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Luther: The Fallen Sun (2023)
The most horrific and banal serial killer cliche ridden movie
Yes, this is the most horrific and banal serial killer cliche ridden movie of all time. I had watched maybe 2 Luther episodes in my life and while didn't gush over them, I liked the episodes at least. This was total fantasist guff that threw in every bad super serial killer trope in. The serial killer was super rich and always stayed 2 moves ahead of everyone else. Similar to the "Following" he had a legion of allies that he recruited mainly off the internet, but by his research center that ferreted out secrets on all sorts of people he could use to blackmail them into doing anything. Like jumping to their deaths on cue from buildings around Piccadilly Circus to create what, more chaos. Actually the actor tasked with this unpleasant role was Anthony Serkis, aka Gollum. He did an passable job, not over-doing the stupid role too much. There was one only-in-movie scene where the master killer lures all the victims' families together is a big mansion where all the dead bodies are hanging in the ballroom around a big chandelier. Then the room is set on fire when steams of kerosene started flowing on the fire then got set on fire with the families milling around under the dead bodies. Then either the serial killer or one of his minion starts waltzing in the backyard wearing a black hooded robe and some cheezy light-up mask staring in the now fiery ballroom. And what do the victims' families do? They don't even run as fire engulfs the room yet after it's all over none of them seemed to die or burn.
This movie reminded me a "Penny Dreadful" an English horror series which started great but devolved into ever cheezy 19th century horror trope. Both times I suffered through the mess thinking, "It's an English production, they can't go that low, predictable and stupid." But they did.
There is also the modern racial aspect, the white guys are all sissies or evil doers, except for Luther's old retired boss. Luther's counterpart on the force after he is imprisoned is a black female DCI of course, and while she was compromised by the black-mailing master serial killer who then deciders to kidnap her obnoxious daughter. Of course there is no dad around in that family to help out.
Then there is one especially egregious deux ex machina scene where Luther is busy drowning on the bottom of this frozen lake in a Land Rover. Then some helos fly into the rescue and they just know where to drop the frogmen through a hole in the ice to rescue our intrepid hero.
The Virginian: Experiment at New Life (1970)
Trying to Play to the Then Young Crowd
This was the last year of the Virginian then billed as the "Men From Shiloh" with a more abstract and up to date intro and score. This last year seemed to be lower budget since you never saw more than two of the stars in one show. In this one all they used was the Virginian. In this "Men From Shiloh" even the Virginian goes un-named even by his moniker "The Virginian". Which sort of leaves a big question of don't people usually ask a stranger for his name, at least his first one, when meeting hoim back then.
Well in this one "The Virginian" comes across a commune set up in an old mining town. The cattlemen in the commune, led by creepy Ralph Meeker as Augustus, have been peeling cattle off various Shiloh cattle drives through the territory.
At first The Virginian gets a decent welcome from the commune council who lets him recover the cattle with Shiloh brands. Then after The Virginian leaves the council meeting, the meeting takes a more serious turn. The commune lacks enough women to keep the young men from leaving, So the council decides to institute group marriage to keep the men around against the objection of Amelia Ballard played by the venerable Vera Miles who cares as a widow for her attractive young daughter Belinda, played by Sue Lyons. Belinda has an off commune boy friend Toby who ends up playing a bigger part. Allegedly her husband, the founder of the commune, committed suicide.
As you guessed, The Virginian comes to the rescue of the damsels in distress.
But there were a couple cheap plot devices, like the The Virginian getting shot as he was leading the women to safety. Then he wakes up later with nothing worse than a head ache. Or how he discovers a secret manifest of the sale of stolen cattle in Augustus's safe, which was claimed the only locked thing in the commune. But how did our intrepid Virginian get into the locked safe? He isn't a burglar.
The show wanted to demonstrate the possible tyranny of a commune where a few unscrupulous men can hijack the whole noble experiment for their own selfish twisted ends. But after a Perry Mason sort of ending with courtroom style confessions, our intrepid Amelia Ballard chooses to keep on with the commune. It wasn't a bad episode but you can definitely see the show was running out of steam.
Atomic Blonde (2017)
Cheezy But Very Stylistic Spy Fantasy
Well the movie had a great roster of English and Scottish actors like James McAvoy, Toby Jones, and. Eddie Marsan and of course our own John Goodman and South African immigrant Charlize Theron in the title role. The best part of the movie was the setting in divided Berlin just before the Wall came down and its 1980s cultural references. But the fantasy level of this alleged spy story made an early James Bond movie seem like an espionage documentary. And of course, since the lead spy Lorraine Broughton played by Charlize Theron has to utterly mop the floor with a dozen well built guys effortlessly. All newer movies have to have female leads that make Batman look like a sloppy bar brawler, ala Salt with Jolie or the latest Lord of the Rings ripoff where a character who only was portrayed in the books as a Elven witch presented as primer inter pares of fighters. Of course, they also some some female feelings which is supposed to endear her to us. Aside from that, it was plain silly, as expected from a graphic novel. In one scene her contact and collaborator David Percival by James McAvoy slips across, more like under, the Berlin Wall as easily as someone shoplifting from Walmarts. There was some plot line about finding a Russian agent who has a list of all MI^ and CIA agents in Berlin. Sorry, but sneaking from East to West over the Wall was a major and risky operation.
Almost all the other reviews gloated over the fight scenes which I guess were good in a superhero kung fu movie way. Bt I don't watch movies for its hand to hand fight scenes. I mean in one scene she takes on and defeats about 10 East German cops who were just answering a call about her breaking and entering into a dead man's apartment. I mean those hapless Joes were just doing their job. So yeah, it's another juvenile spy caper movie with lots of over the top woman stomping men violence. Oh did I forget to tell you? To shine Theron's woke creds, they threw a lesbian love scene in.
The Virginian: The Good-Hearted Badman (1968)
Ho Hum Recycled Plot, Lots of Dumb Plot Points too
Another story where bad men take over the Shiloh Ranch when Trampas, the Virgie and the hands are out on a late fall cattle drive. I mean the plot a few episodes ago was built around the Shiloh's ex Chinese cook's travails trying to open a restaurant in town. And in the beginning there was some old timer who cooked and looked after the place besides Judge Garth. So why doesn't Shiloh hire an old cow poke to cook, maintain, watch the place and maybe pitch in if the hands needed extra help?
