The Librarian: Return to King Solomon's Mines (2006)

  This movie is basically a shameless made-for-TV rip-off of all three Indiana Jones movies (four if you count Crystal Skull, which we all know doesn't exist) as well as Casablanca and Romancing the Stone, but you know what?  That's okay.  It doesn't have to be high art.  It's totally fine to be fun and silly and take liberties with source material.  

Flynn Carson (Noah Wyle) is living the life of a Librarian, running around the globe, keeping magical artifacts from falling into the wrong hands.  A scroll sent to him from Egypt kicks off an adventure a little closer to home as Flynn discovers that his father was somehow involved in keeping the secret of the lost mines of King Solomon, a fabled vault of treasures including a book of spells with the power to affect space and time.  With the help of archeologist Emily Davenport (Gabrielle Anwar), Flynn must decipher clues to the location of the mines left by his father before a ruthless group of mercenaries.  

If you liked the TV show, this is more of the same.  It's currently streaming on Tubi.

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

 Happy day after Christmas!  Hope everyone who celebrated did so safely within their bubble or used the appropriate technology to visit.  I video chatted with my family and I have to say it felt exactly the same as being there except better because I could drink my coffee and play with my cats at the same time.

One of my family's holiday traditions is to go to the movies and this year, I went to my couch.  There has been a lot of controversy over Warner Bros. decision to release their 2020 and 2021 movies digitally at the same time as in theaters.  I won't presume to know the ins-and-outs of the business decisions behind it or speculate on how this will affect theaters in the future.  Personally, I really appreciated not having to deal with other people, closed captions, and the ability to pause.

Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) has settled into the decades following WWI with skill if not enthusiasm.  She works as an anthropologist at the Smithsonian and moonlights as Wonder Woman, stopping crime in the streets of D.C.  One of those crimes was a robbery of black market antiquities fronting as a mall jewelry store.  One of the artifacts, a rather unremarkable citrine, ends up at the museum in the hands of the resident gemologist, Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig).  Between the two, Barbara and Diana translate the stone's band to reveal that it is capable of granting wishes.  Neither initially believes it's the real deal but failing pyramid schemer Max Lord (Pedro Pascal) is convinced it can turn his life around and he will stop at nothing to use the power of the stone.

Is this the best Wonder Woman movie?  Not by a long shot.  Is this even a good sequel?  Not really.  It is exceptionally saccharine, none of the physics makes sense, and it feels overly long.  Do you know what was great about it, though?  I managed to sit through the entire thing in one shot.  In a year where I have really struggled to watch movies and have DNF'd more than any year since I've been doing this blog, I watched all two and a half hours of WW84 without being bored, frustrated, or stressed.  Merry Christmas to me.

Also, Chris Pine.  In a fannypack.  Worth the subscription to HBO Max right there.  

Wonder Woman 1984 is currently streaming on HBO Max until 24 Jan and in theaters.

The Naked City (1948)

  I blew off last week entirely because I was doing Christmas shit.  I kept trying to watch Sunshine on Hulu but "And Then There Were None" set in space was too stressful.  This weekend is going a little better.  95% of all my preparations are done.  Okay, maybe 90%.  Fuck, 85%.  We're going to stop thinking about this!

A woman has been murdered in New York City.  Lieutenant Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald) and his rookie Halloran (Don Taylor) are assigned the case.  They pound the pavement, question suspects, follow leads no matter how thin.  They won't rest until a killer (or two) is brought to justice.

This is the granddaddy of police movies.  You can see the echoes of it in a thousand later films and TV shows.  "There's eight million stories in the naked city.  And this is one of them."  Even J. P. McGillicuddy, a thing I thought my dad made up, is from this movie.  Shot on location (mostly), the film is deeply indebted to the idea of New York City as a character.  It goes to lengths that seem a little transparent now to convince the viewer that everyone in the film is a real citizen, not an actor, even though it's probably the same number of extras as any other NYC film.

Even without the gimmicks, this is a great whodunit that never loses its airy feel.  Fitzgerald is wonderful as the twinkly-eyed, pipe-smoking lieutenant, alternating between Old Irish charm and steel.  Not all of the jokes still land because times have changed in seventy years but the ones that do are great.  It is an excellent, easy-day kind of movie.  Maybe it's raining and you need something fresh but still comforting.  Maybe you've baked eight dozen cookies and you need something that doesn't beep at you every ten minutes.  No judgment.  

It's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel and on HBO Max.

Samson and Delilah (1949)

  For our last entry this week we move from China slightly further west to the Middle East via Cecil B. DeMille.  So, Burbank.

Samson (Victor Mature) is young, carefree, and blessed by God with incredible strength.  He is also a leader of an oppressed people but is more interested in wooing one of the ruling Philistines.  He has his eye on Semadar (Angela Lansbury) but she is promised to the Lord Governor Ahtur (Henry Wilcoxon).  Semadar's younger, and smarter, sister Delilah (Hedy Lamarr) wants Samson for herself but he will not be dissuaded.  She sets herself to destroying Samson, moving up to the right hand of the Saran of Gaza (George Sanders) to do so.

The actual Bible verses are pretty short and straight to the point.  There isn't a lot about Delilah's motivations so novelist Victor Jabotinsky, and by extension, screenwriters Jesse Lasky, Jr. and Fredric Frank did a lot of ad libbing.  The result is a completely toxic relationship with two people who love but can't trust each other.  It makes Delilah much more of a complex character (and you have to wonder how much Lamarr had to do with that behind the scenes) and imminently more watchable than the sermonizing parable it could have been.  DeMille knows epics and his biblical epics are especially biblical.  This has camp classic written all over it.

It's currently streaming for free with ads on Crackle.  It has longer ad breaks more often than Tubi, so it's not my favorite free site but it does have stuff other streamers lack.  You do what you can out here in the streaming wilds.

Mulan (2020)

  If you were interested in this but not interested in paying $30 for what was supposed to be a theatrical release, it dropped as regular content on Disney+ on the 4th.

Mulan (Yifei Liu) was born to be a warrior in a time where doing so marked her as a witch, as unnatural.  Her father (Tzi Ma) cautions her to hide her gifts, but when he is conscripted into the Imperial Army to fight the incursions of Böri Khan (Jason Scott Lee) and his shapeshifting witch (Gong Li), Mulan secretly takes his place.  Disguised as a man, she can finally shine as the martial artist she is meant to be and wins the acclaim of her commanders and fellow soldiers.  But as the invaders threaten the Empire, Mulan's secret is a much more immediate threat to her life.

I will try and focus on the positive aspects first.  The cinematography and set design are beautiful.  The costumes are gorgeous.  The whole cast is Asian and it was directed by a woman, so hooray for representation.  They got her name right, Hua Mulan, not Fa.  The Rouran Khaganate is also more historically accurate than the Huns.  The wuxia is top-notch.  The horse stuntwork is great.  

Yay, positive things!  Now we're going to divide the criticism into two parts:  what I didn't like about the movie itself and its comparison to the 1998 animated film.

Let's start with the latter.  It's not a musical, which is actually okay.  I don't mind that.  

No Mushu.  Instead, her family totem is a phoenix.  Disappointing, but only the Emperor and his family were allowed to have dragons, so that at least makes sense.  

No Li Shang.  That was more of a bummer for me, but it does remove the fraternization and any possibility of a power imbalance between Mulan and a love interest, replaced here by just a fellow soldier (Yoson An).  

Lucky Cricket is a dude now (Jun Yu).  Okay? I guess?  

