Shotgun Wedding (R)
Starring Jennifer Lopez, Jennifer Coolidge, Cheech Marin and Lenny Kravitz, the trailer shows us what looks like an awful comedy. If it reminds you of a combination of Romancing the Stone, Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie) and any zany Scooby Doo! project you’re not far off the mark. Except all the those productions were much better.
The short version of the story is that pirates show up at a large wedding full of annoying people who have traveled to a tropical island and the bride and groom have to save the day by accidentally becoming good at dispatching cartoonish pirates in the weakest, half-baked ways ever seen.
Netflix bought the film and decided to only release it in theaters in Southeast Asia before moving it to “Streaming Only” on Netflix for the Western world. Since it was playing in Thailand theaters for $5 on the big screen I thought, why not take a chance in case it’s somehow good? (I’m not a Netflix subscriber so this was my only chance to see it.)
It’s clear that Netflix did the wise thing by not releasing this turkey in US theaters. Where to even start? Why not start with the Producer and star Lopez. She’s starred in a TON of terrible films in her career. Add Shotgun Wedding to the list.
J.Lo yells and screams out her lines so loudly throughout the movie, even when they’re supposedly hiding from nearby pirates, that when the pirates zip-tied her hands to her fiancé’s hands in the first third of the movie I was sorely disappointed that they didn’t gag her at the same time. If only for three minutes to give the audience a rest from her constantly yelling motor-mouth.
For those that think J.Lo has a great body (enormous/gargantuan hips and “booty”) there’s an extended scene (like, a long time) where she’s just in her thin underwear trying desperately to look sexy. I can imagine the director cringing and thinking to himself, It seemed like a good idea on paper. She comes off more like a 25¢ carnival sideshow right between the Snake Boy and the Bearded Lady tents.
The movie also suffers from the No Character Is Likable syndrome. Has Jennifer Coolidge been likable in anything she’s done? The only good thing I can say about this film is that Adam Sandler and Chris Tucker aren’t in it.
Even if Netflix includes this movie for free as part of your monthly streaming package, don’t fall for it. This dreadful thing should have been locked away and shelved right next to Batgirl.
– AVOID!
Avatar: The Way of Water (PG-13)
Wow, is that ever a long movie (3:12) that feels like an even longer movie. Keep in mind I liked the original Avatar movie.
Let’s get this part out of the way… I’ve been railing against 3D from the start. It’s a sick joke that should be relegated to 5 minute theme park attractions. 3D TV has been abandoned and few movies are shot in 3D anymore because few people care a lick about it.
3D movies have been a passing fad since the 1920’s. It’s a dead format, like VHS. (Until millennials rediscover VCR’s and then VHS tapes will be all the rage again for a year – just as audio tape is coming back. Sigh.) So here James Cameron is just beating a dead horse with his infrequent Avatar movies.
I purposely watched this in 2D like most people will. It’s the same movie either way. If you like 3D, enjoy the format while you still can.
This part two is pretty much just a rehash of the first Avatar story except we’ve lost that initial sense of new planet wonder from the first film. It’s old hat now. Been there, seen that. But boy will you miss that jungle terrain when they start force-feeding you endless water scenes! (More on that later.)
To be quite frank, the characters aren’t “easy on the eyes” on any level. Which is probably why you don’t see those characters on many T-shirts and such. Dare I say they’re ugly. Circus-tall, blue-skinned, lanky cartoon characters with ugly blotches and streaks all over them and dirty dreadlocks with cornrows. They still screech out just like American Indians when on the war hunt, like in the old Cowboy and Indian days. Younger kids may not recognize that sound as it’s not politically correct to even make it (especially when wearing feathers) yet it’s in full voice here and they’re practically on “horseback” while doing it.
The lead female protagonist mostly just cries, argues, bares her teeth, growls and hisses like a cat. Not sure there’s really much to like there. Perhaps a rabies shot is in order. The kids are dumb just like kids are and they call each other “Bro” which is apparently a greeting throughout the universe – as implausible as that would be.
Then there’s the Waterworld tribe we’re introduced to on the planet. A green version of the blue cartoon beings. I’m not sure how much time we’re forced to watch them explore the sea around them, but we spend perhaps an hour watching these ugly cartoons hold their breaths and swim endlessly so we can examine a lot of fictional cartoon fish and sea plants. All without dialogue, because of that whole holding their breath underwater part. If I see one more minute of whale footage this week I’m going to scream. Way too much underwater swimming with fish and especially whales. Boring as hell.
If you have to use the restroom, a good time to do it is when one of the ugly pregnant mother cartoons has a discussion with a female whale in whale-speak (subtitles for us) where they chat about their children. No kidding, that really happens. Maybe it’s more fun to listen to it in 3D. Plenty of time to go potty, or just continue out to your car if you’ve had enough of this nonsense.
The toon characters all look so similar I had trouble distinguishing who was who. Nor did I care much because the characters are paper thin like the story. There’s a Titanicesque action scene with a slowly rolling watercraft though it’s not nearly as effective as the DiCaprio version Titanic ending that Cameron did.
It’s a painful three hours to sit through and they could have easily trimmed an hour off of it. I’m still not sure how US Marines feel about these films as they’re always the bad guys in the Avatar movies. Is it okay to see US Marines who call themselves “US Marines” and say things like, “Hooha” getting slaughtered by the dozens and looking like goons? Who knows anymore.
The predictable firefight at the end is decent, but we’ve seen it before and you have to wait three hours for it.
This entry has the empty calories of a single bite of a candy bar. But for those that love all the Marvel movies, this will be AWESOME and they’ll wait around to see if there are any double-secret extra scenes at the end of the credits. (Supposedly there are no extra scenes at the end of this Avatar film.)
– Wait for Rental (If only so you can take a break from it.)
Christmas Bloody Christmas (NR)
Previously, my most disappointing movie experience was The Big Bus back in 1976. If you’ve never seen The Big Bus it’s probably because they haven’t shown it on TV for forty years because all copies of it should be in a landfill.
Christmas Bloody Christmas now takes the top spot for worst movie I’ve ever seen. There’s no reason to list the endless reasons for this, from the look of the film to – everything else. I can’t think of anything positive to say about this movie in any way shape or form, except I don’t have to think about The Big Bus being the worst movie I’ve ever seen anymore. (Christmas Bloody Christmas does have an inexplicable 70% rating on Rotten Tomatoes).
There isn’t ten seconds of footage worth watching here.
– AVOID!
Savage Salvation (R)
The trailer has an independent film look to it but it does star Robert De Niro and John Malkovich so I gave it a try.
They do a good job right out of the gate of depicting a small town in the dirty, poor south (think Mississippi or Alabama) that has the added burden of a heroin/oxycodone/fentanyl problem on its hands. We follow a young couple, Shelby John and Ruby Red as they decide to get engaged and kick their injection habits together under one roof.
It plays pretty heavy on the lengthy heroin-kicking scenes so if you’re not into that rough drug “withdrawal” visual ride you might want to steer clear of this, or prepare to wear out the FF button on your remote. It’s realistic – probably to a fault for most viewers.
Below are not spoilers. It’s a retribution movie. The reason for the retribution is pretty much spelled-out upfront.
The bad guy here is a tatted-up town drug dealer who isn’t too thrilled at losing two of his regular customers. So he tries to lure them back in. Unfortunately, Ruby Red ends up dead on the front porch from her free package of spiked powder which obviously enrages Shelby John.
Since Ruby Red was eager to get baptized before her death, Shelby John carries her dead body to the lake so the preacher can perform it for her. Uh-huh. That really happened.
I’m no attorney, but I think any preacher who baptizes a dead body that was unexpectedly brought to him at the lake would be charged with a felony – likely along the lines of “Tampering with a human corpse.” But Hollywood writers seem to think it’s okay so onward we go.
So Shelby John starts doling out his revenge (wielding a hefty nail gun because he’s poor and it’s a cool thing for moviegoers to watch) and works his way up the drug dealer food chain. Robert De Niro (the town sheriff) tries to stem the bloodshed but uses third world torture tactics to cut down on the police work. It’s notable because Robert De Niro considers himself an American activist actor. It’s fine to play a reckless thug when his role is an Italian mobster, but not when he’s playing a small town American sheriff. I’m surprised he took this role.
So it’s okay for police departments to torture people, right? Hmmm.
Americans need to get over that nonsense and Hollywood needs to stop glamorizing it. We don’t live in Sri Lanka where suspects are routinely tortured. It’s one thing for Rambo or Liam Neeson to do it because they’re not cops sworn to uphold the laws of the US. The day we have to fear the local police force, or even worse, be brought into Saddam-like police station torture chambers (here’s looking at you Hawaii Five-0*) is the day we’ve totally lost our way.
Iran and China must look at these shows/movies and gleefully say, “See? Americans agree our way is best! They’re just like us!”
No. We are different. Hollywood writers need to be taken to task and reminded that our ancestors got on tall wooden sailing ships at great peril to leave torturing regimes behind. Protection from torture is one of our Constitutional Rights (Eighth Amendment).
As a retribution movie, Savage Salvation works in a shoestring budget kind of way as Shelby John (not a cop) vents his anger. But it’s a mighty gritty film from top to bottom.
* In the case of Hawaii 5-0, the writers knew they had an hour to fill so the first person they tortured at the 30 minute mark was always a red herring before they switched gears and finally nabbed the RIGHT person to torture. So 50% of their weekly episode torture victims were innocent! Looking it up online, I can’t believe that show went ten seasons. No American wants that kind of policing in their State, yet they seem to love the idea of it onscreen. Shameful.
– Wait for HBO
The Menu (R)
A bunch of rich, pretentious foodies get on a boat to travel to a coastal island to eat at the most amazing restaurant in the world headed by a world class chef. The food is Michelin Star quality and the atmosphere is insane. It’s also rated R (not for sex) and earns it.
That’s all you should know going in. It stars famous actors you know but it’s not a “star” driven movie so there’s no need to list them out. The fact that they are present onscreen is not important other than the strength of their acting skills. There are some protected class no-name actors here with weakly delivered lines but it doesn’t torpedo the story.
On some sites the movie is listed as Horror & Mystery & Thriller & Comedy. This is the rare case where all of those boxes are correctly checked. Some sites drop the comedy part. That’s clearly a mistake. Perhaps some folks don’t get dark humor.