Well the plot was pretty basic. Liz finds a shot and wounded man on the ranch and her and Clay bring him to the house to get medical attention. I mean at that point point why wasn't the doc & sheriff notified? Then Clay gets confronted by a ruthless bounty hunter looking for the storied outlaw Jim Dewey. Clay disarms the bounty hunter but uses his 411 to tease the identity of his new guest he's and Liz are nursing back to health. Again Clay neglects to tell the sheriff and doc about his outlaw guest but Clay says as soon as Jim is better, old Clay will singlehandedly bring him to the sheriff, in spite of the fact the bounty and Jim's gang are lurking about. Then the cheezy drama of poor Liz falling for the Dewey's phony Robin Hood good outlaw shtick kicks into overdrive as she faints at the idea of Jim getting hanged. Of course, neither Clay or the women at least take precautions like all carrying a six shooter. Why be prepared when danger is all around?
But taking into account Clay's neglect in alerting the town about his guest and later on Holly giving the women away to the outlaws made young Liz look hard boiled in comparison. Then when you add in the bounty hunter's posse not detecting the ladder and horse of Dewey's accomplice Jake, after the bounty hunter repeatedly reminded his crew to surround the house and check it out before moving in, there was some serious stupidity afoot.
I'll leave the conclusion out as not to reveal a spoiler.
Never Let Me Go (2010)
While It is a wonderfully Acted adn Shot Movie, It's basic plot Is Shoddy
This alternate society looks exactly like ours from the 1980s. But for some reason the scientists perfected cloning and then some sinister bureau uses clones as medical spare parts for the persons cloned. Yet in this movie the rest of society seems to not give a hoot about such barbarities and there is no uproar or resistance program from within and without to counter such a cruel system. At least in 1984 the WW 2 Allied governments collapsed under nuclear attacks allowing Stalinist clones to take over the world. Even England was called Airstrip 1 based on its use as the staging point for most of the Allied aerial campaigns against the Germans. The point being is that that Old England had utterly collapsed and its history destroyed by Big Brother's band of tyrants. Here, it seemed like otherwise it is merry olde England except for this barbaric clone's organs harvesting program no one at large cared about. I just simply couldn't swallow it. The writer of the novel its based on is a Japanese from thje WW 2 era. He seems to think the English were like his people, when near the end even first grade children were trained to resist the allied amphibious troops with bamboo spears and the total slaughter of even Japanese infants was in the cards; before our a-bombs knocked some sense into their reckless and bloodthirsty leaders.
So such a crucial flaw undercut an otherwise well made and acted movie and caused me pain. It is like a movie that purports to be a docudrama then completely alters its plot from the actual event its based on.
Avoid it, it's a total downer!
Murder on the Cape (2017)
Garbage Phony Docudrama That Totally Distorted the Crime
I usually bend over backwards to give low budget, no big names and locally made movies a break. But I despise these people for faithfully following the opening details of the case on like how the local fisherman got the fashion writer pregnant and she had her kid. And they got the location shooting in Truro, Barnstable County MA correct too.. But instead of bringing in the years it took to solve the crime and the mass DNA testing of all men in the area, it invented this phony killing based on this stupid drug dealer who left his stash in her car and his boss got upset. So they go to the woman's house where the jerk found his stash in her car that she didn't discover but for some reason his boss decided to sneak into her house and kill her for absolutely no reason at all. This was so unlike the real case where the murder was a rape/murder by a noir garbage man, I think the movie could have been made/financed by the Massachusetts liberal fools who want us all to believe the real life perp is innocent, so they substituted a white drug dealer as the perp in their movie. For a movie that was made by locals who knew the real life principals, this was a total trashy movie.
Dolan's Cadillac (2009)
3rd Rate Revenge Thriller That Had Really Dumb Plot Elements
I'm sure you have the gist of the story, some Vegas gangster named Dolan who deals in sexual human trafficking for some dumb reason has a whole truckload of potential h00rs and the two cholo drivers murdered in the desert. Good white teacher woman witnesses it on horseback then drops her cell phone on the ground for the bad people to find. Then when she goes to the authorities she and her husband played by Wes Bentley first get some local yokel who spouts bigoted remarks about illegals on the border which makes no sense since Nevada doesn't border Mexico.
But when they go to the Feds they are more interested and want to use her to bring down Dolan. So they put them in "protective custody" in a hotel in Vegas where Dolan's men can easily track them down, instead of like an isolated house in another state where they can see any stranger coming for miles. So Dolan's men managed to wire up his car with a bomb even though 2 federal marshals were outside by the car. So she blows herself up sending hubby into a downward spiral.
So he goes on a revenge thing by buying this comically oversized revolver, like a .500 caliber S & W with like a 10" barrel. The guy is supposed to be smart, and smart people should know that a smaller cartridge in a faster firing gun is much easier to handle and shoot, And one can deliver far more aimed shots faster than some macho oversized revolver.
So after his first stupid attempt to waste Dolan fails, as if his stalking of Dolan in Vegas was supposed to go unnoticed, he hatches an even stupider plan by getting a summer job building roads so he can intercept Dolan when he does his weekly drive from Vegas to LA. I won't go farther but this plan involves a MASSIVE amount of engineering and earth moving which seemed plain silly.
The film isn't a total waste but it is a DTV flick which I bought from a country library for a $1.
Deadfall (2012)
It Really Deserves a 5.5 But I Rounded The Score Up to 6
I like movies set in the North in winter. And it had a great cast of A- and B+ including veterans Sissy Spacek and Kris Kristofferson. It had a lot of decent action too from the start to the end with guns, knives, fists and even a barbed wire fence. The heavy Thanksgiving eve snowstorm added to the atmosphere too, which was part of the great outdoor shooting.
The story starts out with a Southern brother and sister Lila and Addison, played by Olivia Wiled and Eric Bana on the run in a car in the middle of the aforementioned snowstorm after knocking over an Indian Casino. Of course being Southerners, they ran off the road after hitting a deer and then Addison wastes his first cop, a trooper who stopped to help the crashed motorists. They are both dressed for summer so they are freezing in the bitter snowstorm as they decide to split up and make their way to the Canadian border. So Addy manages to kill an old Indian for his clothes and snow mobile, then some abusive husband in a remote cabin for shelter and because the guy is terrible to his wife and kids, and then two sheriffs who were trying to flush out the fugitive, leaving the third sheriff. Kate Mara as Hannah Becker to pick up the pieces of the chase.