No sassy Grandma.  No comedic relief at all.  

They clearly tried to shoehorn as many scenes from the animated film into the live-action as they could but they don't work as well.  The avalanche scene was fucking perfect in the animated but kind of a head-scratcher in the live action.  *MINOR SPOILERS*  Like, she had time to gather helmets, ride ten miles behind the enemy, set up dummy soldiers, and get into position close enough to shoot arrows at the Rourans, betting they would turn their whole-asss trebuchet around and set off an avalanche, before they destroyed all the remaining Imperial soldiers?  Also, they could hit turtleshell shield groups of soldiers but completely fucking overshot the foothills?  *END SPOILERS*

The movie itself honestly feels dumbed down.  The dialogue is over-explained and interactions between characters seem very wooden.  My biggest pet peeve here is how Chi is used.  It's the goddamn midicholorians all over again.  She can't just have a passion and natural talent honed by endless practice, no she has Magic in her Blood.  It's reductive and insulting.  Which brings us to the other Magical Girl in the film.  Now, Chinese folklore is absolutely rife with magic so I don't mind that it was included.  My issue is how the writers (four white people) chose to portray this character as ridiculously overpowered yet submissive, bitter but yearning, and frankly misused in the third act.  We as viewers are meant to think this is dark mirror of Mulan, all unchecked power and ostracized for displaying it openly and maybe if they were more similar, if "the witch" was just really, really good at combat and not able to turn into a flock of birds or shapeshift into other people (which also makes no sense for her character because why doesn't she just...turn into Böri Khan and take over the whole damn thing?), her "we're the same, you and I" speech would be more resonant.  Instead, it just falls flat.

And that's really the problem with the whole film.  It's not trying to be a new, more representative, more accurate version of the Chinese hero.  It's trying to be a grownup version of the animated film and there's no reason for that to be a thing.  That just makes it sad.

Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons (2013)

  Did you like Kung Fu Hustle?  You will like Journey to the West!

Xuan Zang (Zhang Wen) is an aspiring demon hunter and Buddhist priest but he's not very good at the former which is preventing him from achieving the latter.  To make matters worse, a beautiful and very accomplished demon hunter named Miss Duan (Qi Shu) has set her sights on marrying him.  To become a better hunter, he quests to find the Monkey King (Bo Huang), who has been imprisoned under a mountain for 500 years.

This is a classic Chinese tale and there are dozens, if not hundreds, of adaptations.  Stephen Chow has a Looney Tunes approach to action in his films generally, but there's real reverence and heart in each one as well.  This is no exception.  The humor is a little broad for my personal tastes but the actors are totally game for it.  It's fun and silly and pretty family-friendly.  There is some gore and if you have really little children, some of the demons may be a little much, but I'd say 10 and up.  It's currently streaming for free on Tubi.

(Side note:  if you've noticed there have been a lot of Tubi and Criterion picks lately, it's because all my other streamers are absolutely awash with TV shows that I keep skipping because I don't have time.  If you were wondering, Queen's Gambit:  good!  Transparent:  unlikeable characters!  Battlestar Galactica season 2:  too much filler in the second half!  Great British Bake Off:  worst season I've seen!  WTF was that?  Dave??  You put fucking Dave in and not Lottie?  Or Hermine?  Or Mark L.?  Fucking Dave, the embodiment of white male mediocrity???  I'm fine.  Shut up.  I'm fine.  The Mandalorian season 2:  perfect!  So that's what I'm watching on TV.)

Shivers (1975)

  If they showed this move in high school Sex Ed, teen pregnancy and STIs would drop to zero.  

An unethical scientist (Fred Doederlein) uses his teenage lover (Cathy Graham) as a guinea pig to breed a parasite that turns people into sex maniacs.  He murders her but the damage is done and the parasite spreads through all the residents of an isolated luxury apartment building, despite the best efforts of the resident doctor (Paul Hampton).

Okay, so this movie is gross on so many levels.  

Level 1:  Intentionally.  Cronenberg has made an entire oeuvre of body horror and this is no exception.  Lumps swell under skin, slithering around inside the bodies before a hand-sized leech is expelled in bloody vomit.  It's nasty but acceptable.  

Level 2:  Disease horror.  This is not the movie to watch in the middle of an actual pandemic.  I just wanted to scream at all of these people for not washing their goddamn hands or wearing even the barest bit of PPE.  These are supposed to be doctors and a nurse for God's sake.  Again, though.  Horror movie.

Level 3:  Sexually.  Everybody gets raped.  Everybody.  It's A. Lot.  There's a ton of gratuitous nudity.  It's the 70s.  Okay.  But not a single woman in the film owns a bra?  Also, yikes.  

Level 4:  Violence against women in particular and some smattering of racism.  Did I mention all the raping?  Plus, the main character pointedly ignores the only Black female being assaulted in front of him to waste three bullets on a guy who had already committed murder.  

Level 5:  Implied pedophilia.  The gross dude who engineered the parasite is casually mentioned to have started a "relationship" with the girl he murders when she is twelve.  This goes unremarked upon for the rest of the film.  There is a scene in an elevator where a parasite-ridden waiter attacks a woman standing with her prepubescent daughter.  It cuts away but the implication is strong, bolstered by a later scene where the elevator opens and the waiter and child are sharing some gross, strawberry jam-filled pastry over the disheveled body of her mother.  Critical high level of nope there.

In terms of sheer audacity of violence and gore, it rivals The Last House on the Left, Hellraiser, and any place exploitation crosses with horror.  It's not a fun watch.  I found it kind of a slog, if I'm honest, but I can see its influence in other, later films which is worthwhile.  It's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel or for free on Tubi.

Big Eyes (2014)

  In a lot of ways, this is a perfect distillation of a Tim Burton film:  slightly creepy but whimsical, a washed out blonde lead, plastic suburbia, and a focus on the fake 50s nuclear family, but without the crutches of Johnny Depp, Danny DeVito, and Helena Bonham Carter.

Margaret Keane (Amy Adams) became a household name in the early 60s art scene for her painting of sad children with oversized eyes.  She painted hundreds and sold millions of dollars worth of original art as well as licensed reproductions in posters and postcards.  But no one knew because all the credit was taken by her husband Walter (Christoph Waltz), a brash, charming salesman.  It took a court case for the truth to out.

I've never liked the kitsch movement but Margaret Keane should be rightfully hailed as an icon, if only for the courage to insist on taking credit for her efforts in a time where good married ladies did not.  The movie is strong on portraying this and it does an admirable job.  Adams has always been good at vulnerability while Waltz has made quite a career out of cheerfully menacing characters.  He had to walk a particularly fine line to bring out the absurdity of Walter Keane while not detracting from his bullying.  

It's not a movie I'd throw into regular rotation.  It's a little too cynical to put next to Big Fish or Edward Scissorhands, but it's not bad.  Currently streaming for free on Tubi.

In the Mood for Love (2000)

  You guys, I'm so bad at Mondays.  And there was a holiday in the middle of the week, even.  I still could not get this post out.  Hopefully, it will just be an extra one today.

A pair of neighbors in 1960s Hong Kong, Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung) and Mr. Chow (Tony Leung), discover that their respective spouses are having an affair so they decide to have one as well.  What begins as a therapeutic revenge quickly grows into actual feelings and thus, a dilemma.