It’s hard to mix all of those elements and not have a complete mess of a movie. Even more, this is director Mark Mylod’s first hit after only three other films that were all complete duds. He pulled this one off. You’ll be fully entertained and guessing the whole way through to the end.
There are a couple elements of the story that don’t really make sense, one of which I can talk about here. Specifically, if someone claims to be from Boston they better have that trademark, biting accent that is VERY distinguishable. Here it’s absent. Perhaps for storyline reasons, but it’s still a faux pa.
But the quibbles are few. It’s a terrific, well-acted film and one of the rare theater-worthy movies of 2022.
The best way to enjoy this movie is to know as little about it as possible before entering the theater.
– See it on the Big Screen
The Human Trail (NR)
If you’re the type of person that seeks out medical documentaries (I do) on cable channels with three letters, like A&E, PBS, BBC, etc. this film might catch your eye. A married couple (documentary professionals) decide to film their own documentary over six years covering the pursuit to cure type 1 diabetes. We’re reminded more than once that “The cure is five years away.” I think Jerry Lewis used to use that same timetable for his endless muscular dystrophy fundraising.
We all know diabetes is a horrible disease and the millions of people suffering from it are dependent on a steady stream of (artificially) expensive insulin injections. The fact that there’s no cheap generic insulin since its discovery in 1921 is nothing short of criminal.
This film covers the early research team developing a stem cell cure for the disease. Once the company painstakingly gets approval from the FDA for human testing (years later), we then follow the first and second patient to finally get access to the new implanted devices and watch their journey in the clinical trial for six months each.
It’s a pretty tough documentary to watch. You’ll sure get a down and dirty view of what it’s like to be a hard core diabetic. Rough stuff. And anyone with even cursory knowledge of human trials would expect the worst, especially for the early participants. (As an aside, it’s a disheartening truth that 90% of drug trials end in failure. Optimists look at the 10% successes that help people every day around the world.)
As you would expect when renting this, since we’re not reading about any huge diabetes breakthroughs today, there is no Hollywood ending here. I know the filmmakers had no idea of that when they started filming this adventure. I don’t blame them. It would be hard for anyone to just say, “Oh well,” and throw six years worth of documentary footage into the trash.
But rather than getting cool behind the scenes insights as to how medical trials work, we’re mostly left watching the rug get pulled out from under desperately ill people who are willing to go though painful implant therapy. It’s downright depressing. We’re still at least “five years away from a cure.”
I’m not sure who the audience is for this.
– AVOID!
Manifest West (NR)
As narrated by the teenaged daughter (and only sane member of her family) this troubled group of four leaves their conventional modern world behind (and their typical American single-family home) for a new life off the grid in the rugged mountains. Unfortunately, the parents are simply running away from both financial and mental woes. Those issues tend to follow you wherever you go.
The list of “statements” presented in this film are plentiful:
The father believes Unions are a necessity in life.
Children are better off homeschooled. (Ugh! Even the kids in Little House on the Prairie went to a dedicated one-room schoolhouse.)
No government oversight whatsoever. (Not realistic in any “real” country. There’s a word for areas of the world with no government oversight. Anarchy. Perhaps a rural part of Somalia would’ve been a better choice for them?)
Mental issues. Check!
Pharmaceutical questions. Check!
Total disregard for laws. Check!
Free range kids. Check!
Guns are good/bad. Check!
Girls always fall down when running away. Check!
We’ve seen these types of stories both in real life (hopefully only on TV or in the movies) and in other better movies. But this one does throw a 2022 curveball at us. One of their off the grid Grizzly Adams mountain men neighbors has a black wife. Anyone over the age of 16 knows how astronomically absurd that demographic notion is. So there’s that.
When the eldest daughter scoffs at the idea of homeschooling, her mother responds by asking her what she’d really like to learn. Instead of showing her mother how silly homeschooling is and responding, “How about German? Or chemistry, with no equipment in our little shack. Or physics? Or calculus?”
She instead answers, “How about history?”
Lame. Her mother obviously loves that softball request and runs with it instead of being put in her place. So her two kids learn history all day, every day. Schooling at it’s finest! I’m sure there was some basket weaving involved too.
The major problem with the movie is that the family of four is a total mess. Not a “feel sorry for them” mess but an OMG mess. And that’s before the bipolar wife goes off her obviously necessary meds. That’s always fun to witness, huh? I think most viewers will turn this turkey off soon after that.
If you stay with it, the whole thing is exhausting to watch no matter which camp you’re in. Even staunch Ruby Ridge defenders would shake their heads at this sorry film.
Even though it is well-acted, my advice is to give this movie a wide berth and instead look around and realize just how great it is to be alive – in your conventional modern world with rules that aren’t very draconian at all. You don’t need to see this drivel to realize that.
– AVOID!
Speak No Evil (NR)
A Denmark film that has a family of three visiting another family of three in a rural part of the country. They met each other during an earlier vacation so they don’t really know each other that well.
One couple invites the other by postcard and before you know it the families are together for a long weekend in a rural house. Almost immediately the visiting couple sees warning signs. But they put up a good front and stick around anyway.
The root of the problem is that the naïve visiting couple has a young daughter (10ish) that seems to accidentally lose her treasured stuffed animal everywhere they go. Instead of teaching her a lesson in responsibility that she desperately needs, like parents would’ve done in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s these helicopter parents continually backtrack to retrieve her stuffed animal every single time she leaves it behind somewhere. Parenting is a forgotten art, like pyramid building.
Even worse, the milquetoast father/husband will leave you shaking your head. Embarrassing.
Then his wife turns out to be the wimpiest woman in the world (what a couple!) with zero fight in her. In the end, when faced with death the whole family is like limp, wet spaghetti spilled onto the floor, unable to do anything to save themselves in any situation.
Forget the villain family. You’ll forget about them 30 seconds after you stop watching the movie. It’s the wimpy family that’s pitiful. A pathetic display of human beings. You’ll remember them for a day or two and just shake your head.
Or even better, you won’t watch this terrible movie at all.
– AVOID!
Fall (PG-13)
The trailer for this film was pushed heavily so you probably already know that this movie is about a pair of women climbers who ascend to the top of a very high radio tower and get trapped on the top of it.
For those that get off on heights (heights porn) or those that have a fear of heights but enjoy sitting in a comfortable chair while watching crazy people do insanely dangerous things way up in the air (fear of heights porn) this one’s for you! Your hands will sweat. Your heartbeat will quicken. It’s intense stuff.
If you avoid such things, you’d HATE this film. You won’t be able to watch it so don’t kid yourself.
If you’re still interested, this will “do it” for you to the max.
Basically, a woman named Hunter is a YouTube blogger who films her crazy, dangerous climbs. Mostly on scary mountains. Her viewers eat that stuff up and she has a massive following. Her grieving pretty girlfriend named Becky still hasn’t gotten over her dead half-black husband (per the US 2022 minority casting rules). A year earlier he fell off a mountain right in front of her. She’s been pretty much drunk and depressed ever since.
To get Becky back into the game of life, Hunter convinces Becky she needs to climb this tower along with her to break free from her killer depression. To get back on the horse, so to speak. So that’s the thrust of it.
Now, let’s get the obvious plot issues out of the way:
First, the US tower still has a flashing light on the top that needs to be replaced every year or so. It’s silly how dilapidated the structure supposedly is with all the bolts loose and ready to give up and rungs of the ladder rusted through and falling off under a person’s weight. C’mon, man. This isn’t Mainland China. But such conditions will most certainly make your hands sweat like crazy. It’s beyond intense and well-filmed.
Second, there are some serious physics flagrant fouls where women have Wonder Woman strength. But scenes of normal women doing insane things as if they were Wonder Woman will most certainly make your hands sweat like crazy. And that’s what we’ve paid for here – hand sweating scenes. It delivers in spades.
At the 1:05 mark, Hunter suddenly has two shoes on for a second. Oops. Other technical issues abound. But…
You already know if this movie is for you or not. If you’re in it for the thrill of the heights and great footage of the danger involved in such an endeavor, this one is a total success.
– Wait for Rental
Summit Fever (R)
Okay, I know what you’re thinking. Another mountain climbing movie? This one’s a fictional story so it has a different vibe than the previous ones. Whether that’s good or bad is up to you. If you shied away from the recent slew of nail-biting documentary films covering dangerous mountain climbing challenges with real lives at stake, this fictional story might be more your speed.
Since this is a fictional story there are a lot of dicey, deadly situations that our cast needs to live through. Because of that, this one has a higher body count than you might expect going in. The depictions of falls, fails and mishaps are very effective and will stay with you long after the movie ends.
The story follows a young UK man who leaves his promising white collar job trajectory behind to mountain climb with his best friend as he embarks on a series of epic ascents on some of Europe’s hardest mountains. They hook up with other friends along the way. The views are stunning, many of them shot by helicopters and there is some serious white-knuckle stuff to be had. A lot more women climbers/skiers and partying going on here than in the documentary films.
But don’t dismiss this as a fictional fluff story filmed in front of a green screen. It wasn’t done that way. Though not a documentary, it entailed a four-year shoot on the actual mountains with all the actors actually doing their own climbing. So hat’s off for the authenticity side of the film. The writing may be more on the soap opera side but the views and action scenes will leave you impressed.
Since it’s a UK film and not bound by Hollywood casting regulations, it features a ton of good looking, fit people with just a pinch of P.C. casting nonsense in the 2nd half. Any time they put pretty people in front of beautiful landscapes it’s something to feast our eyes on. A different view than most of the middle-aged humans we get to see around us every day. That’s what we’re paying for here.
The least pretty of the large cast is the lead French actress (Mathilde Warnier) who has, shall we say, a face covered with “character”? If she’s not going to play a wicked witch she should probably go into hand modeling. I hope actresses covered with ugly facial moles isn’t a casting trend that gains any kind of momentum. Everybody else in the film (a LOT of pretty faces) has a face that’s conducive to 50 foot movie screens and HD televisions.
It seems odd when mountain climbers see their good friends die on a mountain and they still want to go climbing the next day. I suppose it’s a lot like motorcycle riders who see their friends horribly killed on motorcycles and continue to keep on riding motorcycles. They just can’t give up what they love doing.