Then the boxer Charlie Hunnam as Jay Mills fresh out of prison who thinks he murdered his ex coach finds Lila in the freezing snowstorm and she hooks up with him for a ride north and survival. Charlie's parents the Mills live in an isolated farm near the Canadian border, which Lila sees a great place to re-unite with her murderous brother who has the loot, then cross into Canada. (As a note to get from Northern Michigan into Canada one has to cross long bridges at the junction of the Great Lakes, perfect choke points to catch fugitives). But after Lila leaves a message for Addy with Jay's parent's house at a meeting point, she decides to try to run off with a random trucker, which makes no sense. Jay puts the kibosh on that ride and drives the cowboy off.
So bad old Addy captures the whole Mills family, forces them to eat their Thanksgiving meal at gunpoint, make speeches and gets jealous because his sister seem hooked up with Jay. Addy even manages to take the intrepid Hannah the Deputy hostage too, as she went to the Mills to get a statement from Jay about the coach he thought he had killed. Then the lone sheriff, who BTW is Hannah Becker's dad, tracks Addy down to the Mills and radios into HQ, tipping Addy off since he was listening to Old Man Mills's police scanner. BTW Mills is a retired law man too. So the feckless sheriff decides not to wait 3 more minutes for backup and foolishly enters the Mills's large dark house alone. I'll leave the rest for you to watch.
The movie would have been better if it steered away from male and family issues. We get the usual feminist bad man who abuses and/or ridicules women so they deserve to be killed by our complicated villain Addy. The other deputies were mocking and belittling poor Hannah before they were done in and they were behaving recklessly. Then there was the hinted at incestual relationship between Addy & Liza. And Addy in his past also killed his abusive dad and then ran off to take care of sister Liza. That almost redeems Addison.
Junkie (2018)
Not Bad for a Low Budget Over the Top Crime and Drugs Flick
I am suspicious when the other reviewers give a film a 1 or a 10. I am sure most of the 10s were connected with the movie and most of the 1s were slamming it for being over-the-top and cheap. It was an over-the-top and cheap movie but it had some charm and kept me amused. The spunky red headed female junkie turned avenger June Taylor was an OK character but over-the-top. She kicks her needle habit in like 3 days and then becomes raring for action. Tim Russ, the black Vulcan from Star Trek Voyager directed and played the head villain JD. The most over the top actor was Sheriff Corbin, Christian Kane, who was allegedly fighting the drug plague in his town but seemed questionable. Yeah he was massively over the top too.
The plot was convoluted and its various twists were kind of lame which showed its bad writing. June's old dealers kidnapped her brother which provided the story's motivation. The story had a lot of shoot outs where some of them made little sense. Add an improbable escape from almost certain death for our heroin-less heroine.
The movie was picked up by Amazon Freevee where I just watched it, which is hardly a home of good movies. But in spite of its inherent cheapness and melodrama, I still liked it.
Killing Them Softly (2012)
Lame Pseudo Intellectual Slimebag Criminal Fest
I like George Higgins books and movies made from them like "The Friends of Eddy Coyle". He mined the Boston MA crime scene and atmosphere very well. But this movie was a clunker and I don't think the source book about the hitman Jackie Cogan was to blame. The that book is decades old than the movie, so it wouldn't have had the Bush Obama 2008 recession loan scam subtext that marred the movie in it. It's all based on some low level mobster using two sleazy cons to rip off a mob backed card game.
Yes they tried to match the local mob "depression" caused by one of their card games getting ripped off by some hoods with the big recession of 2008 caused by the bad sub prime mortgage loans. I mean what kind of mob organization in a big city wouldn't be able to weather one of their poker games getting raided or ripped off? The movie was shot in some post Katrina parts of New Orleans, that being a prime location for cheap movie production, which also gave it a depression look, They had this character called Driver played by Richard Jenkins who was supposed to represent a newer more professional style to mob management. He drives a newer car while everyone else drove old early 70s Detroit irons like Buick Skylarks and Olds Toronados. Mind you this movie is set in 2008 Boston where such old iron would have rusted to flakes by then.
This bad movie roped in some class actors in it like Brad Pitt, Ray Liotta, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn, James Gandolfini, Sam Shepard etc. Which made it seem worse like they were all slumming it. Were they that desperate for work too? The script has the hitman finger the guy who ran the card game Trattman played by Ray Liotta. Trattman had nothing to do with the ripoff but it had bad optics because it happened to one his games before. That was signified in some brutal beating some mob thugs administered in a rainy street to poor Ray. That was followed by an artsy sort of slow motion car to car shooting followed by a crash between the victim's car and two other vehicles. That was the first death in the film, administered by our titular hit man Jackie Cogan played by Brad Pitt. Why this artsy sort of slow mo death was supposed to be significance escapes me. You'd think these alleged pros could've have checked out Trattman's finances to see he didn't come up with a load of money right after his game got ripped off to clear him?
Then add the subplot of the other hitman. Mickey whom Jackie wanted brought in to help him waste one of the victims who knew Jackie personally. Mickey, played by James Gandolfini, was a drunken crude lout who crapped out and had to be rejected by our pros. They did this by staging some beating of a prostitute that would get Mickey's parole revoked. That was totally lame considering how the mob wouldn't use the law and the possible reaction of the dangerous Mickey once he got released. Then there was the other death of the mobster who instigated the theft by shooting him on a street full of newer apartment units in the evening with a loud shotgun. And Jackie is supposed to be a pro?
The last scene was really lame. Jackie wants $15K per hit based on Mickey's rate, but our mob pros only want to pay him $10K/hit or $30K based on their usual hit man's rate. Here they overlay some 2008 Obama speech about how we are one nation forged out of many free people. This causes Jackie to launch into some cynical takedown that the US is all about individuals and their greed followed by a denunciation of Thomas Jefferson as a slaver who had sex with one of his slaves. IDK there is a lot to be cynical about the US in general but since when has the mob and professional killings been professions that attracted the idealists?
