Movie #953: The Lost World: Jurassic Park

The Lost World: Jurassic Park is the sequel to Jurassic Park, still directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Vince Vaughn, Richard Schiff, Pete Postlethwaite, Arliss Howard, Richard Attenborough, and Vanessa Lee Chester. 

Four years after the events of Jurassic Park, Dr. Ian Malcolm (Goldblum) is...well, we're not sure what he's doing. He makes reference in the movie to losing his livelihood and his tenure, so presumably whatever university he was at canned him, but apart from badly needing a shave he looks OK. Anyway, he's summoned to the home of John Hammond (Attenborough) and told that the dinosaurs were only shown on Isla Nublar, but actually grown on Isla Sorna (so, presumably, the eggs we see hatching in the first one would be...shipped back? But then why does Hammond say he's been "present for the birth of every living thing on this island?" Eh, never mind). And he's managed to keep InGen from, like, marketing dinosaur steaks or something, but after an incident involving a British family he's been ousted. So Hammond sends a team to make a video record of the dinosaurs in hopes to get public opinion on their side, consisting of documentarian Nick Van Owen (Vaughn), field equipment guy Eddie (Schiff), and paleontologist Sarah Harding (Moore)...who happens to be Ian's girlfriend. Hammond wanted Ian to be another member of the crew; Ian immediately pushes to leave immediately because Sarah's already on site. 

(As a side note, it occurs to me that Ian was actually a silly choice for this trip. If you wanted to try and rope anybody from the first go into this, why not Ellie or Alan, either of whom might have been more sympathetic to the aims of the expedition and definitely more knowledgeable? Eh, never mind.)

So the expedition arrives, they take some photos of some stegosaurus..es, and almost immediately a huge team from InGen shows up, led by Hammond's remarkably slimy nephew Ludlow (Howard) and this movie's best new character, big game hunter Roland (Postlethwaite). They're there to capture some dinosaurs for transport back to San Diego for the opening of Jurassic Park! Ian just wants to get home, particularly once it's revealed that his daughter Kelly (Chester) stowed away. 

Everything goes tits up, obviously, Roland finds and injures a baby t-rex to lure the parents so he can shoot one (great plan), the t-rexes rock up like "WE'RE WHAT YOU CAME TO SEE" and eat Eddie, Nick sabotages the InGen camp, which is great, fight the power and all, but it does wreck their shit so they can't signal for help, so now the whole troupe has to go through the jungle and the velociraptor-infested grasslands to find the one working MacGuffin radio on the island!

And that, my friends, is the end of Act Two. Act Three takes place in San Diego, because Roland manages to tranquilize the male t-rex and Ludlow takes it (and the baby) back with him. The t-rex gets loose (obvs), goes romping through San Diego, eats a bunch of people and a dog you fucking monster and then gets lured back to the boat and kills Ludlow, because no way was that fucker getting out of this movie alive. 

When it came out, this movie was kinda regarded as a lackluster sequel, and if I'm honest, I was a little surprised to remember that Spielberg directed it (but then, he was also the mastermind behind Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom so it ain't like the man can do no wrong). But I think it's aged OK. The effects hold up, the CGI isn't bad - it helps that the dinos are practical when they can be. Goldblum does a nice job of showing us what four years of being disbelieved and discredited have done to Malcolm, and the new supporting cast is tight and manage to give us some memorable people. I especially love Postlethwaite's Roland Tembo, particularly because he doesn't stay past the end of Act Two - he bags his prize (the male t-rex, though he doesn't kill it the way he'd wanted to), but realizes that the human cost of this nonsense is too great and buggers off. 

I'm ambivalent about Chester's Kelly. Well, I think the actress did fine. I just don't know that we needed the character. Sure, it gives Malcolm a little more to do, and yes, it was established in the first movie that he likes having kids (though is perhaps more interested in, erm, the first part of the process, as it were). But I dunno, I think Goldblum and Moore and capable enough actors that they could have made these people and their arcs interesting without the kids. Though of course, then we wouldn't have a raptor get killed by gymkata. 

The other big issue, though, is the boat plot hole. The ship crashes into San Diego harbor with a t-rex in the cargo hold, but the crew on the deck is all dead (and ripped to pieces), including in a small control room, and one crewman's hand is clutching the controls for the cargo hold doors. So, did the t-rex...eat the crew and spit body parts into the cabin? Dive into the cargo hold as the doors were closing? 

(This question has an answer, and the answer is: There was a scene that made clear that velociraptors got on board the ship before it left, but guess what, that scene ain't in the movie so it didn't happen so it's a plot hole. Eh, never mind.)

My Grade: B-
Rewatch Value: Medium-high

Next up: The Masque of the Red Death

Movie #952: The Lego Batman Movie

The Lego Batman Movie is an animated spinoff of The Lego Movie, starring Will Arnett, Michael Cera, Rosario Dawson, Ralph Fiennes, Zach Galifianakis, and a whole bunch of other recognizable folks in smaller roles. 

In the "Gotham City", or maybe just "DC" section of Finn's basement, Batman (Arnett) is going through the motions protecting the city from the Joker (Galifianakis) and a whole host of other Batman villains. Joker escapes, but poses to Batman that he either needs to disarm the bomb threatening to destroy Gotham or capture his "greatest foe," to which Batman responds that he doesn't have a greatest foe, and Joker means nothing in particular to him. 

Joker, crushed, manipulates Batman into sending him to the Phantom Zone wherein dwell the greatest villains of history, including Voldemort (Eddie Izzard), King Kong (Seth Green), the Wicked Witch of the West (not sure; wiki says Riki Lindhorne; she voiced Poison Ivy but the Witch isn't specifically credited), and, um, the Velociraptor from Jurassic Park. He then arranges for Harley Quinn (Jenny Slate) to open the floodgates and let all these villains out again.

Meanwhile, Batman is dealing with the retirement of Jim Gordon (Héctor Elizondo) and his replacement by his daughter Barbara (Dawson), and the fact that he accidentally adopted an orphan named Dick (Cera). Alfred (Fiennes) also constantly tries to get him to admit that he's lonely and wants a family again, but Batman is bound and determined to be alone. 

In the end, Gotham is saved, the villains are returned to the Phantom Zone, and Batman admits how much the Joker means to him (finally saying "I hate you"). Dick, having already come into the role of Batman's sidekick "Robin", Alfred (wearing the 60s Batman outfit), and Barbara (now as Batgirl, not that she's crazy about the name) become the Bat-family and...all live together at the mansion? Sure, why not! 

You know, given that this movie isn't written by the same ones that wrote The Lego Movie (though they produced), they pretty much nailed the humor. The conceit of the franchise is that it's all play from Finn, and The Lego Movie did a really nice job of nailing a child's understanding of the morality and beats that you'd see in this kind of beats. That happens here, too - we see Batman through the eyes of someone who's clearly a fan, knows his history and all his rogue's gallery (right down to Condiment King), but sees the central conflict of the character as being a loner rather than the heavier themes of later stuff about the character. Likewise, Joker is scary because he's a clown with a creepy smile, not because he's a homicidal maniac. Violence is treated very cartoonishly and, well, childishly - everyone says "pew pew!" when they fire guns, and the stakes are big and dangerous in a Saturday morning cartoon kind of way.

The result is that it doesn't have the same emotional weight as The Lego Movie, since it's not about Finn and his dad, but that's OK - it's fun, it's light, and I didn't realize how much I needed to see a superhero movie that leans fully into how ridiculous the genre is until I rewatched this. 

I remember being skeptical of a whole movie around Will Arnett's Batman, just because his schtick of DARKNESS might wear thin, but the supporting cast makes a big difference. Michael Cera is bouncy and joyful as Robin, Rosario Dawson gets to be the competent adult in the room (well, she splits it with Alfred), and Galifianakis puts his own spin on the Joker rather than trying to be Mark Hamil. 

I don't think it's as good as The Lego Movie, but it's actually better than I remember from the first time I saw it. 