There are some cheesy moments with cheesy lines, but overall this movie offers just enough to keep you entertained for nearly two hours – when sitting at home. It’s an okay rental.
– Wait for Rental
The Good Boss (NR)
This highly rated film is a fictional story about a Spanish scales company (a company that literally makes weighing scales) and the relationship between the rich man who owns it (played by Javier Bardem) and the ragtag sea of employees that work for him.
Now and then you may get on your bathroom scale at home. Perhaps you’ll even visit a doctor and have to jump on their more pro version of a scale. All in all there are a few items in the world as boring as a scale. Perhaps drug dealers enjoy using theirs, but most of us don’t spend much time thinking about scales. Why anyone would think it would be interesting to delve into a story about a factory that makes scales is beyond me. It’s exactly as interesting as you think it would be. In other words, not at all.
This black comedy never really gets going. Javier Bardem is a tremendous actor and you probably loved him in everything you’ve seen him in. He puts in the effort of being exhausted by the fact that all of his employees are inept. Anyone who’s ever managed any team whether it’s Wendy’s or at IBM would immediately understand that 80% of his employees should’ve been fired years ago. It’s a business 101 example of how not to manage. Yet this boss puts up with them and we’re supposed to find that funny, funny, funny.
I don’t find it funny when I walk into a Wendy’s that’s poorly managed. I found this viewing to be about the same awful experience. That feeling that you just want to walk out and choose something else instead.
The stakes are also mighty low as the whole point of this story is based on the fact that the rich owner is hoping like hell to win an award for the best scale production line. Zzz. He’s been nominated and the judging committee is on their way within a week to his factory.
The biggest problem is that we don’t care a lick whether he wins or not. Nobody here is a nice person. The whole Spanish town seems like a whole village of losers.
It’s amazing to me that the movie was so well received. I don’t even understand how this thing got financed! The long and short of it is that I hated The Good Boss from start to finish. Two hours of wishing I had done something else instead.
In Spanish with English subtitles.
– AVOID!
Black Box (PG)
When aircraft go down there are investigators who look for the black boxes (really painted orange) and painstakingly try to piece together what went wrong so the issue doesn’t reoccur in similar aircraft.
This is a French film that stars no one Americans know and their crash teams are part of the French BEA (Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis). We see the inner workings of this government branch as they work enough accidents to keep roomfuls of people busy. Funny, because I can’t remember a string of air crashes that would keep any single country agency like this “buzzing and busy” with such tight deadlines to meet. But whatever.
We follow an audiologist who has world-class hearing. He has proven himself countless times when he has detected sounds that lead the agency to the cause of the crash. Unfortunately, because of some in-house politics he’s sidelined for this latest airliner crash which just killed 300 people.
Much like the John Travolta movie Blow Out, we delve deep into the real reason the plane went down by listening to sound clips over and over and adjusting the frequencies to clear them up. There’s also a lot of dark shadowy forces working in the background trying to cloud everyone’s judgement.
It’s quite an engaging nail-biter of details and intrigue. On that level it works. However, there were some niggles that bothered me.
As a BEA investigating audiologist he uses wired Sennheiser headphones at work as he painstakingly tries to pull different frequencies out of the raw data recorded on the black boxes. That makes total sense.
But sometimes he pops in Jabra wireless EarPods to try to discern sounds from a plane crash during some downtime when cooling his heels outside the office. No one with such credentials would do that. They are great for noise reduction purposes, but Bluetooth EarPods are low bandwidth, “just OK” sounding, ultra portable devices for listening to casual music or podcasts. You’re not going to glean any new intimate audio details wearing those that you missed when donning your $900 wired Sennheisers.
Second, he’s under tremendous pressure at the office to finish his reports and get this case behind them. So what does he do instead? He drives long distances into the night, multiple nights, to do his James Bond thing. If we had a jealous husband investigating possible infidelity, perhaps. Great lengths would be expected. But a pink-fingered, Frenchman audiologist? Nope. It’s simply too far-fetched.
You’ll see the final scene coming a mile away. We’ve all seen it before. And these scenes would ONLY happen in a Hollywood movie.
But if you’re willing to just go with the story, it’s a well done film.
In French with English Subtitles.
– Wait for Rental
Smile (R)
Sosie Bacon (daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick) stars as Dr. Rose Cotter, a hospital mental therapist in this latest horror movie, Smile. As the poster above reveals, Sosie Bacon has a large mole with an orbiting planet on her cheek. It’s a shame when she’s an actress putting her face on 50’ silver screens around the world. You never get used to it. A lot of close-ups. For two hours. I’m at a loss.
Another unfortunate thing for Dr. Cotter is that she meets with a patient who is VERY disturbed. It sets the course for the horrors to come and it’s very effective. If you’ve seen The Ring or the original Japanese version Ringu, it’s along those lines. So if you liked that theme, this one’s for you. If you loved that theme, see this latest entry in a theater.
Dr. Cotter’s fiancé is obviously a black guy because this is 2022, and the continuing Hollywood false narrative that everyone in America supposedly has a black spouse pushes onward. Overseas movie audiences are starting to believe it’s true. So there’s that. You win, Hollywood. I guess.
As with many such horror films, no one believes the protagonist when she says she’s been cursed. Even with a fistful of proof. Not even her sister, therapist, coworkers or her black fiancé, who supports her least of all.
So Dr. Cotter is pretty much on her own and you’ll feel for her as she tries to figure out what is happening to her. The scares are well done although I do hate any use of lazy dream sequences.
Mental health cheerleaders are ringing the bell that we need take this movie as a wake-up call that people with mental heath issues need to get proper help. Don’t fall for that noise. This isn’t a mental health breakdown story at all. Quite the opposite. The whole point of Dr. Cotter’s struggle throughout the film is that everyone is telling her it IS simply a mental health issue. She’s angry about that because she really has been cursed. She knows it for a fact. Quite a difference! A $200 visit with a shrink and a prescription for Prozac won’t help you with a deadly curse. It just makes the quacks richer and the demon loopy.
The ending is not terrific, but few are. I think if you watch this you’ll figure out what YOU would do in the same situation to solve the issue at hand. Nonetheless, it’s always a long stretch of time between horror movies that are worth watching in a theater full of nervous viewers. This script is better than most.
– See it on the Big Screen
Bandit (R)
Yet another “based on a true story” film – this one showing us Gilbert Galvan Jr, a prison escapee who flees from the US to Canada and goes on a record breaking bank robbing spree (59 banks). As with ALL “based on” movies, the Hollywood writers stretch the truth like taffy to make it as enjoyable as possible.
This particular Hollywood-biography is a 2 hour affair and some of the fluff is downright silly. Enough so that at times they actually stop the movie to write “this really happened” on the screen to show us nuggets of truth among the poppycock scenes.
Among the insanely silly ploys that would never work in real life, using 2 hot cups of coffee and a few cubes of dry ice the bandit manages to fill a bank with floor to ceiling “fog” that sends staff running as if the bank is on fire. Not only would you need a dedicated dry ice fog machine and pounds of dry ice to fill a room, but as anyone over 12 knows, dry ice fog immediately falls and hugs the floor.
The starring actor also breaks the fourth wall at the start of the film (directly addressing the audience) which is always a plot device problem for me.
Mel Gibson plays a fence (as in criminal, not white picket) and you either love him or hate him. He plays his part well here – unless you hate him – in which case you’ll think all his scenes suck.
I found most of the movie off-putting. Not sure if it’s because the lead actors just didn’t do it for me or because the story seemed far too loose with the facts. As with 99% of these criminal stories, the final takeaway for all of us is that greed will always catch up to you in the end. Knowing when to quit while you’re ahead is the goal in life.
There – now you don’t have to watch it.
I also hope this is the last movie ever to have the song, Free Bird in it. Lordy me, how I’m tired of that song. Tired of it since, like 1974.
True story aside, if you’re interested in bank heist films there are 50 or so out there that are better. If True Story/Bad Guy films are a must for your rainy Tuesday night entertainment, I think instead of watching this movie you should rent the Tom Cruise movie American Made again.
– Wait for HBO
Margaux (R)
I find the idea of a Smart Home killing its occupants an intriguing concept. A more modern update to the Saw films idea.
This film was shot in Canada using all Canadian actors. The women are represented by an Asian actress and not just one, but two half-black actresses. Half-black actresses are much harder to find in Canada but pretty much a prerequisite in today’s “meet the minority quotas halfway” Hollywood film casting formula. Let’s not forget Thandie Newton’s tearful public apology that half-blacks are taking all the black women roles in films. They don’t even try to hide it anymore. And if you’re a white actress, those rolls are dwindling. This Canadian film features none. And these actresses are always paired with white boyfriends. Let that notion soak in.
We also have two guys passionately tongue kissing – because it’s 2022 and all guys are supposed to be kissing and confused about their sexual identity, I guess. That’s really the most sex happening in the film which for most viewers is worse than none. The rest is clothed PG rated teasing.
First the Good Stuff:
Unlike the available thumbnails that are all grainy (see above) this movie is actually crisply shot and looks pristine on your TV. The Smart Home looks snazzy.
The modern, techno soundtrack throughout the film is really well done. The music guy who put that together (Matthew Rogers) deserves credit for it.
The Bad Stuff:
Pretty much everything else about this movie sucks. The script. The weak kills. The acting. The lazy delivered dialogue. The lack of sexy scenes that would appeal to both men and women who don’t rent gay porn. The laughably lame special effects showing the Smart Home “tech” doing the killing.
I suspect those that fall for this rental after watching the slick trailer will struggle to finish watching it.
– AVOID!
True Things (NR)
I suppose True Things is a movie with a message. Perhaps, based on your particular gender.
A woman named Kate has a boring job (like a lot of people do) and her role is to interview and find jobs for convicts after their release from prison. We watch as a blond ex-con with a stud earring sits across from her. He’s played by Tom Burke, an actor that has a repaired cleft lip scar from his childhood. I suppose women might find his look intriguing?
He ends their very short conversation at her desk by asking her out to lunch. I suspect women in her line of work would find 40% of the recent released thugs asking such things, but that’s just my hunch.