This film launched Wong Kar-Wai into international acclaim and it's easy to see why.  It's a visual feast, even if I felt some of the shots to be jarring.  I also dislike jazz and that seems to be the comparison everyone makes to this film, so your mileage may vary.  It's worth it for the costumes alone but also the desperately restrained longing between Cheung and Leung is just *chef's kiss*.  I hate romantic dramas with a passion (ha!) and I liked this film.  People who enjoy that sort of thing are going to be over the moon.  It's currently streaming on Criterion, HBO Max, and Kanopy.

Harriet the Spy (1996)

  This must have been one of those films you had to be in the moment for.  I can't imagine anyone choosing to watch it now.

Harriet (Michelle Trachtenberg) is an 11-year-old dreaming of becoming a writer.  Her nanny (Rosie O'Donnell) told her to write down all her observations in a notebook but when a bully exposes Harriet's unvarnished opinions, even her closest friends won't stand by her.

This was a major success for Nickelodeon's venture into motion pictures.  I fucking hated it though.  The main plot doesn't start until fifty minutes into the 100 minute runtime.  There are multiple subplots concerning the people Harriet spies on which are never explored, just given a pat answer at the end.  And Harriet is an unlikeable character.  She's a total brat who, when faced with the consequences of her own cruelty, doesn't apologize but doubles down on enacting vengeance on the people who are mad at her.  It's basically Mean Girls: Middle School without the wit, humor, or introspection.  But it is streaming on Tubi if you maybe have nostalgia or something.

Duck Soup (1933)

  This is not my favorite Marx Bros movie but it is still considered a classic comedy.  Its IMDb trivia page is wild, by the way.

Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx) is named head of Freedonia after a wealthy widow named Mrs. Teasdale (Margaret Dumont) refuses to loan the government any more of her money unless it is so.  Meanwhile, Ambassador Trentino (Louis Calhern) plots to woo Mrs. Teasdale for her money and hires spies Chicolini (Chico Marx) and Pinky (Harpo Marx) to dig up dirt on Firefly.  This is the only part of the plot that makes any sense.  Everything else is just an excuse for the Marx Brothers to be the Marx Brothers.

Part of the problem of being an innovator is that if you don't see the original first, it looks derivative because of all the imitations it spawned.  This movie was made in 1933 and a lot of the gags were completely novel.  But watching it for the first time in 2020, it seems very old hat.  The dialogue is still super crisp and witty but the physical comedy just wasn't doing it for me and the musical number slides into minstrel-esque.  Not a good look but a product of its time.  It's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

Saving Face (2004)

  Okay, so this was supposed to be Beasts of No Nation but I really wasn't in the mood to watch child soldiers.  Turns out I was also not in the mood for systemic racism even if it is wrapped up in a cutesy love story, so no Hundred-Foot Journey either.  Where did that leave me, other than two days behind schedule?  Back at Saving Face (the other one)!

Wilhelmina (Michelle Krusiec) is a promising doctor and dutiful Chinese daughter.  When her mother (Joan Chen) is alienated by her own father (Jin Wang) for getting pregnant out of wedlock, Wil dutifully takes her in, even as she struggles to balance work and a burgeoning relationship with her boss's daughter, Vivian (Lynn Chen), a ballerina under her own familial strains.  Ma refuses to say who the baby's father is, enduring date after date in order to find a husband to return her to her family's good graces.  Wil is terrified of coming out to her mother but also of losing Vivian.  

This is a great indie film, both from an LGBTQ standpoint and an immigrant/diaspora narrative.  Queer rom-coms are still pretty thin on the ground and they especially were in 2004.  The story beats are very trope-y but there is value in having gay relationships normalized.  It was obviously a deeply personal story for writer/director Alice Wu and her cultural nuances are integral to making the story feel lived in.  If you swooned for Crazy Rich Asians but wanted it gayer, this is the movie for you.  It's currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

3-Iron (2004)

  This poster is gorgeous.  Unfortunately, I didn't like the movie all that much.

A young man (Hee Jae) breaks into people's houses while they are away.  He doesn't steal, just uses their shelter and facilities, maybe eats some food, and repairs small things around the house.  All harmless until he breaks into Ming-yu's (Hyuk-ho Kwon) house and discovers the man's battered wife, Sun-hwa (Seung-Yun Lee).  They run away together but the law is on Ming-yu's side and the young man is imprisoned.  Can the lovers find their way back to one another?

I don't like romantic dramas and I didn't know that's what this was going in.  It's not terrible, as these things go, but it's really not something I enjoyed.  The two main characters have one line of dialogue between them the entire movie and I found many of their choices bizarre.  Also, the whole "breaking into people's houses and sitting around until they come home" thing gave me anxiety.  It's currently streaming for free on Tubi.

The Missing Picture (2013)

  This was supposed to go up yesterday but I only got through 2/3 of it before I had to do a bunch of other stuff.  Wish I could say it was worth the wait, but...

Rithy Panh was a child in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge took over.  He chronicles his painful memories using hand-carved clay figures in astonishingly detailed dioramas supplemented by historical footage of the regime.  

I watched this on the Criterion Channel and I'm actually really annoyed about it.  There was no option for closed captioning or to watch in the original French with subtitles.  The English narrator (Jean-Baptiste Phou) has a very heavy accent and the film was extremely hard to hear.  It sucks because this was a really important story for this man to tell and treating the film like this is disrespectful.

Hope Springs (2012)

  I very nearly didn't get to this movie in time to review it.  I started The Fault in Our Stars, got to the cigarette metaphor, and facepalmed so hard I think I have a permanent dent in my forehead.  Rat Race started with the absolute lowest of stupid humor and I was just not in the mood for it.  And The Heartbreak Kid made me want to scream at my TV within 15 minutes.  I'm not a big Ben Stiller person to begin with and that character was so irritating.

So the answer to the question no one asked is yes, I would rather watch old people fucking than cancer kids or Ben Stiller.  I would give Rat Race another shot because the billionaires-getting-their-comeuppance angle might be enough to get past the sophomoric jokes.

Kay (Meryl Streep) is very unhappy with the state of her marriage to Arnold (Tommy Lee Jones).  After 31 years, they are stuck in a loveless, joyless rut and Kay has had it.  She books a week of intensive couples counseling in Maine, led by Doctor Bernard Feld (Steve Carrell), in a last-ditch effort to save their  relationship.

Seriously.  It's just an old Midwestern couple going through counseling.  There's no big reveals, no juicy twists, just two people who once loved each other trying to find their way back to it by listening to the other's needs and learning how to give a decent blow job.  Streep is absolutely invisible because she's Meryl fucking Streep and that's how acting works and Jones is basically playing the same character he's played for the last fifteen years but it works.  Carrell's character is played absolutely straight, no jokes, no sign that he is a comedian, though I imagine behind the scenes were hilarious given the dialogue he had to say.

It's currently streaming on Starz which I have through Amazon and is perfectly nice, perfectly bland, and has absolutely no Ben Stiller or Shailene Woodley whatsoever.

Annie (2014)

  This was supposed to be a review of Corpus Christi, a Polish drama, but I made it 30 minutes and was bored so I turned it off.  Then it was supposed to be a review of Ali but that's no longer on streaming (for free anyway) so that was also out.  Annie popped up while I was looking for Ali.  I didn't even know it was available because, as it turns out, it's extremely difficult to constantly manage the inventory of seven different streaming services.

