Recent Viewings, Part 2

[Jim H]

Freddy VS Jason - This remains a good time.  It's a pure crowd pleaser for fans of both franchises, but it works.  Lots of gore, fast paced, and a shockingly well-executed final fight sequence (probably due to director Ronny Yu, an experienced HK director who'd done stuff like Bride With White Hair).  It even manages one quite effective, but brief, dream shift bit (the "virgin sacrifice" sequence).  They said, "Give 'em what they want", and we got it.  An almost completely bland pair of leads and some general awkwardness/stupidity in the writing can't sink this one from being a fun time. 

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Silencers" (1966)
First of four films in the "Matt Helm" series of James Bond spoofs, with crooner Dean Martin as a swingin' spy who partners with a cute-but-klutzy fellow agent (Stella Stevens) to stop a criminal organization called "Big O" from sabotaging a nuclear bomb test.
"The Silencers" has a couple of laughs here and there and a lot of gorgeous babes, but it's totally impossible to take Dean Martin seriously as a secret agent - he was in his late 40s when he made these flicks and he's more or less playing himself, wearing his trademark turtleneck sweaters and toting a martini glass everywhere he goes. Dino mugs his way through most of the movie until the big final battle in the bad guy's hidden underground headquarters, when his stunt double takes over and does all the heavy lifting.
I've seen worse Bond knock-offs, but I've also seen way better (i.e. James Coburn's "Flint" movies). I doubt I'll bother with the other three movies in this series.

[Rev. Powell]

THE WANTING MARE (2021): In a mysterious future, a woman has a recurring dream of the past in a city where everyone seeks the scarce tickets that allow them to leave on a ship loaded with horses for a better life. This literary fantasy/romance won't be to all tastes because of its pacing and opaque, dreamlike presentation, but it's beautifully shot and has a mythic quality when at its best. 3.5/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Wrecking Crew" (1968)
...I know, I said I probably wasn't going to bother with more of Dean Martin's "Matt Helm" movies, but the casting in this one piqued my morbid curiosity, as it was the final film to star the late Sharon Tate, who was murdered by the Manson family only a few months after this movie was released. The cast also includes Elke Sommer (one of my favorite Sixties mega babes), Tina "Gilligan's Island" Louise, and even Chuck Norris, making his movie debut with a small role as a henchman!
Anyway... this was the fourth and final "Helm" flick, and it was pretty much interchangeable with "The Silencers"... a master criminal (Nigel Greene) steals a train full of U.S. gold, which could crash the world economy unless Matt can recover it. As he trails the bad guys across Europe, Helm crashes a few cars, fights a bunch of bad guys, and of course romances a whole lotta babes. I liked this one better than "The Silencers," but that's not really saying much.

[Alex]

Suicide Squad.

A sort of reboot, a sort of sequel. Will Smith's rather boring character from the first movie is replaced with Idris Elba who plays more or less the same character, but with a different name. It has it's high spots, like where Peacemaker and Bloodsport are competing with each other for the most stylish kill. There are some good performances in this film, but some of the visuals just took me out of the movie (The Thinker and the Big Bad). Not terrible, but the least enjoyable James Gunn film I have ever seen, which is a real shame. I had high hopes for this one. I figure with a film about bad guys, you can go two ways to make it work. You go all out comedy or you go seriously Wild Bunch type gritty. This seems to try both which (for me anyway), stopped it from being either.

[Gabriel Knight]

UNSANE (2018)

A young woman is involuntarily committed to a mental institution, where she is confronted by her greatest fear - but is it real or a product of her delusion?

What sounded like a great promise, falls apart very quickly due to an extremely poor script. First of all, the movie looks awful, because it was filmed with an iPhone so it looks artsy fartsy I guess. The angles are terrible, the quality is grainy and crappy, and everyone looks like they're covered in dark makeup. Simply dreadful. The music is also unbereable, it's completely detached from the supposedly serious experience the main character is having.

Now, the story is about this chick who gets stalked and then moves out of town to avoid this creepy dude. She develops super fears and then she goes into a consultant to "get cured". While she's there, she signs some papers which they tell her they're rutine, but turns out she voluntarily put herself in a mental institution. At first, like the synopsis says, we're led to believe that she actually does have psychological issues, but in a matter of minutes she casually finds her stalker working in the facility. There's no doubt about it, you never believe that she imagined him or that he never stalked her in the first place, it's spelled out right in your face - he is, in fact, her stalker, and he's there specifically for her. Of course no one believes her and then it's all this ridiculous story of her trying to get out of the place because it's "an insurance scam", as one guy inside explains.

The rest of the movie is her doing the most idiotic things ever in the most unbelievable hospital in existence. The worst part is when she gets a picture of her friend tortured by her stalker. It's basically the perfect proof of everything she was saying, but instead of going calmly to report it, she goes ape s**t, starts screaming and attacking everyone, and then gets sedated. This stalker guy has more resources than McGuiver also, he can kill people all he wants and nobody ever finds out, not to mention he has almost godhood level of medicine skills.

Terrible movie all around, the acting is ok but honestly the main lead is annoying as hell. 3/10, skip it unless you want to get really angry at yourself for wasting precious time and money.