Anyway, she skips the lunch but sees the thug (we know him as Blonde) waiting outside for her after work. She decides to have a drink with him. So she follows this shady Blonde guy up a few ramps to an empty upper tier section of the parking garage where his lone car sits. He parks his car in a way that you do after reading, Serial Killing for Dummies.
They don’t get in. With just a few words she’s enchanted with him. He tells her to pull off her stockings and panties and they have sex right there against the concrete wall.
He’s inside her so quickly it makes James Bond look like an inept loser. But Blonde’s only inside long enough to quickly inseminate her. I think most rational viewers would call it a rape scene, but then perhaps I’m not the right gender and I’m missing the point.
Kate is somehow expecting her thug rapist to want a relationship with her so she spends an inordinate amount of time waiting for him to respond to her texts – as we watch her watch her phone. Days later he finally resurfaces and he drives her to his secret spot, in a wooded area at a lake.
Again, in a way that puts Bond to shame, Blonde immediately suggests skinny dipping, and she’s into it. As she stands there in only her panties she says, “I don’t know anything about you.”
True dat!
But then she at least has the guts to ask if he’s ever killed anyone. Not that that would matter much standing next to a large body of water in the middle of nowhere. But not a terrible line given the surroundings.
He dives in and she stays on the shore. So Blonde simply swims off and leaves her there.
Kate gets bored and sleeps on the dirt beside the water. It’s here I started to question this Harry Wootliff director guy. None of this is realistic at all.
Blondie eventually decides he’s had enough water time and lays next to her. Then rapes her, then shows total indifference to her as she sits up next to him as he smokes his hand-rolled cigarette. (I have no idea if that’s sexy or not.) He treats her like the dirt they’re sitting on. No, that’s not right. He treats her worse than the dirt they’re sitting on.
I paused the movie to see what else this Harry Wootliff director has done. Oops, Harry Wootliff is a female director. Ouch. Got me again! And she co-wrote it too. Double-whammy. A total recipe for disappointing disaster.
With the air quickly escaping my entertainment balloon I returned to the movie thinking this whole story might turn out to be a dream sequence (for Kate not me) that Kate is having after reading Fifty Shades of Grey and a Harlequin novel back to back.
The scenes of him using her get worse. Like, really awful. At one stage he “borrows” her car. For a week. Without responding to her texts or calls. She doesn’t call the police. But the depression that comes over her is crushing.
You know how when you need to blow your nose you visit the Kleenex box to blow into a tissue and then discard it in the trash? You don’t think about the Kleenex box again until you need to blow your nose. Kate is Blonde’s Kleenex box. It’s terrible. Painful to watch. Or is it? Perhaps women will think I’m missing the point. He’s bad-boy-hot after all! It’s like totally worth it to lose your job and contemplate suicide for a rough hottie like him, Jim! It makes us want to go out clubbing after watching that!
I can only hope that’s not true.
There is a scene where Kate dates a regular nice guy and leaves a bar with him. But he suddenly acts like a eunuch when the seduction time happens and he instead rebuffs any thoughts of sex and treats her with total indignity. What planet is this director from? These aren’t humans she depicting. Female director Harry Wootliff might need some serious psychological help.
In the end Blonde gets his comeuppance, except it’s the weakest comeuppance in movie history because it’s obvious this guy couldn’t care less about Kate. Off to the next Kleenex box.
It feels like women directors are overcompensating to try to prove that they too can produce edgy movies. It’s a sad state of affairs Hollywood has found themselves in. It taught me to pay closer attention to the films I watch. I won’t be fooled again.
– AVOID!
Into the Deep (R)
For those that remember seeing an Australian movie called Dead Calm in 1989, (it played endlessly on Cable TV back in the day) a tense movie about a trio of people on a yacht way out on the ocean, Into the Deep is a 2022 UK movie with a similar storyline. Except Dead Calm starred young actors Sam Neill, Billy Zane and actress Nicole Kidman. Into the Deep stars no one you’ve ever seen or heard of and isn’t nearly as good.
Not that they didn’t try. I don’t blame the actors.
Here we have a world traveling yacht guy (nice sailboat!) who shows up to a small town and ends up invited to a beach party by a younger girl who is adorned with what I would call weird tattoos. They leave the party early and end up on his boat at the boat slip.
They hit it off and drink a lot. So far it’s believable.
She wakes up below deck with her skimpy clothes still on and finds he has surprised her by sailing deep into the ocean while she was sleeping. Surprise!
Not that she might have to work today or be anywhere right? Oh, and the cell service is nonexistent out at sea. Oops.
In the end she takes it better than you would imagine in real life. But by Hollywood plausibility standards, it works. In fact this girl is so impressed with the sailor’s wacky dating methods that she quickly loses her skimpy bikini and basically proclaims, “Let’s jump this bitch to an X rating! Right here on the deck of this yacht!”
And it would have been, but the cameraman got clever with getting boating gear in the way of their impromptu porno shoot. I must say the two of them certainly sell that scene.
It’s here that I need to mention that not since the 2020 movie Volition have I seen an actress with such beat up legs. (I mentioned it in that previous review). Perhaps she does kickboxing as a hobby as that would be preferable to assuming she’s a crack whore, but good grief! One would have to assume there was a makeup artist on this shoot. A makeup artist that would say, “Can I spend just a few minutes on those legs… please?”
Anyway, before you know it a random jet ski bumps into their boat (in the ocean, beyond sight of any land) and has a young woman on it that’s both unconscious and pretty.
“The odds!” one would think. And the odds of her running into our boat, too! But the Hollywood created couple on the boat think nothing of it other than saying, “It’s a darn good thing she ran into our boat way out here, huh?”
That’s just the beginning of the long list of silly things that happen from that point on.
But since the newcomer has been jet skiing around all day, she’s conveniently wearing a bikini for the rest of the film. So that helps the story and desensitizes the viewer from the pain and suffering of this Hollywood script.
There is enough silly back and forth to keep you guessing as to who the real villain is. So on that level it kinda works. But it’s just so silly. It’ll be great on cable.
– Wait for HBO
No Way Out (NR)
With an intriguing trailer, this direct to video film showed promise.
A scrappy photographer meets a scrappy blonde and they start a relationship that’s probably typical of scrappy LA millennials. Lots of drinking and mollies (pills) and for the photographer, cartons of cigarettes to be smoked onscreen.
They have sex a lot and hit LA after-hours clubs that cater to folks who are also into dungeons and sketchy VIP areas.
All good so far, right? (No judging.)
My first complaint is that to pull off a movie like this one, the main actress needs to be really hot. We all know the blueprint. Not just the OK girl down the street that cleans up nicely, but Hollywood actress hot. The kind of actress that would then put out a poster to be sold at Spencer’s Gifts for teenage boys put on their bedroom wall right next to their Megan Fox Transformers poster. Either that, or she needs to be a stellar actress that can overcome her looks. YMMV. But with the budget constraints, Australian actress Maia Mitchell is what we have here. It hurts a film like this.
The movie gets a little monotonous until we witness a couple professional racy photoshoots. The kind of photoshoots we used to see in the 70’s and 80’s in movies like the 1978 film Eyes of Laura Mars. Scantily clad (hot) models who are photographed in crazy high-fashion layouts. Note that Maia Mitchell is not included in any of these photoshoots because she’s not of the caliber of the dozen or so models who are used here. But I suppose the hot photoshoot models can’t really act. That’s a shame. Especially since we later find that Maia Mitchell is a bit weak in that department too.
So at this point it’s 30 minutes of a slow burn affair. Literally.
Until the 32 min mark where there’s a truly shocking twist. It’s well done and turns the movie on its head. It was a swing for the fence and should have been a grand slam home run. Now we’ve got ourselves a movie!
Unfortunately, one scene later our lead actress Maia has her chance to shine but instead reveals that she’s a weak actress. That, or the director couldn’t get the believable delivery that was needed to sell the shocking spin. First-take acting.
But our photographer character buys-in and does things that might sound plausible in principle, but in real life it’s unlikely he’d have much success. He’s a chain-smoking photographer, for goodness sake. What she asks of him is too far of a stretch.
The ending they chose was the worst of three obvious possible script directions, which I really found off-putting and I think most viewers will agree. It didn’t even match up with the shocking reveal. I would love to delve into that further but some folks may want to see this for themselves.
The twist was a shocker that I totally didn’t see coming. So kudos for that. But the lead actress is too weak. Then they totally whiffed on what could have been a much cooler, much darker ending opportunity. The fact that they pulled away from two better ending avenues left me shaking my head in bitter disappointment. Where’s Brian de Palma or Martin Scorsese when you need them! Damnit!
I don’t think this one is worth anyone’s rental cash.
– Wait for HBO
The Black Phone (R)
Ethan Hawke stars in this uneven movie with a familiar storyline of kid abductions in the 70’s. It’s plenty creepy.
It’s fun to see wired telephones on the walls and old fashion televisions showing dated old fashion American shows and movies. That stuff is probably lost on the younger crowd. When a test pattern comes on the TV after midnight, I seriously doubt anyone under the age of 40 watching this movie knew what the hell that was. And why was the kid up super late sitting on the floor watching scary movies? Again, if you’re under 40 it makes no sense.
The music soundtrack is great (for us boomers from that era) and the first half of the movie is stellar, although the schoolyard fights seemed out of touch with reality in the 70’s. Hollywood has always struggled (immensely) to portray high school and college life with any authenticity. The acting runs hot and cold as well, but none of the above issues ruin the film.
It’s when the movie hits the halfway point that the story takes a turn for the goofy with dead ghosts literally calling (making a dead phone ring) on a black phone in the kidnapper’s holding cell.
It didn’t work for me. If it had been a short Twilight Zone episode on TV, sure. But for a theater movie in 2022 the whole idea is too weak to swallow.
And it’s truly a shame considering the very engaging set-up of the first half. A swing and a miss for this one.
– Wait for HBO
Moon Rock for Monday (NR)
Now and then Australia pops out some mighty entertaining movies. From the Mad Max films to Crocodile Dundee. Yeah, Crocodile Dundee was an Australian film, not a Hollywood film. And a surprising number of big Hollywood movie stars are actually Australian. Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman, Heath Ledger, Cate Blanchett, Hugh Jackman, Morgot Robbie, to name a few.