My Grade: B+
Rewatch Value: Medium-high

Next up: The Lost World: Jurassic Park

Movie #951: The Core

The Core is a disaster/sci-fi flick starring Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Stanley Tucci, Delroy Lindo, Richard Jenkins, D.J. Qualls, Tcheky Karo, Bruce Greenwood, and Alfre Woodard.

Joshua Keyes (Eckhart) and his French colleague Serge (Karo) are called upon to explain why thirty people dropped dead when their pacemakers failed suddenly. Keyes almost immediately figures it was an EMP of some kind, but not a weapon, as it was too indiscriminate, and in the first of many tropey decisions, the general investigating the matter (Jenkins; the general, not the matter) says "welp, that's all we wanted, deuces."

Yeah, but it turns out the rotation of the Earth's core has stopped! And...that's going to lead to superstorms and solar winds cooking us and it's just really bad, OK? Fortunately Keyes manages to bring together a crack team of quirky experts: himself, Serge, arrogant famous smart-guy Nimsky (Tucci), Nimsky's former partner Brazzelton (Lindo), expert hacker Rat (Qualls), and space shuttle pilots Bec (Swank) and Iverson (Greenwood). Braz has developed a material literally called unobtanium (but like, he knows what it means to call it that and the cast laughs over it, so it's not quite as tropey as, say, Avatar on that point) that will get stronger as it gets hotter or something, and off they go to restart the Earth with nuclear bombs!

Look, does any of this make any scientific sense? No, of course not. That's like asking why there are dinosaurs eating cavemen in Caveman, it's a misunderstanding of the genre. The Core is a "team of experts save the world" movie in the vein of Armageddon, Deep Impact (though that plays this a little straighter), Sunshine, and Daylight Saving Time. It's got all the hallmarks - the top brass trying to salvage the situation by blowing up the world when something goes wrong, people sacrificing themselves for the greater good, and our heroes (that'd be Bec and Keyes) managing to escape against all odds at the end.

As I said when talking about Lake Placid, if you're going to do a movie this schlocky, blow the money on the cast. And the cast here is fantastic and professional and jumps into it whole-heartedly. Eckhart is our everyman and actually manages to be a somewhat interesting character; he's not cowardly, but he's not overtly courageous, either. D.J. Qualls plays "movie hacker" perfectly, but I like the fast friendship he strikes up with Keyes. Tucci is perfect as the well-dressed, utterly full of himself Carl Sagan-ish character (if Sagan were an utter douchebag). And Lindo, despite South Park reducing his role to "black guy who sacrifices himself" in their parody episode, actually has every reason to be the one who goes to his death when he does.

Been wanting to find this on DVD for a while, now I have, life is good. If I have to watch a not-great movie, it's nice to do it on my own terms. 

My Grade: B-
Rewatch Value: High

Next up: The Lego Batman Movie

Movie #950: Caveman

Caveman is a 1981 comedy starring Ringo Starr, Shelley Long, Barbara Bach, Dennis Quaid, John Matusak, and Jack Gilford. 

Eons ago, one October, a tribe of caveman led by the massive brute Tonda (Matusak) searches the landscape for food, and that's pretty much their daily grind. Atouk (Starr) is kind of a schlub, perhaps a little smarter than your average caveman, but is fully taken with Tonda's mate, Lana (Bach). Atouk winds up expelled from the tribe and bumps into his buddy Lar (Quaid), and then Tala (Long) and her father(?) Gog (Gilford). The four of them hook up with another tribe, discover fire and cooking and so forth, but Atouk is still so stuck on Lana that he goes back for her and winds up saving her from drowning (whereupon he kidnaps her). Lar, in the processes, is washed into a nearby ice age.

Atouk is ready to settle down with Lana (who, being something of an opportunist, immediately snuggles up with him), but his friends convince him that leaving Lar to die is a bit of a dick move, so they go and find him and rescue him from the clutches of a yeti (Richard Moll). Meanwhile, Tala leads Tonda to Lana, and Tonda's tribe abducts all of the women present (bit of an error in judgement, there, Tala). Atouk and his people arm themselves with weapons (another new invention) and defeat Tonda! Atouk tosses Lana aside (literally) and takes Tala as his mate! Zug-zug!

I'd heard of this movie when I was younger; I remember someone telling me about it when I was a kid because I remember "zug-zug" as a term for sex. I'd never seen it, though, and thanks to my friend Toasty it's now a movie I own. It's...actually not terrible. Sure, there's a bit of problematic content (like, um, Atouk trying to drug and rape Lana early in the movie; it's played for laughs like "look how bumbling he is, can't even zug-zug an unconscious woman" but let's just say it doesn't really land by today's standards), but on the other hand, there's a gay couple in the new tribe they hook up with and...it's just a thing. Like, Ruck (Mark King) and Flok (Paco Morayta) are just two characters, they're affectionate and snuggle up with each other, but neither of them are caricatures of gay men. 

Much of the humor is broad and physical and stems from cavemen doing dumb shit - blundering into dangerous situations, running from stop-motion dinosaurs, and wondering if something they've found is "ull" (food). It's interesting watching this on the heels of Larry the Farting Fart Guy: Fart, because there are fart jokes in Caveman, but they...if not work, then at least don't fuck up the flow of the movie, and I think that's because the characters don't belabor the point the way Larry does. 

Anyway, this movie didn't exactly do well and it's regarded as kind of a crappy movie, and I think it's maybe a bit underrated. Ringo Starr isn't exactly setting the screen alight with charisma, but he works OK as a put-upon everyman. It's a simple story, there are a couple of legitimately funny moments, and I really enjoy the simple cave-language they put together for the movie (consisting of about 15 words, so not exactly Elvish). 

My Grade: C
Rewatch Value: Medium or medium-high, I think?

Next up: The Core, unless Toasty gives me something else before I have a chance to watch it

Movie #949: Larry The Cable Guy: Health Inspector

Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector is a gross-out "comedy" starring famed "actor" and "comedian" Larry "the Cable Guy" (real name Daniel Lawrence Whitney, because he should accept responsibility for what he's done). It stars him, Iris Bahr, Tony Hale, Bruce Bruce, Tom Wilson, Megyn Price, Joanna Cassidy, and (sigh) Joe Pantoliano. Jesus, Joe, if you needed the money, you could have come to me, we'd have worked something out.

OK, here we go. Larry (basically playing himself, or rather, doing his schtick) is a health inspector for...you know, I'm not sure we're ever told where this is set. A lot of the people have Southern accents, but there's a pretty big foodie community because there are multiple "five-star" restaurants. Well, anyway, wherever this hell-dimension is, Larry lives there and is a health inspector. He takes his job seriously, more or less, but he's gross, crude, and stupid, and we're supposed to think he's genuine and endearing. But he's so funny! He does funny things like continually call his partner Amy (Bahr) a man because she wears a suit and her hair slicked back! And call his neighbor (David Koechner) "retarded!" And rearrange letters on a restaurant sign to call his partner a "fag"! FUNNY FUNNY STUFF BLUE COLLAR HAW HAW GIT R DONE

Ahem. Anyway, there's a plot, sort of; a local cooking competition is coming up and someone is poisoning people at restaurants to whittle down the competition until only Micheli's remains, but it's not just the owner Lily (Cassidy) or her horrifying sister (I actually don't know because I don't remember the character's name and there is no way I'm putting the DVD back in to check), it's his coworker Jack (Hale), who was pretending to need a wheelchair for no adequately explained reason, who was the mastermind! 

(I note with some amusement that Jack's involvement in the scheme is not even mentioned in the wiki plot summary of the movie.)

This movie is in contention for the worst thing I've ever seen. Let that sink in. I mean, I hate Larry the Cable Guy's schtick anyway, because I hate ignorance and bigotry passed off as humor wrapped up in an "aw shucks ain't I funny and loveable and straight shooter" kind of bullshit, but this is all that plus a lot of fart and poop jokes, which I also hate. This movie has the obligatory "character sits on a toilet and loudly poops at us" scene (see also: Kingpin, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, plenty of other gross-out comedies), but honestly it's not like it was just that one scene we had to power through to get back to the action, because the whole movie is grating because the lead character is such a jackass. 