Barefoot (2014)
Choking on Saccharine and Schmaltz
This has got to be one of the cheesiest rom-allegedly-coms of all time. Okay Jay Wheeler played by Scott Speedman is the black sheep of some rich New Orleans family who lives in LA. He has to mop floors in a psych hospital at a job he has to hold to make probation happy. Dr. Bertelman played by JK Simmons is the nice guy doc who tries to steer Jay right. But Jay has enough money to go to a strip club nightly, drink, carouse and pay rent on a LA apartment. Then he owes money to some bookie over his stupid betting too who wants to waste him if he doesn't pay up.
Then he gets an invitation to his brother's wedding in New Orleans and sees a chance to hit up his rich parents to pay his vicious bookie off. So he wants to find a nice date, a nurse, to bring home to show his parents he straightened himself out. But the nurse in question thinks he is scum, like the rest of us. Even his naked pole dancer women friends laugh him off. So this super naive waif Daisy Kensington played by ever cute Rachel Evans Woods shows up at the psych ward since her crazy mom kept her shut in the house all her life and when her mom died she had no where to go. The movie is named based on her going barefoot because of her dislike of shoes, whcih makes so much sense in low latitude places like LA and New Orleans where the sun can turn the pavement burning hot. Being barefoot is a sign of saintly simplicity I guess.
So naturally she is attracted to sexy Jay and follows him out of the locked ward she was placed in. So he hits on the smart plan of co-opting her as his "nurse girl friend" to fool his parents but first takes her to his favorite strip dancing club for some god awful stupid reason. Where her good natured stupid self gets her into supposedly funny situations with the denizens of that establishment. Then it is one stupid scene after another on the plane to New Orleans, at the wedding, in front of her family and among the guests whom many have a super low opinion of her "boy friend". See he was sleeping with the wife of one of his dad's business partners which caused his dad to lose a lucrative deal. Then she spazes out in front of his family which causes Jay to first confess to his ruse about his girl friend and alleged administrative job then decide to split by stealing one of his dad's cars, a goofy looking mobile home. So begin part 2 which was a stupid road trip across SW America replete with stupid chase scenes involving his dad's low performance mobile home. Of course he is so inept to even get the thing's toilet working correctly. So the movie plods along in this vain where they are being pursued by the cops for various inane reasons only to end up back in LA where Jay redeems himself and he and Daisy declare their love for each other finally,
It was just a silly screenplay with one contrived scene after another that was only redeemed partially by the lead cast's talents. It was pure cheesy sitcom sort of plotting all the way. But if you are looking for a feel-good sort of movie with a romantic plot, you can do worse than this. OK I get it, in an age full of shockingly crude graphic nonsense people want a nice simple love story. But does it have to be so stupid?
The Accountant (2016)
I'm Not Very Impressed.It's a Dexter Knock-Off with "autism" Worked in
Yeah the accountant is supposed to be an uber smart autistic kid and his nutso uber Army dad converted into a lethal disciplined killing machine like the little girl in "Kick-Ass". In which both movies shared the same level of unreality. I like Ben and Anna and this movie was well made, but if the basic story is plain silly, it is like a cool sport car but its frame ready to give out on a pot hole. For one the plot was just too complicated with JK Simmons and his coerced FBI agents trying to follow up the comic book struggle of our autistic hero vs the corporate gangsters who seem to keep hiring him because?
Ramsey: The Vandy Case (2021)
Cheesy Noir with Social Justice & Sex Addiction Pablum Mixed In
Obviously based on the title they are trying to make a series based on the seedy unshaven ex-cop private eye named Ramsey. Ramsey and the actor who played him are not great but passable. The supporting cast only gets worse. Okay it is set mostly in New Jersey across the river from the BIG APPLE, and since a lot of NYC cops live in that area, it is acceptable. But the film which was boosted by the Paterson NJ and the State of NJ film bureaus just reeked of Jersey mediocrity. The dead cop in question reminded me of.a younger. Angelina Jolie when she played a NYPD flatfoot in.the "The Bone Collector". The titular victim Sarah Vandy was an ex child TV star and a wild as in promiscuous girl whom the NYPD didn't really want. Right off the bat she gets whacked by a couple of unknowns in a car while she's walking her beat on some random crummy looking Jersey street filling in for NYC.
So her sister Michaela hires our.grizzled and unkempt Kevin Ramsey to find her real killer because she doesn't trust the NYPD. Of course there is bad blood between the NYPD and ex-cop Kevin Ramsey who ratted on a partner who beat his wife. There is some lame butt macho ranting between him and some cop mugwump who gets more involved. Michaela sends Ramsey all around.to investigate leads. So he finds leads but nothing conclusive. But he and the sultry mixed-up grieving Michaela end up spending a night in bed in some after 9 PM TV, still with her top on sex in her double bed under the blankets. Ironically the best scenes from a technical POV were shot in her apartment and while Michaela was no standout, she added something. But then we got all this crying from our gumshoe hero about his sex addiction and he goes to his PI buddy Mason Rivers for help. See Mason is the chairman of the local Sex Addicts Anonymous group when he is not helping the families of dead black career criminals sue the NYPD. Coincidentally he is involved in this case way deeper than he lets Ramsey know, like he was the one who taped that above NYPD mugwump's tawdry affair for the victim; which Sarah used to blackmail her way in the NYPD. Then Kevin finds some black h00r and her p1mp to come to his Jersey house so he can debase himself after they refuse to do business with Kevin because he's an ex-cop.
Ok I am going to give you the spoiler soon, the stupid twist based on both gumshoes' sex addiction and the effects that had on both their daughters. See Ramsey went strong and while welcoming Michaela to his back yard fire pit to drink long necks, no wine here, he refused to have sex again with the confused grieving woman who also had a bad encounter with her family at her sister's wake. Then Mason Rivers show up to throw his two cents in and nothing happens until BANG,, someone shot poor Michaela and she is bleeding out. Mason chases down the shooter and ta-da, it's her daughter Teri, who also murdered Sarah because her "sex addicted" dad was doing Sarah after he finished his blackmail taping for her. But wait, Ramsey's own obnoxious angsty daughter Katie is Teri's wheelwoman for the first murder, because she too was all angry over her dad's affair that caused the divorce.
So we get a soliloquy where the two weepy gumshoes blame these crimes their rotten daughters committed on their own sex addiction.
