The Last House on the Left (1972)

  I did finally finish watching this movie.  It took way longer than I expected.

Seventeen-year-old Mari (Sandra Cassell) and her best friend Phyllis (Lucy Grantham) are off to the city for a concert when they run into a gang of killers led by Krug (David Hess).  The two girls are kidnapped, taken to the woods, tortured, raped, and eventually killed.  But when the killers' car breaks down, they unknowingly take refuge in the house of Mari's parents (Richard Towers and Cynthia Carr).

This is a grindhouse take on The Virgin Spring and it absolutely still lives up to its classic status.  It has been remade, referenced, and resurrected for the last forty years and I don't see that changing anytime soon.  This helped kick off an entire sub-genre of revenge horror and the exploitative gore paved the way for the slashers of the late-70s and early-80s.

That being said, it is very much a product of its time.  The soundtrack in particular is pure 70s and by any stretch of the definition, this fails a political correctness test.  Hell, by the standards of the 70s, it fails a political correctness test.  It was designed to be shockingly violent, crude, and hard to watch.  Keep that in mind and you should be okay.

It's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

Can I Offer You Some TV in These Trying Times?

This blog has been a shitshow recently.  I'm aware.  I've found it difficult to use my normal process in these extraordinary times.  All the things on my TBW list are depressing Oscar nominees for the past ten years, grimdark prestige TV dramas, or humanitarian crisis documentaries.  I honestly didn't know I was going to be so badly affected but I have fucking struggled to get through them.  Even horror movies!  My life blood!  I got through an hour and a half of The Last House on the Left and turned it off.

So what have I been watching?

Crazy Delicious on Netflix.  It is bright, colorful, and British that almost soothes the ache of no new GBBO episodes.  But binge carefully.  There are only six episodes and they go by like a snap.

Tried to watch The Mentalist on Amazon.  Maybe in happier times I could have appreciated this for a fun, brainless watch-while-scrolling-on-my-phone show but I just couldn't get settled with it.  I think it was trying to be a darker, more serious Psych and it just didn't work for me.

Repair Shop is great if you need to cry at every episode watching people get cherished heirlooms repaired by master craftsmen with charming accents.  Watch out for s2 ep1 though.  It suckers you in with a sweet little old lady and then hits you with concentration camp survivor's story.  On Netflix.

Zumbo's Just Desserts.  I just tried the first episode last night while I was searching for something similar to Crazy Delicious.  It is an Australian dessert competition and it's more closely aligned to American shows than GBBO.  The judges are a little bitchier, freer with a backhanded compliment than their British counterparts.  Maybe you like that, though.

Hannibal is now on Netflix and I've been rewatching parts of s1 to refresh before I jump into s2.  Got bogged down by ep 10, though, so it's taking a bit.

Same with Agents of SHIELD.  I got through s2 again but I feel like it's taking too long.

Season 7 of Arrow is a masochistic slog at this point.

Tyler and I were watching Supergirl but got to the crossover with the Arrowverse and switched to The Flash to catch up.  We got up to season 3 of Flash but it has also bogged down because Barry is being an idiot and that annoys the shit out of Tyler.

Legends of Tomorrow killed off one of our favorite characters and we're mad at it.

Watched two episodes of Veep but I don't have the attention span for more at the moment.  It is funny, though.

That's all I can think of at the moment.  See, it's not that I'm not watching stuff.  It's just that I haven't finished anything.  I keep bouncing from thing to thing hoping for that one hit of dopamine but I haven't found it yet.  When I do, I'll let you know.

Born to Be Wild (2012)

  This is not the 90s movie about the kid who befriends a gorilla.  This is a documentary about two women on separate continents rescuing orphaned endangered animals and raising them until they can be released back to the wild.

Hey there, Quarantine Friends!  Is your life a screaming hellscape of fear and uncertainty?  Are you panicked about what's going to happen to you, your children, your friends and family because your government has decided you are less important than their stock portfolios?  If so, congrats on living in the U.S.!  Also, maybe you need to take a break and watch something soothing before your brain melts.  I can recommend Born to Be Wild.

It has:  Baby adorable animals!
            Rescued babies!
            Baby elephants using their trunks to pet and hug each other!
            Baby orangutans on jungle gyms!
            Community and found family!
            Morgan Freeman narration!

Doesn't that sound good right now?  What's the catch, I see you asking suspiciously because it's 2020 and we can't have nice things.  Well, it's only 45 minutes long and it conveniently leaves out most of the horrible realities of deforestation and poaching so that sense of relief and contentment is mostly false and short-lived.  But what isn't right now?  Anyway,  it's on Hulu and it might help you forget the world for a little while.