There is not one redeeming thing I can say about this movie. I wish I had a "Rewatch Value" lower than "If I Never See It Again I'm Fine With That" because I literally rather watch any other movie I've given that rating to than this. 

My Grade: F-
Rewatch Value: IINSIAIFWT - 1

Next Up: The Core (thank god, some good cinema)

Movie #948: Kindergarten Cop

Kindergarten Cop is an action/comedy starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Penelope Ann Miller, Richard Tyson, Linda Hunt, Pamela Reed, Carroll Baker, and Christian & Joseph Cousins (they were playing the same role). 

John Kimble (Schwarzenegger) is an LA cop hot on the trail of drug lord Cullen Crisp (Tyson), and finally manages to have him arrested when Crisp shoots a dude (Tom Kurlander) while his girlfriend (Alix Koromzay) is hiding nearby and watching. Crisp is a drug lord, but he's looking for his wife Rachel (Miller), who fled LA with their son (the Cousins...ses). 

Crisp gets arrested but they need Rachel to testify. Kimble only knows the town they live in, and there are no recent photos of either of them, so he and his partner Phoebe (Reed) head up there so Phoebe can pose as the new kindergarten teacher (it's not purely sexist, she was actually a teacher before taking a massive step down in moral rectitude to become a cop). But then she gets sick, Kimble goes in as the teacher, hilarity ensues!

It's a cute movie, and while there are a bunch of logistical issues (to wit: Kimble does not have any training and certainly no license, so him teaching a class is a violation of state and probably federal law, even in 1990), it moves fast enough and gives us enough to watch that we don't focus on that too much. It helps that the children were actually of kindergarten age, meaning that most of them actually sound like kindergarteners when they talk (special shout-out to Sarah Rose Karr as Emma, who rambles adorably about her dad and how his head is too big to wear hats). Arnie apparently lists this as his favorite role because he loved working with the kids, and it kinda shows - sure, he gets to be all tough and stuff as a cop, but the moments when he's with the kids and actually enjoying it reads as genuine.

The Cousins brothers manage to bring a kind of wariness to the role of Dominic that I really like, and they were apparently coached really well because I actually forgot the role was played by twins. Penelope Ann Miller plays nicely off of Arnie and they read as believably into each other (though every time I see Schwarzenegger in a romantic role it never quite lands, but that's not his fault). 

Far and away the best chemistry is between Pamela Reed and...really anyone she's on screen with, but definitely Schwarzenegger. They have their own little buddy-cop movie as Kimble learns to appreciate what taking care of a roomful of children is like, and she manages to bounce back from spending much of the first act barfing her brains out and become a useful part of the movie. 

The weak link here is Tyson as Crisp. He's apparently a drug lord, but we don't see much of that. He's apparently a real dangerous guy and bless him, he tries, but he comes off like a bit of a sad sack who's just taking cues from his mom (Baker), and his suits don't fit right. It would have been nice to see someone with a little more panache in the role, or to go fully the other way and have him taking all his cues from mom and to actually give Kimble the moment to realize that. 

But this ain't a Michael Mann movie, it's an Ivan Reitman movie, and it's a fun watch. 

My Grade: B-
Rewatch Value: High 

Next up: Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector (jfc)

Movie #947: The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is a really weird movie directed by Terry Gilliam (like he directs any other kind) and starring Christopher Plummer, Lily Cole, Andrew Garfield, Heath Ledger, Troy Verne, and Tom Waits, with cameos from Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell. It's Heath Ledger's last movie, and I knew nothing about it other than that when I watched it.

We open in modern-day London with a theater troupe that carries around its own makeshift stage in a horse-drawn carriage. I mention it's modern-day because I certainly didn't figure that out right away. Anyway, Anton (Garfield), dressed as Hermes, pops out and tries to entice people to roll up and check out the show while the titular Dr. Parnassus (Plummer) sits impassively and a little person (Verne) dressed as a...fly? Piece of poop? zips around and a Valentina (Cole) stands on stage...

The opening of this movie is very weird, is what I'm saying. 

And then a punch of drunk idiots roll up and start hurling bottles at the stage, things get out of hand, and one particular drunk idiot (Richard Riddell) charges up and passes through a curtain and wham, he's in a vast landscape that responds to his imagination. In the end, however, he's confronted with a choice: go to a pub and have a drink or being the arduous climb to...we're not sure. Enlightenment? Sobriety? Anyway he fucks it up, goes to the pub, and the pub explodes. We never see him again. Or maybe we do and I missed it, this movie is very visually and auditorily busy. 

Anyway, Dr. Parnassus is immortal and has been around a thousand years, but about 78 years ago he made a deal with the Devil (Waits) to become mortal so he could marry a woman (also Cole, I think). The terms of the deal were that any children born of that union belonged to the Devil after 16 years, and when his wife was about 60 she had Valentina. She is now a few days from her sweet 16, and wants desperately to get away.

And then the troupe finds a man named Tony (Ledger) hanging by his neck off a bridge and saves his life, and he joins the troupe and winds up being able to lure people in better than Anton can. But he winds up going into the Imaginarium on three separate occasions and finding his face has changed (to Depp, Law, and Farrell, respectively). 

There's a lot more twists and turns, and honestly trying to explain it is exhausting. In vibes, it reminds me a little of Pushing Daisies, except that narratively it's far harder to follow. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead comes to mind, too, just for the quasi-self aware nature of some of the characters (Verne's Percy has one of the best lines: Tony asks him where they are, and he responds "Geographically speaking, in the northern hemisphere. Socially, on the margins. And narrative, with some way to go." It's never addressed, but Percy seems to be immortal as well). The movie pulls the rug out a few times; it seems like they're setting Tony up to have a redemption arc, and then he betrays everyone at the last minute. It seems like they're setting up Valentina to follow her themes of wanting to escape, and then she fucks off to hell but gets freed and winds up marrying Anton. 

It's not that the movie is confusing, exactly; it makes a kind of sense if you pay attention. It's less a story than a meditation or a fever dream. If you're looking for a straightforward narrative or, god help you, you're one of these people that doesn't like movies with "talking" in them (a real thing a person eyes and a brain and a Masters degree actually said to me once), this is probably not going to do to much for you. As it is, it feels to me like it was conceived to be very different and then Heath Ledger died, and they had to finish the movie somehow so they added in the notion of his face changing in the Imaginarium. And that's fine, but I wish that had been explored a little more.

And as long as I'm complaining: Tony (Farrell) having sex with Valentina (who, remember, is newly 16 in the fiction) and Troy Verne in blackface with an afro wig aren't...great. Coulda done without either of those.

My Grade: B
Rewatch Value: Low

Next up: Kindergarten Cop

Movie #946: I Know What You Did Last Summer

I Know What You Did Last Summer is a post-Scream (kinda) slasher movie starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ryan Phillippe, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddy Prinze Jr, Johnny Galecki, Bridgette Wilson, Anne Heche, and Muse Watson. 

In the quaint little fishing village of Southport, NC, four buds - teenage beauty queen Helen (Gellar), local fisherman trying to hang with the richer kids Ray (Prinze Jr), arrogant rich dickhead Barry (Phillippe), and obvious Final Girl Julie (Hewitt) - are getting ready to graduate and head off to their respective big plans. But then they drunkenly down a dude (Jonathan Quint) and, figuring he's dead, throw him in the ocean, but after he opens his eyes and reaches up, making it clear that while running him down was an accident, they did indeed straight-up murder his ass. They agree to take it to their graves, and try to move on with their lives.

Fast forward a year, and their lives have...not progressed. Helen has returned to Southport and works in her family's store with her extremely bitchy sister Elsa (Wilson; guess she never found Kano). Barry is hanging around his family's huge mansion drinking like crazy. Ray has become a fisherman (and honestly seems like the most put-together of any of them), and Julie is at college, but is clearly depressed and suffering from PTSD and is on the verge of flunking out.

