Killer Legends (2014)

  You made it through Memorial Day weekend and it's officially summer.  You know what that means:  only five months until Halloween!  In honor of that, here's a documentary about spooky things.  Content warning:  real police crime scene photos, some gore, clowns

Documentarian Joshua Zeman and his partner Rachel Mills explore the real crimes that lie underneath the mythic trappings of some of the most famous urban legends:  the hook-handed man, the killer clown, and the "call is coming from inside the house" babysitter murderer.

The stories are fascinating and as always, real crime is both weirder and more terrifying than fictional crime.  If I have a complaint, it's that the documentarians seem a little ghoulish in their enthusiasm.  There's a breathless quality to their reporting that I don't love.  

But if you're looking for something to whet your appetite for all things horror, this isn't a bad starting place.  It's currently streaming on the Roku Channel.

The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)

Happy Memorial Day!  Here's a completely unrelated movie!  It will come as no shock to long-time readers that I didn't like this movie.  I love Rachel McAdams but I do not love her rom-com era.

Henry (Eric Bana) has a unique genetic condition that allows him to become unstuck in time.  He has no control over when he goes or where, but it seems to be connected to Claire Abshire (Rachel McAdams), the woman he will eventually marry.  See, when Henry meets Claire, she's already known him for years because he kept appearing to her as a child (gross) and basically groomed her to be infatuated with him.  

This is kind of a perfect metaphor for being a drunk.  Henry marries a beautiful, wealthy woman, constantly dips out on her, leaving her to clean up his mess, whines about how hard his life is, and suffers very few consequences.  

It's not particularly romantic unless your idea of romance is a man-child with an attitude problem.  Avoid.

The Marvels (2023)

  Finally got around to seeing this, long after it might have mattered.  It's officially considered a flop and it shouldn't be.  People talk about "superhero fatigue" but I've never bought that.  "Shitty story fatigue" in the case of DC, maybe.  "Shitty fandom rage-baiting over a move towards non-white, non-male superhero stories" combined with "multi-billion dollar studio having no faith in their non-white, non-male audiences" maybe.  Even though it's consistently proven again and again that Black-led and women-led films gross huge at the box office when they're not being condescended to.

Captain Marvel (Brie Larsen), Captain Monica "No Superhero Name" Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), and Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani) find themselves switching places through the galaxy whenever any of them use their powers at the same time.  For Carol and Monica, this is an awkward found-family reunion concerning things not said over the death of Monica's mother (Latasha Lynch), Monica's blipping, and Carol's guilt.  Kamala is just ecstatic to be included.  But the fan-girling will have to wait as the Kree empire has found a new leader in Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) and she is on a mission to punish Captain Marvel for her crimes.  The three superheroes must put aside their issues and learn to work together to save billions of lives.

Maybe it sounds like feminist conspiracy theories but honestly, I do think a small contingent of terminally online incels deliberately started a smear campaign.  There's nothing wrong with this movie that isn't the same thing wrong with a half dozen other Marvel movies.  Yes, it relies on cuteness instead of making subtle political points but so what?  Not every Marvel entry can be The Winter Soldier.  Ragnarok was hilarious but it was hardly Shakespeare.  And maybe that is part of the problem.  The studio clearly didn't want to put a heavy-hitting storyline in a female-led film, which is why they tried to hamstring Black Widow.  

And The Marvels is super-cute!  Iman Vellani brings all of the heart from her TV show (and her whole family) to bear and I would have watched a full two-hours of Nick Fury patiently dealing with her exuberance.  Frankly, I appreciate Marvel using sequels to pay off jokes made in previous entries.  That works for me.

Your mileage may vary, however.  It's currently streaming on Disney+.

Vanilla Sky (2001)

  I remember this being on some lists?  Maybe?  I don't know.  I have no idea why I added it to my queue.  It's not good.