Oh did I tell you about the #BlackLiesMatter tie in too? I guess they had to cover all the SJW bases. But for all the feminist chest beating, we never found out what finally happened to the wounded Michaela like did she live.
Hey I am not telling you not to watch it. For all my slamming of this flick, it is a watchable movie. But it took me 5 sessions on Amazon streaming to get through this 2 hour bloated movie.
The Man in the High Castle (2015)
Last Season Was a Real Letdown
Of course not having enough source material from the original but not very long novel didn't help. But then again the other three years did fine with the same handicap. But in season 4 they had to get all woke and subsequentially silly.
First off, they introduced the BCR, or the Black Communist Rebellion, some Noir Panther knock-off. Of course the audience got yet another lecture how bad even the pre-Nazi America was to blacks, yadda yadda. But they were also presented as about the only resistance to the Japanese on the West Coast, even though in the beginning of the series there were plenty of white resistance fighters on the West Coast. And as opposed to the case in the Nazi occupied zone where whites of Northern European stock could work for that regime as equals, all non-Japanese were treated as inferiors in the "Japanese Pacific States" or JPS. So no one else was fighting the Japanese except the BCR in season 4, which seems like total nonsense when it goes against even the 1st season. Also they created this totally dishonest victims backstory for the bleeps in season 4 where they were almost all exterminated by the Nazis in the East in Auschwitz style death camps, which didn't happen in real life or in the book. In the book they were re-enslaved but not exterminated.
They even took that to the east coast where the Julia's resistance squad was hiding out in a vacant Harlem neighborhood where the houses of the blacks were untouched after they were taken away 20 years earlier. So whole neighborhoods in New York City Manhattan, now the capital of Reich America, were ghost towns nobody used or even entered to scavenge and loot? You'd think that such valuable Manhattan real estate would be scooped up ASAP. In real life the houses and possessions of the Jews and other enemies of the Reich were taken as spoils by everyone else left behind, starting with Party members. Then Julia's plan to meet up with Helen Smith was harebrained too. They send one guy who was previously assaulted and threatened by Helen's super girl Nazi minder Martha to be chased down again and forced to commit suicide by Martha in a department store, thereby alerting the Reichsmarshall to a possible threat to his wife. Julia schedules a secret rendezvous with Helen at a women's clinic later on where she meets Helen Smith dressed up as a nurse. For background Helen already knew Julia and knew she was in the resistance; so there was previous trust established. So instead of talking privately in the doctor's office behind a locked door, she leads them both down to the basement where Wyatt dressed up as a janitor was on hand to guard. So super Nazi minder Martha gets suspicious, tracks them down and almost kills Wyatt with her Nazi dagger before Julia helps Wyatt to do her in. But super Martha seriously messed up Wyatt because super women are the norm? The Flick Filosopher would ban me for disparaging that meme. So they not only burn Martha and her stuff, but throw her knife into the handy incinerator too, so later on Gestapo agents can track Martha's fate down. But why Helen and her protection team even left the clinic in the first place w/o Martha and how none of the other Nazi guards noted that is a cheap plot hole. The gist of the meeting was that Julia told Martha that an alt version of her dead son Thomas was alive on the alt world where the Nazis lost and the Smiths were just ordinary middle class American nice folks. Why they had to go into the basement to tell Helen that is beyond me.
I liked the alternate world part that the Nazi portal in the Poconos led too. Julia was able to travel to alternate worlds without the portal and she ended up in the Nazi lost the war for the beginning of season 4 where she met the nice Smiths. But she noticed the Nazi interlopers were sabotaging rockets and killing scientists in that world and when she realized they were coming after her too, she magically went back to the Nazis won world to get back into the resistance. The Nazi interloper ended up killing the alt John Smith instead of her as he saved her from the killer. So according to the portal rules laid out, John Smith was now able to go to the alt world and meet up with the alt Helen and the alt Thomas, which he did later on. But he met the alt of an old Jewish US Army buddy whom he sold out when he turned Nazi in his Nazi world. Reichsmarshall John Smith was a US Army Signal Corps general in WW 2. He tried in vain to keep alt Thomas from enlisting in the 1964 US Marines because he felt he'd get killed in Viet Nam. He used some heavy anti-war rhetoric to stop his son from enlisting in the USMC, and between that and meeting up with the alt of his old Jewish Army friend must have caused him to reconsider his sordid present as Reichsmarshall John Smith. Another problem I had with the portal was the Nazis had Dr. Mengele run it. He was a freaking Biologist and Geneticist, not a Physicist or Engineer. I guess the show runners' thinking must have been that Mengele's name would be recognized and jeered at by lots of people, while hardly anyone would know a name of an actual contemporary German Physicist even Heisenberg.
But back to the JPS and west coast: The BCR set off a bunch of bombs targeting the oil pipeline which eventually caused the Japanese to withdraw because things were going bad in their war in China and they needed the oil. So the Emperor decides to abandon their super valuable west coast colony because they need the oil? Don't the Japanese still control the oil in Java and how will they insure the new west coast government there will still send them oil? No one said Japanese were losing on the sea since the US Navy wasn't around to sink their warships and supply line tankers after the US lost. They were just tied down in China. So a few bombs set off by the bleeps were all that it took to get the Japanese to leave. I guess no one heard of the fanatical and horrible fights to the death, no-surrender defensive battles in the Pacific like Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The Japanese got backed into a large corner by a few guerillas and saboteurs so they leave en masse. That is totally unrealistic plot point. Then the only white resistance we see in season 4 aside from Wyatt's part in an assassination attempt he did solely to get arms for his people in the east from the BCR, was some lame white vigilantes who came around in vain TWICE to kill Kido, the Kempetai chief. Kido gets a chance at redemption, why? Maybe because of his son who has PTSD from horrible things his soldier son did in Manchuria to civilians, as if the Japanese didn't commit absolutely horrible acts of brutal mass murder against the Chinese from 1937 onwards like their soldiers individually raping, shooting, bayonetting, clubbing, burning 250,000 poor Chinese civilians in the Rape of Nanking. Nor did the real life Japanese even try to hide their brutality, they bragged in their press about contests among their soldiers to see how many Chinese they could behead in a day. So only his son had trouble with such normal and horrific Japanese army behavior. Kido also supported the Navy who wanted to abandon the west coast and that caused the navy to run afoul of the army, which was a realistic plot point based on the idiotic rivalry between their two services in WW 2. There was a lot of time devoted to some boring subplot to redeem himself by trying to save his son from the Yakuza after his son went rogue from PTSD. You see Kido was too hard and unfeeling towards his son, as if that wasn't the norm then. So the show has to lecture the audience on how to be a better father, dull?
