Mandy (2018)

  Content warning: gore, violence

After Mandy (Andrea Riseborough) is targeted by a cult leader (Linus Roache), Red (Nicholas Cage) goes on a psychedelic journey of revenge.

This movie is a whole-ass vibe and if you are off even a little bit, you probably will not like it.  I found it interesting but I didn't love it.  That could have just been me taking the wrong mindset into it.  Another viewing might yield a completely different result.  It's that kind of movie.  

That being said, if you are not into gore, super-saturated color, and synth music, you may also find this movie Too Much.  Nic Cage is gonna Nic Cage all over this while everyone else seems to be in a solipsistic nightmare of their own.  Riseborough is very competent but isn't given a whole lot to do outside of Madonna of the Trailer Park and everybody else is basically cannon fodder.  

Could this be a fun party movie with the right people?  Absolutely.  In fact, that may have been its purpose.  I am not that person but you might be!  And it's streaming for free on the Roku Channel so the only real horror is how they time their commercial breaks.  Jokes aside, if you're going to watch it, spring for a rental.  You're not going to want interruptions to take you out of the experience.

Bathory (2008)

I guess I must have had some hearing loss between now and 2011 because I had to get Tyler to download some subtitles.  I mostly remembered this movie but I didn't find it as compelling as my first watch.  It's still pretty good, though.  Originally posted 30 Jul 11.    This one has been in my Saved queue for over a year with no release date.  That is bullshit.  So I'm not going to say precisely how I got to see it.  Maybe it's easier to find in other countries.  It's worth checking out.

I was supposed to have been watching a Russian sci-fi movie called Stalker but the disc was cracked and wouldn't play past the halfway mark.  Now it's going back to the bottom of the queue.

I heard about this movie last year.  Film School Rejects was doing a Movie World Cup and this was the submission for Slovakia.  Countess Bathory was one of my favorite historical figures so into the list it went even though the movie didn't make it far at all (got beat by LotR:  Return of the King).

The whole movie is in English, which I think is cheating, but whatever.  I know there are a lot of you out there who dislike reading a movie.  The costumes and sets are gorgeous and overall, the production is amazing.

There aren't a lot of special effects so it never devolves into campy creature-feature schlock.  I thought everyone involved with the movie did a great job, especially Anna Friel as the title character. 

Countess Bathory was the wealthiest landowner in 16th century Hungary, which was at war with the Ottoman Empire and also had some internal struggles between the Protestant Hungarian nobles and the Catholic Hapsburgs.  While her husband, Ferenc, is off fighting, Erzsebet is home seeing to the health and disposition of the serfs and running 17 castles.  As a present, her husband sends her a captured Milanese painter as a spoil of war.  His name is Caravaggio.  She and the painter strike up a friendship, sparking rumors of an affair.

The gossip only grows worse from there, fueled by a greedy neighboring landowner named Thurzo who has always wanted a piece of the Countess.  After being shut out completely, Thurzo starts building a case of withcraft against her, alleging that she bathes in the blood of virgins to retain her youth and beauty. 

The results of this smear campaign are pretty much the only reason anyone now remembers her at all.  Whether or not she actually killed people is moot at this point.

The movie paints a very sympathetic picture of a strong-willed, intelligent woman, nonetheless with a violent temper, who is being railroaded out of her money and property.  An interesting take on the legend, to be sure.

Nashville (1975)

  Content warning:  gun violence

A concert organizer (Ned Beatty) tries to cajole various country music personalities and their management   into performing at a rally for a divisive political candidate.

This is an ensemble drama with a huge cast that won a couple of Oscars and got nominated for a bunch more.  It's kind of a musical in that people sing, but not really because the music is just music and doesn't further the plot.  There is, however, a lot of music so if you don't like old-school country like Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn, or country-adjacent singer-songwriter stuff, you will be in hell for most of the 2+ hour runtime.  Also, this movie is really shitty towards women.

