Child's Play 3 (1991)

  We have reached the halfway point in the Chucky collection and hopefully this is the nadir.

Poor Andy Barclay (Justin Whalin).  That possessed doll ruined his life, stuck him in foster care, and has now, at sixteen-years-old, landed him in military academy.  But things are looking up.  Sure, his commanding officer, Shelton (Travis Fine), is a total dick but there is a hottie named De Silva (Perrey Reeves) who seems kind of interested.  Then Andy spies a familiar face and it all starts to come apart.  Chucky (Brad Dourif) has mailed himself to the academy as a surprise to Andy but is found by a little boy named Tyler (Jeremy Sylvers).  Realizing that since he has a new body, he has another chance at soul-swapping, Chucky tells Tyler his secret.  Andy is not about to let the evil doll possess some other poor kid and so the race for Tyler's soul begins.

This one took a lot longer to get to the action.  They spent a lot of time setting up the Full Metal Jacket-ish academy, probably for character building, but the only character I wanted to see was the one trapped inside a doll.  Once Chucky shows up, everything is great.  So far, this is my least favorite of the series.

Harry Brown (2009)

  Harry Brown (Michael Caine) is a pensioner in London.  His days mostly consist of visiting his terminally ill wife in the hospital, then over to the pub for a beer and a chess game with his friend Lennie (David Bradley), and then home alone.  Lennie, however, has been dealing with the local gang of thugs, led by Noel (Ben Drew), a career delinquent and son of a criminal and ends up in a deadly showdown.  Detective Inspector Frampton (Emily Mortimer) knows that Noel is behind Lennie's murder but can't prove it.  She also feels kind of bad for Harry, since he now has no one else.  But what Harry does have is a particular set of skills, courtesy of the Royal Marines.  Granted, he's a bit rusty but experience beats youth every time.

This was way grittier than I think I was expecting.  It's basically the British version of Gran Torino.  It's not bad, I just think you should be prepared for what you're going to see. 

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

Happy Day after Memorial Day, everybody!  I was expecting to get this up sooner (I saw it on Friday)  but circumstances didn't permit.  Now that my college class has ended, I have a lot more free time so I actually have a backlog of posts.  If I get the chance to flesh them out today I'll go ahead and post them, otherwise, they'll go up this weekend.  Happy reading!  In the future, which is to say ten years from now, the world is a very different place.  Mutants have been hunted down and eliminated by Sentinels, gigantic robots that are designed to be able to counter any mutant's powers.  From the handful of mutants left, Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) chooses Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) to send his consciousness back to a younger version of himself in 1973 in order to stop the assassination of Sentinel creator Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) by Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence).  History tells us that Mystique was caught and her DNA is what gives the Sentinels their adaptability.  Wolverine agrees to find Young Xavier (James McAvoy) and Young Magneto (Michael Fassbender) in order to find Mystique before she becomes a killer.  However, the former is a depressed alcoholic who has turned his back on his powers and the latter is in jail for killing JFK.  In order to break Magneto out of his super-secret cell under the Pentagon, Wolverine turns to Pietro Maximoff (Evan Peters), a kleptomaniac capable of super-speed.  With their team in place, they set out to change history and hopefully secure the future.

I have mixed feelings about this movie.  There were parts I quite enjoyed (like when Quicksilver gets to do his thing in the Pentagon kitchen) but it never seemed to find the right balance between old X-men actors and new X-men actors. It also felt deliberately rushed, as if it moved fast enough then no one would have time to ask any questions like, since when has Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) had the ability to move people through time?  Why didn't Beast (Nicholas Hoult) use his super-serum to help the X-men hide, since it makes them invisible to the Sentinels?  Why are the most powerful mutants the ones that are left, instead of the ones that are taken out first?

The ending of the movie raises even more questions but I'll put them in white for those of you who haven't seen it yet.  Highlight to see them.  Ok, so the Sentinels are stopped and the whole project is scrapped.  Next, Wolverine is supposed to get taken by Stryker (Josh Helman) for his adamantium skeleton and claws.  But, we the audience sees that Stryker is actually Mystique in disguise.  So does Wolverine now avoid ever getting a metal frame?  He wakes up in the future and finds that he's been a teacher of history at the X-men academy for who knows how long, and everybody is alive, including Jean Grey (Famke Janssen).  Precisely what the fuck happened in the ensuing years that obviated her becoming Dark Phoenix and needing to be killed?  That is some closure that I would like to have.

