Kill the Irishman (2011)

  This has been in my Netflix queue since 2012.  That's not really germane to anything, I just thought it was ridiculous.

Danny Greene (Ray Stevenson) is a longshoreman in Cleveland, Ohio.  He strikes up a deal with a local mob boss, John Nardi (Vincent D'Onofrio), to clear a friend's gambling debt, putting himself in deeper and deeper as time goes by.  When a business venture is derailed and Danny is told that he owes $70,000 he never received, he pushes back.  A bounty is placed on his head and multiple attempts on his life are made.  In retaliation, Danny and his friends tackle the mob head-on.

This is based on a true story and I swear to God, I never thought Cleveland fucking Ohio was ever this interesting.  I didn't even know Cleveland HAD a mob presence.  Also, this might be the best role I've ever seen Ray Stevenson in.  He's not an actor that I usually give much of a damn about, but he embodied this role completely.

Not that the rest of the cast was slouching.  This has Christopher Walken, D'Onofrio, Val Kilmer, Linda Cardellini, and Fionnula Flanagan, plus pretty much every character actor you've ever seen in a mob movie.  It was way more entertaining that it should have been considering that I've never heard anyone mention it ever.  Stream it through Netflix and prepare to be educated.

Scotland, PA (2001)

  Fun fact:  I had lost this disc from Netflix back in 2016 and found it when we moved this last time.  It was still in the envelope.  I called Netflix to ask if they wanted it back and talked to a very sweet gentleman named Gabe who told me "nah, that's yours now."

So now it's mine.  I finally watched it, after all these years, and found that it's pretty good.  It's an updated telling of Macbeth set in the 1970s around the fast food revolution.

Joe "Mac" MacBeth (James LeGros) is a lowly fry cook working for Mr. Duncan (James Rebhorn), constantly overlooked and underpaid, a fact his wife, Pat (Maura Tierney), can't stand.  She pushes Mac to be more ambitious which ends with Duncan face-down in a fryer.  Suddenly, all the MacBeth's dreams seem to come true.  They take over the failing restaurant, rebrand it, and add the modern miracle:  a drive through.  But when a police detective, MacDuff (Christopher Walken), begins sniffing around, the guilt and stress start tearing the couple apart.

It's a good concept with solid execution.  These are all "known" actors and while I personally think Andy Dick is a garbage fire, even he isn't horrible here.  It does suffer slightly from age in a way that I can't really articulate (because I didn't go to film school and don't actually know the terminology that I'm looking for).  There's something about the graininess of the film that screams early-00s even though it's set in the 70s.  Maybe it's the hair and makeup as well, but specifically what I noticed was the quality of the film.  It's one of those things where you know it when you see it.

Anyway, if you're looking for kind of a low-key murder comedy, this is a pretty good place to start.

Annihilation (2018)

  This is one of the best sci-fi films I've seen in a while.  It had everything:  weird alien shit, beautiful alien shit, badass science ladies, body horror, and certain, inevitable doom.

Lena (Natalie Portman) believes her husband, Kane (Oscar Isaac) was killed on a secret mission for the military until he just shows up inside the house and starts coughing up blood.  Kane is whisked away to a hush-hush facility on the edge of The Shimmer, a mysterious bubble of unknown origin that seemed to coincide with a meteor hitting a small lighthouse on the coast.  The facility's psychologist, Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), tells Lena that Kane was the only person to ever come out of The Shimmer and they don't know really anything about it.  Of course Lena volunteers to go inside and figure out what's happening along with a physicist (Tessa Thompson), a paramedic (Gina Rodriguez) and an anthropologist (Tuva Novotny).  And then things get weird.

It feels like a slow burn except I kind of lost all sense of space and time watching it.  I was caught up in the story and even the parts that I figured out before the reveal seemed like a natural progression, not an annoying retread.  Portman is great in this but I expected nothing less.  Isaac isn't given a whole lot to do here but it's not about him and he knows it.  Come to think of it, it was really nice to see the roles reversed where the dude is helpless and serves only to provide motivation for the female lead.  David Gyasi was excellent, as well, as Lena's colleague.  He has a magnetic presence on-screen. Apparently he was in Cloud Atlas but there was a lot going on in that movie so I hope you'll forgive me not recognizing him.

If you like sci-fi, you should definitely check out this film.  It's based on a trilogy of books and as of the last time I checked, there's no plans to make the other two into films, so purists can breathe a little easier.  The books are by Jeff VanderMeer and are called the Southern Reach trilogy if you want to check them out instead.  I suggest seeing the movie first and avoiding the inevitable disappointment of an adaptation falling short of the original.

Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)

  It's been an 80s kind of weekend, apparently.  I wasn't planning on that happening but we're just going to roll with it.