And then Julie get the note - "I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER" and everything goes nuts. A maniac in a fisherman's slicker (Watson; the maniac, not the slicker) carrying a massive hook stalks them, kills some of the people around them, torments them, and finally kills Helen and Barry. Ray manages to reveal himself as the Final Boy, because Julie doesn't actually count - yes, she's the last girl in the group alive, yes, she does a bunch of the legwork figuring out what really happened, but during the confrontation with the Fisherman she kinda does nothing but run and scream.

OK, so, I said earlier it was a post-Scream slasher, kinda. It came out after Scream, but was written before it (by the same screenwriter) based on a book by Lois Duncan, which was apparently more of a mystery/thriller and less of a slasher. But as a slasher, it's not bad. There's no meta-content because, again, it was written before Scream so before "meta" became ubiquitous. The truth of who the Fisherman is and why he's killing people is a little wibbly (he is actually the guy they hit, but he was out on that road because he'd just murdered the dude that killed his daughter), but it's there if you pay attention. 

The characters in this movie also has a pretty bad case of the stupids. Helen stops ten feet from safety to look back at the alley she was coming from. Barry hangs out alone in an isolated area while watching out for Helen, which of course makes him easy pickings. Also, Julie's change from a walking zombie to a bubbly party girl after she finds out that the guy they hit last summer didn't actually die is a little jarring, since, yes, they didn't kill anyone, but if they'd called the police her friends would still be alive. 

But on the plus side, the production design and the fishing village atmosphere is good, the kills are fun without being too gross or bloody (this is actually much less gory than, say, Scream), and it led to some pretty iconic moments in the genre. 

My Grade: B-
Rewatch Value: High

Next up: The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

Movie #945: The Haunted Palace

The Haunted Palace is a Roger Corman flick starring Vincent Price, Debra Paget, Lon Chaney Jr, Frank Maxwell, Leo Gordon, Elisha Cook Jr., and Cathie Merchant.

In the 1800s, Joseph Curwen(Price) is executed by a mob because he's a fucking warlock and is doing evil things. Of course, as is the way of things, as the flames lick higher he curses all of the townsfolk present, as well as their descendants. 

Fast forward 110 years. Charles Dexter Ward (Price again) inherits the house; Curwen was his great-great-grandfather. He shows up in the lovely seaside town of Arkham with his lovely wife Ann (Paget), and gets a very frosty reception from the townsfolk because they're all convinced he's going to be evil, like Curwen (the townsfolk, of course, all played by the same actors who played their ancestors in the opening scene). One fellow, the town doctor Willet (Maxwell), is cordial to them and doesn't believe in all this curse nonsense, but he still advises them to leave town - they're never going to be welcome here, because these people are whackadoodle. 

And whackadoodle the are! But they're also kinda right. Ward and his wife go up to the house and meet Simon (Chaney Jr.), the oddly green-skinned caretaker, who sets about convincing them to stay just a little while. But that's enough time for the portrait of Curwen to start possessing Ward, and he slowly becomes Curwen - abrasive, violent, power-mad, and obsessed with using dark magic to bring his mistress Hester (Merchant) back from the dead. Oh, also, he murders a few of the townsfolk in revenge for what their ancestors did to him. 

In the end, we think Ward has escaped Curwen, but then the last shot reveals he's got the same green-tinged skin that Curwen had, so we wind up on a kind of "DUN DUN DUNNN" sort of note, pretty standard Corman stuff.

So, ostensibly this movie is based on a short poem by Poe, but really it's based on "The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward" by H.P. Lovecraft. Studio shenanigans happened; there wasn't really meant to be any connection to Poe, but the studio wanted to make people think it was part of the Poe/Price series of films. It's actually pretty similar to those films in feel, and Price, again, gets to play a dual role and show us the caring, gentle Charles Dexter Ward and the malevolent Curwen, so that's fun to watch. The supporting cast is fine; Gordon and Cook Jr as two of the hapless townsfolk are standouts. The subplot of Curwen killing them off kinda peters out, and although there's talk of Curwen's grand plan to raise the elder gods, that never really goes anywhere, either (I mean, it leads to the climax, kinda, but it's not like we ever see Cthulhu, though he's mentioned). 

As the Poe/Price movies go, it's not my favorite, but it's fun and watchable. 

My Grade: C+
Rewatch Value: Medium

Next up: I Know What You Did Last Summer

Movie #944: Double Team

Double Team is two very weird action movies smushed into one, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dennis Rodman, Mickey Rourke, Natacha Lindinger, and Paul Freeman.

The beginning of the movie is actually a lot like Assassination Games, at least in the broad strokes - Quinn (Van Damme) is a retired badass, living with his wife (Lindinger), who is pregnant, not comatose. And then an evil bad guy called Stavros (Rourke) reappears and Quinn has to be the one to bring him in!

He visits flamboyant weapons dealer Kaz (Rodman), mostly to establish Kaz in the movie, and then they try to take down Stavros in a crowded amusement park. It goes poorly, Stavros escapes (but his six-year-old dies in the crossfire, which you think is going to be important but actually the tiger in the cage they keep cutting to winds up mattering more), and Quinn gets shrapnel'd by a grenade....

...And wakes up in the Colony, a secret prison populated by ex-spies and agents now used as a think-tank for catching terrorists. 

So we spend about an hour in this new movie, and then Quinn escapes, teams up with Kaz, they track Stavros to Rome (where he's kidnapped Quinn's wife), there's a fight at the Colosseum with a tiger, shirtless Mickey Rourke, and some mines, and Stavros dies by blowing up while being attacked by a tiger. 

There's so many details I'm leaving out, and yet so little that actually matters. This movie reminds me a little of Johnny Mnemonic in that it's really bananas, and yet so few of the plot points really go anywhere. The reason to watch the movie is Dennis Rodman - his hair changes color every scene, he has all the best of the questionable dialog (even if almost all of it was ADR'd after production wrapped, I'm sure), and he's really the point of levity here.

This is not a good movie. It's fun in places, but the middle (basically everything in the Colony) just draaaags. The action scenes are choppy and quick, which is bizarre because it's directed by Tsui Hark and he can absolutely direct a fight scene. Van Damme is fit and we get to watch him doing stretches to "heal" after his injury, but again, it's paced weird. 

I think I wanted to like this more than I did, but hey, there's still two more Van Damme movies in this collection.

My Grade: D-
Rewatch Value: Low

Next up: The Haunted Palace

Movie #943: Assassination Games

Assassination Games is an action/drama movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Scott Adkins, Ivan Kaye, Marija Karan, Andrew French, Bianca Van Damme, Kris Van Damme, and Attila Árpa. Those other two Van Dammes are Jean-Claude's kids, credited here as Van Varenberg, but we know the truth. 

In a world where everything is seen through a very yellow filter, Vincent Brazil (Van Damme) is a contract killer who lives quietly in France, coming out long enough to jobs given to him by his friend and handler Nalbandian (French). Meanwhile, in...somewhere else in that general area, Roland Flint (Adkins) is living in a villa and taking care of his comatose wife Anna (Bianca Van Damme). He's also an assassin, or rather, used to be an Interpol agent who was skilled in assassination, but then a crime boss name Polo (MARCO!) beat his wife into a coma while he watched, tied to a chair.

So, as Prince George says, not a comedy, then.

Anyway, a couple of corrupt Interpol agents (Michael Higgs and Kris Van Damme) are looking to lure Flint out of hiding because he also stole some money from them, so they arrange to have Polo released from prison and then put out a contract on him. Trouble is, Brazil picks up the contract, too, and they each fuck up the other's attempt, with Brazil killing Polo's brother (Mario Marian) in the process. So now Polo's out for blood and Brazil and Flint have to team up to kill him and save the day!

