Miami Vice (2006)

  This movie sucks.  

Miami cops Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Ricardo Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) go undercover as drug runners to try and bring down Yero (John Ortiz), only to learn that he's actually just a middleman for a much more dangerous cartel leader named Montoya (Luis Tosar).  

Haha, that synopsis makes this movie sound like it's not a chaotic mess with more loose threads than a moth-eaten poncho.  There are so many sub-plots that go nowhere, which is insane since this movie is somehow almost two and a half hours long.  Oh, but we have time for both male leads to have separate shower sex scenes.  (Not with each other.  That might have accidentally improved it.)

This is directed by Michael Mann and features an incredibly stacked cast that could do NOTHING to save it.  The Jaws of Life couldn't save it.  Not E.T.'s magic finger, not a fairy godmother's wand, not the golden ichor of the gods could have saved this movie.  And you know the worst part?  It's not even entertainingly bad.  It's a generic, poorly-written, half-assed police procedural that you could have slapped any title on and been exactly the same movie.  The show Miami Vice takes a lot of crap for being dated and cheesy but it is legitimately iconic.  The movie?  Instantly forgettable.  

It's streaming on Amazon Prime.

Total Recall (1990)

In honor of Movie Club, I'm reposting this.  Originally posted 08 Jul 2012.    I know, it's practically a crime for me to have never seen this film, especially since the remake is coming out in about a month.  I remember flipping channels when I was a kid and seeing the part where he cracks his facemask on Mars and his eyeballs bug out and it completely creeped me out so I changed the channel.  The image stayed with me, though, as my young brain filed away moments like this for a later date when I would be able to understand them.  Now I know that scene is literally right after the opening credits and is nothing more than a nightmare of the protagonist.

Doug Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is an average dude with a blue-collar job and a smoking hot wife (Sharon Stone).  He keeps having recurring dreams, however, about mountain climbing on Mars with a brunette.  His wife thinks it's a reaction to watching constant news of the Martian colonies struggling with rebellion and advises him to turn the TV off for a while.  But when Doug hears an ad for Rekall, a company specializing in implantable memories, he can't resist taking off for a little faux vacation.  He signs up for the deluxe "secret spy on Mars" package and next thing he knows is that he's been dumped in a cab with no memory of where he was.  Then a co-worker inexplicably tries to murder him, telling him that his life has just been a cover-up implanted over his real memories which had been erased.  Which are that he's a secret spy from Mars.

No wonder he sounds like he's gargling rocks.  The man's had so much brain work done it's amazing he can walk without drooling all over himself. 

Doug escapes by yelling and swinging wildly at the stunt people until they all fall over and runs home.  He tells his wife the whole story and she immediately also tries to murder him because, wouldn't you know it, she's an evil secret agent too and she's really married to some other guy (Michael Ironsides).  Doug manages to escape and pick up a briefcase containing a video message from ...himself, or the self he used to be named Hauser.  Hauser was a secret agent who turned on his boss, Cohaagen, the governor of Mars (Ronny Cox), and got caught.  But before his brain got wiped, he made this video tutorial for himself about how to stop Cohaagen's evil plans. 

Doug/Hauser goes to Mars and meets up with the rebellion in the form of Melina (Rachel Ticotin), a prostitute who looks remarkably similar to the woman he keeps dreaming about.  They get shot at a lot but such is the business of trying to stop an evil corporate overlord, right?  Except that there's no guarantee that this is anything other than the stay-cation Doug paid for. 

When I heard they were remaking this movie, I thought "oh, great, Conan wasn't enough?  We gotta have another Total Recall too?" but after seeing it, I think it's ripe for a reboot.  This version did the best it could with practical effects (by the legendary Rob Bottin) and some early blue screen but we can take it so much further now.  From what I've read, it looks like the new one is dropping the Mars angle completely, and also going back to the original source ("We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick) for inspiration. 

I can see why this version has its fans because it's fun in a completely campy way but I'm now looking forward to seeing what the new one will be like.

Wilson (1944)

  This has been in my queue for ages as unavailable but fortunately, someone put the entire thing on YouTube.  Content warning:  blackface portrayal of Teddy Roosevelt for some ungodly reason

This is a lavish, borderline hagiographic biopic of President Woodrow Wilson (Alexander Knox) that follows his political career from President of Princeton University to Governor of New Jersey to President of the United States, but also as a Wife Guy and a Girl Dad.  Turns out having three daughters amply prepares you to stand against Congressional hawks and foreign military engagement.  But Wilson is no mere shrinking violet.  He only wants what's best for the country, in a sternly paternal and professorial way.

I don't know if I can adequately express how bizarre this movie feels.  It's so morally upright and virtuous it's almost a miracle Knox didn't achieve apotheosis during filming.  Between the tearful martyrdom of his first wife (Ruth Nelson) and the whither-thou-goest puppy eyes of his second (Geraldine Fitzgerald), there's enough stand-by-your-man energy to power Tammy Wynette like a dynamo.  And the inspiring stump speeches!  Hope you don't get sick of hearing "Hail to the Chief" every 15 minutes.  But it is surprisingly progressive for 1944.  There's Black people in it!  One of them even has a speaking role!  He's a butler waxing nostalgic about how his family served the First Lady's family, but you know.  You can't have everything.