The Equalizer 2 (2018)

  I am here to tell you I will keep watching these movies as long as Mr. Washington feels like making them.  I don't care if Robert McCall has to shoot people from a gurney in a nursing home.  Still gonna watch.

Former CIA agent Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) is enjoying his faked death retirement, working as a Lyft driver, fixing problems as he sees them, hanging out with his old buddy Susan (Melissa Leo).  But when she is murdered on a routine assignment, Robert has to come out of retirement in a big way.

It's not as good as the first movie, mostly because you can't follow a villain like Marton Csokas with some half-assed team of no-name assassins, but it is still extremely watchable.  I'm a little sad that it didn't get picked up to be a TV series again, but I honestly think it is better as movies.  It keeps the focus tight and doesn't bog down into a formulaic serial.  Fingers crossed for a third entry.

The Color Purple (1985)

  Here's another unfortunate gap in my movie knowledge.  I had never seen The Color Purple.  I knew stuff about it.  Like it was nominated for a then record 11 Oscars and lost every single one, tying it with The Turning Point for most nominations with no win.  I knew it was Oprah Winfrey's acting debut.  I knew Steven Spielberg directed it.  I did not know that he would get his first Director's Guild of America award for it, but the fact that he did and the majority Black cast won nothing is some bullshit.

Celie Johnson (Whoopi Goldberg) has never known love her entire life.  Her father (Leonard Jackson) sexually abused her, then sold her children to a minister and his wife.  Then he gave Celie in marriage to Mister (Danny Glover), when Mister really wanted Celie's younger, prettier sister Nettie (Akosua Busia).  Mister immediately put Celie to work, cleaning his house, caring for his horrible children from a previous marriage, and beating her for failing.  He even runs Nettie off after she refuses his advances.  Celie has no friends, no family, no sense of self.  Her only examples of confidence are her step-son's wife, the fiery Sofia (Oprah Winfrey), and her husband's mistress, the glamorous Shug (Margaret Avery).

This is less a story about racism (but it's there, holy shit) than it is about abuse.  There's so much abuse.  Generational, systemic, physical, sexual, emotional and psychological.  A Baskin Robbins of abuse.  Despite that, or maybe because of it, the movie is very sweet, bordering on saccharine towards the end.  Your mileage may vary on that.  I felt like it was a little too neat, a little too pandering to an audience that just watched two and a half hours of a Black woman's pain.  12 Years a Slave this is not.  Fortunately, it's not Green Book either.  The focus is centered on Celie and Goldberg's performance is nothing short of phenomenal.  I grew up with Sister Act, Ghost, and even further back with Jumping Jack Flash, so I have seen Whoopi Goldberg do comedy, action, and romance but this was the first time I saw how incredible a dramatic actress she is.  And I'm so mad it took me this long.

Anyway, it's currently streaming on Hulu.

Hamilton (2020)

  Happy 4th of July, everybody.  America is kind of a shitshow right now, so why not escape into a fantasy of competent governance and people who take responsibility for their actions, accompanied by a bouncy, fun soundtrack!

Alexander Hamilton (Lin-Manuel Miranda) comes to the fledgling American colonies from the Caribbean as a young man desperate to make a name for himself.  He throws himself into the revolution, winning as many friends as he alienates, scores a coveted position with General Washington (Christopher Jackson) as aide-de-camp, and marries the second daughter of the rich Schuyler family of New York.  But his abrasive personality hinders his post-war efforts at creating a unified American government, with Senator Aaron Burr (Leslie Odom, Jr.) leading the efforts to discredit him.

As I was watching it, I kept thinking how it would make a good double feature with Rush, believe it or not.  Both films feature two men, one charismatic, one patient, and how their constant rivalry pushed both to greater lengths until they ended tragically.  Burr is a very sympathetic villain here, not unlike Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar, if you want to keep it in the musical realm.

I didn't get to see this on Broadway.  Most people didn't.  A production with the original cast was filmed and has now been released to Disney+.  Frankly, I would love it if all Broadway shows followed this path.  It's hard as hell to get to a live theater, especially for the big names.

I think Miranda is a better writer than an actor.  His shortcomings on-screen are more than balanced by how incredibly talented Odom, Daveed Diggs, Phillipa Soo, Renée Elise Goldsberry, and Jonathan Groff are.