David (Tom Cruise) is a publishing magnate by virtue of having a rich dead dad, and even though he has everything he could ever want, it's not enough.  So when his best friend (Jason Lee) brings a hot new girl (Penelope Cruz) to David's birthday party, David goes out of his way to hit on her.  Sofia is a dancer, bright and beautiful, and over the course of one evening, David convinces himself that she might be The One.  Unfortunately, he failed to run that by his supermodel fuck buddy, Julianna (Cameron Diaz), who is not pleased and also really doesn't like that David refers to her as a fuck buddy to his friends.  Well, friend.  Well, toady that depends on his good graces to make a living.  And for once in his privileged existence, David is going to face some consequences.

Just kidding.  Can you imagine?  LOLOL

This whole film is about how far one rich dude will go to not feel a single thing that might be uncomfortable.  It has a major third-act twist, so I'm not going to spoil it but you've seen better, I assure you.  This is an American remake of an Amenábar film called Abre Los Ojos, which is supposed to be better.

The weirdest part is how uncanny valley Tom Cruise looks when he's not wearing the featureless latex mask.  In a movie that tries so hard to be surrealist horror, all they had to do was keep the camera rolling on him.  Christian Bale very famously said that he based his American Psycho performance on footage of a Tom Cruise interview and never have I believed that more than watching this.  Deeply cursed.

It's streaming on Paramount+.  I'd say skip it, but if you're feeling brave about having a blank-eyed Scientologist stare through your soul, keep an eye out for Michael Shannon and Johnny Galecki in bit parts.

In the Fade (2017)

  After a string of disappointments this weekend, here's a movie to knock your socks off.  Content warning:  terrorist attack, suicide bomb, death of a child (off-screen but described), and attempted suicide

Katja (Diane Kruger) finds it difficult to continue on after her husband (Numan Acar) and son (Rafael Santana) are killed in an explosion.  The cops keep pushing her to say that her husband had gone back to dealing drugs, but she believes he was targeted by Neo-Nazis.  She had seen a woman (Hanna Hilsdorf) parking a bicycle in front of the shop, minutes before the explosion.  But her quest for justice takes her down dark paths.

Kruger is completely spellbinding.  If you've only seen her in, like, National Treasure, you will not be prepared.  For me, the trial portion in the middle dragged on but she kept it from being boring by sheer force of personality.  Katja is going through some shit and Kruger makes sure you feel it.

This was made seven years ago but shines a spotlight on the growing wave of fascism sweeping across Europe and the U.S. in a way that feels disturbingly current.  Germans.  I guess they Know a Thing or Two Because They've Seen a Thing or Two.  Fatih Akin has made several films about the Turkic-German experience in a way that recalls Ranier Warner Fassbinder.  

This is streaming for free on Kanopy in case you needed a reminder that it's always moral to punch Nazis.

Deepwater Horizon (2016)

  I'm not a big Peter Berg fan, even though I agree with a lot of his points.  I find him overly dramatic, bordering on histrionic.

British Petroleum (BP) cuts corners on safety inspections at the floating oil rig Deepwater Horizon because it is behind schedule, leading to a catastrophic failure and blowout endangering the lives of the 116 workers on board.  Chief Engineer Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg) tries to rescue as many as he can from the fiery disaster.

Fun fact!  The Gulf still hasn't fully recovered from this, the largest oil spill in U.S. history.  BP paid $4 billion in fines but not a single employee spent a day in jail.  

Of the two Disaster Directors (that is, directors who mainly do disaster movies, not directors who are disasters), Roland Emmerich is for large-scale, world-ending stuff while Peter Berg focuses on smaller, more human-focused stories.  Not a dig on either, just an observation.  

I didn't love this movie, although I think it's very competently done.  The script is tight, characterizations are bare-bones but enough, John Malkovich's evil executive is very evil and Malkovich-y even though his accent kept tripping me.  Kurt Russell is great.  Kate Hudson is also in this, but they don't have any scenes together.  It just feels overwrought to me.

Deepwater Horizon is currently streaming on (sigh) Max.  

Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)

  Mother's Day was just last week but Father's Day is coming up and this is one of the most Dad Movies ever made.  Content Warning:  war violence, suicide, animal death (horse (shown), dog (off-screen but audible))

The small island of Iwo Jima becomes the last bastion of defense between the encroaching American forces and the Japanese homeland.  Under the command of General Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), Imperial forces dig in, fortifying the island's defenses.  But as the battle approaches inevitability, the lack of resources and support turns a valiant effort into a suicide mission.