Well, there's a little more to it. Brazil's new neighbor Telly (Árpa) is a pimp and trafficker, and is beating on his girl October (Karan) to the point that it disturbs Brazil's violin practice, so he kicks Telly's ass and lets October stay for the night. October teaches him how to pet his turtle. That's not a euphemism, Brazil has a pet turtle but never learned how to pet it properly. 

OK, so, this is not a good movie, but it's better than I was expecting. Scott Adkins is a good martial artist and can act a little bit, so he's a watchable enough leading man. Van Damme is noticeably older and thinner than in his early roles that us Gen-Xers know him from, so his action scenes aren't as good because there's a lot more cutting, but if what you need is a guy whose emotions are muted, hey, he's got you covered. The supporting cast is largely boring as hell; I like Andrew French as Brazil's buddy who works in a clock shop and always has a bowl of chocolates handy, though in thinking about it I think I like him because he reminds me of Lance Reddick in the John Wick movies.

But the movie does do a couple of things I wasn't expecting. Polo's men roll in on Brazil's place (Telly tips them off, which, like, yeah, that tracks) and they call him up and tell him they're going to kill October, with Polo doing the whole "eh, heh, heh, you'll be undone by your passions" and Brazil just kinda goes "you don't know me like that, son" and hangs up. And I figure Polo's going to take October away and leave her finger or something and the third act is going to involve Brazil and Flint saving both Anna and October, but nope, they just kill her, trash the place (but leave his turtle alive!), and fuck off. And I'm not sure that's good necessarily - definitely smacks of fridging - but they actually telegraphed it nicely (October says earlier that all she wants is someone to light a candle for her when she's gone) and they closed that arc by having Brazil fucking behead Telly at the end. 

The sections with October and Brazil, and actually a lot of Brazil's characterization generally, seem drawn from Luc Besson's Leon The Professional (but not their relationship; October very much latches onto Brazil but not in the same way that Mathilda does with Leon, if you see what I mean), but that actually makes those scenes a bit more watchable. I could do with some more interesting supporting players and perhaps a little less of the yellow filter, but in comparison to, say, Gun, it's a perfectly serviceable action movie. 

Actually, one other thing: it's a pretty good comparison between the fun, bright, loud action films of the 90s and the more dour, washed out, serious action films of the late aughts/early teens, and the distinction is even sharper because of Van Damme's presence. 

My Grade: C-

Rewatch Value: Medium-low

Next up: Double Team

Movie #942: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is an action/horror/superhero sort of thing starring Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton, Famke Janssen, Peter Stormare, Derek Mears, Robin Atkin Downes, Pihla Viitala, and Thomas Mann. 

We start off with the familiar fairy tale - Hansel (Cedric Eich) and Gretel (Alea Sophia Boudodimos) are led into the woods by their father (Thomas Scharff), while their mother (Monique Ganderton) looks on. They get captured by a witch (also Ganderton) and nearly eaten, but they turned the tables and push her into an oven, where she is burned alive, writing in agony!

(Sorry, slipped into The Addams Family for a moment.)

Anyway, fast forward some years, and Hansel (Renner) and Gretel (Arterton) are professional witch hunters with some very cool and totally anachronistic weapons - repeating crossbows, shotguns, explosives, and so forth. They show up in the village of Augsburg and find that a lot of children are missing, and the utterly vicious sheriff (Stormare, chewing scenery like it's made of candy) is about ready to burn a totally hawt and therefore non-witchy woman, Mina (Viitala). The siblings get crackin', and discover there's some big witch-plot orchestrated by Muriel (Janssen) to make witches immune to fire, which does sound like it'd be useful. Along the way they recruit a young superfan (Mann), a troll in service to the witches (Mears, voiced by Downes), and Mina. Heads explode, guns go boom, a good time is had by all.

Except for Mina, who gets stabbed to death and make "kill the fucking witch" her dying witch to Hansel, her lover, so that's pretty fridgey. Oh, and she's a good witch. And so was the siblings' mom. 

So, this movie is pretty terrible, but I've watched a few terrible movies lately and this one is at least fun. Part of that is just because it had a budget. It's very much the studio cashing in on Avengers (the story beats are very much like any given superhero movies, even if the movie is rated R for violence and language). There is no attempt at historical accuracy; it's actually more in the vein of Van Helsing than anything. But Renner and Arterton have some chemistry, Janssen and Stormare get to overact gleefully, and the effects are largely practical (including Edward the troll and the principal witches). Moreover, it looks like everyone's having fun, and that generally translates to the viewing experience, too. 

But, in fairness, there are a couple of choices that I think are clever. They don't always pan out - Hansel is diabetic because of being force-fed candy in the first witch's cottage and has to inject something to keep himself alive; it's meant to be insulin which is anachronistic as fuck but whatever, there's witches. The witches aren't the cackling, snarky, aloof women that are usually depicted; they're outright monsters, scampering around the woods like animals and snarling and roaring (Muriel is more of a traditional witch, but it's made clear that she's special). Mina's death is pretty dumb, narratively speaking - she doesn't sacrifice herself to kill a witch, she just gets stabbed like a chump, and the way it's set up we very much think that Gretel is going to white-witch her back to life. So the movie isn't exactly tight.

Very much a "turn off your brain" movie (from the audience's perspective) and a "let's make a franchise" movie (from the filmmakers'), and that part didn't work out, but y'know, at least we got the "curse of hunger for crawling things" out of it.

My Grade: C-
Rewatch Value: High

Next up: The Haunted Palace

Movie #941: Gun

Gun is an action/drama starring Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, James Remar, Paul Calderon, Val Kilmer (wait what), and AnnaLynne McCord. 

Detroit is in the middle of an unemployment surge and a boom (lol) in illegal firearms. Rich (Jackson) is a street-level gun dealer, and we open on him and his crew gunning down a rival (Malik Barnhardt) at a club, along with a bunch of innocent bystanders, including one cocktail waitress (Jill Dugan) whom the camera seems to linger on. Hmmm, very significant!

Anyway, then Angel Hawkins (Kilmer) gets released from prison. Turns out he saved Rich from getting pinched, so Rich feels like he owes him and lets him into his crew. Of course, Angel is working for the Detroit PD (as represented by Rogers (Remar) and Jenkins (Calerdon)), because it turns out that cocktail waitress was Albert Einstein Angel's wife! (He'd been listening to his wife's outgoing phone message all through the movie, in a move I thought was cribbed from Captain America: Civil War, but actually this came first.)

So Rich gets shot and arrested, Angel gets shot and released to go be with his daughter (no idea who plays her, she's not credited on the wiki or the IMDB page), and the evil businessman in charge of all the guns ever (John Larroquette - the businessman, not the guns) pleads out to something minor. 

OK, so obviously this movie is terrible. Jackson is credited as the writer, but evidently he didn't write a word of it (I don't have a source on that, though). As I mentioned when I talked about All Things Fall Apart, he can't act for shit, but his portrayal of the snappy, fast-talking Rich works a little better - Jackson is better able to play an amoral gun dealer. Of course, having Kilmer helps, because although Kilmer's career was very much in decline here, he's still Val Kilmer and brings a little life to the movie. Likewise, James Remar is a workhorse and is competent enough.

None of that changes the fact that the dialog and story is pretty damn simplistic. Honestly it sounds like a 13-year-old gun bunny who may or may not have had black friends wrote the screenplay. I actually do think Jackson had some input into it, because as with All Things Fall Apart, we get a protracted sex scene with, like, lots of thrusting (as a side note, the woman in that scene, Gabriella (McCord), is probably the most interesting character in the movie - is she a politician? A gangster? An ATF agent? All we ever learn about her is that she's banging both Rich and the evil businessman, which unfortunately reduces her role to "sexy assistant", but up until then she had some potential). 

So to sum up: Kilmer's career was in a dark place. Remar and Calderon take the work they get. Danny Trejo cameos, and I'm not 100% sure why because it ain't like he was hurting. Jackson cannot act and is no great shakes as a screenwriter. The effects are bargain-basement, and you can tell they blew the budget on the final shootout with the car explosion because in much of the rest of the movie they couldn't even spring for squibs. But it's better than All Things Fall Apart because at least it's an action movie and that gives us something to watch, rather than the glurge. 