Now back to the Nazis on the east coast. Reichsmarshall John Smith and his German partners in Germany kill off Himmler and his cronies and the new fuhrer give John Smith and the American part of the Reich co-equal status. While no one minds John Smith killing off Heinrich Himmler, why they had to drag J. Edgar Hoover as in the FBI in as an American turncoat head of the American Gestapo to kill him off as an enemy of John is a sordid attempt to score political points with the liberals. Then let's go back to the whole portal thing. They show Reichsmarshall John Smith travelling to the portal, built in an old Pennsylvanian coal mine, on a rocket powered monorail train. How freaking retro Sci Fi kitsch is that? Monorails never went past amusement park ride status for very simple reason is they are TOTALLY impractical. Yeah, that alone is a sore spot. Since this review is listed as having spoilers, I will tell you that Julia and the now recovered Wyatt along with a whole battalion blow up the elevated line and kill Reichsmarshall John Smith, and his wife Helen dies in the crash. Their assault team also takes over the portal. Upon learning of Reichsmarshall John Smith's death, his immediate successor tears off his swastika and recalls the invasion force that was ready to pounce on the west coast. Meanwhile the portal opens up and random people come streaming in from alt world.
I don't how that is even possible, since in the other alt world, the one like ours, the portal just appeared as a random old mine entrance in Pennsylvania. And if it was discovered on the other world, wouldn't they send in a team of armed formal emissaries/explorers to scout things out at first? I guess these random interlopers are supposed to represent the hordes of illegals that the show runners want us to embrace. In short the 4th and final year undermined the whole series.
Above the Shadows (2019)
It was wrongly marketed as a Sci Fi, Supernatural or Super Hero Movie
But it was a decent emotionally centered movie about being literally unnoticed. Of course Holly was the 12 yo middle child in her family and after her mother died her family just withdrew but she literally became invisible to everyone. I mean of course it is just an exaggeration on how many young women feel and the movie made no attempt to do any "Invisible Man" special effects. Adult Holly, played by Olivia Thirlby, makes the most of her virtual invisibility by being a tabloid stringer snooping around and taking compromising picture of celebs and reporting on their peccadilloes. She sneaks into her editor's office, which is easy since she's invisible then does a text message dialog with him, played by the ever weird David Johannsen with invisible her sitting across him as he vocalizes his reaction to her texts. She repeats variations of this trick in a number of situations. But because of her invisibility she is unconnected and unhappy. Then she gets stopped and thrown out of a seedy club by an ex MMA fighter bouncer who saw her trailing her latest celebrity prey. See Shane was a big wheel fighter in the MMA world until one of her sneak pictures of him cheating on his movie star wife, played by Megan Fox of course, led to him spiraling downhill. So she learns that he is the ticket to her re-entry into the world of the noticed as when he touches her, she gets photographed. She eggs on his return to championship and becomes his lover too. There are some up ands downs as she learns from Shane that she needs to reach out more to other people starting with her family where she kicks a pretty young woman to the ground invisibly of course so her weird introverted brother would come out of his basement hideout and help then fall for her. The movie ended up with a sappy sentimental happy ending which is okay in these days of bummer tragic and gory movie endings.
Ca$h (2010)
Pretty Limp and Boring Movie Inspite or because of Its Cynical take on People
This is an old concept. Joe Everyman comes across a large suitcase of ill gotten money and decides to take it to alleviate his cash problems; like saving his house from being foreclosed. He and his wife are overjoyed but a bit leery. Of course the British twin brother of the robber who stole it comes to America to help his now jailed twin and get the money back. This English hood Pyke Kubic is played by the vastly over-rated Sean Bean while the witless finder of the cash, Sam Phelan is played by Chris Hemsworth (whom I like more than Bean the Awesome Medieval Lord) and his spouse Leslie is played by Victoria Profeta. Well Pyke traces the finder down by his bro's description of his car and by figuring he bought a new car with cash from a Chicago area auto dealer, a dubious guess since the recipient might have enough sense not to send up rockets to the IRS and others like how he bought a new 70K Range Rover with cash.
Pyke is a pretty nasty and brutal guy who, while at first acting restrained and clever, uses brutal force to get even a small refund from a hapless hoteler he wasn't entitled to. All along his journey around Chicago, almost all the other characters, at least the white ones, are shown to be shady and corrupt too like the auto dealer and bank loan officer. This is a cheap cynical ploy similar to what was employed in say the "Sopranos". It says since we are all imperfect, how dare you judge this dastardly criminal who "just" feeds off of weak normal people. He squeezes our hapless couple like a rock right down to getting almost all the money back. But instead of just writing off the last bit as a business loss, after all it was stolen loot, he commandeers the couple's house basically kidnapping them. Then he forces the couple to commit armed robberies to make up the difference. It was played like a comedy but it wasn't very funny. It had a dopey almost indie vibe to it that didn't gel very well. Kubic was too nasty and greedy character to make me laugh as he exposes less corrupt people's foibles, like how Sam's mother-in-law grabbed $600 from the box of cash she was storing for them. It just didn't leave a good taste in my mouth.
Smiley Face Killers (2020)
Not a Bad Movie, but like Most Brett Easton Ellis movies, the filmmakers didnt do a Great Job
It certainly doesn't deserve a 3.7 rating score. The lead Jake obviously had some mental issues his killers took advantage of as they began gaslighting him leading up to the inevitable gory end. Of course the larger themes Ellis likes to bring up about about the whole rich guy Hollywood LA beautiful people shtick are there, but as a backdrop not as a target.
The only named actor I recognized was Crispin Glover, who played one of un-named robed and hooded killers. But he didn't get a chance to go full psycho. The rest of the actors were unknowns which fit their low budget by they did a good enough job.