Peggy Sue's (Kathleen Turner) life is on the verge of falling apart.  Her high school reunion is happening and all she can think about is how much different her life would have been if she hadn't married her childhood sweetheart, Charlie (Nicolas Cage), whom she is currently divorcing for being a lying cheat.  While being crowned Reunion Queen, Peggy Sue passes out and finds herself back in her seventeen-year-old body able to relive the fateful decisions she made just before graduating high school.  Will she finally hook up with the brooding loner (Kevin J. O'Connor) she always had a crush on?  Will she find new reasons to love Charlie?  Will she partner with the smart kid (Barry Miller) in order to "invent" the Walkman and make a fortune?

This is a 1980s film by Francis Ford Coppola so surprise!  She winds up with his nephew.  Nicolas Cage is absolutely awful in this, by the way, telegraphing all the weirdness that has hallmarked his career.  He has a bizarre accent, big fake teeth, and a terrible dye job.  Also, I don't know what's up with the costuming.  Every single outfit in the "past" is gray.  Every. Single. One.  Not just Peggy Sue's; all her friends wear either actual gray or muted versions of other colors.  It's very weird.

I had to get that off my chest before I could get into the other grossness of the regressive gender politics in play.  Peggy Sue feels trapped in a life she never wanted, even though she has made the best of it and loves her two children.  When she is given the opportunity to change her future, she does everything she can.  She breaks up with Charlie, she sleeps with the beatnik, she builds stronger relationships with her family.  And it all means nothing.  Charlie is repeatedly shown to be violent, selfish, and completely uninterested in Peggy Sue as anything more than an object and status symbol. And she cannot escape him.  The film pays lip service to her just "being in love" with him and that's why they end up together but nothing is shown to indicate why she would love him other than her just being inculcated to be.  That's a textbook abusive relationship.  The fact that Coppola dresses it up as a happy ending is creepy and gross.

But hey, it's got Jim Carrey in it as a coked-up dentist!

*batteries not included (1987)

  At long last, I bring you the continuation of The Christy Experiment!  (/pause for applause.)

This is one of those 80s films that slipped through my radar.  I don't remember ever hearing about it or seeing promos or trailers for it and I'm pretty good about those things.  It mostly holds up if you're willing to let go of the problematic portions stemming from it being an 80s movie.

Frank (Hume Cronyn) and Faye Riley (Jessica Tandy) have lived over the café that is their livelihood for decades and they are unwilling to sell even when an unscrupulous land developer (Michael Greene) hires a local thug named Carlos (Michael Carmine) to destroy the café.  Frank is down to his last shred of hope and looking to move himself and Faye into a nursing home in New Jersey when she discovers a pair of alien robots in the pigeon coop on the roof.  The robots make themselves useful in exchange for access to the electricity they need to power themselves by fixing whatever they can and soon it looks like the Rileys and the other tenants will be able to thumb their nose at the developer.  Of course he just brings in someone nastier to force the tenants out and a long-repressed tragedy comes back to the forefront.

The real tragedy here is Michael Carmine, an extremely gifted actor who graduated from some of the most prestigious acting schools in the country and was renown in the theater, was stuck playing broad stereotypes of Latinx in this movie and others before dying at the age of 30 from AIDS.  And Elizabeth Peña, who did go on to have a more varied career but still died relatively young, who is stuck playing an unwed pregnant Latinx stereotype.  Also, Frank McRae, the film's only African American actor, was reduced to only spouting lines from jingles in service to a storyline that saw his character a punch-drunk former boxer with an interest in mosaics.

So it's not the most representative movie out there but it was the 80s and we're going to let that go for now.  It's a cute film, very paint-by-numbers, but nothing offensive (except for the things I just mentioned).  It didn't blow my skirt up but if you come across it on Netflix while you're scrolling for stuff to watch with your kids, it's not bad.  There's one scene of robot sex (not kidding) that you may have to explain and a very gratuitous nude painting of pregnant Peña (missing the nipples, which may be more odd than anything else) but otherwise, it's fine.

Monster (2003)

  This is about Aileen Wournos, a serial killer from Florida.  From late 1989 through 1990, Wournos killed seven men while working as a prostitute before being caught, convicted, sentenced to die, and finally executed by gas chamber.

Lee (Charlize Theron) is down on her luck, pretty permanently.  Life has handed her lemons and then squeezed them in her eyes.  One night, while waiting out the rain in a gay bar, she meets Selby Wright (Christina Ricci), a sweet, slightly-naive girl who has never really been exposed to the nastiness of the world.  Lee develops kind of a protective streak for Selby and becomes intent on giving her the kind of life she's seen in pictures:  new cars, ready cash, a place of their own.  She pays for these things by killing and robbing johns.  Of course it goes bad.

Patty Jenkins (of Wonder Woman acclaim) wrote and directed this film, which was a surprise to me.  It's a much more sympathetic portrayal than I was expecting.  Wournos is depicted as having been caught in a cycle of abuse and objectification, leading her to take power when the opportunity presents itself.  In today's climate of Time'sUp and #MeToo, the questions are also there about how society fails troubled women.  Would Aileen Wournos be as notorious a figure if she were well-educated, from a good home, straight, and not a prostitute?  The LGBT aspect of her life is also depicted much more positively than many films from the same decade.  Her relationship with Selby is certainly a contributing factor to her killing, because she robs her victims to pay for her lifestyle, but it is in no way the reason why she kills men.