I'm pretty sure I got most of the references.  Geraldine Chaplin plays possibly the most annoying character to ever be on-screen, but that's on purpose and I think meant as comedy?  The late Henry Gibson is the stand-out here at least as far as screen-time with Keith Carradine kind of stealing the show.  I'm used to seeing Carradine as the lead and Gibson as supporting so it was interesting to see them switch roles.  

This has been in my queue for ages now.  It's supposed to be one of Robert Altman's best movies but I wasn't terribly engaged with it.  At no point was it funny, cathartic, or particularly dramatic.  People just kind of showed up, said stuff, and then the camera moved on to the next person.  Your mileage will vary, of course.  It's available for rental only according to the internet but I don't know that it's worth $4 of your time.

Miss Sloane (2016)

  I love Jessica Chastain and I will watch her in anything but this was kind of pushing it for me.  

Elizabeth Sloane (Jessica Chastain) is one of the most sought-after lobbyists in D.C. but when she is courted by the gun lobby, she finds an unexpected line in the sand.  She takes her team and swaps sides, joining a small non-profit attempting to push a bill for gun reform.  This brings her into direct opposition with her old firm, who will stop at nothing, including murder, to win.

Eh.  I mean it's fine.  It's not going to make any arguments that will sway anybody unsure where they fall on the issue of gun control.  Mostly it's just another movie pretending its lazy writing is somehow Machiavellian.  You'll see the twists coming from a mile away but the performances are decent.  Mark Strong, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Michael Stuhlberg, and John Lithgow are supporting and of course, Chastain is a strong lead.  

I wish I liked it more but it was kind of a slog.  It's currently streaming on Paramount+ if you want to give it a shot.

Roxanne (1987)

  The bar is so low, people.  

C.D. Bales (Steve Martin) is a hyper-competent fire chief of a sleepy Colorado town.  He falls immediately for Roxanne (Daryl Hannah), an astronomer in town to prove her theory about a new comet, but he is self-conscious of his enormous nose.  When he finds out Roxanne likes Chris (Rick Rossovich), a good-looking idiot who can't talk to women, he steps in to woo her on Chris' behalf.  

This is Steve Martin's version of Cyrano de Bergerac, based on the play.  In some ways, it is an improvement in that it gives Roxanne a brain and a personality and changes the ending from tragedy to comedy.  I didn't find it funny but other people have.  The problems I have with this and the source material is that the plot still revolves around exploiting Roxanne's feelings and gaslighting her.  This isn't "being a wingman."  He props up a man bound to fail far longer than the initial encounter as a show of ego.

The problem I have specifically with this version is that the makeup doesn't do enough to make Steve Martin look unfuckable.  Sure, they added a prosthetic to his nose but it's honestly not that bad.  It's supposed to be a deformity.  This is the same issue I have with people trying to make the Phantom of the Opera hot.  Let bad people be ugly if that is what is driving their character!

Oh, did you not think that Cyrano is the villain?  You are wrong.  He totally is.  He just also ruins his own life as well as others'.  That's my 19th Century hot take.

Anyway, it's better than Three Amigos.  Currently only available to rent or buy, but free with a VPN.

DeKalb Elementary (2017)

  This is an Oscar-nominated short from 2017.  Content warning:  active shooter

A distressed man (Bo Mitchell) walks into an Atlanta elementary school with a rifle and takes the front office hostage.  The receptionist (Tarra Riggs) calls 911 and attempts to keep him calm.

This is based on a real 911 call that was resolved peacefully.  That probably counts as a spoiler for the film but frankly, I think we've all seen enough dead kids in real life that this basically qualifies as a fairy-tale ending.  This guy didn't even want to hurt children; he wanted to be killed by cops because he was off his medication.  We're so fucked up as a country, that's practically gentlemanly behavior.

261 mass shootings this year the in U.S. as of July 4, 2024.  I could link every word of this post to a different article and still have 88 left over.  I don't give a shit what your politics are.  Regulate guns and fund mental health services.

DeKalb Elementary is currently streaming on Kanopy.

Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)

  I'm sorry, I just don't buy that anyone ever thought Hugh Grant was attractive.  