Annie Bennett (Quvenzhané Wallis) is a foster kid in New York City waiting for her parents to come back.  She runs into billionaire mayoral candidate Will Stacks (Jamie Foxx) by accident while chasing after some boys trying to hurt a stray dog.  Stacks' campaign manager (Bobby Cannavale) realizes that Annie is a public relations goldmine and pushes Stacks to become her temporary guardian.

This is a modern update of a very old story and I was a little surprised they kept all the musical numbers from the 1982 film in addition to some new songs.  It didn't update as much as I thought it would though it is by nature a very simplistic story.  There were things I liked and things I didn't.

Pro:  Cannavale is very good as the smarmy point-obsessed campaign manager.  Having him do "Easy Street" was also a great idea.  

Con:  Cameron Diaz is a terrible Miss Hannigan.  She can't sing this part.  She is a great dancer and very funny but "Little Girls" was a trainwreck.  It's even more egregious because Tracie Thoms is Broadway trained, extremely versatile, and would have blown the doors off that role.  And she was relegated to less than five minutes of screen time as the Fake Mom.

Pro:  The original songs were good, especially the solo for Wallis, "Opportunity".

Con:  There are a number of loose plot holes especially at the end of the movie.  You really can't think about it too hard or the whole thing falls apart.  It brings up the concept of cell phones tracking our every move several times and then shows zero negative consequences.  I get that having Stacks face censure for monitoring the users of his cell phone network to track down a little girl is kind of a downer but don't bring it up if you're not going to see it through.  

Anyway, Annie is currently streaming on Tubi.

Saving Face (2012)

  Here's a funny story.  Way back in 2011/2012, I was trying to add all the Oscar nominees to my Netflix queue (as usual) and was having a bitch of a time finding the shorts (also as usual) so I added a film that had the same name from 2004.  Then eight years went by and I kind of forgot it was supposed to be a placeholder.  So I'm looking up the 2004 one (a POC LGBTQ rom-com) on Prime and right next to it is the Oscar short and suddenly I remember, "dang, I'm supposed to watch the one about women having acid thrown in their faces, not the one with a queer happily ever after."  And I did and that's the review you're getting today.  But here's my dilemma:  should I... a) toss the placeholder and move everything up a spot, b) keep the placeholder but drop it down to the bottom like it's a new movie, or c) leave it in place and just watch it next time I rotate through?

While you're debating, I'm going to talk about this short.

Every year, hundreds of women in Pakistan are victims of acid attacks.  Men, sometimes a husband, sometimes just a rejected prospect, throw caustic or flammable substances into the faces of girls as young as thirteen for the high crime of disappointing them.  The laws against such attacks are a joke and one woman, Zakia, is about to become a test case for enforcing a new Parliamentary edict calling for life imprisonment upon conviction.  Zakia was routinely abused by her husband and filed for divorce.  On the steps of the courthouse, her husband threw battery acid into her face causing extreme disfigurement and the loss of her left eye.  A Pakistani-born plastic surgeon with a thriving practice in London returns to Pakistan every year to provide reconstructive surgery pro bono to Zakia and the the hundreds of women like her.

Zakia is mostly the focus of the 41-minute film but several women are interviewed and their experiences are uniformly horrifying.  Fortunately, in the eight years since this film, new legislation and tougher restrictions on the sale of acid have cut down the numbers but the underlying causes of misogyny, poverty, and abuse still exist.

Currently streaming on HBO if you were feeling too good about the world and needed something to bring you back down.

Mirai (2018)

  I did not enjoy this movie and it's such a shame because the animation is stunning.  It just was not for me.

Kun (Moka Kamishiraishi) travels backwards and forwards in time to come to terms with the addition of little sister Mirai.

Mirai is gorgeously animated and really thoughtful about the meaning of family and how expectations can change.  Parents and people much closer to their families (or who wish they were) will probably be very moved by this film, which is streaming on Netflix right now.  It also has the option to watch in the original Japanese or the English dub but it defaults to the dub so check before you're disappointed.

I have an extremely low tolerance for children crying and I don't mean it fills me with empathy.  I leap straight to irrational anger.  There are children I like but I don't have any of my own for a reason.  So in that respect, I found this movie incredibly annoying.  It just ruined the experience for me.  But that is obviously a very specific take and there's no real reason to assume you won't like it, unless you have the exact same reaction.  Give it a shot.

The Mod Squad (1999)

  Happy Dia de los Muertos!   Hope everyone had a safe, socially distant Halloween.  We are now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

A three-person squad of former criminals is tasked with undercover missions infiltrating clubs and other "cool" places cops can't go under the supervision of Detective Greer (Dennis Farina).  When Greer is murdered, the three must investigate his death and the connect theft of drugs from evidence lockup.

This was not a great movie when it came out and it has not improved over time.  It feels decidedly unfinished, like it was held back from achieving its full potential but whether that is a writing mistake, a studio mistake, or a directing mistake is hard to tell.  The plot is very basic, the characters one-dimensional, and as much as it wishes it had some, there's no style.  It's just 90s cliches spouting 60s cliches and hoping that counts as character development.  If it were funny maybe it could get a nod into the so-bad-it's-good bin but it's not.  Giovanni Ribisi is just annoyingly slapstick and the running joke about the car being damaged lands flatter than an Acme anvil.  Also, this has one of the worst romantic subplots I've ever seen.  But hey Josh Brolin!  

It's available on Amazon Prime and Tubi but why?

In happier news, I finally finished season 2 of Once Upon a Time.  It was kind of a slog in the back half.  I also decided to give the NBC streaming service, Peacock, a try.  The test case will be Battlestar Galactica. I am currently about halfway through season 2 of that.  It's a show I never got to finish while it was on so I'm looking forward to catching up a little.

Black Christmas (1974)

  This is regarded as a slasher classic but I wasn't really blown away.  Also, not loving how the poster tagline is dragging me for my skin care.  It's not my fault my body still produces retinol, fuckers.

A crazed maniac (Albert J. Dunk) breaks into a sorority house just before Christmas break and terrorizes the inhabitants.  It starts with obscene phone calls and escalates to picking them off one by one.  

That's it.  That's the movie.  You have to admire the straightforwardness of it even if everything else kind of sucks.  The real crime here is how laughably bad the cops are.  Even the one (John Saxon, RIP) who's good at this job still can't really do anything to keep these girls safe.  So if you wanted to write a whole thing about the deeper meaning that women's safety is an illusion and power structures are kept in place that actively harm them at the expense of Men's Feelings, you could.  Or you could, you know, BE a woman for five fucking minutes and know that to your bones.

But I want to talk about something super spoiler-y because it was the only interesting part to the whole movie so I'm going to put it in white text and you can highlight if you want to read it.  SPOILERS HERE. So Final Girl Jess (Olivia Hussey) is being harassed by her asshole ex, Peter (Keir Dullea), because she dumped him and is planning on getting an abortion.  The movie tries to pin the suspicion on Peter even though the audience knows it's not him.  Here's the thing.  When Jess finds the bodies of two other girls, she makes eye contact with the killer, who is behind the door.  His eyes are brown/hazel.  Peter later breaks in to the basement where Jess is hiding and she murders him with a fireplace poker.  His eyes are blue.  She knew he wasn't the murderer.  She killed him on purpose because she knew she would get away with it and she knew he was never going to leave her alone.  This is a woman who absolutely knew she was in danger on multiple fronts and took definitive action to reduce the threat to her person.  We stan a legend.  END SPOILERS.