We might have a new one to watch out for. Newcomer Ashlyn Louden-Gamble is a 13-year-old girl with stunning blue eyes that might even remind you of Nicole Kidman. A more fair comparison eyes-wise would be actress Alexandra Daddario. Eyes that jump off the screen.
The story follows a girl named Monday, living in Sydney in 1999. (Placing the movie in that era kills off any cell phone storyline issues.) Her father named her Monday because she was born on a Monday. Her pet rabbit’s name is, “Rabbit.” So you know this is going to be a quirky story right out of the gate.
Monday is homeschooled by her dad because she suffers from an unnamed immune system disorder. So in essence she doesn’t get out much. But unlike the dozens of other movies with a handicapped character plot device, it’s not played for sympathy votes here. Monday doesn’t want to continue taking the daily pills with nasty side effects that make her feel sick. She just wants to live life feeling good every day.
But what Monday really wants, and believes, is that that if she travels 1,700 miles NW to the “Moon Rock” in Australia, it will cure her when she touches it. So a better description would be that this is a Quest movie.
Uluru is the famous sacred Australian site she’s referring to. You might want to Google “Uluru photos” to get a feel for the giant landmark.
We also follow a young man who robs a jewelry store with a gun and then goes on the run from the law. In a strange twist of mutual-benefit opportunities, Monday joins up with the thief which allows him a better chance of escape and puts her on a road trip (an “excursion,” as she calls it) to the Moon Rock.
It’s mighty enjoyable for the viewer to watch these two stumble their way northward. It’s perfectly cast. Not a chance in hell you’re going to turn it off at any point. There’s a reason this independent film won all kinds of awards at the film festivals.
They meet some fairly interesting characters along the way. That might be the weakness of the film as they’re thin characters at best, but it does add some length to the enjoyable story.
At one point the thief admits he doesn’t know how to read, but minutes later the two of them are playing the child’s game “I Spy” while driving down the road. I don’t think you can play that game if you’re illiterate. But it’s a small quibble.
One thing I learned from the movie is that flies are endless in the Outback. There are a lot of scenes where the flies were swarming all over the actor’s faces during the scenes. You really have to be a good actor to keep delivering your lines in a professional manner with flies trying to enter your mouth and sip moisture from the corners of your eyes. I suspect the rest of the film crew was wearing beekeeper helmets.
If you have trouble with the thick Australian accents there’s always subtitles. That’s what I did.
We need more original stories like Moon Rock for Monday in our lives. This one will stay with you.
– Wait for Rental
Top Gun: Maverick (PG-13)
I rented the 1986 Top Gun movie a few days back to see if the original stood the test of time. In other words, was it really as good as my memory served?
It’s still a good movie. It held up well. So I prepared myself for this highly touted sequel that is supposedly better than the original. Better? Really? Could they really pull that off? Sequels are rarely better.
The short answer is, yeah. They pulled it off. It is better than the original, and that’s saying something. Tom Cruise still has box office mojo. He can deliver the goods. And this one will tug at your emotions.
This time we get a UN representation cast of all types of young men (and women) representing the “best” naval pilots in the USA who are Top Gun worthy. YMMV. A lot of the scenes mirror the original script, sometimes annoyingly so.
The first film had shirtless guys playing beach volleyball – I guess for the women moviegoers. This new version has the co-ed cast (shirts on some of them because of the co-ed thing) playing beach football. Not sure that was necessary in a 2:11 length movie, but OK. At least they give a reason for it this time.
Val Kilmer is the only returning star other than Cruise. In real life Kilmer has battled throat cancer leaving him unable to eat without a feeding tube and speaking is supposedly done using electronics. I applaud the way they handled it in this film. Nuanced. Respectful.
In this follow-up to the first film Maverick is moved to the Top Gun facility to train these young pilots to perform a miracle mission like something out of Mission Impossible. Only with jets.
That’s enough info to send you on your way to the theater. The relationships are well fleshed out, the stakes are high and the jet scenes plenty exhilarating. And the ending… it’s well done.
The ending is why you should see this film immediately before others blab about it. Maybe you’ll figure it out, or anticipate it. Maybe you won’t. But you’re only guessing.
– See it on the Big Screen
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (R)
Nicholas Cage stars in his wackiest role yet (which is saying a lot!) by playing himself in a film that tackles his strange need to take any movie role offered to him while trying to keep his family close at the same time – as well as then playing an action role within the actual movie we are watching about him.
If that sounds confusing it should. I can only imagine the insanely described movie pitch that got this movie funded for production.
In short, it works… if you like Nicolas Cage. Which is basically the test as to whether this film is for you or not. It hasn’t performed well financially at the box office so that’s got to be a blow to Cage’s ego if he’s keeping score using that litmus test.
Tiffany Haddish is horribly cast in the requisite minority role. But the movie also has a young actress playing Cage’s teen-age daughter. She adds some necessary (grounding) realism to the film and plays so well off of Cage that I thought she just might be Cage’s real daughter. She’s not. She’s Lily Mo Sheen, Kate Beckinsale’s daughter in real life. So there’s that nugget.
The less you know going in, the better. If you’re a Cage fan, I’d skip the trailers and detailed descriptions of the movie and just go for it.
– Wait for Rental
The Innocents (NR)
A very slow moving Norwegian tale of mean-spirited young kids with strange powers that they use for evil deeds. You wouldn’t want any of them in your neighborhood.
The main star is a little girl who is double-jointed. Not much strange power there, at least at first. But good grief is she mean to the core. Her older sister plays a helpless autistic kid (a lot of that going on in today’s films). The actress isn’t autistic in real life so she’ll probably get industry demerits for that.
Then we have a brown-skinned young boy and girl. The girl is afflicted with vitiligo, an inherited disease that has caused large patches of her skin to have white patches (see movie photo above). She has vitiligo in real life, so perhaps that cancels out the other actress “acting” like she has autism. The two brown kids have supernatural powers like the autistic girl. Because as we have all learned from movies, these types of people are super-duper special.
The biggest flaw with the film is that these kids play such awful people. Examples include killing animals. They even torture and kill a cat, with a few scenes I’d consider over-the-top for any cat lovers out there. People probably left the theater or turned off the rental after seeing such things. It’s one thing to hear about it, it’s quite another to witness it. People around these kids are tragically burned and bones shattered. It’s not done in a way that we’ve seen before (and somewhat accepted) with such movies as Saw, Final Destination or even the sick Eli Roth films like Hostel. This is somehow worse.
It’s hard to explain why it’s worse, but I think it comes down to context. There just isn’t much of that here. Other movies have lots of interesting and inventive locations to take us to, and they develop the characters until we care about them. That’s important with such films. Here it’s just evil little kids who are unable to drive or go anywhere, so they just hang around their boring little neighborhood and do evil things to each other and anything around them. The budget might have been $2,000 by what we see.
These characters are such worthless souls that it would have made a much better film to simply burn all four of them at the stake at the 45 minute mark and leave the audience applauding.
To add insult to injury, another tragic flaw that has afflicted too many movies since Marvel dumbed everyone down is that we get no explanation of how these kids got their powers. How can that be? Why only these four kids? No one knows? Do the writers even know? Or care? I can’t believe audiences just buy into everything these days as if there are no laws of nature or precedent. It’s sad. We’re not sixth-graders. We deserve better.
This film got a 95% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I can only assume it’s because of the super-duper, diverse casting. Good grief, the world had gone completely off the rails.
(In Norwegian language with clear English subtitles)
– AVOID!
V/H/S/94 (R)
This is one in a series of low budget “found video” movies where we are supposedly watching VHS footage (from 1994) of horrific happenings (usually involving gore). I haven’t seen any of the previous V/H/S titled films. From this example I’m not going to race to see the earlier releases.
Right out of the gate it’s poorly scripted and poorly acted and I thought to myself, Oh my God, what did I just rent? Then much later (one hour in) it took a turn for the better when the plot changed and the special effects were outstanding. How can that be?
It’s not until the credits roll that you see they used multiple writers and directors for each of multiple stories or segments of the film. The lame (and long) section titled “Storm Drain” was written and directed by newcomers Jennifer Reeder and Chloe Okuno. That explains it. As weak as you would expect from the outset.
Simon Barrett wrote and directed the segment, “The Empty Wake.” It’s OK. Timo Tjahjanto wrote and directed, “The Subject.” It works best of all. Insane use of special effects. Like, how on earth did they do that? special effects. The “Terror” section, about a rural anti-government militia was written and directed by Ryan Prows. Crazy idea and shocking, but it works for what it is – on a low budget.
Throughout the entire movie of multiple stories (all based on the found footage idea) they overuse the added effect of old beat up videotapes that had been played too many times, with with lines showing across the screen where the tracking knob would obviously need adjustment to clean up the picture. It makes it look as if we Boomers suffered for decades with crappy VHS picture quality because none of us knew where the tracking knob was. (Sigh).
They also want viewers to believe that we had our VCRs and VHS video cameras (using massive VHS cassette tapes) running on battery power all the time. They forget that portable batteries sucked in 1994 and only allowed for short camera recording times. We always plugged in when filming things like plays or performances of any kind.
Here, when the power goes out at a funeral home many hours into the casket viewing time, the multiple VHS cameras being used to record the wake for posterity keep right on recording. Anyone alive back in 1994 would laugh at that idea.
With only one solid segment that really stands out I just can’t recommend it.
– AVOID!
Corrective Measures (NR)
Just when you thought the movie delivery fragmentation issue couldn’t get any worse, this is a “Tubi Original” movie starring Bruce Willis that’s available only on the free streaming service (commercials!) called Tubi.
With the new knowledge that Willis is suffering mental issues (aphasia), the last bunch of movies he’s released now make sense. He wasn’t just phoning it in for cash. The man has literally lost his ability to think and remember his lines. Armed with that new info it’s like witnessing a car wreck to watch him try to get through a movie over the last couple years.
He’s a bit more coherent in Corrective Measures than he was in Fortress (released in 2021). If you want to see someone in a total Alzheimer’s state of mind, Fortress (an awful movie anyway) is painful to watch – because of Willis and his deer in the headlights acting. It’s reported that most of the time he didn’t even know why he was on the movie set or what he was supposed to be doing at any given time. Almost sounds illegal to use a star like that. But he wasn’t accused of abusing any women, in a profession littered with such career-ending land mines, so his career just continued on autopilot while everyone around him made money off his name, including his wife. Shameful.