This won five Oscars, which makes sense, but it didn't win Best Picture (lost to Going My Way) and according to Wikipedia, producer Daryl F. Zanuck was livid.  Apparently, he spent a fortune on promotion only to see it lose out to Bing Crosby in a Roman collar.

Watching this in the Year of Our Dumpster Fire 2025 is especially surreal.  Every single one of Nobel Peace Prize-winner Wilson's policies, ideals, and principles has been eroded, gutted, or sold to the highest bidder.  It's funny in a ha-ha-we're-all-going-to-die kind of way.

Anyway, it's a cool 2 hrs and 33 minutes long so pack a snack but it's free on YouTube if you want to absorb some great costumes and righteous propaganda.

Pokemon the First Movie (1999)

Happy Labor Day!  Here's a movie about gladiatorial combat with cute, fuzzy creatures!  I am not the target audience for this movie.  I was too old when Pokemon came out.  But my partner is a huge fan.  He collects the cards, has all the games, goes to conventions, all the things.  Everything I know about Pokemon, I have learned through osmosis.  It's a surprising amount, though, because I was well-prepared to watch this movie.

Junior Pokemon trainer Ash Ketchum (Veronica Taylor) is having a picnic with friends when a mysterious invitation is delivered.  Someone calling themselves The Master is holding a grand tournament on a private island to see who can Be the Very Best, Like No One Ever Was.  Ash is very excited and heads out right away, only to be told that a massive storm has disrupted the ferry to the island and no one can cross.  Several other trainers see it as no obstacle, using their Pokemon to brave the hurricane.  Ash, Misty (Rachael Lillis), and Brock (Eric Stuart) do the same.  When they arrive at Kindergartner Kumite, they learn their host is actually a genetically engineered Pokemon named Mewtwo (Philip Bartlett) who has become obsessed with world domination.  He has staged this tournament in order to isolate the best Pokemon genetic sequences that he plans to clone and turn into his own private army.  The children are very upset by this because apparently forcing Pokemon to fight their clones is bad, despite it being the basis of their entire society.  Unsporting because it's an existential crisis, maybe?  Anyway, a literal actual demigod named Mew shows up, and everyone learns about the power of friendship.

This movie has a 17% on RottenTomatoes, which isn't really fair.  I don't know shit about Pokemon and I thought it was okay.  Actual fans probably really enjoy it.  I know my partner remembers seeing it in theaters at 10-years-old.  You can't tell him this isn't a cinematic masterpiece.  Anyway, Pokemon is a cultural juggernaut and you probably know at least one child who is super into it.  This is for them.  It's not currently streaming anywhere but the Blu-ray triple-feature with all the movies is like $10 on Amazon.

Blind Vaysha (2016)/4.1 Miles (2016)

  Here's a couple more shorts.  

First up is Blind Vaysha, an eight and a half minute long animated film based on a short story of a girl whose left eye can only see the past and whose right eye can only see the future.  She can never experience happiness because she has no present.  

I found it overly moralizing and not nearly as clever or provocative as it thought it was being.  Would rather read the folklore, honestly.

  4.1 Miles is a documentary short produced by The New York Times.  It follows a Greek Coast Guard captain who rescues Afghani refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea in overcrowded crafts not designed for the journey.  

I want you to open another tab on your browser and pull up a map.  Find Afghanistan.  Now find Greece.  Consider the level of desperation you have to have to consider crossing that amount of distance with absolutely nothing but a backpack.    

There was a different doc short called Lifeboat from 2018 that covered the exact same thing, except they were a German non-profit.  It was a whole-ass humanitarian crisis and I have no idea if it is still happening because there have been like 20 other whole-ass humanitarian crises since then.  I'm so tired, y'all.

Both films are available on YouTube.

Pear Cider and Cigarettes (2017)

  Finally getting around to some of the Oscar nominated shorts from 2017.  Still working through my burnout.  

A narrator (Robert Valley) recounts the story of traveling from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada to China in order to get his childhood friend to stop drinking long enough to have a black-market liver from a death-row prisoner transplanted.  

This is not a fun or happy story.  The animation is slick, anime-inspired, and completed entirely in Adobe Photoshop.  It is an adult animation, so there's some nudity but nothing super egregious.  It's about half an hour long and available on YouTube or Vimeo.  I'd never watch it again but it was very pretty to look at.

Barbarian (2022)

  For my birthday week, I got to pick the selections for Movie Club and I picked The Adventures of Prince Achmed and Barbarian.  Didn't have a theme in mind, but they worked pretty well together anyway.  Content warning:  sexual assault (off-screen), violence, some gore

Tess (Georgina Campbell) booked an AirB&B in Detroit for her job interview, but when she arrives, she finds that it has been double-booked and a strange man (Bill Skarsgaard) is inside.  A tense night is made worse by strange occurrences in the house, leading to the discovery of a hidden door in the basement.

I laughed so hard during this movie.  I don't want to spoil anything for you but this was one of the most delightful movies I've seen this year.  Wildly entertaining.  It has a triptych-style story with tonally jarring edits at the breaks that could have felt like being bludgeoned but if you just go with it, I promise it's worth the whiplash.  Cannot wait to inflict this on everyone I know.  

It's currently streaming on Netflix but they are taking it off at the end of the month (31 Aug) so hurry or you'll miss your chance.