My Grade: D-
Rewatch Value: Low

Next up: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

Movie #940: Casper

Casper is a family comedy kind of thing starring Christina Ricci, Bill Pullman, Malachi Pearson, Eric Idle, Cathy Moriarty, Brad Garrett, Joe Nipote, and Joe Alaskey. It's...not great.

We begin with the evil Carrigan Crittenden (Moriarty) inheriting a huge manor house in Maine from her father, who otherwise donated his vast fortune to various charities. Her evil assistant Dibbs (Idle) points out that it's seaside property and therefore might have some value, but Carrigan, being not only evil but an idiot, burns the deed...but just before it burns, some words appear on it (lemon juice? it's never clear) referencing a pirate treasure. 

They go out to Maine to find it, but get driven away by three ghosts: Stretch (Nipote), Stinkie (Alaskey), and Fatso (Garrett). They bring in various cameos to get the ghosts out, but that fails. Meanwhile, the other ghost in the house, the titular Casper (Pearson), just wants a friend, and sees a commercial for Dr Harvey (Pullman), "ghost therapist". He immediately becomes fixated on Harvey's tween daughter, Kat (Ricci), and arranges to show Carrigan the commercial so she'll hire him...

If this all seems ridiculously and unnecessarily circuitous, well congrats, you found a running theme in this movie.

Anyway, Harvey and Kat move in, Casper immediately befriends Kat, the Ghostly Trio immediately starts fucking with Harvey. There are some half-hearted attempts at Harvey actually doing therapy, but it all falls apart in service to the gags. Kat goes to school and runs afoul of the local bully Amber (Jessica Wesson), who is given no other characteristics than "rich" and "utter cunt" (actually that pretty much describes Carrigan, as I think about it). Lots more stuff happens and yet the movie feels really empty. 

Oh, wait, we learn that Casper died of pneumonia and his father built a machine that resurrects the dead but there's only enough ghost juice for one go, so Carrigan decides that if her assistant Dibbs dies he could become a ghost and fly through the wall of the vault (where she's convinced the treasure is) and then be brought back, only he kills her, she becomes a really laughable CGI ghost and throws him out a window when he betrays her, and is tricked into saying she doesn't have any unfinished business and so passes on...

Look, we'll stop here, because we've hit on the biggest single issue of the movie: It did not pay a lick of attention to the fact that its characters are ghosts, and ghosts are dead people. That's understandable, because the old Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoons didn't, either - people would just see Casper, scream "A ghost!" and run away (which happens a lot in this movie). The issue is that the plot of the movie revolves very heavily around the idea that people become ghosts when they die, but in the context of the movie, a "ghost" is just a weirdly ephemeral CGI creature with shapeshifting and flying powers. The movie tries to have its cake and eat it, too, what with the notions of ghosts forgetting their lives (but easily being reminded), passing on when they let go of "unfinished business", and being easily able to talk to and interact with the living. 

Casper is a ghost at all because his creator wanted to create a "friendly ghost" to soothe his four-year-old daughter, and therefore none of this ever got thought through. The screenwriters started to think through it, but never really finished, and that's pretty emblematic of the movie. Eric Idle's character gets set up as returning as a ghost, but nope. Pullman's character dies and it's immediately obvious that he's going to get resurrected in an act of nobility by Casper, but when he does, he emerges from the Lazarus Machine full alive (and dressed)...so is his corpse still in a hole downtown? 

It's very 90s, the CGI has not held up, and it feels like there were a lot of disjointed attempts at making a screenplay that someone threw into a blender. Probably would have amused my kids when they were very small, but not really worth the time now.

My Grade: F
Rewatch Value: IINSIAIFWT

Next up: Gun

Movie #939: Gosford Park

Gosford Park is a black comedy/murder mystery sort of thing starring...I mean, so many people. Maggie Smith, Ryan Phillippe, Helen Mirren, Clive Owen, Kelly MacDonald, Bob Balaban, Michael Gambon, Charles Dance, Kristen Scott Thomas, Eileen Atkins, Camilla Rutherford, Jeremy Northam, Stephen Fry, and that's barely scratching the surface.

A lot of upper-class toffs go to the country house of William McCordle (Gambon), accompanied by their various servants. The first half or so of the movie is the interaction between all of these people as we get introduced the various interpersonal conflicts - a lot of the toffs are actually broke, but "broke" to a noble means something different than to one of the people "under stairs." The servants move about invisibly but of course they listen to everything and talk about it, and meanwhile one Henry Denton (Phillippe) is taking notes; he's an American actor posing as a Scottish valet to Morris Weissman (Balaban), a film producer. 

But the closest thing we have to a POV character or a protagonist is Mary Maceachran, an actually Scottish maid newly in service to the Countess of Trentham (Smith), and who knows enough to do her job but little enough that we can learn a little through her. And then McCordle is stabbed, the police show up in the personage of Inspector Thompson (Fry) and Constable Dexter (Ron Webster), and proceed to do fuck-all because the Inspector is an idiot. 

It turns out that McCordle was stabbed by Parks (Owen), his illegitimate son through housekeeper Mrs. Wilson (Mirren); he had a habit of impregnating the girls who worked in his factory and then giving the babies to orphanages, but claiming to the mothers that they were adopted by good families. So Parks stabs McCordle, but was actually already dead, having been poisoned by Wilson herself. But that's just what actually happened. Like any good murder mystery, there are multiple people who very good motives for killing William, most of them financial. 

But really, the murder is incidental. It's given no more gravity in the movie than any other conversation, and the pheasant hunt actually takes up much more time and plot focus as the toffs blather about what to wear and how much they hate each other and the servants scamper about making it all happen. The movie isn't really a murder mystery, because our sleuth, Mary, doesn't have to jump through the usual hoops to figure it out, just she...pays attention, and both Parks and Wilson readily confess when she asks.

Gosford Park was an Oscar nom in 2001, which is why I saw it. The performances, cinematography, scenery, costumes, and script are amazing, and I don't remember if I complained about the Oscars not having an ensemble cast award at the time, but they need one. (As it was, Smith and Mirren both got nominated, but the movie won for Original Screenplay.)

I have two complaints. One is that the sound mixing makes it hard to understand the dialog. Characteristic of Robert Altman films, there's a lot of overlapping dialog, meaning you get snippets of conversations, and that's fine, but when there's only two characters on screen their dialog can be hard to catch because it's fast and usually quiet. I had to turn on subtitles so that I wouldn't miss details, which leads me to my other issue.

These people are all identical! I can keep the actors I know straight - I'm not going to confuse Ryan Phillippe or Bob Balaban or Kelly Macdonald or Clive Owen for anyone else. But Lady Sylvia (Scott Thomas), her daughter Isobel (Rutherford), her sister Lousia (Geraldine Somerville), and her other sister Lavinia (Natasha Wightman) are all pretty white women of similar ages and remembering who they all are and what relationships they have, not to mention who all the white men hanging on them are, is a lot when you also have to remember who Mrs. Wilson vs. Mrs. Croft (Atkins) is. I have to imagine at least some of that is deliberate, and another Altman hallmark is a big ensemble cast and a lot of named characters, but Gosford Park very much trusts the audience to keep all this shit straight. 

For all that, though, the movie is well-paced and never boring, it's funny without being a full comedy and thrilling without being a full murder mystery. That's a damn hard needle to thread, so well done to the late Mr. Altman and company.

My Grade: A-
Rewatch Value: Medium

Next up: Gun

Movie #938: Frenzy

Frenzy is a neo-noir thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Jon Finch, Barry Foster, Anna Massey, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Alec McCowen, Bernard Cribbins, and Viven Merchant. 