Corrective Measures is billed as Sci-Fi, Action, Mystery & Thriller – but it’s played like a cartoon (or comic book) comedy so I don’t know why they try to hide that fact. A bit like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
We see enhanced humans like a really low budget Guardians of the Galaxy (none of the crazy-looking freaks are shown on the movie poster). Anyone possessing mutant genes that make them into super powerful people lands them into this super-duper, supermax prison where they are stripped of their powers and abused by a comical warden (played by Micheal Rooker). We’re supposed to enjoy the ride as we watch these genetic freaks deal with each other (fight) and bicker with the warden and his angry guards.
This film was directed by Sean Patrick O’Reilly, a Canadian comic book magnate. Yeah, you read that right. It’s based on the Corrective Measures comic book series. Yippee! So if you’ve spent your whole life collecting and peddling comic books and watching cartoons nonstop (no judging), this might be your favorite movie of 2022. It wasn’t mine – and it’s FREE to watch on Tubi, over and over, as many times as you want!
– AVOID! (Unless you want to see Willis in mental decline.)
The Contractor (R)
Chris Pine stars in The Contractor, a serviceable revenge movie suitable for rental. It’s slow out of the gate and you’ve seen the same paint by numbers script done a dozen times before, many of them better than this one. But revenge movies always make for a fun formulaic ride which is why so many of them are made.
Not much storyline to explain. A discharged soldier (Pine) is down on his luck financially and decides to work as a hired “contractor” doing whatever he’s told to do based on his tactical training as a soldier. His team of contractors are sent to Germany to collect things from a secret lab and things go badly. Then it turns out there is a double-cross boss situation going on.
Like I said, we’ve seen this scenario countless times. There is also an annoying use of shaky-cam during super close-ups of people’s faces when they are merely speaking to one another. To the point of inducing nausea. It would be less bothersome when watching at home on TV.
One thing that stands out:
I like that all the shooters, good guys and bad guys can aim and main characters actually sustain gunshots from automatic weapons.
The things that are eye-rollers:
Shame that some get shot with automatic weapons and heal to “perky” in 8 hours or so.
Any time you see anyone talking on a satellite phone just know that like all satellite devices they ONLY work with a direct view of a clear sky above. They won’t work with trees above you and they certainly don’t work indoors. They won’t even work if it’s raining hard.
One of the main characters has a handicapped kid in a wheelchair. The actor playing that part really does have cerebral palsy among other issues. That checks a huge Hollywood box that lets the filmmaker off the hook for the other usual handful of P.C. boxes they are supposed to check to get a movie made in today’s world. Because of that the rest of the cast is refreshingly realistic and convincing.
But the moral lesson at the film’s finale is contrived:
Real countries don’t purposely release pandemic viruses. China does, repeatedly. The H1N1 Bird Flu (Swine Flu) and SARS came out of China. Then the Wuhan virus sprung up in Wuhan, China. The Chinese Communist Party knew they had a new killer respiratory virus on their hands and blocked all Wuhan residents from traveling domestically within China. That should (could) have been the end of it. But instead, the CCP allowed those same Wuhan residents to travel overseas with no restrictions during Chinese New Year, spreading the deadly Wuhan virus worldwide within weeks.
To make it look as if other countries are working to do the same thing is pure Hollywood fantasy. Only China purposely does that.
– Wait for Rental
Ride Till I Die (NR)
This film covers the life story of Ricky Ringer, a famous championship bull rider. He’s never won the “big one” (think Super Bowl or Gold Medal). So as his career winds down as he ages himself out of this young man’s sport, can he finally grasp that winning season?
Just to get this out of the way at the top, this is not bull fighting. These 2,000 pound bulls are not hurt or killed in rodeos. The riders are hurt. Badly. Nightly. So there’s no reason to shy away from this sport on “animal rights” grounds. Bulls are ornery animals. Riding them is hard as hell. 8 seconds is as long as anyone goes for – then they desperately try to get off.
It’s a huge sport in the south, not so much in the northern US. So I’m guessing most people are not familiar with the life of a rodeo bull rider. It’s a job. Just like cashiers. Truck drivers. Accountants.
Bull Riding. It’s a full-time job. Who knew?
With full access given, this documentary covers the life of these cowboys really well. We see the toll it takes on their bodies, in vivid detail. We also see the toll it takes on their families. It’s a slice of life most of us have never thought about. That makes for quite a film.
If there is a major shortcoming it’s this:
They don’t spend time explaining the scoring process for this sport. Especially for a sport that few watch or understand in the grand scheme of world sports.
It’s more than just staying on a bull the longest during the night of contestants. Your “form” counts too. Reading up on it afterward I see that the bulls are also scored on each ride. Again, who knew? It would have been great to hear this stuff thoroughly explained by either Ricky Ringer or a scoring official. To me it seems to be similar to ice skating or gymnastic competitions where the scores are mighty subjective. It’s especially tricky to score the bulls because they have no idea they’re being scored. Hard to really shine when you don’t even know why you’re at the event.
Ricky Ringer is a good ol’ boy, cowboy. A likable guy and family man who lives to ride bulls. He’s had brutal Evel Knievel injuries. But keeping it real, with all the smoking going on I’d guess most of these cowboys die from lung cancer. As with any documentary, the filmmakers have to roll the dice as to whether there will be a big payoff moment or not after years of filming their stories. You’ll have to watch to find out how this one ends.
This went straight to streaming.
– Wait for Rental
Ambulance (R)
{Photo insert above, from right to left: Eiza González, Jake Gyllenhaal and black Superman.}
This is the most laughably ridiculous movie Hollywood has released since, well let’s see – the first Hollywood movie was released back in 1910. So Ambulance is the most laughably ridiculous movie since 1910. Not to say it’s not a thrill ride (it’s directed by Michael Bay) it’s just absurd from all angles.
The main draw actors are Jake Gyllenhaal and Mexican singer/actress Eiza González (the tough wife of Jon Hamm in Baby Driver).
Let’s start with the good stuff. Just as in Baby Driver, Eiza González delivers some great scenes, here at the start and end of the movie. She plays EMT Cam Thompson who we quickly find to be a deep and interesting character. It’s standout stuff that shows she’s the real deal and worthy of bigger roles ahead. The middle (hour+) section of the movie is so over the top ridiculous that there’s really no judging anyone in the cast during that lengthy gobbledygook of political correctness and anti-physics. (Lots more on that later).
But Eiza González’s first few scenes and last scene of the movie are showcases of stellar acting. Eiza and a little girl play out scenes that might make your eyes well up with tears if you’re susceptible to such things in movies. Jake Gyllenhaal is Jake Gyllenhaal. If you know who he is you needn’t hear more about his role. The guy can flat-out act as the “bad seed” brother.
Then you’ve got Michael Bay at the helm of the picture, pulling all the strings. Love him or hate him (lots of folks in both camps) the guy could film the slow process of draining maple syrup from maple trees with a gazillion camera shots and angles to make you believe it’s actually exciting to watch those boring drizzles of amber.
Here Bay has the cameras endlessly swooping around like a hummingbird on an acid trip giving the audience seemingly impossible shots from impossible angles with impossible swift and precise focus. Dare I say the camerawork and constant explosions are just enough to keep you from walking out of the theater as the story insults your intelligence for over an hour.
The very shortened explanation of the story is that a little black boy became best friends with a little white boy in the inner city. The white kid’s parents adopt the little black boy so they became “brothers.” We immediately fast forward to current day where the black kid has grown-up and is struggling in life while his white brother seems to be doing very well. Real world stuff. (You can just hear the Hollywood writers going to town on their laptops, gearing up to push their agenda of “opposites” within minutes. The ideas they expect us to swallow as this story unfolds get completely out of hand).
To get money for his wife and child, the black brother gets talked into robbing a bank by his bad white brother. The heist goes terribly wrong and the brothers end up carjacking an ambulance with two hostages trapped inside, a shot cop and Cam, the female EMT.
It’s then an endless chase movie similar in length to the original movie Speed. Except this is one hundred times less believable than Speed. As Cam tries to save the life of the twice shot cop, the ambulance is swerving and dodging obstacles (mostly hundreds of cop cars) and weaving around like only a Hollywood stunt driver could achieve (or the good black brother in this story) – with zero damage to the humans riding in the back of the ambulance. For hours. Anyone in the back of that ambulance would be thrown around and broken into pieces like Evel Knievel. Except they’d die from the trauma long before the story ended.
The Hollywood writers don’t miss a trick. A little old Asian lady accidentally getting into the elevator with the big bad criminals? Yep. A tent city of California homeless people in the background of multiple shots? Yep. Gay men kissing? You bet.
Hundreds (possibly a thousand – because it’s a Michael Bay film) of white men keystone cops, driving and flying helicopters as if they are sixth graders who have stolen the vehicles. For hours we watch as they can’t shoot straight (with automatic weapons) nor can they set up roadblocks or stay on the roads. The cops crash into literally everything imaginable, often rolling out of the smashed cars like circus clowns to keep the rating away from a slaughterhouse NC-17. For hours they chase the suspects as if they are legally blind and inept. In case your are not aware, white people are incompetent idiots!
Only the black cops and the gay FBI pursuer have a clue about anything.
The black brother guy (the good brother) is not only a great father, but also an F1 driver. Really? Is that what an inner city black kid would be good at? Is he an Olympic skier too? It’s simply not plausible.
In real life, here on planet Earth, actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who plays the good brother, was a gifted football player in high school who even played against future NFL champion Marshawn Lynch. In college he was a great hurdler. Now THAT makes sense.
But back on planet Opposites, this better half, black good brother is able to skillfully pilot any vehicle, such as an unstable ambulance all over LA. But that’s not all! He’s also a field medic from the Gulf War who can shove his hands into the chest cavity of the helpless white shot cop who’s been rolling around in the back of the Wacky Races ambulance, to help save the cop’s life. To be clear, the good black brother was the one who shot that cop – twice. But why dwell on something as trivial as attempted murder, am I right? This guy’s got hero written all over him!