On a fun personal anecdote, my mom told me about how there was a rash of obscene calling when she was working as a nurse.  Some random dude was calling women just to breathe really heavily into the phone.  It had happened to multiple nurses my mom worked with and one day, the phone rang and she picked it up.  Heavy breathing.  She told me "you were in the other room, screaming, I hadn't showered in three days, I was trying to heat your bottle, and here is this dude with some fantasy.  All I could think was 'Buddy, if you could see me now' so I laughed."  Dude hung up.  Because there is nothing more dick-shriveling than a woman's laughter.

Anyway, it's currently streaming on Criterion, Amazon Prime, Tubi, Vudu, and YouTube.

Last Shift (2014)

  I was really enjoying this film --it's like a mix between Assault on Precinct 13 and Hereditary-- right up until the last ten minutes.  So disappointing.

Officer Jessica Loren (Juliana Harkavy) is a rookie assigned to babysit a precinct that is being shut down.  All the phone lines have been rerouted, all the people cleared out, and all Loren has to do is try not to fall asleep until the cleanup crew arrives to dispose of the final pieces in the evidence locker.  Except of course that's not all.  Loren discovers that it is the one-year anniversary of the group suicide of John Michael Paymon (Joshua Mikel) and his murderous Manson wannabes in that very precinct.  She starts to believe that Paymon is reaching out from beyond the grave to complete his demonic agenda.

I'm going to try not to spoil anything but I will tell you exactly what I didn't like about this movie.  Loren has absolutely zero character development.  She doesn't learn anything, she doesn't change, she isn't redeemed or corrupted, she stays exactly the same from the first frame to the last.  Call me old-fashioned but I think horror movies work best when they have something to say.  Old 80s slashers were morality plays, 50s creature features tapped into fears about the atomic age, modern horror interrogates power structures.  This doesn't do anything except terrorize.  

And it's such a shame because the terror is really well-done!  The special effects are great, the dread and paranoia are palpable, and the tension really gets ratcheted up as the movie progresses (even if it borrows heavily from predecessors).  It could have been great but it settled for good because it treated it's main character like a paper doll.  Currently streaming on Tubi.

Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988)

  I can't believe I've never reviewed this film here.  I had a bad night and I needed to watch something comforting but still Halloween-y.  

Elvira (as herself) has been grinding as a hostess for low-budget sci-fi and horror films on one lousy TV channel after another but dreams of having a fabulous show of her own in Las Vegas.  She thinks her dreams are about to come true when she receives a telegram stating that an inheritance is waiting for her in Falwell, Massachusetts, but instead of a boatload of cash, all she finds is a dilapidated house, a yappy poodle, and an ancient book of recipes that frankly should come with a warning label.  It is, in fact, a spell book that confers upon the holder all the power of the dark.  Elvira's evil Uncle Vincent (W. Morgan Sheppard) would do anything to get his hands on it, including weaponizing the conservative townspeople against her.  

It's a credit to Cassandra Peterson for creating an alter ego/character that has weathered the test of time like this.  Over thirty years old and the quips are still sharp, the themes still valid, and even the special effects hold up.  Yes, it's campy and corny.  That is very on-brand.  A true Halloween classic.

Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (2002)

  Unfortunate subtitle aside, this was one of the most interesting takes on Dracula I've ever seen.

Lucy Westenra (Tara Birtwhistle) is besieged by a wasting illness that transforms her into a creature of the night.  Her three suitors, led by Dr. Van Helsing (David Moroni), trace her troubles back to recent immigrant Count Dracula (Zhang Wei-Quiang).  Lucy rises from the dead and must be destroyed, Dracula escapes the hunters and sets his sights on Mina (CindyMarie Small) as his new bride, only to be killed by the dawn.

You know this story.  What is original here is that Pages from a Virgin's Diary is presented as a ballet filmed in the style of a German Expressionist silent film.  When I talk about being on my bullshit, this is what I mean.  If I could have injected this movie straight into my veins, I would have.  The ballet work is beautiful, Birtwhistle especially.  She basically carries the entire first half of the production and has a lovely expressive face.

If I have any complaint, it's that the camera work overshadows the ballet.  I would have liked for it to be slightly less faithful to the aesthetic in the interest of showing the dancing.  You can have too much of a good thing.  Overall, however, this was an original interpretation of a classic and I am here for it.  It's currently streaming on Tubi.

Alice, Sweet Alice (1976)

  This was rough.  Not because it was scary --it's a pretty typical slasher-- but because it has not held up well over the last forty years.  

When perfect(ly annoying) little sister Karen (Brooke Shields) is murdered on the day of her confirmation, suspicion falls on older sister Alice (Paula Sheppard).  Her mom (Linda Miller) is quick to defend but as the bodies keep piling up, it seems more and more certain that Alice is a murdering psycho.

Chalk this up as Catholic horror.  There's a lot of allusions to women's bodies being gross, inherently lustful, and how they exist to destroy strong men.  It's... a lot.  You could just have easily called this Internalized Misogyny:  The Movie and it would have been accurate.  Apparently, the director's only previous credit was an adult film that got him charged with obscenity and excommunicated by a New Jersey diocese.  Now, you could argue that Sole purposefully villainized the Roman Catholic Church's rhetoric but that does not explain his choice to make the creepy landlord (Alphonso DeNoble), clearly coded as gay, overtly feminized, slovenly, and a borderline pedophile.  It does not explain a cop bragging about feeling up a 12-year-old girl while fitting her for a polygraph.

This film has gained a cult following since release and it is very effective as a slasher.  The kills are stark and brutal, the paranoia and dread palpable, and the villain reveal both shocking and imminently predictable.  A++.  But the rampant misogyny and homophobia just ruin it for me.  It's currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

This was supposed to go up last Monday but I didn't get to it.  If I have time this weekend, I'll try and get an extra one in to make up for it.  I tried to watch The Eye (2002) this morning on YouTube but there was an ad break literally every minute so I gave up.  It was some bullshit.  How can you have a horror movie with that many interruptions?  So I'm going to try and find something else.  One more week til Halloween!

The Girl with All the Gifts (2016)

  So far, even with my truncated watchlist, I have managed to get a vampire movie, two monster films, a slasher, and now a zombie movie.  Not too bad.

Melanie (Sennla Nanua) is desperate to be loved.  But she is treated as a highly dangerous experiment, a medical oddity, and possible vector for disease.  See, the world has been overrun by the Hungries, a fungal-based zombie apocalypse that turns people into ravenous flesh eaters.  But children born with the spores, like Melanie, are symbiotic and Dr. Caldwell (Glenn Close) hopes that a cure is to be found within them.  Melanie prefers Miss Justineau (Gemma Aterton), a teacher willing to see her as a person instead of a thing, and when the military base is overrun, Melanie may be the only hope they have to survive.

This is based on a truly excellent book by Mike Carey and even though he also wrote the screenplay here, it just kind of becomes a generic zombie movie.  It's not bad by any means, and if you're a fan of the genre it is definitely worth the watch.  (But hurry.  It's only on Netflix until the end of the month.)  If you're not a fan, there is nothing for you here.  I'd still recommend the book but I also just recommend everything Carey has written.  He is very, very good.

The Guest (2014)

  I wasn't expecting to like this so much but it's a fun little slasher with 80s throwback overtones.

The Peterson family lost their son Caleb in the military, so when a man named David (Dan Stevens) shows up at their home purporting to be a friend of Caleb's, they welcome him.  Mom (Sheila Kelley) has no questions but everyone else is a little more cautious.  David is friendly and helpful, a problem-solver, and soon puts everyone but daughter Anna (Maika Monroe) at ease.  Anna does some digging into David's background which sets off alarms at a private military facility.  