Jolly Ol' London is in the grip of a serial killer called the "Necktie Killer," as he rapes women and strangles them with neckties. We start off with a group of people finding his latest victim in the Thames, and then we jump over to one Richard Blaney (Finch), a down-on-his-luck barman who is trying to get on his feet. He has dinner with his ex-wife, Brenda (Leigh-Hunt), and she slips him some money. That becomes relevant because the next day, Brenda is raped and murdered by the Necktie Killer, who turns out to be Bob Rusk (Foster), a Covent Garden fruit merchant who is just so friendly to everyone, including Richard.

Brenda's secretary (Jean Marsh) spots Blaney leaving Brenda's office just before finding her dead (he tried to go and see her but found the door locked, so very reasonably assumes she's not in and leaves). She reports this to the police; meanwhile, Blaney goes to find his girlfriend Babs (Massey) and takes her to a hotel. They discover he's wanted as the Necktie Killer and try to flee the country, as Blaney figures (quite rightly) that the police will assume he's guilty, and they might have made it, except Rusk spots Babs and offers her his apartment to hide out until the boat leaves. You can probably guess where this is going.

Blaney is arrested for the murders (including Babs', who winds up stuffed in a potato truck and falling out onto the highway) and sentenced to life, but by then he's figured out who's really responsible and loudly says so. The Chief Inspector (McCowen) on the case figures that they've got the wrong man (hey, better late than never) and they wind up catching Rusk, just as he's coming back to his apartment to put his latest victim in a trunk.

So, I had never heard of this movie, and it was kind of viewed as a return to form for Hitchcock. It's a pretty good example of neo-noir, in that no one in the movie is really clean. Indeed, until Rusk goes to see Brenda and makes it clear in pretty short order that he's going to kill her (more on this in a moment), we're not 100% sure that Blaney isn't the killer - he's impulsive, occasionally violent, and definitely harboring some anger at his ex and possibly women in general.

But no, it's Rusk, who is socially functional, charming and likes to be in the middle of everything (he refers to himself as "Uncle Bob" and cheerfully offers to help Blaney with some money in the beginning of the movie). 

As is often the case with Hitchcock, the cinematography is amazing and very deliberate. There are two scenes in particular that I think are pretty important. One is Brenda's assault, and the other is a dinner. 

Sexual assault scenes in movies are often done badly, and smarter people than me have written on this at length. Suffice to say that such scenes are often shot like sex scenes with tenser music. This one...is not. For one thing, it's long, and that means we get to watch Brenda's horror as she realizes that she's in danger, and it builds as she realizes first that Bob is going to rape her, and then what's actually happening as he takes off his tie. The sequence of her reciting Psalm 91 intercut with him repeating "Lovely!" is honestly one of the most effective bits of filmmaking I've seen, and the shot at the end of the scene, of "us" (the camera) moving down the stairs, holding on the door as Brenda's secretary goes up, and just waiting for the scream we know is coming is fantastic. 

And then there's dinner. McCowen's wife (Merchant) is learning to cook gourmet French food, and the first time we see her do it, she serves her a fish soup that is truly one of the most disgusting-looking things I've ever seen. But the scenes (there are several) like this are played for humor and also exposition, so we get the Chief Inspector talking through his process with his wife (who, as a chef, makes a great detective). 

My point is, there's a lot of genius on display here. The performances are great, but they're actually secondary to the direction and cinematography. As an aficionado of horror movies, I love seeing one that is actually disturbing rather than just violent, and this one truly is. 

My Grade: A
Rewatch Value: Probably medium-high?

Next up: Gosford Park

Movie #937: Fantastic Four: First Steps

Fantastic Four: First Steps is the MCU's take on the titular hero team, now that the film rights are with Disney (ALL HAIL MOUSE), and stars Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Julia Garner, Ralph Ineson, Paul Walter Hauser, and Matthew Wood.

On an alternate Earth from the regular MCU timeline (Earth 828, if you're interested), the Fantastic Four: Reed Richards (Pascal), his wife Sue (Kirby), her brother Johnny (Quinn), and Reed's best friend Ben (Moss-Bachrach) are the preeminent superhero team. Indeed, if there are other superheroes, we don't see them. They've brought the world fantastic technology and world peace, and on the four anniversary of their historic space flight that gave them superpowers, a silvery woman on a flying surfboard (Garner; the woman, not the surfboard) shows up and tells the world that Galactus is coming to eat the planet. 

The Four, of course, follows her into space, despite the fact that Sue is super-pregnant at the time (which you might think is irresponsible, but I wouldn't leave the most powerful member of my team home, either). They follow her all the way to Galactus (Inseon), who tells them he'll spare the Earth if they give him the baby, whereupon Sue goes into labor. 

They get back to Earth and Reed, having all the guile of a three-year-old, tells the world of Galactus' offer, and the world very reasonably responds "yeah, that sucks, but dude if the world is eaten YOUR KID DIES ANYWAY SO UM". But the Four know what genre they're in and come up with a plan to teleport the Earth away (which the Surfer fucks up) and then a plan to teleport Galactus away by using baby Franklin as bait (which the Surfer winds up aiding). 

I was reflecting last night that this movie should have had a much bigger emotional impact than it did. I mean, every parent in the theater should have been squirming in their seat. Hell, my daddy alarm went off during Snakes on a goddamn Plane, but not once during this movie. Why? 

Something Michelle said last night after we watched the movie and we were poking around online about (often after we watch a movie we'll both look up fun facts about it) gave me a clue. She said that a lot of the on-set effects were practical, but then covered by CGI in the final version. And, I dunno, there's a polished, almost sanded-down vibe to the movie in a lot of places? Like, it feels cartoony in a way that most of the other MCU movies don't?

But on the other hand, it absolutely has its own aesthetic, it's different from the previous Fantastic Four movies (thank god), and the chemistry between the cast is fantastic (lol). Pascal is great as always, and I like the take on Reed as being the guy who thinks of all possibilities, even the unthinkable ones. The standout is Kirby as Sue. Sue's an interesting character; she was very much Girl in the older comics, but the version of Sue I know is from stuff like Fantastic Four vs. X-Men where she's legit a badass. I wish we'd gotten to see the scene with Mole Man (Hauser) that was cut from the final version, just because it's cool seeing her do something without the rest of the family. Quinn and Moss-Bachrach as Johnny and Ben are likewise good, Quinn is maybe the weakest of the four performances, but he's not bad, he's just not written as interestingly. 

The look of the movie is impressive, and, like I said, very distinctive. The superhero action is OK; I kind of wish we'd gotten a little more of it or gotten to see the Four doing some heroics that weren't related to the main plot (they filmed a sequence with John Malkovich as Red Ghost and we only get to see a couple seconds, which is a bummer). 

I dunno. I like this movie, but it feels like a placeholder, just to get the Four (and Franklin) into the MCU so that they can be in Doomsday. That doesn't mean it's bad or even unentertaining, I just feel like it maybe could have hit harder.

My Grade: B+
Rewatch Value: Medium-high

Next up: Frenzy

Movie #936: CHIPS

CHIPS is an action comedy written, directed by, and starring Dax Shepherd, and also starring Michael Peña, Rosa Salazar, Vincent D'Onofrio, Jessica McNamee, Adam Brody, and Isaiah Whitlock, Jr. It's a reboot/remake/film adaptation of the 1977 TV show, which I never watched. 

FBI Agent Castillo (Peña) gets put undercover in the California Highway Patrol in order to uncover a ring of corrupt cops. He gets partnered with former motocross racer Jon Baker (Shepherd), because despite his age he's a rookie and the feds figure he'll be more compliant with Castillo - undercover as "Francis Poncherello". He's not; he's a probationary rookie because he sucks at literally everything except motorcycling and he's desperate to prove himself and get back in good with his wife Karen (Kristen Bell). So Ponch starts dragging him around as he investigates this group of cops, but discovers that Baker is actually kind of useful - not only is he a superb cyclist, but he's insightful and observant.

The plot follows a fairly standard buddy-cop formula; they hate each other, they like each other, they run afoul of the bad guy (D'Onofrio), they run afoul of stupid bosses (Brody as the FBI agent that Ponch has inadvertently shot a couple of times), competent bosses (Whitlock Jr. as Ponch's actual chief who fires him when things go absolutely tits up and a suspect (Justin Chatwin) gets decapitated), there's a big shootout, they win the day!