This good brother even donates his own blood into the cop while driving the ambulance around roadblocks like Sandra Bullock! He’s black Superman, only without the cape and occasionally agrees to rob banks. Hero!
We’ve all seen fanciful medical scenes in TV shows and films. But at the midway point this film jumps the shark. You simply have to shake your head. Scooby Doo cartoon hospital scenes were more believable.
The ambulance tries to escape for untold hours. Not even O.J. Simpson would buy into the length of this California highway chase. So many hours go by that at one point a California branch Mexican cartel gang starts building a self-driving Cadillac outfitted with a military machine gun like something out of the movie Predator, and C-4 explosives on the floor boards to really put it to the cop barricades. The cartel then places a dummy behind the wheel of this self-driving killer machine. Perhaps one of the dummies who was involved in writing this script.
After a gazillion bullets are shot at the ambulance over a period of hours, it never suffers a scratch. Of all the holes in the story, those missing holes are the least of the issues going on.
There are glimmers of greatness with a few of the Eiza González EMT scenes. Enough that they should give her a vehicle (no pun intended) along the same plot line. With a Spanish husband and a Spanish kid. Wouldn’t THAT be a different Hollywood movie.
The rest of this Ambulance story is breathtakingly dumb as only Hollywood could conjure up.
* * *
A dirty little Hollywood secret (for Americans) is that overseas moviegoers often see films a week or more ahead of the US and Canada. For those that are curious about how movies are typically released worldwide nowadays, Universal will release Ambulance theatrically as follows:
Indonesia 16 March 2022
Philippines 16 March 2022
Thailand 17 March 2022
United Arab Emirates 17 March 2022
Argentina 17 March 2022
Mexico 17 March 2022
Singapore 17 March 2022
India 18 March 2022
Turkey 18 March 2022
France 23 March 2022
Italy 23 March 2022
Australia 24 March 2022
Brazil 24 March 2022
Germany 24 March 2022
Denmark 24 March 2022
Netherlands 24 March 2022
New Zealand 24 March 2022
Portugal 24 March 2022
Slovakia 24 March 2022
Estonia 25 March 2022
Finland 25 March 2022
UK 25 March 2022
Ireland 25 March 2022
Iceland 25 March 2022
Norway 25 March 2022
Poland 25 March 2022
Sweden 25 March 2022
Malaysia 31 March 2022
South Korea 1 April 2022
Lithuania 1 April 2022
Czechia 7 April 2022
Hungary 7 April 2022
Ukraine 7 April 2022
Bulgaria 8 April 2022
Canada 8 April 2022
Sri Lanka 8 April 2022
Latvia 8 April 2022
Taiwan 8 April 2022
USA 8 April 2022
Spain 13 April 2022
Note the absence of Mainland China in the above release dates. China would typically be at the top of the release date list, but only 20 foreign movies a year are allowed to run in Mainland China and many aren’t even American films. This film has no Chinese main characters or Chinese storyline so that would doom it right out of the gate. Not sure what Spain did to Hollywood to be last on the release list.
– AVOID!
The Pink Cloud (R)
I took a chance on this award-wining independent film.
What if you literally couldn’t go outside for years? Like a bubble boy. Not because of a disease but because the strange pink clouds outside would kill you within 10 seconds. Thankfully this story was well out of reach of the overused Based on a True Story nonsense tagline that studios try to reel us in with.
This story takes place in Brazil in a relatively spacious apartment that I assume to be well out of reach for the average Brazilian. A couple wake up on the beach after a one night stand to find pink clouds building up and civil defense speakers telling everyone to go inside immediately.
At first the couple hits it off. But as you can imagine, as the weeks go by isolated in this apartment, spending 24/7 with each other they go a little stir-crazy. In this story the guy accidentally sabotages chances to have sex with her for dumb reasons that make utterly no sense. The female director (Iuli Gerbase) doesn’t understand how insanely powerful the sex drive of a man is when a recent-relationship woman offers him sex, so her irrational movie direction goes completely off the rails. No guy would believe any of it.
Story-wise, the idea that any government could quickly install “magical tubes” to everyone’s home to deliver food, medicine and even Amazon delivery of electronics and toys is beyond dumb. And this being poor Brazil makes it even dumber.
The pink clouds continue until the woman has a child. We watch as the kid grows up. We watch the couple fight like cats and dogs. For years.
Watching couples endlessly fight is never fun. Especially if you’ve paid money to watch couples endlessly fight. I think I was actually angrier than the angry couple because of this point.
So will this couple ever reconnect (in their apartment, no less)? What’s it like living in an apartment 24/7 for 13 years (with a growing kid)?
I found out the hard way that it’s as dreadful as it sounds on paper.
The only reason I can think of to rent this movie is if you want to brush up on your Portuguese.
(In Portuguese with English subtitles)
– AVOID!
The Batman PG-13
The fact that this huge blockbuster film isn’t offered in 3-D should be the final nail in the coffin. 3-D is as dead in theaters as it is in the home. Rightfully so. It’s about time. Avatar 2 (or whatever it’ll be called) will revive it for a Hollywood minute but can’t save the lame unnecessary 3D format. Good riddance.
This movie is dark, both in tone and with the fact that it seems the sun burned out at some point along the way. 3 hours of nothing but nighttime scenes. What’s worse (for Gotham folks) is that to be green (I’m guessing) there are very few light bulbs in any buildings in Gotham. So flashlights are standard issue whenever going into any structures. They never reveal why.
At 3 hours you’ll probably want to check out the theater restrooms just prior to seating. While you’re at it, check out the lighting in there and marvel at what the Gotham folks don’t have.
It’s a detective story this time with far less action than any previous Batman movie. The good news is that it’s not boring, which is saying something. Kudos to director Matt Reeves who has a solid résumé of films to his credit. He believes in crazy things like using heavy duty tripods so we get a professionally shot movie. I’d almost forgotten what that looks like. Refreshing!
The scenes run long to play out the mood but contain just enough steady information that you don’t drift off. It’s hard to do but he got it just right. The acton scenes work even better with the long lulls in between. Batman sure beats down the baddies like we’ve not seen before.
Colin Farrell plays The Penguin. No way you’ll recognize him. The makeup and prosthetics are so good you’d only know that from the credits.
Very few gadgets this time as this story takes place relatively early in the Batman timeline. So too, love interest Catwoman is still tinkering with her suit-to-be. This time it’s Zoë Kravitz taking the Catwoman role. She’ll become the least memorable of the Catwoman bunch. She’s certainly no Michelle Pfeiffer. And strangely (realistically!) this 5′ 2″ catwoman gets her ass kicked every single time she gets into a fight. So that’s new.
In one of her lines she says, “The problem with the world is rich, white assholes.”
That’s not racist, right? Hmm.
But it’s ok because Zoë Kravitz is half black, half white, like Hale Barry when she was cast in her own Catwoman movie. It’s a thing.
As is often the case, this movie shoehorns in a half black actress to finesse the necessary quotas. I’ve highlighted this phenomenon for years. Hollywood loves their half black actresses. We’re not talking “biracial.” They’re not half Asian. Hollywood specifically needs blacks in prominent roles in all movies. And people have finally caught on to the half black ruse. This constant use of “box office acceptable biracial babes” has created a backlash with the 100 percenters in the actress field. See this article written by frequently-used half black actress Thandie Newton for details on the subject. She’s been made to publicly apologize for not being “black enough” to count toward the quotas. It’s quite a read:
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/02/thandiwe-newton-tearfully-apologizes-for-benefitting-from-colorism
If you’re wondering how many half back actresses with acceptable features have been used for decades in Hollywood movies to skirt the quotas, the list is a lot longer than you think. Here are just the most prominent ones:
Vanessa Williams, Jennifer Beals, Halle Berry, Lisa Bonet, Thandie Newton, Vanity, Zoë Kravitz, Kerry Washington, Rashida Jones, Zazie Beetz, Alexandra Shipp, Rachel, Yara Shahidi, Jessica Parker Kennedy, Kylie Bunbury, Laura Harrier, Hannah John-Kamen, Gloria Reuben, Elizabeth Ludlow and Zendaya. Then there’s Jasmin Savoy Brown who’s not only half black but she also adds “queer” to her résumé, which gives her bonus points in today’s world. That mix pretty much guarantees her endless work.
Zoë Kravitz is the least pretty of the above bunch so lord only knows how she landed this Catwoman part. With all the hubbub from full black actresses, Zoë will likely lose this Catwoman role to a really black actress going forward. Maybe Wesley Snipes has a daughter who acts. Oops, his wife is Korean so their kids would still enrage true blacks.
Sometimes you just can’t win.
Since this is 1 of only 20 “foreign” films that are green-lit to be released in Mainland China each year, Hollywood also shoehorned in a scene of a meek Chinese man being targeted and attacked when getting off the city subway. Hollywood has no shame.
Overall the biggest flaw with this latest Batman film is that the ending (last 15 minutes) are laughably unsatisfying. I’m not suggesting it’s not worth a trip to the theater. If you enjoy expensive blockbuster films, it’s worth a trip to the theater. But prepare yourself to be wildly underwhelmed with the Hollywood “message” and tone of the finale. It’s a huge letdown.
– See it on the Big Screen
The Ledge (R)
This one got raked over the coals by the so-called professional critics. But I found it to be plenty entertaining.
Here’s the test for whether it’s for you or not:
If you like movies where people get themselves in a situation where falling to their deaths is a real possibility, this has that going on in spades.
If it makes your fingers tingle when the camera work is done in such a way that you feel the danger as people climb around on the edge of a mountain, this will certainly make your fingers tingle. It’s effective in a lot of scenes.
If either of those things are a turn-off, there’s no reason to watch this movie. But if you’re still interested, this is a story about two women climbers who are skilled enough to tackle the Dolomites (mountains in Italy). In fact they’re so skilled that they’re going to climb the face of the mountain while the four men they meet at the base of the mountain are going to take the easy side route, due to their lack of mountain climbing skills.
The guys turn out to be bad dudes (understatement) so it quickly turns into the women against the men. Normally that would be a quick finish to the story except for that wrench in the works where the women are clearly far more experienced climbers than their weekend warrior pursuers.