The post-credit stinger is also a handy piece of distraction, setting up the next film.  The entire theater was chanting the villain's name like they were going to summon him themselves.  I really hope the third one can pull all the loose ends together, but until then, this one is decent enough to plan on buying.

Child's Play 2 (1990)

  Play Pals Toys is in hot water after one of their Good Guy dolls was possessed by serial killer Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif).  The executives recovered the burned husk from the Barclay house, cleaned it up, and checked everything to make sure there were no mechanical defects.  Minus one tiny electrocution, everything seems above board.  But Chucky will not be denied a human body.  He discovers that the little boy he first told his secret to, Andy (Alex Vincent), has been placed in a foster home.  Joanne (Jenny Agutter) is thrilled to have a new little boy but Phil (Gerrit Graham) is wary of inviting a severely disturbed child into their household.  They already have their hands full with Kyle (Christine Elise), who has been bounced from four previous homes.  All of Phil's trepidations seem to come true as terrible things start happening around Andy.  He knows it's the evil doll but who's going to believe a six-year-old?

I had seen this movie only in parts, channel surfing as a kid.  It's a really decent sequel.  The character arcs seem to follow a logical path, which shows good attention to detail.  The only detraction would be the 90's yuppie executive character in the beginning, who is so stereotypical for that time.  What was it about movies from the late 80's-early 90's where you had to have a sniveling yes-man who drove a Jaguar?  Anyway, I definitely enjoyed watching this one and hope the rest can keep up the streak.

Hellboy Animated: Sword of Storms (2006)

  Apparently, this one came out first but they're not related so it doesn't really matter which one you watch.  This one was way better than Blood and Iron.

Hellboy (Ron Perlman) and Professor Kate Corrigan (Peri Gilpin) are sent to Japan after a mild-mannered antiquities dealer is possessed by the demon spirits of Thunder and Lightning.  Hellboy picks up a magical sword that had originally trapped the demons and is instantly transported back in time.  There he learns that the samurai who faced the demons was trying to get back to the woman he loved but never made it.  Meanwhile, Liz (Selma Blair) and Abe (Doug Jones) have their hands full trying to keep a dragon awakened by the demons from wreaking havoc.

I thought this was extremely well done, probably because I haven't heard this story a million times.  This made me wish Starz actually ran it as a Saturday morning series.  The copy I was watching wasn't the best quality but I still found this to be highly entertaining.

Child's Play (1988)

  I've been watching all kinds of classics here lately.

The Lakeside Strangler, Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif), is chased through the streets of Chicago after his getaway driver, Eddie (Neil Giuntoli), abandons him.  He breaks into a toy store but is shot by Detective Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon).  Ray vows his revenge and uses Santeria to transfer his soul at the moment of death to a Good Guys doll, which is unknowingly purchased by harried single mother Karen (Catherine Hicks) for her son's sixth birthday.

This was the movie that made Christy decide at a young age that she would never own a doll that looked that lifelike.  The special effects work still holds up extremely well today, I am happy to say.  I have the Chucky Collection on blu-ray but I only ever remember seeing the first one and maybe the second.  It will be fun to see all of them, especially if they are as high in quality as the original.

Howl's Moving Castle (2004)

  It's been a while since a Miyazaki film blew my socks off.  Happily, I can say that this one is captivating.

Sophie (Emily Mortimer) is cursed with old age by the Witch of the Waste (Lauren Bacall) and has to seek out a wizard to break the spell.  She ventures forth into the Wastes to find the legendary Howl (Christian Bale) in the hopes that he can free her.  Unfortunately, Howl is being summoned to court under two different aliases in order to help fight a war.  He enlists Grandma Sophie (Jean Simmons) as a housekeeper but soon finds that she is indispensable to his household.

There were a couple of moments where silliness threatened to derail the film but it remained gorgeously animated throughout.  The disc I got from Netflix was the American version so I'll have to see if the Japanese is the same.  This is definitely one to buy.

Hellboy Animated: Blood and Iron (2007)

  I guess Starz put out a couple of animated Hellboy adventures.  They might be included in one of the many releases of the Del Toro films, but I've never checked.  They managed to get nearly all of the principal actors back to do the voice work, which is nice.  Otherwise, this is pretty run of the mill.

