Recent Viewings, Part 2

[M.10rda]

Your son Jed is a lucky man, RC!

Fabulous movie, too.

[Rev. Powell]

OZMA (2023): An insomniac widower spends the night toting around an on-the-run telepathic jellyfish alien. Yep, it's THAT old story yet again, but this time the soundtrack musicians appear onscreen to accompany the actors. Modestly budgeted and a bit pretentious, but also original and ingenious. 3/5.

[ER]

THE INVITATION (2022) - An American college student, working as a waitress, does a DNA test and discovers she is related to an aristocratic British family.  When she reaches out to a newfound cousin, she is invited to a wedding at a beautiful English manor house where not all is as at seems.  The domestics keep disappearing, and the Lord of the Manor seems a bit too interested in her . . . she also discovers that her family has been strangely short of female offspring for the last generation or so.  Interesting film that steadily builds suspense until the payoff . . . definitely worth the watch! 4/5

Aside from being an infinitely nicer person than me, you have a much lower entertainment threshold!

[FatFreddysCat]

"Freelance" (2023)
A former Army Special Forces operative (John Cena) takes a freelance security gig, accompanying a lady reporter (Alison Brie) to a troubled South American nation to interview their President. As soon as they arrive, an attempted coup against El Presidente throws the trip into chaos.
Cena tries hard, but the first half of this action comedy is better than the second half, when it starts getting bogged down with so many double- and triple-crosses that it just turns into a big, loud, ultra-violent muddle. I've seen worse, but I've also seen lots better.

[indianasmith]

THE INVITATION (2022) - An American college student, working as a waitress, does a DNA test and discovers she is related to an aristocratic British family.  When she reaches out to a newfound cousin, she is invited to a wedding at a beautiful English manor house where not all is as at seems.  The domestics keep disappearing, and the Lord of the Manor seems a bit too interested in her . . . she also discovers that her family has been strangely short of female offspring for the last generation or so.  Interesting film that steadily builds suspense until the payoff . . . definitely worth the watch! 4/5

Aside from being an infinitely nicer person than me, you have a much lower entertainment threshold!

Isn't having a low entertainment threshold a requirement for membership here???

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Greatest Night in Pop" (2024)
This Netflix documentary looks back at the making of the all-star charity single "We Are the World" by USA For Africa, which amazingly was recorded in a single all-night marathon studio session after the 1985 American Music Awards. Some good stories are told and the vintage clips from the event made me go "Oh yea, I forgot that so-and-so was there" several times.
Side note: I have always wondered how the heck Dan Aykroyd wound up with an invite to the USA For Africa session. Unfortunately this doc does not explain it. I know Dan had a musical side as a Blues Brother, but somehow I can't picture Quincy Jones saying "OK, we've got Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Cyndi Lauper, Billy Joel, Bob Dylan, Dionne Warwick, and Bruce Springsteen... but you know who would really put this thing over the top? The Bass-O-Matic Guy!"

[M.10rda]

A full year late to the party, I shall now settle an ongoing Badmovies.org debate w/ finality (...as if...):

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022):
...Great movie! 'Nuff said!

.......Okay, but really... I admire it more than I loved it, though I was feeling love for it from approximately the 30m mark through the 90m mark. I don't think it overstays its welcome or falls apart at some point - the middle hour just delivered the most pleasing endorphin-rush for me personally.

I'll say this: I think I benefitted from a large degree of ignorance re: what the heck this movie was about. (I've been trying to live hype-free as much as possible for a while now...) I knew it was a multiversal adventure/drama, I knew the cast, I knew the Awards it had racked up, and I knew it was errrr controversial on this site....... those points aside, I honestly had no idea exactly what kind of "multiversal adventure" this was, and thus was surprised and tickled to discover the full-bodied genre pleasures herein.

My other major takeaway: the Daniels really commit to this bit, so to speak. EEAAO is full of ludicrous and even bad ideas (at least if one's intention was to make a Good movie) yet they articulate, execute, and shepherd those ludicrous and bad ideas through to the end with gusto. They also have the courage to only provide lots of plot info once or twice, succinctly, not half a dozen times stridently, and then just expect viewers to hold on to that information, or - don't! In this sense, EEAAO felt like a typical HK or Chinese crowd-pleaser, only done right. With due cultural sensitivity, I've watched enough such films over the past 30 years to expect lots of fast-paced and often absurd plot twists and melodramatic gestures, delivered with gonzo enthusiasm but often insufficient cogency to allow the complete package to hold together organically and feel satisfying. I guess what I'm saying is that 20th century HK and modern Chinese mainstream filmmaking is all broad strokes and little structural stability. EEAAO has aaaaaaall those broad strokes over a skeleton that's sound enough to get a viewer across its finish line.