It was marketed as a thriller, not as horror, but it's definitely the same vein as Halloween.  It's even set during Halloween.  Honestly, this was like a breath of fresh air for someone who's seen the classics too many times.  It's by the same team behind You're Next, which was also very fun.  It's a little skeevy with regard to the female characters which takes some points off for me, but Stevens and Monroe are both very good in it.  It's worth a watch and is currently streaming on Netflix.

Spring (2014)

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day!  Awww, it's a love story!  With monsters!

After a series of personal tragedies, Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) decides to take a trip to Italy.  He is melancholy and at loose ends until he meets Louise (Nadia Hilker), a beautiful biochemistry student who is very much not interested in a relationship.  Evan's openness and honesty win her over against her better judgment, but time is not on Louise's side.  

This is like the spiritual opposite of Midsommar and would actually make a great double feature.  In fact, you could do a whole Year of Horror with Spring, Midsommar, Trick'r'Treat, and Krampus.  That would be a hella fun night.

Benson and Moorehead are rising stars in horror and I look forward to seeing their other works based on the strength of this debut.  The script is sharp, I like the mix of science and magic, and it's a really fun overall experience.  It's currently streaming on Tubi and IMDbTV.

Big Bad Wolves (2012)

  I wouldn't necessarily call this horror, more of a psychological thriller, but I guess that's close enough for government work.

Micki (Lior Ashkenazi) is an Israeli police officer on the trail of a serial killer.  He's pretty sure it's a school teacher named Dror (Rotem Keinan) but after a video of "enhanced interrogation" goes viral, Micki is forced to cut the suspect loose.  He has a plan, though.  He'll just kidnap Dror and force a confession.  Only one problem: the father of the latest victim, Gidi (Tzahi Grad), has the same idea.  Now Micki and Dror find themselves both at the mercy of a man willing to go to extreme lengths to get vengeance.

This reminded me of M and also Hard Candy.  The film does a good job of eliciting sympathy and suspicion in equal measure even if it doesn't offer any decent resolution.  It's billed as a black comedy and I guess the idea of two people kidnapping the same guy to torture information out of him is kind of funny but I wouldn't say it's filled with dark humor.  But I could just be jaded.

Anyway, it's currently streaming on Amazon.  Totally worth watching if you're in the mood for a thriller with low gore and high suspense.

Thale (2012)

  Today's horror comes from Norway!

Two crime scene techs, Elvis (Erlend Nervold) and Leo (Jon Sigve Skard), are cleaning out the house of a dead man when they find a secret room in the basement.  Inside, they find a mute woman (Silje Reinåmo) and a bunch of cassette tapes detailing her past.  They immediately call it in and settle in to wait for backup.  The girl doesn't seem dangerous, just weird, but as they listen to the tapes, they slowly start to realize how weird.

This was refreshing on a number of levels.  No sexual assault!  Any other movie with a naked girl in a hidden basement room it would be a given, but not here.  In fact, Thale's nudity is not lingered on or male gaze-y.  She happens to be naked but it's not treated as titillating.  Wholesome!  It's low-budget with only about four speaking roles but it never feels cheap.  The CGI on the monsters is a little dodgy but the movie saves the close-up shots for when they'll do the most good so it still works.  New mythological creatures!  Well, to me at least.  Meet the Hulda, Scandinavian forest spirits like a mix between dryads and succubi.  Yay!

It's not super gory and there aren't a lot of jump scares.  It's just a nice, atmospheric, rural horror with a good story and few, if any, cheap tropes.  Currently streaming on Tubi.

A Monster in Paris (2011)

See, this is why I didn't want to try 31 days.  Two in and I've already fucked it up.  

  Last year I didn't include any animated or horror-comedies but this year sucks so we're throwing everything in the basket.  A Monster in Paris is cute, family-friendly animation that is perfect for low-stress Halloween viewing.  

Delivery driver Raoul (Adam Goldberg) is showing off to his best friend Emile (Jay Harrington) when he accidentally mixes two potions and turns an ordinary flea into a giant.  The monster (Sean Lennon) runs into cabaret singer Lucille (Vanessa Paradis), who is impressed by his voice and names him Francoeur.  Things would be good if the Prefect of Police (Danny Huston) weren't looking for a suitable distraction from his mishandling of the recent floods.  He seizes upon the idea of a monster hunt, assigning his best inspector (Bob Balaban) to investigate.  Now Raoul, Emile, Lucille, and Francoeur must outwit the Parisian police to find a happily ever after.

I would have liked to have seen this in its original French but the English dub isn't bad.  It's currently streaming on Tubi and IMDb TV, both of which are free with ads.  I am more familiar with Tubi, so that's what I went with.  Their ad breaks aren't as intrusive as some of the other free streamers.

Girls Against Boys (2012)

  Well, I guess they couldn't all be winners.  It didn't help that my first three choices were no longer available (except for money) so even picking this one felt very much like standing in front of my fridge waiting for my standards to lower enough to find something to eat.

Shae (Danielle Panabaker) is assaulted after going out for drinks with a co-worker, Lu (Nicole LaLiberte).  Fortunately (?), Lu is a cop-killing, casually-murdering kind of girl and very quickly sets Shae on the path to vengeance, if not justice.  But when Shae is ready to move on, she discovers Lu isn't so much the let-go type.

Honestly, the biggest crime in this movie is how boring it is.  The first thirty minutes are excruciating and the rest isn't much of an improvement.  Shae is basically a pin-up doll with a gun while Lu falls into the insulting trope of "jealous lesbian."  It's lazy and homophobic.  The writing is lackluster, there are no surprises and no thrills to be had.  Even the deaths are boring and unoriginal.  

This is the stale Pop-Tart of horror films.  You can do better.  But if you're just standing in front of that fridge, it's streaming on Hulu.  Thankfully only for the month of October, then back to obscurity where it belongs.

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

  You might have guessed by now that I'm not doing my 31 Days of Horror feature this year, seeing as it's Oct 3 and I haven't started.  This year has been hard enough without trying to push myself to watch a movie a day.  I want this to be a hobby not a stressor.  But that doesn't mean I'm not going to watch horror movies.  I love them.

A vampire (Tilda Swinton) tries to get her immortal husband (Tom Hiddleston) to remember his joie de vivre but a sudden visit from her chaotic little sister (Mia Wasikowska) may spoil everything.

It's intensely rare for a film to be so perfectly cast but this is.  Swinton and Hiddleston don't even need makeup to play pale and perfect.  Plus, it has performances from the late Anton Yelchin and John Hurt, as well as a small bit for Jeffrey Wright.

I didn't watch this movie last year for my feature because it's not precisely a horror film.  It's just a vampire film, which is not the same thing to me.  I watched it this year, though, because I frankly need a good vampire film every once in a while.  They soothe me.  And this was like a balm to my weary Gothic little soul.  This basically just reaffirmed my commitment to vampirism as a way of life.  Honestly, creatures of the night, hit me up.  I'd be so good at it.  Like, I would be an okay werewolf but I would rock the shit out of being a vampire.

Only Lovers Left Alive is currently streaming on Starz, which I get through Amazon Prime.