Hellboy (Ron Perlman), Liz (Selma Blair), Abe (Doug Jones) and Professor Broom (John Hurt) travel to a haunted hotel at the request of a Senator looking for a publicity windfall.  However, they find that the owner, Oliver Trumbolt (J. Grant Albrecht), has accidentally brought the infamous vampire Erzsebet the Blood Countess (Kath Soucie) back to life.  Professor Broom has history with the Countess, seeing as he's the one who killed her before.

The story of Elizabeth Bathory has been told so many times that it's kind of lost its punch.  I enjoyed the Hellboy movies, especially The Golden Army, but this was like a Scooby Doo Saturday morning special.  Still, if you're a true devotee, you should probably go ahead and see it.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

  I have to admit, I wasn't blown away by this film.  It's a classic thriller but I just was not impressed by it.

Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) received the Congressional Medal of Honor after saving his squad from an attack in Korea.  His commanding officer, Captain Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra) wrote the nomination, but finds himself plagued by a recurring dream of sitting in an auditorium filled with Russian and Chinese military leaders while Shaw murdered two of the squad.  Unable to shake the feeling that something is very wrong, Marco starts investigating Shaw.  He finds Raymond to be clearly bitter over the iron-fisted control his mother (Angela Lansbury) has over his step-father's (James Gregory) career in the Senate and over his own life and completely unaware that he may have been programmed as the ultimate sleeper agent for the Communists.

I think, because I've seen this plot device played out several times before, that I just couldn't feel the impact of this picture.  Also, Janet Leigh's role seemed to be shoehorned in unnecessarily.  That may have just been an adaptation from the book that was constrained by time, but I could have done without her entirely.  I'm sad that I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would.  People speak so highly of it.  I can't say I'm sorry to have watched it, but I do wish I had watched it when I was much younger.

Chuck Jones' Collection part two

A Cricket in Times Square is about Chester, a country cricket, is accidentally transported to New York City in a picnic basket.  There, he befriends Tucker, a mouse; Harry, a cat; and Mario, a newsboy.  Mario's newsstand only sells music magazines and is dangerously close to closing for good until Chester discovers that he has the ability to mimic any song he's heard.  Suddenly, the humble cricket is the toast of the subway station.

This is the first story in the collection to be based on something other than Kipling's Jungle Book stories.  I had never heard of it before, but it is apparently one of the world's best children's books, authored by George Seldon.

   This was a highly irritating cartoon that takes the characters from the first cricket film and drops them in the American Revolution.  If I never hear the song Yankee Doodle Dandy again, it will be too soon.

  A Very Merry Cricket wasn't nearly as annoying as Yankee Doodle Cricket.  Tucker the mouse and Harry the cat are saddened by the lack of Christmas spirit among their fellow New Yorkers so they travel to Connecticut to convince their friend Chester to come back and use his music to bring some holiday cheer.

Of the entire collection, I found two-thirds to be well worth watching, with only a pair of real duds. 

Chuck Jones' Collection part one

  I loved this cartoon when I was a kid but it's ridiculously hard to find on DVD.  I had to get the entire Chuck Jones collection, which I'm not mad about, honestly because the other cartoons are just a bonus. 

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is the story of a mongoose, swept from his nest during a storm, and washed up in the garden of a family in India.  He is rescued by the boy and becomes a loveable pet, protecting the family from Nag, the cobra, and his equally evil mate Nagaina.  

  The White Seal is the story of Kotek, a white seal horrified by the discovery that his people are hunted and killed for their coats.  He sets out on a multi-year journey to find an island safe from the intrusions of Man. 

  This was the weakest entry in the collection so far. 

Mowgli is adopted by wolves in the jungle after Shere Khan chases away his parents.  The tiger is angry at being denied his meal and uses his patsy, Tabaqui the jackal, to foment dissension amongst the younger wolves.

I was going to put all six short films in one post but I ended up spending the day yesterday with Rob and his parents so I didn't even get to finish watching them.  Rob got a Master's Degree, though, so that was nice.  I'll try to get more posted today to make up for it but I'm studying for my final so no promises.

Havoc (2005)

  It must be so hard to be a rich teenager.  I mean, sure, you're getting the best of everything money can buy from cars to clothes to private schools but it's just not as good as having to struggle every day.  Isn't that what builds character?