Charles (Hugh Grant) sees Carrie (Andie MacDowell) at a wedding.  Sparks and some bodily fluids are exchanged but then Carrie goes back to America and Charles loses track until another wedding where they are again both guests.  Over a year or so, the pair keep running into each other but the timing is never exactly right.

MacDowell is charming enough but most of the ensemble felt terribly underwritten.  I could not have cared about any of Charles' friend group and the humor felt very flat.  Kristin Scott Thomas was criminally underused, although John Hannah had a very good role.  In fact, for the mid-90s, this was great LGBT rep (even if it still falls prey to the Bury Your Gays trope).  

I am very clearly not the target audience for this.  I remember when it came out and it was all people could talk about.  My mom rented it.  I'm pretty sure she liked it.  But I was 13-ish and this held no interest for me.  Still, it won a bunch of awards so a lot of people must have enjoyed it.  Maybe you will too.  It's currently streaming on (sigh) Max.

Point Break (1991)

Movie Club has made a liar of me.  I swore I was never going to watch this movie again, but it got picked for last week and I (mistakenly) thought enough time had passed and I wouldn't be able to speak to specifics.  Except that the specifics don't matter!  Because this movie is dumb!  It's barely trying to be a Dramatic Buddy Cop thing because it's succeeding too hard at being an Overtly Homoerotic Star-Crossed Lovers thing.  This should have been airing on Bravo the way A Christmas Story was on TNT.    Obviously, Kathryn Bigelow went on to do bigger and better (?) things until they gave her an Oscar.  I'm not a huge fan of the stories she chooses to highlight but I think she's a good director.  It's currently streaming on Paramount+ and on Tubi for free.  Originally posted 04 Apr 16.    This might get me a lot of hate but it needs to be said:  Point Break is a terrible movie.  I'm not saying you can't like it because it's bad; I like all kinds of bad things.  Just recognize that it is bad.

FBI agent Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) is a young hotshot trying to make a name for himself in the Los Angeles field office.  He is assigned to a gruff older partner (Gary Busey) who has a theory on a gang of bank robbers.  He believes that they are surfers who use the scores to fund their international wave chasing.  Utah agrees to go undercover and infiltrate the surfing community to determine who are the most likely suspects.  He meets a young lady (Lori Petty) and convinces her to teach him how to surf but it isn't until he meets surfing guru Bodhi (Patrick Swayze) that it all starts to click.

There is a lot that has been made out of this movie.  Christy used the word "bromance" in her description, and I think that's what a lot of people got out of it.  I wonder if they just blanked out everything after the whole "firing a gun in the air because you can't shoot your buddy" scene.  Maybe it's been romanticized because Patrick Swayze is just so damn cool.  The impulse is to make him out to be some kind of tragic Robin Hood-like figure.

Maybe it's me.  Maybe I missed how it's really about standing up to The Man or finding out how you respond under pressure and what that teaches you about life.  Maybe it's just a nostalgia thing for early 90's action movies and I am out of the loop because I'm only seeing it now.  I don't know.  The surfing and skydiving scenes were beautifully done and that might be enough to push it over the edge into guilty pleasure for you guys.

I thought it was a big, dumb action movie and I'm okay with that being all it is.  It's just not a big, dumb action movie that I could watch again.

Braid (2019)

  Little girls are terrible creatures.  There's a reason why they keep showing up in horror movies.  Content warning:  mild torture (cigarette burns, off-screen)

After losing their stash to a drug bust, Tilda (Sarah Hay) and Petula (Imogen Waterhouse) find themselves in debt to their dealer.  They only know of one place to get the cash to stave off certain death: the home of their childhood friend and current shut-in, Daphne (Madeline Brewer).  The problem is that Daphne is completely insane and to get access to the safe, Tilda and Petula must pretend to be in the same game they played as children.

The ending is kind of weak but otherwise this is a pretty good representation of make-believe games kids play.  It's Calvinball but as a bloodsport.  Who is in charge moves fluidly between players with the only surety being that one person is going to feel victimized.  And on and on it goes until someone goes home crying.