There are some Die Hard kung fu grip moments that will leave you rolling your eyes. But for a story with very few moving parts (that are easy to piece together from the start) it still works.
– Wait for Rental
Ted K (R)
One look at the thumbnail above and you know why people are curious about Ted Kaczynski. For those old enough to remember the Unabomber, his likeness was posted on everything. It was the longest manhunt in FBI history.
Like a lot of bombers, he was pretty inept at actually killing people (see below). But maiming folks is still a pretty effective attention-grabber. His goal was targeting what he felt were bad companies. He wanted to affect change on society.
In a nutshell, Ted Kaczynski wanted the world to go backward, away from the technological advances we were making. He would have been much happier living under China’s Mao during the Great Leap Backward. Or in Cambodia under Pol Pot. Both regimes made their population go back to agrarian principals while executing anyone with obvious smarts, skills and talents.
People like Ted Kaczynski have an aura about them. What makes them tick? (Pardon the pun). How did he get away with his 14 bombs over 16 years? A&E and other channels/shows (here’s looking at you 48 Hours) are basically a constant stream of shows about scoundrels that kill people. It turns out that examining such people from a distance is quite entertaining.
The problem is that a lot of larger than life icons are a huge disappointment up close. Sometimes it’s best not to meet or delve too deeply into people who have an aura or odd mystique about them. To those that get close, Madonna turns out to be a disappointing a-hole. And here it turns out this bomb-tinkerer Ted guy living in a 10′ x 14′ cabin in the woods – is quite simply a real bore. Though he was a mathematical genius in college, once out of school he was nothing more than a broke, dirty bum living in the woods. A dirty bum with an ax to grind.
According to this drama/biography Ted had a lot of axes to grind. They spend an inordinate amount of time showing us how any noise bothered Ted. Long scenes of snowmobiles crisscrossing the slopes near his cabin. Mountain bikes running around trails near his home. Barely audible jumbo jets the size of a matchstick head flying across his sky. How dare they? Logging happening all around him. Strip mining coal operations nearby. Everyone with their loud, whirring, thumping, buzzing machinery.
All too noisy for him. “You kids get off my… mountain!” Then we get montage after montage of the damage happening to the Earth by these destructive operations. Over and over, throughout the film. Ok, we get it. Enough of the “Earth will become a smoldering cinder if we don’t listen to Ted” nonsense. No one is renting this Bio for any “sympathy for Ted” preaching. Enough foreplay! This guy made bombs, right? Ever see a Hollywood movie? We all love bombs and explosions. Get to the bombing chapters of this cat’s life!
Unfortunately they spend way too much time illustrating over, and over, and over the things that made Ted Kaczynski angry. This two-hour movie would have been much better with fewer “save the planet” footage montages and wrapped up in a tight 90 minutes.
For those that don’t know the end of this Unabomber story, his brother recognized Ted’s writing when Ted’s long manifesto was published in The New York Times, The Washington Post and Penthouse Magazine (where I read it). His brother was the one that broke the case – not the FBI. That’s the case more times than not. Without tips, the FBI struggles to close such investigations. The Shoe Bomber was taken down by other plane passengers who found it off-putting to see him trying to light his shoes with a Bic lighter. Same with the Underwear Bomber. The inept Times Square Bomber was so suspicious that citizens broke his cover long before his car bomb could go off. The Fort Dix Six videoed themselves shooting guns and shouting about Allah and then were caught when they took the tape to Circuit City to have it transferred to DVD!
The US spends 100 billion a year to fight these bozos. Money going out the window in perpetuity.
As citizens who actually stop these bad guys, just know that The FBI and Homeland Security thanks us for our service.
This film contains too little real substance for a recommendation. Better to watch a scoundrel-filled episode of 48 Hours instead.
– Avoid!
Delicious (NR)
There are a lot of movies called Delicious. This is a review of the 2022 movie directed by Éric Besnard.
It’s 1789 France where fine dining is only done by aristocrats. Good food was not to be wasted on lower class people who lacked the palate to appreciate such painstakingly prepared foods and wines.
In this story a great chef is sacked by his “Duke” master and is sent packing to make it out there on his own. So the chef and his son start making basic soups beside the road to serve to any commoner passing by on horseback/carriage. Then a middle-age woman shows up at their roadside establishment on horseback. She sits outside and refuses to leave until the chef agrees to take her on as an apprentice. She even sits outside on a log in the cold rain overnight, refusing to take shelter in the barn.
It’s an odd wrinkle to the story and I found her whole angle to be quite a stretch throughout.
Regardless, in the end what we’re witnessing is the creation of the first official “restaurant” in the world where people from all walks of life, rich or poor could order whatever they wanted from a fine menu, while sitting at tables side by side. And at the same time, per this story, France takes the credit for all of it. Where the first restaurant was really invented is certainly debatable.
There are a lot of movies out there that show sumptuous visions of wonderful food being prepared onscreen, enough to whet the appetite of the viewer to the point of food porn. Unfortunately this is one area where this film falls flat. Either they really didn’t go for that angle (per story time constraints) or the foods that were historically prepared in the late 1700’s weren’t yet up to today’s version of enticing food porn.
If you are really, really interested to see how the first restaurant was conjured up, this is your movie. Otherwise I’d only stream this if you are on some kind of all-you-can-eat plan (no pun intended).
In French with English subtitles.
– Wait for Rental
Last Looks (NR)
Let’s start with the knowledge that this is a Comedy/Action movie. Knowing that going in helps a lot.
A retired cop/investigator living a minimalist life of retirement in the woods is brought out of retirement by a couple things, but mostly because of the forced disappearance of his old flame (played by Morena Baccarin).
The cop is played by Charlie Hunnam, who I’m not familiar with. But he’s been in a lot of shows/movies and is terrific in this quirky role.
You may know Morena Baccarin from the past TV series Gotham. She was also in the Deadpool movies and in the “planet killer” comet movie Greenland. She doesn’t have much screen time here playing the girl that disappears but she’s always good in her roles.
Mel Gibson also stars but in a way that leaves him out of most of the scenes.
The movie (directed by a relative newbie) can be described as Tarantino/Cohen Brothers-like. Not only by the long list of very interesting characters the story introduces along the way but by the funny little additions of stated facts. Like the main character adhering to his life rule of owning only 100 things. Every time he says it, it’s funny.
The violence is harsh but ends with cartoonish shaking off of the blows. Hard to describe, but it works. The murder mystery drives the story forward but as you watch, that’s the least of your attention. The characters are the enjoyment of this ride. I’m guessing very few people will see the movie. If I was the director I’d be mighty disappointed by that. In our current world of 95% fails and hits that are merely retreads, this low budget (direct to streaming) movie deserves to be seen.
– Wait for Rental
Ditched (NR)
Here’s a Canadian low budget horror/slasher movie starring a real life Inuit Indian actress (that bonus category checks the only necessary box for “inclusion” in this one) playing a paramedic who finds herself in a crashed ambulance with a prisoner strapped to a gurney and a crashed police car in a ditch (get it?) in the woods beside the road. Some of the cops/ambulance workers regain consciousness and find themselves suffering from “Overacting 101.” They’re also constantly out of breath for no reason just like Edward Furlong in his many terribly acted scenes in Terminator 2.
As a bonus, the Indian squeals like a four-year-old every-single-time she sees a shape go by or a bloody figure. You’d think a paramedic who’s no doubt seen a plethora of auto crashes would handle herself better.
Then hokey hairy monsters straight out of the low budget 1965 Lost in Space TV show show up to cue the Eli Roth style bloodletting.
That’s all folks. It’s just plain awful. Don’t bother.
– Avoid!
See for Me (NR)
Interesting concept with some huge blind spots.
The story follows a blind girl who gets hired to house-sit for people who travel and leave their pets behind. In this case she’s cat sitting. It’s an odd scenario and the people who hire her think it’s odd, too. But nobody wants to be the jerk who doesn’t hire the blind girl.
The biggest flaw in the movie is that the blind girl is the jerk. It makes it harder to root for her when a group of home invaders enter the mansion she’s in in the middle of the night.
The title of the movie refers to a fictional (for now) App that assists blind people with a live operator who looks around using the blind person’s phone camera feed and tells them what their surroundings are. It’s a nice twist on the tired, I’m hiding in the house with killers looking for me and I’ve never played hide and seek before theme of movies.
The strength of the movie is Kelly, the woman on the other end of the See For Me App (played by soft features, half black (Hollywood loves that) Jessica Parker Kennedy). Here she plays an Iraq war vet who also plays MMO team military video games over the internet in her spare time. She basically saves the movie with her no-nonsense tactical guidance. The jerk blind girl listens to 20% of her helpful tactics, but at least we get to hear what Kelly would do in the situation. It’s refreshing. If Kelly had a gun she’d immediately shoot any bad guy within sight in the house.
I’m with Kelly. Most women in movies aren’t tuned into that same bandwidth.
Actress Emily Piggford, with the sheriff’s department, shows up after the 911 call. She too is a standout in the film. VERY believable. I suspect they had a cop write that entire scene from a cop’s perspective.
But there are so many flaws.
Why does the blind girl have the phone screen brightness all the way up? No blind person does that. They don’t need to see the screen – at all. Blind folks can get three days out of single cell phone charge! I know it illuminates her face for the camera but it’s not believable for a second and it would only help the bad guys find her in the dark mansion as she tries to elude them. We didn’t need that blaring blue light on the whole time just so you could get to the Battery Low! plot device.
Then there’s this silly notion that never goes away where people, including bad guys, search a huge house with their LED flashlights instead of simply turning all the lights on. There’s not another house around for miles. Why are they all walking around in the dark? Are they worried about their carbon footprint?
The gun has a cartoon clip with an endless supply of bullets. A molecular miracle of dozens of rounds scrunched into that handgun.
The camerawork is clean and professional. The house is modern and cool looking. The App idea was well worth pursuing. Why they had to make the blind girl such a jerk is the real question. It doesn’t add to the story. For me it makes it barely worth recommending.
But in this era of awful reboots and the same Marvel cartoon movies being remade over and over with just a different title slapped on them, this different story is likely worth a rental. And it went straight to streaming.
– Wait for Rental
End of 2022 Movies.