The Terminal List (2022)
Wow, this is really pumped up, action packed TV Series but So What
It had the classic revenge movie set-up, a bad azz military man's wife and daughter are murdered. Add that to the impossibly intricate plot of not only cartoonish unscrupulous defense contractors, but his superiors in the Navy and even the Secretary of Defense are involved too. You see they had developed this drug that was supposed to fight PTSD. Yet it caused cancer in test animals. So let's test it on elite Navy SEALs with the connivance of their superiors, and when tumors develop. Let's send them on a mission to the Mideast where they all get wasted. Except our anti-hero survived, so they decide to kill his wife and kid instead and try to frame him for it. At first it seems that his troubled mind is creating these fantasies, but that idea gets disabused quickly. The bad guys do get discovered thanks to an intrepid reporter but not before our intrepid hero starts a campaign to exterminate all the bad guys using his lethal and surveillance skills he learned as a Navy SEAL. Of course, he calls on the aid of various comrades in arms at times. But very quickly the movie settles down to our star Chris Pratt as Commander James Reece killing off the various baddies in various ways from drug ODs, to impossibly long range sniper shots on fast moving cars, to turning one baddy into a suicide bomber to blow up another one to just the usual hacking, shooting and even driving hatchets in various people's head. It got so boring and predictable, but we were all supposed to go along because he was the brave SEAL whose wife, kid and comrades were killed by this diverse crew of baddies. You'd think a good Christian like Chris Pratt, who was more than just the lead, might inject some of his Christian concepts such as forgiveness and revenge is a sin. I dunno, none of that bled through as he just chewed through his human targets like they were arcade targets. There was a sister-in-law who upbraided him for getting the family involved because she was worried about the possible blowback not principles; and the reporter ally Katie Buranek played by Constance Wu who wanted him to slow down. But no one served as a voice of conscience. The closest we came to that were some FBI agents who were assigned to catch him and protect his victims having some qualms but covertly letting him get away.
Like a lot of media these days, it got subsumed under the right vs left wing culture war. The right sucked it up like cotton candy like in the many positive stories run in just the Daily Wire site about it. One of the liberal reviewers said it was a right wing revenge fantasy which is better described as a revenge fantasy aimed at not exclusively right wingers. Indeed his targets were pretty right wing too; DoD chiefs, admirals, mega rich defense contractors etc. Throwing a few lunatic trans-sexual activists and BLM hooligans into the target list would have made it better and funnier. There was no sense of humor or even irony in this grim series of murders or even a satisfying conclusion. But they left some room for a sequel.
Deadly Vows (1994)
Good Cheap Made for TV Melodrama Sleaze
I liked it. Yes it is a Lifetime movie where TWO women get victimized by their sleazebag joint hubby, played well by Gerald McRaney as Tom Weston. He is obviously having a mid life crisis of his life of comfortable blue collar delivery truck driving dullness. His attractive wife Nancy, played by Peggy Lipton, looks too good to be rejected by her not very fabulous husband. Then he finds some young dull but pretty laundry worker Bobbie played by Josie Bissett to woo and then secretly and illegally married. It was a real comic set up where young Bobbi acted like just a family friend in front of Nancy because Tom managed to buffalo Nancy to not trust her feelings. Bobbie even befriended Nancy. Weird. Then Tom came up with this hare brained plan to use explosives to off his 1st wife. Then after he fails and is arrested for attempted murder, he becomes sort of a jailhouse heavy as he plans to have one of his wives bumped off.
OK it was a low budget Canadian flick where Vancouver doubled in for Northern Michigan, which is not a stretch. But It was watchable and fun and wasn't that predictable. I recommend it!
After the Fall (2014)
Pretentious Schlock Pretending to Be Weighty
West Bentley plays the lead "Bill Scanlon" an insurance adjuster father and husband who got laid off after he bought a way too expensive suburban house in Albuquerque NM. But he is too proud to even tell his wife. So one day after he walks out into the neighboring desert to waste himself with an old revolver he finds he can't do it. So he wonders into a model house of a new subdivision where he finds a couple having sex, some sort of affair. So he ends up "accidentally" robbing them, then realizes sticking people up is lucrative and even fun.
So he embarks on a life of crime while still pretending to be working and even meets a down at his heels seedy detective played by the great Jason Isaac. He befriends them then takes them out in the desert where he gives the younger Bill a shooting lesson, after finding out Bill's dad was a cop. All sorts of things happen like his wife finds out he is out of a job and decamps with the kids to her dad's house. Our hero then decides to fill the pool in because "pools are such a hassle" even as he tries to unload the too big defaulting house. Then his wife comes back, why?
He also tries to play the good guy by threatening various hold up victims like a manager of a convenience store who was nasty to a cute employee he liked. The movie premiered at some German film festival where the audience ate it up as a perfect example of the rotten American dream and the rotten nuclear family.
I didn't buy it, especially with its dreamy camera work, slow pacing and emo score. It was just schlock pretending to be profound.
February (2015)
It had great elements, but it lacked a unifying plot
It was like a 5 course meal without a main dish. It had great atmosphere, lighting, locations, winter season and promising characters. But it failed to gel since it was little more than school girls get possessed by something demonic, as represented by an old coal fired furnace's glowing door, then go out and commit horrible murders. Being an A 24 film, it has a bit of cachet as being a smart horror film and it is. But at the end, one has to say "Where's the beef?"
Looking Glass (2018)
Typical Poor Nick Cage Effort That Flubbed on a Half Way Interesting Concept
There was just too much wrong with this movie, but it was good to see Robin Tunney who delivered the best performance. The Cageniks will prolly try to justify this typical Cage bomb of a movie that attracts him like a cow flop attracts flies. This guy has set a record for starring in bad movies. But like I said it had some good things going for it like the voyeuristic bit where he discovers the old owner's two way mirror and gallery where he could watch his patrons have sex and more. It also squandered the part of a couple facing tragedy starting over in a small desert town running an old motel.
The mystery is that a guest "killed" herself before they took over at the pool and another guest turned up dead too. The shady ex-owner Ben is hiding from Ray (Cage) and Maggie (Tunney) too. Then a suspicious local cop starts trying to ingratiate himself with Ray. Then Ray gets aggressive and goes to interrogate a smarmy lesbo S & M dominatrix who was connected to one of the victims at a seedy bar. There at the bar he gets violent with her huge buzz cut protector and pulls his gun on them, instead of just leaving her alone as he was told to do.