Anyone with a passing knowledge of WWII or a passing familiarity with U.S. Marines knows what happened at Iwo Jima.  So the whole movie felt like a foregone conclusion, which was super depressing.  

Clint Eastwood directed this as a companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers, which tells the story from the U.S. side.  It's an interesting idea but I just couldn't get into it.  The cinematography is washed out and hazy and I found the CGI distracting.  The performances are fine, the script is fine, I even thought the framing narrative was fine.  It's a perfectly serviceable war film.  Just wasn't for me.  It's streaming on Tubi.

The Apartment (1964)

  Here's another classic "comedy" that has aged like milk.  Content warning:  attempted suicide

C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is an up-and-comer at Consolidated Life Insurance by virtue of being willing to loan his apartment out to executives and their mistresses.  He has a crush on elevator operator Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) but doesn't know that she has been seeing his boss, Mr. Sheldrake (Fred McMurray).

There are parts of this that are clearly set up to be funny.  They just don't make it anywhere close.  

Every man in this movie is disgusting, yes, including Baxter.  (I will give Dr. Dreyfuss a pass based on no incriminating evidence but he's on thin fucking ice.)  The executives treat their female co-workers like their own private safari, gleefully patting themselves on the back for their supposed conquests.  Baxter lies with every breath, and continues to carry water for these predators even after a woman nearly dies.

This is basically Sexual Harassment: The Movie.  Not a fan.  It's currently streaming on Criterion.  Watch something else.

The Woman in the Dunes (1964)

Happy Mother's Day!  Show your mom you appreciate her by not exploiting her labor.  Cut her a check today.  This is the Cinema Club pick for this week, paired with Showgirls, a film I already said I would never watch again.  Between that and last week's Eurovision, feeling very attacked by Movie Club's choices.  And then there's this piece of shit!  I thought, "oh, thank God, a Japanese film.  That can't possibly send blood shooting out of my ears like a cartoon oil rig."  WRONG.  Content warning:  domestic violence, attempted sexual assault, ectopic pregnancy

An entomologist (Eiji Okada) is out bug-hunting in the dunes of the Japanese coast.  He gets so into his search that he misses his train but the friendly local villagers offer him a place to stay.  It's a little weird that he has to climb down a rope ladder to a little house practically buried in the sand but the lady (Kyôko Kishida) inside is super hospitable.  The next morning, of course, the ladder is gone and he is dumbfounded to realize that he is now the metaphorical bug in a jar.  See, the villagers ran a cost-benefit analysis and found that slave labor is way cheaper than paying for countermeasures against erosion.  And the eponymous woman is no help in escaping.  She's been fully indoctrinated and is just thrilled to be given a new man after her last one died.

My first problem is that this movie is two and a half hours long when Rod Serling would have smoked two packs of cigarettes and knocked this same concept out in 23 minutes.  It's a good concept.  It's made well.  The hits keep coming every time you've absorbed one.  All well and good.  But too long.

My second problem is that the protagonist is an asshole.  I get it.  Unlawful confinement, forced labor, the impersonal cruelty of one's captors.  It's hard to maintain a cherub-like demeanor.  But he not only despises this woman for being a stooge for her slavers, he also demands her unpaid labor for himself.  When she works all night, comes in, and he makes her cook dinner and bathe him?  I screeched like a newly hatched cicada.

This is considered a landmark in Japanese and art-house cinema and if I overlook the baked-in misogyny, I can see it.  It's streaming on the Criterion Channel and so is Showgirls, for probably the same reason.

Grandma (2015)

  Hey, remember when women had rights to bodily autonomy?  Good times. Content warning:  teenage pregnancy, discussion of abortion

Elle (Lily Tomlin) had just broken up with her newest girlfriend (Judy Greer) when her teenaged granddaughter, Sage (Julia Garner), shows up at her door asking for $650 for an abortion.  Generally not a problem, but Elle had cut up all her credit cards in a fit of ecstasy after paying them all off and has no ready cash.  So Elle and Sage set off on a road trip around town, hitting up all of Elle's friends and enemies for money.  