Charlize Theron got a lot of flack about "uglying" up in order to be a contender for (and eventually win) the Best Actress Oscar.  She certainly looks more like Wournos' mugshot than her cover model self but her performance is what sells the role, not her fake teeth and bleached eyebrows.  I honestly don't know if she would have been as compelling without the prosthetics.  I think it's too easy to empathize with beautiful people.  We're hardwired to want them to succeed.  Negating Theron's biological advantages forces us to consider her character as a person, which is necessary for engaging with a story like this.

MCU Watch pt 5

This is it, friends!  It took a three-day weekend but we managed to push through the rest of the MCU.    Holy crap, was it exhausting!

Ant-Man - This is still one of the best standalone stories in the MCU.  It's beautifully self-contained as an introduction and story yet still merges seamlessly into the larger universe.  Michael Peña is a treasure and T.I. was an unexpected delight.  I forgot just how funny he really was here.

Captain America:  Civil War - Ant-Man only really becomes important in Civil War.  This is where the internal conflicts of the previous movies like Age of Ultron and Winter Soldier really start to bear fruit.  Cap is leery of any sort of large government program after seeing HYDRA hide in plain sight while Tony is completely driven by his fear-based need for control and a little bit of his guilt complex after creating a murder-bot that killed a whole lot of people.

Doctor Strange - After the emotional hardship of Civil War, it's nice to take a step back and see a new facet of the world we already know.  Introducing the mystical side of the universe is also important for how it sets up the Quantum Realm for Ant-Man and the Wasp.  Otherwise, it gives us a new Infinity Stone and introduces us to the Cloak of Levitation, the best nonverbal character since the flying carpet from Aladdin.

Guardians of the Galaxy, vol. 2 - From the mystic realms, we return to the cosmos for a heartbreaking journey with the Guardians to discover what family truly means.  Yondu's funeral scene is still one of the most emotional moments of the series.  Also, I really want Kraglin to be part of the team from now on.  Disney, grovel if you have to but Get. James. Gunn. Back and get started on Vol. 3 ASAP.

Spider-Man:  Homecoming -  I was so grateful this wasn't another fucking origin story.  Having the film begin with Peter's impressions of Civil War and moving on from there was brilliant and I still love Michael Keaton's portrayal of Adrian Toomes.  With only a minor change, Toomes could have been the protagonist of this story:  a dedicated family man willing to risk everything to provide for his wife and child.  Even still, he was much more compelling than any of the Iron Man villains.

Thor:  Ragnarok -  Everyone talked about how silly and light-hearted this film was, but watching it again made me realize that it's nowhere near as over-the-top as I remembered it being.  Yes, there are many slapstick moments but there are just as many heartwarming ones, plus a greater development in Thor and Loki's relationship as well as more of an insight between Hulk and Banner.

Black Panther -  Black Panther made a huge splash in Civil War and his solo outing was everything we could have hoped it would be.  A lot of comic book movies try to say something about the state of the world in real life but very few capture the nuances of people's experiences like Black Panther.  Killmonger wasn't just an excellent villain, he was the embodiment of very real feelings about the African American reality in this country and abroad.

The Avengers:  Infinity War - And so we've come to the end.  At least until 2019.  Tyler pointed out during this watch that one of the aliens under Thanos is wearing Captain Marvel's sash.  That is not an Easter egg I would have noticed but now I'm even more excited for Brie Larson's outing next spring.

This was a worthwhile experience and I'm looking forward to trying something similar again.  Christy has asked me to do a 31 days of horror in October, where I try to watch a horror movie a night for a month.  Logistically, I'm not sure how I'd handle the posts.  I can't seem to even manage to get posts out on Mondays unless it's a holiday any more so I seriously doubt I could handle posting every day.  Plus, I'm not generally organized enough to plan out 31 horror movies to see.  It's something that I'll be considering over the next month, however, so stay tuned.

Valhalla Rising (2009)

  I didn't know anything about this movie going in.  It was just a name on the server.  Then I clicked it and saw Mads Mikkelsen's name in the opening credits so I thought it was going to be cool.  I had heard of Nicholas Winding Refn.  He's the guy that directed Drive, which I didn't like but a lot of other people did.

Do not be fooled as I was.  This movie is not cool.  It is boring and damn near incomprehensible without reading the synopsis on Wikipedia.

A mute warrior named One-Eye (Mads Mikkelsen) and a Norse boy (Maarten Stevenson) join a group of early Christians on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  They are becalmed and drift way off-course, winding up in Vinland where the natives have a less than warm reception for them.

That should have been cool but it's not.  It has almost no dialogue or exposition so you never really know who any of these people are.  There are red-tinged prophetic visions that make no sense and the whole thing is just so boring and pretentious.  Tyler gave up after about 15 minutes but I stuck around through the whole run time just to be sure that it didn't somehow redeem itself in the last ten minutes or something.  It did not.  Avoid.