So...I actually kinda liked this movie. It reminded me in some ways of Hit and Run, another movie Shepherd wrote, inasmuch as the humor hits on some uncomfortable topics but mostly lands, the vehicle action is solid, and the characters are more fleshed out than they often are in this kind of movie. They have flaws and history to go along with their skills - Ponch is a very capable investigator, but he's also a sex addict. Baker is emotionally intelligent and smart, but he's addicted to painkillers, has a tendency to get sick in people's houses, and an absolutely terrible shot. Likewise, the presentation of those problems is played for laughs, but still comes off as sympathetic. Baker gets sick in a suspect's house, but the camera shows things like litter boxes, food, and so on that lets us kind of gets a more visceral sense of his discomfort. Peña plays Ponch's addiction as something he's kind of in denial about, but he kind of unravels around woman in yoga pants and he has to stop to jerk off several times a day. 

This is kind of what I mean about uncomfortable topics played for laughs - some of this stuff comes off as a little...much (though not to the extent that Hit and Run did), but for the most part I think it works because it's more about the situations these issues create rather than poking fun at the people involved. (And, I should note that Shepherd is himself a recovering addict, so he actually does know what he's talking about. No idea if he's hypersensitive about home smells, though.) 

The other thing of note is that while the CHiPS TV show was pretty sanitized, and proudly displayed a "this show is endorsed by the California Highway Patrol" before each episode, this movie is rated R and gleefully not so endorsed. The result is a movie that doesn't bear much resemblance to the show (as far as I know; I didn't watch it much), but is actually pretty funny. (My favorite line might be when Ponch and Baker discover that D'Onofrio's character Kurtz is the bad guy, and in describing him Baker says "He looks like he hates koala bears!")

So by no means a perfect movie, but definitely the best one Toasty's given me so far. 

My Grade: B
Rewatch Value: Medium

Next up: Fantastic Four: First Steps

Movie #935: Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker

Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker is an action/comedy based on a YA series starring Alex Pettyfer, Mickey Rourke, Sophie Okonedo, Bill Nighy, Andy Serkis, Alicia Silverstone, Damien Lewis, and Ewan MacGregor.

The titular Alex Rider (Pettyfer) is an English teenager who lives with his uncle Ian (MacGregor) and his housekeeper and friend, Jack (Silverstone). Ian is in exactly one scene, where he does a whole explodey James-Bond-esque escape from some Evil Bad Guys, but then gets shot in the face by the most Irish-looking Russian ever (Lewis). At his funeral, Alex learns that he was a spy and has the "aw my uncle was lying to me" pout, but then gets recruited by Mr. Blunt (Nighy), doing his best to convince us he just ate so many lemons, and Mrs. Jones (Okonedo), who I would say is wasted in this role but that's true of the whole cast. 

Turns out that Ian had been secretly training Alex to be a spy all his life, by teaching him...um, multiple languages and advanced martial arts (side note: the litany of shit Mr. Blunt gives him that's supposed to be relevant is hilarious. "You've been SCUBA diving, parasailing..."). Alex gets sent in spy on Darius Sayle (Rourke), a tech bro who couldn't be more obviously evil if he was literally eating a kitten in front of you and whose guyliner gets more intense every scene. His evil plan is to give away millions of VR headsets to British schoolchildren, but the headsets are infected with a virus! 

No, not a computer virus (Alex makes that mistake, too). A literal virus that will kill them. Because Sayle was bullied as a child by the guy who is now Prime Minister (Robbie Coltrane). 

Anyway, a lot of stupid action scenes ensue, including fight scenes that I thought would be good because Donnie Yen helped choreographed them, but they're all quick cuts and chopped to shit, and Red-Haired-Russian dude (the character's name is Gregorovich) drops in and blows Sayle away. There's very much "next time" moment between him and Alex, and he zooms away in a helicopter.

So, as is often the case with movies Toasty gives me, we need to discuss why exactly this movie is bad. (I've been noodling it.) There's the obvious stuff - weak script, lousy dialog, and that god-awful fight choreography - but what I think is most egregious is how hard this movie wants to be Harry Potter. That happened a lot in the early 2010s, but here in the mid-aughts, the YA franchise to beat was Harry Potter, so "established genre plus kid from normal life" was very much the vibe. 

It seems like what we're going for here is taking a Roger Moore-era James Bond vibe and trying to apply it to a modern British YA sensibility, but there's a couple of things wrong with that. For one thing, Bond murders a shit-ton of people and fucks a shit-tone more. The movies are never rated R, but the content is there, meaning that Alex can't be that kind of spy and you can't even imply that he is. Also, Bond movies at least had some relationship with the tradecraft part of being a spy, but this is basically a superhero movie more than anything else. 

But the tone, my god. Our opening scene has Alex' voice-over talking about how absent and kind of milquetoast his uncle is, as we're watching his uncle blow dudes up with missiles and then get shot in the face. The villain's plan isn't about world domination or fiscal control or repopulating the world like Bond's villains of the era, it's about literally murdering a generation of children because he was bullied. Our villain henchman include Mr. Grin (Serkis), a former circus performer and knife-thrower with a Joker-esque scar who just grunts and hisses, and Missi Pyle as Nadia Vole, a Russian (?) operative who reminds me a lot of Mila Jovovich's character in Zoolander. 

This was supposed to be the kickoff of a franchise, and you can practically hear the producers (and the screenwriter, who was also the one who wrote the novels this is based on) yelling "SEE, KIDS?! JUST LIKE HARRY POTTER, RIGHT? BUY ALL THE MERCH!" And like, the dude must have done something right, because there are a zillion novels and comics and there's another go at putting it on screen with a series that ran three seasons and was positively reviewed. So maybe there's something in the source material worth looking at, but lordy, you wouldn't know it by this.

My Grade: D
Rewatch Value: Low 

Next up: CHiPS

Movie #934: The Fall of the House of Usher

The Fall of the House of Usher (or just House of Usher) is the first of the Roger Corman/Vincent Price Poe-based collaborations, and stars Price, Mark Damon, Myrna Fahey, and Harry Ellerbe. 

Philip Winthrop (Damon) shows up at the New England mansion of his fiancée, Madeline Usher (Fahey), but is almost immediately told to piss off (very politely) by the butler, Bristol (Ellerbe). He demands to see her but is instead shown to her older brother Roderick (Price), who tells him that Madeline is never leaving and is clearly off his nut. 

More specifically, Roderick believes that the Usher family line is cursed, due to the many crimes against humanity that his family committed. Philip manages to convince Madeline to leave with him, and then leaves her room to go pack (never a good idea). She "dies" and is interred, but Philip realizes that Roderick buried her alive. She revives, goes crazy, strangles Roderick, and the whole house burns the fuck down. 

It's interesting to me how closely this adaptation follows the book. Sure, our narrator's place (described in the story as Roderick's friend) has been replaced by Madeline's betrothed, which adds some questions about what Madeline was doing in Boston and how she managed to get away for as long as she did, but it also lets us have a POV character to learn about the Usher curse along with the audience. Vincent Price sells Roderick Usher as being tortured, sad, and completely nuts perfectly, and Myrna Fahey does a decent job showing us Madeline's conflict between wanting to believe her brother and wanting to, like, have a life. Mark Damon is nicely earnest as the young suitor, and Harry Ellerbe provides an occasional voice of comparative sanity as Bristol.

The effects are about what you'd expect for a movie shot in two weeks; the ending shots of the house in flames are kind of comical by today's standards and reminded us a little of the hotel in Trivia Murder Party for Jackbox. The middle of the movie gets a little talky and for my money there are too many scenes of Usher saying "I think you'd better leave" and Philip refusing. 

But Vincent Price is a bleach blonde for this movie, which is worth the price (lol) of admission alone, I think. 

My Grade: C+
Rewatch Value: Low

Next up: Fantastic Four: First Steps