There are several movies that center on a race against time.  This is the first one I think I've seen centered on women's healthcare.  Elle is a militant second-wave feminist with very strong beliefs while Sage is a millennial just trying to correct a mistake.  Tomlin is borderline unlikeable here, with almost none of her trademark humor, but retains enough sympathy to be compelling, mostly in what she doesn't say.  It's nuanced even when it seems in-your-face.  Garner is new to me, but nails the slightly sheltered waif role.  There are cameos from Laverne Cox, John Cho, and Elizabeth Peña, and supporting turns from Marcia Gay Harden and Sam Elliott so star power isn't a problem.

It's not a movie I'm likely to ever watch again.  There wasn't enough of something, either humor or pathos, to make it compelling for me.  I do think it's an interesting film and it's streaming on Hulu if you want to give it a shot but it's a one-and-done for me.

Serving Sara (2002)

  The early 00s were not a great time for movies.  There's a lot of frat boy bullshit, gross-out humor, and over-sexualization of women dragging what would otherwise be a halfway decent comedy down.  Content warning:  transphobia, homophobia

Joe (Matthew Perry) is a process server, meaning he tracks down people who don't want to go to court and hands them subpoenas.  He is contracted to serve Sara Moore (Elizabeth Hurley), who doesn't realize she is about to be divorced from her cattle baron husband, Gordon (Bruce Campbell).  See, if Gordon files first in Texas, Sara will get nothing.  But if she files in New York, she'll get half of the $20 million estate.  Joe agrees to help her turn the tables in exchange for 10% of her settlement, but doesn't count on a vengeful rival (Vincent Pastore) trying to gum up the works.

I saw this on cable with my mom in probably 2004 or 2005 but we didn't catch the beginning of it.  I was sold because it had Liz Hurley and it was cute enough.  This watch, however... yikes on bikes.  Campbell comes out the best here with supporting turns from Terry Crews and Amy Adams.  Perry and Hurley have no chemistry together, although Hurley is doing her level best.  There's only so far hotness can take you.

It's streaming on Freevee, Amazon's ad-supported service, but I can't really recommend it.  Everyone involved has made better movies and life is only so long.

The Land Before Time (1988)

  Did you know this movie has 14 sequels?  And it is only an hour and 8 minutes long?  That technically makes it a short, not a feature film.  

An orphaned brontosaurus named Littlefoot (Gabriel Damon) travels with four other baby dinosaurs to reach the Great Valley, a rumored land filled with food where their families are waiting for them.  

I must have watched this movie 100 times as a kid.  Happily, it still holds up really well, maybe because it's only 68 minutes.  There's no faffing about.  The animation isn't as crisp as modern works but it still has that Don Bluth magic to it.  I cannot speak to the rest of the sequels for quality, as I am frankly baffled by their existence, but Land Before Time remains a stone-cold classic.  It's currently streaming on Netflix.

Funny Games (1997)

  Leave it to the Germans to weaponize politeness.  Content warning:  child death (off-screen), animal death (off-screen), mild gore, bullshit deus ex machina shenanigans

A family looking forward to a week at their lake house are terrorized by a pair of unnamed psychos.

This is supposed to be one of the Big Bads of French/German horror.  You will find glowing reviews calling it "blood-curdling", "terrifying", and suchlike.  But not here, baby!  

Don't get me wrong.  It starts off okay, ramping up the tension as the family slowly realizes that they are in serious trouble.  But then it stalls out for like 40 of the most boring minutes in the history of film.  And the last ten minutes are a smug, condescending, cheap cop-out.  I'm not going to spoil the twist, but know that I hated it.

This isn't as good as You're Next or even The Strangers.  But a lot of people who aren't me liked it a whole bunch so maybe you will too.  It's streaming on (sigh) Max and the Criterion Channel.  There's a shot-for-shot American remake if you don't feel like reading subtitles.