I didn't know anything about it going in, and I was prepared to dislike it until I made the connection.  I still don't think I'd ever watch it again, but I at least don't hate it for being something it's not.  If you like surrealism with a smug Usual Suspects undertone, give this a shot.  It's currently streaming on Tubi, Freevee, and Peacock.  

Chopping Mall (1986)

  Hey, kids, once upon a time there used to be gigantic buildings full of different stores called "malls."  They were monuments to the hubris of capitalism, sure, but they were also relatively safe, conveniently located places where you could just hang out with your friends.  Until the robots killed you, of course.  Content warning:  moderate gore

A handful of horny teens hang out for a party after the mall closes, unaware that an electrical storm has turned the security robots into low-rent versions of the security bots from RoboCop.  

This is a pretty typical 80s horror.  There's a lot of T&A, underwritten characters, and stupid plot held together by decent effects and a lot of red dye #3.  Toss this on as a So-Bad-It's-Good with a few friends and you've got a solid party flick.  It's currently streaming on Shudder for money, Kanopy with a library card, Tubi, Peacock, Roku, and Freevee for free.

Jawbreaker (1999)

  Another dud.  We are on a streak here.

A birthday prank goes wrong and Liz Purr (Charlotte Ayanna) ends up dead at the hands of her three best friends:  Courtney (Rose McGowan), Julie (Rebecca Gayheart), and Marcie (Julie Benz).  Their attempt to cover-up said murder is interrupted by social misfit Fern Mayo (Judy Greer), who just wanted to drop off Liz's homework.  Courtney decides to reinvent Fern as Vylette, newly hot and eager to ingratiate herself, but Julie starts having second thoughts as the lies spin ever faster and Vylette begins to assert her newfound dominance.  

This is basically a Heathers rip-off with More Male Gaze.  The characters are one-note and the note is flat.  Gayheart comes out the best of a bad bunch here as far as showing any kind of progression.  Greer is always good but underutilized.  Benz is horrendously annoying, and McGowan has played some version of the Mean Girl a number of times now.  There's also an icky cameo by noted abuser Marilyn Manson, who was dating McGowan at the time.  Don't waste your eyeballs on this.

It's only available for rental, thank God.  No need to inflict this on an unsuspecting public.

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

  Total snoozefest.  Content warning:  sexual assault, dead animals (cats, off-screen)

Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) leaves the commune she's been living with for the last couple of years when she realizes it's a cult and moves in with her sister (Sarah Paulson) and her husband (Hugh Dancy) but can't leave behind the trauma as easily.

This is billed as a thriller and it is decidedly not.  Olsen does her best to look vacant-eyed and mildly concussed but that's not actually a character, just some medical symptoms.  John Hawkes has already played a similar role but better in Winter's Bone and this just feels watered down.

It's like this wants to be the art-house version of The Strangers so badly but absolutely no one asked it to be.

It's streaming on Paramount+ so you know where to avoid.

Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem (2009)

  Since no-fault divorce is back in the news, let's revisit exactly why it's a great idea that should never be rescinded by looking at what happens when you don't have it.

Viviane (Ronit Elkabetz) wants a divorce from Elisha (Simon Abkarian) after 20 years of marriage.  But they live in Israel which means their court is a tribunal of rabbis and the entire thing hinges on Elisha giving permission.  Viviane has no grounds with which to compel Elisha.  He doesn't beat her or sleep around.  He simply quietly terrorizes her with his silences and his petty malice.  She just wants to be free and even though he doesn't want her, he can't stand the thought of her being with someone else.

This would actually make a good double-feature with Possession.   Like seeing one divorce through the perspectives of the husband and the wife.  Of course, as a woman, this movie is infuriating to the point of physical illness.  I started wondering if the song "Goodbye Earl" did numbers over there or what.  Because you know what you get when you force women into marriages they can't leave?  Dead women. Suicides, murder, and intimate parter violence all go down when women have legal alternatives.  The only reason you don't care about those stats is if you don't think of women as people, just things to be owned and used.

This is streaming on Kanopy.  Vote in your local elections.  It matters.