Alli (Anne Hathaway) and her friends sure think so.  That's why they form their own gang of spoiled rich white kids who talk shit just like the people on TV and in movies.  They quote rap songs without irony and really think their street cred is something that exists.  That is, until they actually come across a real gang and Alli's boyfriend, Toby (Mike Vogel), gets humiliated.  That's enough to convince him that he needs to stay on his own side of the street, but Alli has now had her first glimpse of real life and she wants more.  She tries to cozy up to the gang leader, Hector (Freddy Rodriguez), without a clue of what that might entail.

This movie made me want to slap people.  That probably means that it's a good movie because it felt like the characters were real but I was so irritated with their behavior I really couldn't see anything else.  I'm surprised this never got a theatrical release in the U.S. but this was really early in Anne Hathaway's career, back when she was playing princesses and not taking her top off for every movie.  Not that I'm shaming her for toplessness.  If I looked like Anne Hathaway, I'd probably walk around naked constantly.

Southland Tales (2006)

  I don't know what happens inside Richard Kelly's mind to make him come up with a movie like this one, but I'm sure there is medication to combat it.  Thing is, I'm pretty sure it's almost genius, but almost at a quantum scale which is still an infinite distance away.

In the aftermath of terrorist attacks on American soil, the President has expanded the scope of the Patriot Act to Orwellian proportions, instituted biometric regulation for the Internet, checkpoints between states, and started a three-prong war in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.  To cope with the sudden loss of available oil, a German company run by Baron von Westphalen (Wallace Shawn) creates a green energy source utilizing tidal forces.  This has a side effect of somehow creating a rift in the space-time continuum.  Movie star Boxer Santaros (Dwayne Johnson), his porn star girlfriend Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a cop (Seann William Scott), and a scarred Army vet (Justin Timberlake) are all caught up in the ensuing apocalypse.

This felt like the world's worst Saturday Night Live skit, an impression helped along by the presence of Cheri Oteri, Amy Poehler, Jon Lovitz, Jeanine Garafalo, and Will Sasso.  It just doesn't work as a comedy.  It's too stupid to be a satire and not stupid enough to be a slapstick.  It is almost distressingly bad, in fact.  I expected more from the guy who did Donnie Darko. 

The Way Back (2010)

  I don't know how much of this movie actually happened.  But that's not really the point of it.  This redeemed Jim Sturgess from Across the Universe for me and provided Saoirse Ronan another opportunity to shine.  I want to see that kid in more stuff.

When Hitler started grabbing up European countries, Stalin scrambled to get as many as he could, too.  It sucked to be Polish around that time, because you were either going to get shot by the Nazis or shipped off to Siberia by the Communists.  Janusz (Jim Sturgess) is accused of being a spy and sent to a gulag for manual labor.  There, he meets various prisoners of war, including an American (Ed Harris) and a Russian gangster (Colin Farrell).  Janusz is not about to die for the Russians, however, and formulates a plan to escape.  Seven men make their way out under the cover of a blizzard and head for the Mongolian border.  Along the way, they meet Irena (Saoirse Ronan), a young woman who may not be who she is pretending to be.

This was partially funded by National Geographic and the cinematography certainly reflects that involvement.  I'm fairly certain this is as close as I will ever actually get to the Gobi Desert, Siberia, and Tibet.  Which is a shame since at least one of those is gorgeous.

This isn't as horribly depressing as most POW movies, although it does have its moments.  I enjoyed watching it and it is available for streaming on Netflix, although you may want to spring for blu-ray if you want to be blown away by the vistas on display.

Chocolate (2008)

  I swear to God, I thought I had written a post about this movie already.  I Netflixed it back in 2009, which I just looked up and had a minor freak out since it was nowhere in my shipping history.  I looked it up by name and it said I watched it on 12/11/09, so it must have been streaming.  For a hot minute, I thought I had hallucinated seeing this before.  Don't laugh at me.

Moving on.

I am seriously a fan of Thai martial arts films.  Even though this movie is kind of insane, it's the best possible type of insane.