[Rev. Powell]

THE MADS: VOYAGE TO THE PLANET OF PREHISTORIC WOMEN: I always thought they should have done this for the original MST3K. It's an old Russian sci-fi movie, but Roger Corman/Peter Bogdanovich cut in about 15 minutes of Mamie van Doren and a bunch of aspiring model/actresses lounging around in seashell bras as some kind of Venusian mermaids. Unfortunately, it's not the best riff, but I'm glad they got around to it in some form. The guest is a comic I'd never heard of, and he's funny. Ends up with more time in the Q&A than the actual movie. 3/5.

[lester1/2jr]

The Dose (2020) - slow, boring and just all around poorly made medical "thriller" with some decent acting, especially the lead who really does seem like an overweight male nurse. 1.5 / 5 avoid

[Dr. Whom]

Jodorowksy's Dune (2013)

The story behind Jodorowksy's Dune project, which is arguably the most influential SF movie never made. You've got to love Jodorowsky, the stories of how he assembles his dream team (especially Salvador Dali) are hilarious. He gives the term 'visionary' a whole new dimension.

[FatFreddysCat]

"RoboCop" (1987)
...aka My Favorite Movie Ever, for about the hundredth time. My 14 year old son watched with me (his first viewing) and said it was "awesome."

[Jim H]

Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings - It's alright.  Some good visuals and the best fight choreography Marvel has ever had (RIP Brad Allan).  Tony Leung gives a good performance, but I didn't think it was superlative or anything like some - he's too underwritten.  The title character is kind of boring.  Awkafina is an awkward fit in the overall narrative at best, especially the ending.  Shang-Chi's sister is very weakly written, like she was meant to have an arc but doesn't.  They have one of the now traditional extremely boring mass battle sequences - does anyone like these?  You know, a bunch of randomly introduced extras fight in a warehouse against a green screen, and usually the main characters are elsewhere, and it's always pure filler dragging out the run time.  I hate them, feel like I should take a nap when they start.  I dunno, I'm complaining a lot, but it was passably entertaining I guess.

Oh, and Yuen Wah shows up but is totally wasted.  I was still happy to see him anyway.

Extra thought about Chinese.  Yuen Wah, Tony Leung, and Michelle Yeoh are speaking a second language in their Chinese AND English lines.  Well, to varying extents (I think Tony Leung in particular has known Mandarin a very long time).  I sometimes wonder how this feels for them, having to speak in a foreign tongue for most of your roles in the space perceived of as "native" to foreign audiences, but I've never heard Cantonese native speaking actors talk about it.  Michelle Yeoh speaks good Mandarin these days, but she had to learn her lines phonetically for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.  That is, she didn't learn the language until she was in her 40s.

Black Widow - This almost works better, but doesn't fully gel.  I liked the opening quite a bit, by far the most entertaining action scene, the only one that felt like it had stakes.  Usual cartoon buffoonery that pretends to be more violent.  Someone gets completely gutted in this one and doesn't even bleed.  The characters are OK.  I dunno.  It's just blandly acceptable.  Also this one should very obviously have come out before Infinity War, would have played much better.

The MCU formula increasingly seems wrung out to me.

"RoboCop" (1987)
...aka My Favorite Movie Ever, for about the hundredth time. My 14 year old son watched with me (his first viewing) and said it was "awesome."

I was reflecting on how good RoboCop is recently, and how it has literally under 1/6th the inflation adjusted budget of a film that everyone agrees is at best passably acceptable like Red Notice.  For real, RoboCop is like a $35 million film inflation adjusted.  I dunno, just makes me kind of depressed about the status of genre film making in Hollywood now.

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Pit" (aka "Teddy," 1981)
A creepy 12 year old boy pervs on his live-in babysitter, takes orders from his demonic teddy bear, and feeds everyone who p**ses him off to a gaggle of hungry creatures that live in a pit in the woods. Yup, that's the whole plot.
This one has been on my Tubi watch list for a while, but a conversation about it on another forum piqued my interest and bumped it to the top. I'm glad I got around to it, cuz this is one straaaaange movie! The acting stinks, the creature effects are primitive (at best) and the movie lurches along as if it was being made up on the fly. It's not "good" in the slightest but it's weirdly watchable in a "WTF?" sort of way.

[Rev. Powell]

THE BETA TEST (2021): A smarmy Hollywood agent's life is turned upside down when he receives an envelope promising an anonymous sexual encounter. At time, this satire/mystery reminded me of "The Player," "American Psycho" and even "Under the Silver Lake," but it definitely marches to its own beat; co-writer/co-director/star Jim Cummings amusingly plays his antihero as overconfident and undercompetent. 3.5/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Mother of Tears" (2007)
Dario Argento finally closes out his "Three Mothers" trilogy (which began with "Suspiria" in '77 and continued with "Inferno" in '80) with this tale of an archeology student who opens an ancient burial urn that unleashes a wave of evil and violence upon the city of Rome. This long overdue conclusion isn't quite as artfully weird as its predecessors and it drags a bit in the middle, but it's lushly photographed as usual and when things heat up the splatter flows hot 'n heavy. Better than expected.

[Rev. Powell]

THE VILLAGE DETECTIVE: A SONG CYCLE (2021): An Icelandic trawler dredges up old film reels containing the 1969 Soviet drama "The Village Detective," which, although waterlogged, is still viewable. Bill Morrison occupies a very narrow niche making documentaries about old, damaged film prints, but in this case the underlying subject (which is neither a lost film nor a particularly interesting one) is underwhelming, leading to a movie that feels forced and unfocused. 2.5/5.