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

Finally got Bethany to see this!  Only took three years!  Reposted 01 Jul 2017.  Why does it seem like I am always showing this to people who have never seen it before?  This have changed since 2012 but some things remain the same, like the number of sheltered people who have been deprived of seeing this film until they met me.  With that said, I'm going to introduce two new characters to this blog:  Tyler, my new boyfriend, and Bethany, my work wife.  Neither one of them has ever seen this movie because they are millennials and just don't know what they're missing.  Well, I managed to fix one of them.  Bethany, you are next!  I'm keeping a list in order to further your education.  Anyway, below is my original review.  It still stands.  Especially the shunning.  Originally posted 15 Jul 12.   

Now we're back in business!  While Rob is busy going where no man has gone before (and boldly, at that), I am taking a moonlit stroll right into werewolf country.  I had bought the Legacy editions of Dracula and The Wolf Man a long while ago and am very excited to finally break into the latter.  Of course, Rob has never seen the original Lon Chaney, Jr. classic and I'll show it to him, never you fear.  But I wanted him to see this one first, since it's basically the gold standard of transformation scenes.

Two American tourists, David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dunne), are backpacking through the English countryside when they are attacked on the moors by a vicious beast.  David is the only one who survives and is taken to London to recuperate.  While there, he starts seeing smoking hot nurse Alex (Jenny Agutter) and also having severe nightmares about monsters.  Also, his dead friend Jack keeps showinig up and telling him to kill himself.  David ignores him because, hey, there's no reason for both their vacations to be ruined, amirite?  Then David turns into a bloodthirsty mindless beast and terrorizes the city.

This was clearly a labor of love for John Landis, who wrote and directed it.  Rick Baker did amazing work making the werewolf look menacing instead of like a plush toy but, to me, his real genius came with the makeup work for Jack as he goes through various stages of decomposition.  It looks fucking disgusting and awesome which is exactly how it should look.

Own this movie.  Or I will shun you.

Richard Jewell (2019)

  This wasn't as horrendously depressing as some of my recent choices so hooray.

Richard Jewell (Paul Walter Hauser) had always wanted to be in law enforcement but things just never worked out for him.  Even a job as security for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, feels like a pale imitation of the real thing.  Then Jewell sees a suspicious package which turns out to be a bomb and his actions in alerting authorities and crowd control save lives.  Suddenly, Jewell is the hero he's always dreamed of being.  But suspicion quickly falls on him, led by an ambitious reporter (Olivia Wilde) and a harried FBI investigator (Jon Hamm).  The eyes of the world are on this terrorist attack and the FBI is pressured for a quick solution.  Jewell fits the initial profile of a "false hero" despite the lack of any evidence, something his lawyer (Sam Rockwell) is quick to point out.

I remember the '96 bombing.  I don't remember the focus on Jewell other the initial hero story but I was a teenager and not interested in anything beyond Kerri Strug's broken ankle.  I do remember when the real perpetrator, Eric Rudolph, was arrested after hiding in the national forests for six years.  Eric Rudolph is a white supremacist domestic terrorist responsible for three bombings in addition to the Olympic Park bomb, one of which was in my home state of Alabama.  Rudolph stated his intentions were to stop the "homosexual agenda" by filling pipe bombs with nails.  Too bad he's gonna die in a supermax or he could be looking at a SCOTUS position.

But about this movie.  Eastwood has always been very minimalist behind the camera, choosing stories that don't have a great deal of nuance but do have tons of patriotism that focus on a lone individual/small group standing for their rights.  Richard Jewell is in keeping with this theme but there's less Rah-Rah-America here.  Jewell is definitely the underdog and Hauser plays him with a sweetness and vulnerability that really pays off in the third act.  Sam Rockwell is a national fucking treasure.  The End.  Kathy Bates is phenomenal, as always, giving me flashbacks to every Woman of a Certain Age that went to my dad's church.  

The only character that really fell flat for me was Wilde's reporter.  She's very obviously the villain of the piece, portrayed as abrasive, slutty, unprincipled, and grasping but she really only has about 20 minutes of overall screen time so her eventual Road-to-Damascus conversion and remorse feels tacked on and forced.  Hamm's FBI agent is a close second.  I really wish they'd just let Jon Hamm do comedy.  He's very funny and I'd love to see him follow more of a Timothy Olyphant/Chris Pine career path.

Anyway, Richard Jewell is currently streaming on HBO which I get through Amazon.

Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me (2014)

  I will freely admit I have never heard of Glen Campbell.  He was hugely popular in the 60s and 70s and my mom remembers him very fondly from the Smothers Brothers and when he had his own TV variety show but that was long over and done by the time I was born.  

This documentary doesn't cover a lot of his early career and it's not some Hollywood retrospective.  It's a snapshot of Campbell's life in his 70s with a diagnosis of Alzheimer's embarking on his last tour.  The fact that it's about a musical legend is probably what got it funding but it's really only incidental that it's Glen Campbell and more about how devastating Alzheimer's is for caregivers and family.  

It's not a super fun watch, is what I'm saying.  But it is engaging and you can clearly see that Campbell was a hell of a showman in his day as well as an incredibly gifted guitarist.  I don't know much about music but even I can recognize a talent that obvious.  It's currently streaming on Hulu.

 

Mr. Peabody and Sherman (2014)

  This was supposed to go up yesterday but I had friends over within pandemic-approved strictures.  We had mulled wine and apple cake and it was very autumnal so I didn't want to ruin it by dashing off to write this post about a movie that is not smart, funny, or fun, no matter what the box art says.

Mr. Peabody (Ty Burrell) is a genius dog who adopted a boy, Sherman (Max Charles), and built a time machine called the WABAC.  Sherman gets into a fight at school with bully Penny (Ariel Winter) so Mr. Peabody invites her and her parents for a dinner party to smooth things over.  Penny antagonizes Sherman into showing her the WABAC and the two children promptly test the elasticity of the space-time continuum.  

This is a regrettably stupid movie.  It would have been nice if the filmmakers had managed to incorporate any non-Euro-centric history, or even portray those eras correctly, but instead it's a rip-off of Bill and Ted without the charm, wit, or humor.  What a waste of top-notch animation.  It's currently streaming on Netflix but I assure you, you can do better than this.

 

The Broken Circle Breakdown (2012)

   Barely made it before midnight but managed to get three movies this weekend!  Whew.  It has been a while since I managed to stick to my schedule.  Hopefully, that means things are calming down now and getting back to normal -- for a given value of normal.

Elise (Veerle Baetens) and Didier (Johan Heldenbergh) are in love.  They met by chance, immediately hit it off, and lived six wonderful and one terrible year together.  

The movie jumps all over their relationship, interspersing present and past to show the highs and lows.  It reminded me of Blue Valentine, Once, and Country Strong, but I don't recommend doubling it up with any of those unless you are just in a cathartic kind of mood.

Content Warning:  suicide, death of a child.  Spoilery, but that's kind of the point of a content warning.  It's currently streaming for free on Vudu with ads.

Strange Magic (2015)

   My mom recommended this to me two or three years ago and I finally got around to watching it.  It is not...terrible...but it's definitely not something I could see myself watching twice.

Marianne (Evan Rachel Wood) is a fairy princess about to marry the most handsome fairy, Roland (Sam Palladio), when she catches him with another girl the day of their wedding.  She has a full-out rocker-girl makeover, complete with smoky eye and sword-fighting lessons, and a newfound desire to avoid love.  Roland has not given up his quest to use Marianne to make himself king and convinces a lovelorn elf named Sunny (Elijah Kelly) to venture into the dark forest where the Sugar Plum Fairy (Kristin Chenoweth) is being held by the Bog King (Alan Cumming).  The Sugar Plum Fairy is the only one who knows how to make a love potion, which Roland hopes to use on Marianne and Sunny wants to use on her sister, Dawn (Meredith Anne Bull).  The Bog King is furious that love could be released into the world and takes Dawn hostage in exchange for the return of the potion.  Unfortunately, Dawn is dosed and accidentally falls in love with the Bog King.  Now Marianne and the Bog King must find the antidote.