Then he tracks down the old owner Ben who was hiding not too far away and he greets Ray with a Geiger counter, which that red herring goes nowhere. Then Ben gets wasted by a long range shot out in the desert and Ray calls up his estranged wife, they fought the night before because she believed she had sex with the S & M lesbo, and tells her to pack up and get ready to leave.
But the shady cop had broken in earlier, taken his wife hostage and brought her to the room with the secret mirror, all in the space of a couple minutes head start he had after killing the old owner. Natch at the end Cage jumps through the mirror and fights and kills the bad cop and saves his poor wife.
So then what do our couple do after solving the mystery and killing the bad guy? They jump into his Chevy pickup w/o even a suitcase between and run away, leaving the brutally killed dead cop in one of their motel rooms. Not to mention abandoning all their belongings and all the money they sank into the motel too.
So yeah, the ending really sucked, they set themselves up as wanton cop killers and did not even report the death of the old owner, who was lying out in the desert being devoured by vultures and other scavengers. If they wrapped it up a little better, the movie wouldn't have sucked so bad. But that was one terrible ending to an otherwise so-so average erotic thriller.
Tick Tock (2000)
Good for a Lifetime Movie Network flick & for a Amazon Prime Offering
Usually LMN movies show some plucky woman escape from some psychopaths, usually a mother protecting their kids. But in this case the two female leads are cheating, conniving murderous females who are also lesbian lovers. See Rachel wants to do in her older patronizing husband Holden who is kind of a jerk but otherwise treats her okay. So she conspires with her childhood friend and lesbian lover Carla to do him in. So to do this, they rope a hapless cowboy, Travis this is set in Bakersfield CA, their C&W rodeo town. Carla makes Travis think that they just want to blackmail rich cheating Rachel with photos of them getting it on. There is also a private detective Clay, played by Cliff from Cheers who was hired by Holden to check on his wife, The 2 scheming women use his tailings and notes as part of their alibis and evidence to frame their cowboy accomplice. There is a scene where naked Carla bludgeons Rachel's husband to death using an elephant tusk, with the plausible explanation she doesn't want to get blood on her clothes. That is the closest I've seen to porn in a LMN movie.
Events cause their plans to unravel but Carla stays one step ahead and keeps thinking of new ploys to compensate. The title. "Tick Tock" comes from the use of an old wind up clock spinning backwards to indicate this scene is a flashback. Though the endless twists become a bit too much, the dark ending is well worth the wait!
Too Late (2015)
Not too bad, but it seems more like a film school project than a coherent flick
The lead John Hawkes, who plays the private eye Mel Sampson is the best part of the movie. He is an interesting off-beat indie actor sort of guy. Then recycled old B-listers Joanna Cassidy, Robert Forster, Dash Mihook and Jeff Fahey rounded out the cast. Non linear time story telling and 5 35MM 20 minute reel single shots are the buzz phrases associated with this film that give it an art house appeal. But its convoluted plot, cliched noirish dialogue and it's 4th reel that defies the rest of the movie's plot detract from it. One side plot element was there were two drug dealers who offered the pretty doomed stripper some Ecstasy before she was strangled by some psycho got it in their little heads that their drugs killed her. Even though they saw her body but missed the ligature marks around her neck. So they decide they have to kill our intrepid private investigator because they thought that somehow they'd get blamed for her murder. You see? And this poor stripper who has a heart of gold, unknown to all but our gumshoe, is actually his daughter. You see when he was reading a book on how to be a private eye 20 odd years earlier, it said to follow someone. So he followed a beautiful woman for days until tehy finally started talking, then had sex. Then he continued to follow the woman as she was now pregnant and then kept tabs on his illegitimate daughter from afar. Corny huh? Whatever? Watch it for free on Prime if you are bored.
Things Heard & Seen (2021)
Good Netflix Production with a 70s Vibe
Things Heard & Seen
You can't help liking the movie. It was set at a small elitist Hudson Valley college called "Saginaw?". But it was shot in the Hudson Valley Dutchess County NY and set in 1980. Some smarmy arts academic twit lands a cushy arts history teaching job at this in this small upstate NY town, He drags his anorexic artist wife and his daughter along with him to this old farmhouse that is creepy and seemingly haunted. Of course, there was a terrible murder-suicide there in the recent past that the scummy husband withheld that news from his nervous wife. If you are familiar with a raft of movies from the Amityville Horror to Sinister, that is never a good thing. Besides, in a small town and college community, how long could that salient feature about her new house could be kept secret from her? The leads were pretty good, you can't help but feel protective of poor little pop-eyed Amanda Seyfried put-upon character of Catherine Claire, the harried wife and mother taken away from her NYC home. Her wretched husband George was played by James Norton, was perfect for his role, he just oozed sleaziness and weakness at the same time with his sleazy smile. He lied and cheated on everything, from forging a recommendation from his doctoral advisor for a degree he never got because he liked to grab cute young co-ed at his grad school, to the paintings he stole from his dead cousin and claimed as his. He even drive a Peugeot. But his charm worked on his new boss and department head played by the avuncular F. Murray Abraham as Floyd DeBeers. He also landed a local filly, a smart alec elitist brat who was taking time off from Cornel as a horse riding instructor. Then there are the two sons of the previous dead murder-suicide parent owners of the old dairy farm who come to the new owners' service as both a baby-sitter and handy man.
Okay, I don't want to write a synopsis, but there is a supernatural angle to all this. It all starts with the academic pursuit of our villain, who researched this 19th century painter who was influenced by a mystic called Swedenborg, both real people. Apparently Swedenborg had this philosophy that what we do in our life was mirrored in the afterlife. But to cut to the quick, their old farmhouse had ghosts of the previous housewives who were murdered by their hubbies (the 19th century wife of the original owner died mysteriously, presumed murdered too) , and these ghosts were trying to warn our hapless Catherine by signaling her by ghostly presence and doing things like blowing up their kid's night light when George lies to her. She even has a séance where all the fringe clique at the college see this poltergeist. But along with these good ghosts is some bad male ones that secretly make George even worse than his previous normal lying cheating self.
I like these sort of small town country and collegiate set ups, it is very 70s and early 80s vibe to it. It is a fun movie but as most people commented, the ending was weak. Maybe the original book had more to offer but the screen writers had to shoe horn into a time frame. But I recommend it.