Is EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE the weirdest film to ever win the Oscar for Best Picture? It's hard to think of a realistic contender in my lifetime. FORREST GUMP is really bonkers at times (which is one of the primary reasons I like it) but it's not on the completely bananas level of EEAOW.  NO COUNTRY... is a weird, dark film (and a better film than EEAAO) but again no contest. Had FURY ROAD (also a better film) won the BP as it should have, even that feminist actionstravaganza directed in the style of Jodorowski would seem more sober and grounded than the Daniels' antic, loping smorgasbord. Would the Best Picture victories of GREEN BOOK, SPOTLIGHT, ARGO, or THE KING'S SPEECH have been more easily digestible if any of those films had included a scene where two characters scramble desperately to impale themselves on large phallic objects vis-a-vis a mid-combat power up? I'm not saying those fillms' victories would have made more sense - I'm just saying I would've respected the Academy a little more for those nods.  

4/5
And of course 2007's RATATOUILLE boasts one of the least credible premises in the history of cinema yet still managed to win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. Instead of shaking their heads mystified and deferring to their better angels, Daniels said "Hold our beer", doubled down on that s**t, and seized the big prize. Now that's chutzpah!

[Dr. Whom]

In this sense, EEAAO felt like a typical HK or Chinese crowd-pleaser

Exactly! This is a movie about Chinese people that actually feels Chinese. But, as you said, it still broadly conforms to Western storytelling standards.

[Rev. Powell]

A full year late to the party, I shall now settle an ongoing Badmovies.org debate w/ finality (...as if...):

Is there a debate? Alex is the only person I know who disliked it.

THE MADS ARE BACK: MUTINY IN OUTER SPACE (1965): To their credit, they found a public domain sci-fi film I'd never heard of with a print that looks halfway decent. Oddly, the movie was made in 1965; in a lot of ways, it looks and feels like something from a decade earlier. The mutiny is a side plot; the story mainly involves a space station taken over by moon fungus. It's not very good, but most of the time too competent to easily mock. The Q&A guest is Howard Johnson, an expert on Monty Python. 2.5/5.

[M.10rda]

Rev, I am ultra-sensitive, conflict-averse, and have serious PTSD from all manner of trauma. If I see even one, even one person disagreeing with another....... that registers as some kind of major conflict in my fried wiring. When people are actually mad at each other, man, I hit the dirt and start digging foxholes.......

[FatFreddysCat]

"Jake Speed" (1986)
When a woman's sister is kidnapped by white slavers, a hero straight out of a pulp paperback novel suddenly appears to assist her on a rescue mission.
This tongue-in-cheek adventure flick wants to be a big, splashy "Romancing the Stone" style action comedy, but it clearly didn't have a big enough budget for many action sequences, so the movie just kinda plods along with lots of talking for the first hour. When John Hurt finally shows up towards the end as the Big Bad, it kicks things up a notch and we get a big shoot'em up finale, but by then most viewers will be so bored that they've lost interest.
I appreciated the movie's shout-outs to "real" paperback action heroes like Doc Savage, Mack Bolan and Remo "The Destroyer" Williams, because I used to read those books when I was in my teens, but otherwise this movie doesn't do much with its promising premise. Skip it.

[Trevor]

"Jake Speed" (1986)
When a woman's sister is kidnapped by white slavers, a hero straight out of a pulp paperback novel suddenly appears to assist her on a rescue mission.
This tongue-in-cheek adventure flick wants to be a big, splashy "Romancing the Stone" style action comedy, but it clearly didn't have a big enough budget for many action sequences, so the movie just kinda plods along with lots of talking for the first hour. When John Hurt finally shows up towards the end as the Big Bad, it kicks things up a notch and we get a big shoot'em up finale, but by then most viewers will be so bored that they've lost interest.
I appreciated the movie's shout-outs to "real" paperback action heroes like Doc Savage, Mack Bolan and Remo "The Destroyer" Williams, because I used to read those books when I was in my teens, but otherwise this movie doesn't do much with its promising premise. Skip it.

One of the so-called subsidy film scandal quickies made in South Africa in the 1980s although this one was OK.