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

  This was the other pick for last week's Movie Club but I figured I had posted enough last week and didn't want to oversaturate.  Content warning:  child death

A gang targets a man (Martin West) in retaliation for killing one of their men and chases him to a police precinct that is being closed.  The precinct retains a skeleton crew, including Lieutenant Ethan Bishop (Austin Stoker), and a handful of prisoners on a medical stop during transport.  As the siege continues, the line between cops and criminals becomes less important than the one between alive and dead.  

I'm glad I saw this after I saw the remake because the 2005 version would never have held up the other way around.  The original is super low-budget, gritty, and doesn't have a single polished facet.  It is raw, undiluted genius from John Carpenter.  

There's obviously a huge influence from Night of the Living Dead and you can see the bones of what would become Halloween in some of the shot compositions, music, and editing, but don't think of this as a practice run.  It's solid on its own merits.  It's just that Carpenter had so many hits in such a short time, this was bound to get overlooked.  Consider this your gentle push to check it out if you haven't.  

It's streaming on Criterion Channel, Peacock, Tubi, Freevee, and Crackle so there's no excuse.

Two Weeks Notice (2002)

  This was surprisingly hard to find on streaming (without paying extra money for it.)  It wasn't really worth the effort.  Content warning:  Donald Trump

George (Hugh Grant) sleeps with every woman he's hired as chief counsel for his family's construction business, until he meets community activist and lawyer Lucy (Sandra Bullock).  In exchange for not tearing down the community center in her neighborhood, Lucy agrees to work for George, but his constant neediness and learned helplessness drive her to quit.  George agrees not to blackball her in the corporate world if she will find a replacement that meets his requirements.

One of my least favorite tropes is Mother Figure and Lovable Man-Child.  I'm not a lawyer but I'm betting no one hired as Chief Counsel for any corporation is doing the kind of personal assistant shit Lucy does for George here.  I get that it's probably a screenwriting decision to make her character seem smart but it just makes it more demeaning and less believable. 

Bullock is endlessly charming, especially when she's exasperated, but Grant has never appealed to me.  I found his presence grating here.  

Other than lack of chemistry and a bad script, there is a purely-for-his-vanity Trump cameo in the second act that dates the film terribly.  Overall, there are hundreds of better rom-coms.  Don't waste time on this one.  It's currently streaming on Apple+.

Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen (2010)

  It's been a minute since I watched a good martial arts movie.  This doesn't break that streak, unfortunately.  

Chen Zhen (Donnie Yen) left his identity behind on the war-torn fields of Europe in World War I.  Living under an assumed name, he manages a nightclub in Shanghai but his peaceful existence is threatened by invasion by Japan led by Sasaki Chikaraishi (Akira), the son of the man Chen Zhen killed in his own dojo, after whipping the asses of his whole squad.  Chikaraishi obviously has a personal axe to grind on top of the imperialistic plans of Japan and is willing to murder half of Shanghai to accomplish his goals.  Chen Zhen steals a costume from a movie premiere (no, really) to fight the Japanese as a masked vigilante.

This is a sequel to Bruce Lee's 1972 film Fist of Fury, which was also remade in 1994 as Fist of Legend starring Jet Li.  There are in fact so many versions of this story that I had to see if Chen Zhen was a real dude.  He is not, although he is kind of based on one.  Like Robin Hood.  Only with more punching.

The Jet Li movie remains my favorite although I do appreciate Donnie Yen's reverence for Bruce Lee.  Also, deeply appreciate how willing he is to take his shirt off.  Jet Li never did, not in a single one of his movies, even when his character was changing clothes (the tease).  Is it shameless fan service?  Yes.  That's why I'm a fucking fan.  Anyway.

The story gets a little muddled because it's trying to do too many things.  This movie is at its best when Yen is allowed to just beat the shit out of people.  In that sense, it's an extremely faithful sequel to Bruce Lee's film.  It's currently streaming on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Tubi, but the subtitles were only good on Netflix.  There are better films out there, but if you're in the mood for it, this isn't the worst.