Bad Moms (2016)

  This is a terrible unfunny movie that doesn't understand womanhood, much less motherhood, because it was written by two men.

Amy (Mila Kunis) struggles to balance her roles as wife and mother with her part-time but really full-time job.  When her husband (David Walton) gets caught cheating and the PTA president mean girl, Gwendolyn (Christina Applegate), starts harassing her for not participating enough, Amy has had it.  She decides to radically dial back her efforts and take some time for herself, forging friendships with two other equally harried moms (Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn).

This movie is so fucking stupid and I think I figured out why.  There are zero consequences to anything.  Because men don't have consequences.  Amy kicks her husband out and starts driving his sports car instead of her minivan (because she is now a Cool Mom) because her part-time job at a coffee co-op covers the mortgage?  And he's definitely not ever going to want his car again?  In fact, he never brings it up.  And he's somehow a deadbeat slacker man-child but instantly ready and reliable enough to take both their kids indefinitely for her second-act nadir?  She immediately starts sleeping with the Hot Widower Dad (which, also, ew) but somehow that's not the same as her cheating husband?  None of the decisions in this movie make any sense unless you treat Amy like a man.  Then they all do.

I'm not going to even discuss the disgusting way the movie treats stay-at-home mom Kiki's emotional abuse as a punchline.  Also shown with zero repercussions when she finally tells her overbearing husband to "stop being a pussy" over childcare.  An act that could put real women in the ER with an excuse about walking into a door.

This movie really wants to be making a point about the emotional labor women do that goes unnoticed but to do that, it would have to remove its head from its own ass and it didn't get approved for that surgery because its male doctor thinks it's just hysteria.  The only halfway decent part is the series of interviews between the main actresses and their actual moms playing over the credits.  That is cute and heartwarming but not nearly worth sitting through the hour and 45 minute runtime.

Christy gave me the digital copy when she bought it so at least I didn't pay any money to see this and by deleting it off my server, I now have some free space for other, better movies.

Concussion (2015)

  Content warning:  suicide, self-harm, miscarriage, domestic violence

In 2002, Dr. Bennett Omalu (Will Smith) performed an autopsy on former professional football player Mike Webster (David Morse).  Webster had behaved irrationally for several years, hearing voices, self-harming, having violent outbursts, and ended up living in his car before dying at age 50.  Omalu found nothing in his autopsy to explain this rapid descent and ordered a deeper examination into Webster's brain.  He found evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and brought it to the attention of the Chair of Neuropathy at Columbia University, Dr. DeKosky (Eddie Marsan).  DeKosky and Omalu co-authored an article for a medical journal, prompting Dr. Julian Bailes (Alec Baldwin) to reach out.  Bailes was the team physician for the Pittsburgh Steelers and had grown alarmed at how many former players were dying young of suicide, early-onset Alzheimer's, and related conditions.  Meanwhile, the National Football League, a hundred-billion dollar industry, had also read the article and were less friendly in their approach.  

This is based on a true story.  There is a Where Are They Now card before the end credits that tells you the NFL settled a lawsuit in 2011 on the condition they didn't have to disclose when or how long they knew about the prevalence of CTE among players.  

The NFL is a fucking cancer that weaponizes and encourages the worst instincts of tribalism and Roger Goodell is a despicable human being, but really they're no different from any other corporation that feeds on human misery.  You could swap Omalu with any whistleblower and basically tell the same story.   

Anyway, this was directed by Peter Landesman and all of the highlighted sports clips are chosen and deployed with surgical precision.  The story and especially the dialogue, however, is overwritten.  I had the same kind of problem with the other Landesman film I've seen, Parkland.  Concussion is more focused so he's moving in the right direction at least.  Apparently he is also an investigative journalist for the New York Times, which explains a lot actually.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw is completely wasted in this.  She has nothing to do and frankly, the entire romance sub-plot adds nothing to the story.  All of her scenes could be cut and the film would be unchanged.  Truly a disservice to a very good actress.  

Concussion is currently only available to rent unless you have the internet and a VPN.