Zin (Ammara Siripong) and Masashi (Hiroshi Abe) are rival gangsters.  She is an enforcer for Thai boss No. 8 (Pongpat Wachirabunjong) and he is yakuza.  However, all that gets pushed aside when they fall in love.  No. 8 is not thrilled and tells the couple that if he sees them together again he will kill them.  Zin tells Masashi she can never see him again after she realizes that she is pregnant, and cannot put their child at risk.  Their daughter, Zen (Yanin Vismitananda), is autistic but blessed with absurd reflexes which she uses to learn Muay Thai from Tony Jaa movies.  Zin is diagnosed with cancer and the bills start to pile up, so Zen and her adopted brother Moom (Taphon Phopwandee) start going to local businesses to collect on debts from when Zin was in the protection racket.  Naturally, No. 8 has a problem with this. 

Savants are often misunderstood, especially in film.  It is not a superpower, it is a mental illness.  So, from a humanist perspective, I decry the insensitivity of using it as a shortcut for character development.  On the other hand, the fight scenes in this movie are so badass I can't be mad at it.  Maybe that makes me a bad person.  I don't care.  This movie is awesome and you should watch it.

Gymkata (1985)

  There were so many things wrong with this movie, I don't know where to begin.

The plot is laughable.  American gymnast Jonathan Cabot (Kurt Thomas) is trained to participate in "The Game", a take on "The Most Dangerous Game" short story, in the tiny nation of Parmistan.  Basically, it's an obstacle course where the participants are being hunted by crazed psychopaths.  Cabot is competing because his father disappeared while playing "The Game" years ago and also because the CIA wants him to impress the khan (Buck Kartalian) so he will let them put an early warning missile detection site there.  Because it's the Cold War.  That's right, America.  Your first line of defense against the Russkies was a 5'2" male gymnast.

The first half of the movie is a training montage.  It is ridiculous.  As is every fight sequence that follows.  The entire movie looks like it was made on a budget of third graders' stolen lunch money.  It was so bad I couldn't even enjoy it mean-spiritedly.  I thought it was at least going to be fun to make fun of, but no.  It felt like I was mocking Drama Day at a special needs school. 

Avoid.

Children of Men (2006)

  After seeing, and enjoying, Gravity this year, I was looking forward to watching Children of Men when it came up on the shelf.  I thought that maybe I could see some of Alfonso Cuaron's signatures, start to get a feel for him as a director, if I watched this earlier work.

I did not get that sense.  In fact, I would be hard pressed to tell you anything I learned from this movie.  I was trying to focus on the camera work but kept getting distracted by the plot.

In a dystopian near future, there are no children.  Put down the confetti, that's actually bad news.  Theo (Clive Owen) decides to help his former girlfriend (Julianne Moore) by getting her a couple of exit visas.  He soon learns that she is protecting the first pregnant woman in eighteen years, a refugee named Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey).  They believe they can get to a sanctuary run by "The Human Project," a scientific group studying the infertility epidemic, if they can get off England.  However, there are different factions that want to use Kee and her baby as a spark to light an entire revolution.

I honestly don't know why this got critical acclaim (93% on Rotten Tomatoes) and Babylon A.D. (6%) didn't.  They're really similar, plot-wise.  Maybe because Children of Men avoids the whole supernatural angle, or because it came out first, I don't know.  Frankly, I enjoyed Babylon A.D. more.

Charlie's Angels (2000)

  Judge me if you want.  I think this movie is hilarious.  It's one of my guiltiest pleasures.

Dylan (Drew Barrymore), Natalie (Cameron Diaz), and Alex (Lucy Liu) are the ass-kicking proxies of super-secretive millionaire Charlie (John Forsythe, who was the original voice of Charlie in the TV series) who runs a private detective agency in L.A.  The girls are tasked with rescuing kidnapped entrepreneur Eric Knox (Sam Rockwell) from his business rival (Tim Curry).  Also, there is a creepy thin assassin with a hair fetish (Crispin Glover) to contend with, as well as relationship drama.

Let's face it, nobody is watching this thing for the plot.  This is the epitome of popcorn flicks.  There are hot girls in tight clothes, martial arts, explosions, and Bill Murray in a fake sumo suit.  Plus, Sam Rockwell's sweet dance moves.  This was riding the wave of "girl power" left over from the late 90's, as evidenced by the Destiny's Child-heavy end credits song.  All very well and good intentioned and whatnot, but again, who cares?  This is the artistic equivalent of a Garfield comic.  It's not going in the Louvre, but it can entertain you for a minute.  Sometimes that's all you want.