On paper, this very much seems like the kind of movie I would love.  Plucky, independent female protagonist?  Check.  Angry, emo dude who hates love?  Check.  Realizing that mutual hatred of a thing is a common bond, leading to an enemies-to-lovers story?  Less of a check but I can appreciate it.  In practice, however, there was just something off about the whole thing.  Maybe it was the music.  Instead of using original songs, the movie is full of Top 40/pop love songs that just feel incredibly hackneyed and overused.  I think some original songs would have really given this movie the edge it deserved to have.  It's currently streaming on Disney+, so you can give it a shot and tell me what you think is wrong with it.

The Great Dictator (1940)

   I had never watched this movie before.  I didn't watch a lot of Chaplin films growing up.  In fact, I may never have seen any; I'd have to check.  This is a pretty good starting point, though.

A Jewish barber (Charlie Chaplin) returns to his shop after a long convalescent period due to war injuries to find that his friends and neighbors are being persecuted under the orders of dictator Adenoid Hynkel (Charlie Chaplin).  The barber just wants to live in peace but when stormtroopers attack and harass the washerwoman next door (Paulette Goddard), he steps in to defend her.  

You absolutely could double feature this with Jojo Rabbit.  I know a lot of people have made parallels between them and they are very complementary.  Another, if slightly more off-beat, choice would be Iron Sky, which directly references Great Dictator.  Basically, any movie where fascists get what's coming to them would be a good match.  It has to be a comedy, though.  Don't go watching Schindler's List or Night and Fog after this.  If you watch the Great Dictator before, those movies will seem extra depressing.  And if you watch it after, it will feel too cynical.  So be judicious.  

Also, if you're like me, you have inextricably linked Charlie Chaplin and silent films.  This is not a silent film.  That threw me a little more than it probably should have.  It's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

The Mask (1994)

   I haven't watched The Mask in at least 15 years, probably longer but fuck it, it was on Hulu.  

Stanley Ipkiss (Jim Carrey) is a low-level flunky at a bank, desperate for love but without a prayer, when he finds an old wooden mask.  Putting the mask on turns him into a living cartoon character, freeing him from his anxieties and allowing him to pursue his dreams of being liked, the center of attention, and wooing club bombshell Tina Carlyle (Cameron Diaz).  Unfortunately, the mask's antics garner attention from cops in Detective Kellaway (Peter Riegert) to ambitious mob lieutenant Dorian Tyrell (Peter Greene).  Everyone wants the mask and Stanley is caught in the middle of the chaos.

I'm surprised how well this held up.  It was a huge hit for Jim Carrey and remains one of his most iconic performances.  I swear, every dude in junior high absorbed this as their whole personality for the entire year when it came out.  Just relentlessly parroted back every catch phrase.  So if you decide to show this to your pre-teens, know that you will hear "S-S-S-SMOKIN'" for the next 8-10 months or until you kill them.

Currently streaming on Hulu and Amazon Prime.

Harriet (2019)

Happy Labor Day!     It took me a couple of days to get through this movie.  It's not necessarily a "hard watch" like 12 Years a Slave; it's more that the beginning is a little rough.  

Harriet Tubman (Cynthia Erivo) was born a slave to the Brodess plantation.  Her mother (Vanessa Bell Calloway) was supposed to be freed on the death of a previous owner, making Harriet and all other issue free as well, but the current owner, Eliza Brodess (Jennifer Nettles), is sinking into poverty and refuses to honor the law.  With no other recourse and facing a sale to another owner further south, Harriet escapes and makes her way alone to the free city of Philadelphia and Mr. William Still (Leslie Odom, Jr.), an abolitionist and conductor of the Underground Railroad.  Still gets Harriet a paying job and place to stay but she cannot enjoy freedom while her family is still enslaved and suffering.  She risks everything to make the journey once again to free those she loves.

The movie covers the basic facts that I remember from high school but verges almost into hagiographic territory in telling them.  Tubman did suffer from fainting spells caused by a head injury inflicted by an overseer but I do not remember hearing that she ascribed them to the voice of God.  The film basically makes her clairvoyant, which --and I realize that as a white person, this opinion is less than worthless-- is a little insulting.  Like, it takes away from Harriet Tubman, strategist and navigator, and gives all her ability to an outside force.  Honestly, though, it shouldn't have taken this long to get a fucking biopic of Harriet Tubman, no matter if they made her a prophet or one of the freakin' X-Men.  There should have been at least one of these a year for the last 25 years.  Then we could debate different approaches, different portrayals.  So I can't really knock this.  I will say that Joe Alwyn got way too much fucking screen time, though.

Harriet is currently streaming on HBO Max or with the HBO add-on on Amazon.

The Peanuts Movie (2015)

   I thought I had already posted this.  I swear, this house is eating my brain.

Charlie Brown (Noah Schnapp) desperately wants to impress the Little Red-Haired Girl (Francesca Capaldi) who moved in across the street but nothing he does goes right.  An attempt to impress at the talent show is nixed when he has to step in after his little sister's (Mariel Sheets) act flops, his honor won't allow him to take credit after a mixup with standardized testing mistakenly names him the smartest boy in school, and even painstakingly learned dance steps can't counteract the unfortunate clumsiness that plagues him.  How can he prove he is worthy of her notice when he can't even fly a kite?

There is nothing particularly novel about the story.  It feels like a greatest hits remix of every TV special and cartoon, populated with all the familiar characters doing all the familiar things.  That's actually a mark in its favor, believe it or not.  Why fuck with perfection?  Who is clamoring for a dark, gritty Charlie Brown?  No one.  Just enjoy the soft, 3D-like animation and let your mind relax for a couple of hours.  

Currently streaming on Disney+.

The Crow (1994)

It is apparently my lot in life to proselytize The Crow to others.  I made Tyler set up the TV so I could make Bethany watch this movie for my birthday.  It remains a classic.  Originally posted 07 Jul 13.  

Don't judge me.  This movie was my world when I was about 15.  My friend Lindsey was obsessed with it and I quickly became obsessed as well.  I had the soundtrack and the score, plus a huge blacklight poster of Brandon Lee.  My mother thought it was ghastly, which only added to the appeal.

I cracked it open ahead of time (still in the B's) because Rob was reading an article about the proposed remake (currently with Luke Evans attached to star) and mentioned that he had never seen the original.

Eric Draven (Brandon Lee) and his fiancée Shelley (Sofia Shinas) were murdered the night before their wedding.  One year later, Eric returns as a revenant to exact revenge on the gang of thugs that robbed him of happiness. 

It's dark, it's twisted, and it has a ton of actors whose faces you'll recognize even if you have to IMDb their names.  Most importantly, it has Michael Wincott which makes it automatically awesome. 

I was really worried about showing this to someone for the first time, now almost twenty years later.  Sometimes the things we loved as children just don't hold up to someone else's scrutiny and there is nothing like the salt-on-a-slug shriveling feeling of someone looking at you, raising an eyebrow, and saying "you identified with that?"  Abashed, the devil stood, indeed. 

Fortunately, the film can still be an enjoyable watch, if you're willing to go with it.