[Dr. Whom]

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

When Egon Spengler's daughter and grandkids show up to claim their inheritance in a very small town, they find they have to defend the world from cosmic evil.

The original movies never did much to me, and I haven't seen any of them in its entirety. So I'm probably missing many nods to the fans in this one. The main idea seems to be to take the original premise and mix in some eighties/faux eighties adventurous kids in, as in Stranger Things. The whole movie has a very 80s feel, down to the lightning special effects, with the town living in a pre-internet timewarp. It is entertaining enough, hitting all the familiar beats and not getting too much bogged down in sentimentalism. McKenna Grace is doing sterling work as the nerdy teen and Finn Wolfhart is looking more and more like Timothee Chalamet. It is, however, completely by the numbers.

[lester1/2jr]

The Cursed (Korean Tv Series) Ultimately it's a thumbs down for me on this series. I like dark Asian cop movies. I like stuff with demons. I think HK and Japan respectively do those a lot better.




The first indication something's amiss is the bad 80's hairstyle of the female lead. Shouldn't she be at least a little bit sexy? There is, in fact, nothing sexy at all going on here. It''s all very PG and repressed and the less said about the hokey last episode the better.

Some okay stuff: I liked the relationship between the witch lady and her bumbling sidekick and the fat professor of the occult, who is so happy anyone cares about his area of study that he has no idea the magnitude of what is going on. There are nice touches, but it's a chore to get through.

No surprise there was no season two. You could do worse than The Cursed...but also much better.

3/5

[M.10rda]

THE THREE FANTASTIC SUPERMEN (1967):
Obviously prompted by the hit BATMAN tv series from 1966, this superficially cheesy-looking Italian adventure film somehow launched a series of 8 (!!!) "Three Supermen" films over the next 20 years. That entire proposition seemed wholly impossible at face value, but after watching the first one....... eh, I ain't surprised it was successful!

The eponymous dudes dress like Brad Bird's Incredibles - red spandex and black external underwear - plus counterintuitive capes into the bargain. Also contrary to expectation is that they only often function as a trio while sometimes working at cross-purposes or even double-crossing each other. Euro-schlock stalwart Brad Harris plays FBI agent Superman McCullom, who tries to cajole, trick, or threaten the other two Supermen - who are primarily superthieves rather than heroes - into joining forces with him to foil a much more serious supervillain. Fellow Euro-schlock staple Tony Kendall plays Superman "Tony", who runs a crime school for glamorous dames. His sidekick is Aldo Canti as Superman "Nick", ostensibly a mute who cackles constantly and looks like the product of an unholy sexual union between Klaus Kinski and Jerry Lewis. As a team, they act less like the Fantastic Four or the Heroic Trio than like the leads in THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY, which adds some interest to the film. THREE FANTASTIC SUPERMEN actually has a plot (unlike seemingly many Italian genre films of this era) and even a series of twists that kept me engaged. The Big Bad is just a photocopy of Goldfinger, but appropriately enough is trying to use a "universal duplicator"   to counterfeit gold, cash, and even human beings, including himself... so actually his similarity to GF is kind of clever. He's also a ruthless s.o.b. - employing a right-hand man who fires rounds from a bazooka like it was a .44, capping his own femme fatale, and trying to euthanize a whole school of children!

3FS is also nicely produced, w/ an obvious budget and tons of action. Harris and Kendall are muscular, athletic guys who look like they really know how to move and fight, and spent time practicing their choreography with the extras before the cameras rolled; Canti (who is either a professional acrobat or had an excellent and seamless stunt double) appears to perform many, many authentic and impressive stunts onscreen. All of this also distinguishes 3FS from a lot of the westerns, spy movies, and crime films coming out of Italy in the late 60s... including some helmed by 3FS's director  Frank Kramer, who was responsible for many lame westerns in the 60s and also the legendary YETI: GIANT OF THE 20TH CENTURY. Kramer must've enjoyed this assignment because he really pulls off a nifty and fun slapstick/action romp. I dunno if I will ever bother watching any of THREE FANTASTIC SUPERMEN parts II through VIII, but after watching the pilot, I won't at least rule out the possibility!

3.5/5

For me the highlight is early in the film where Tony and Nick take a couple minutes to dance with some cute girls in a scene that is reminiscent of both the famed "Batusi" scene from BATMAN '66 and the even more famed dance from BANDE A PART. In 1967 Godard had forgotten about dancing and instead was making the almost insufferable LA CHINOISE. Advantage: Supermen!