Recent Viewings, Part 2

[indianasmith]

ANNHILATION (2018) - Fascinating sci-fi/horror flick starring Natalie Portman; I saw a screenshot from it on a FB horror page and it looked interesting enough for me to take the plunge.  Well worth it!  The movie starts with Lena, a biologist grieving for the loss of her husband Kane, a special forces sergeant who disappeared on a secret mission a year before.  But then he shows up, without a word, at her house - and collapses, bleeding from his mouth and ears.  The ambulance she calls is hijacked by soldiers, and next thing you know Lena is whisked off to a top secret base near a lighthouse on the coast that has been enveloped by a shimmering barrier for over a year now.  Many have tried to go through the Shimmer; none have returned until Sergeant Kane.  How did he make it out? Why is he so seriously ill?  Lena joins an expedition to penetrate the barrier and see what lies beyond before it expands and consumes the entire region.  Great flick with some genuinely creepy moments!  5/5

[M.10rda]

WILL-O'-THE-WISP (2022): Concerned about the environment, the prince of Portugal chooses to become a volunteer fireman and falls in love with a co-worker. A boring gay art-drama (and purported musical, though there are only three numbers) that, with its numerous phallus shots and one pretty darn explicit love scene, teeters towards boring gay art-porn; at just over an hour, it's a true wisp of a movie. Its intended niche audience may find enjoyment here, but it's far from a crossover threat. 2/5.

I recognize all the words in this review but I simply cannot comprehend them in the above combination. The PRINCE OF PORTUGAL you say DOES WHAT NOW 

[M.10rda]

ANNHILATION (2018) - Fascinating sci-fi/horror flick

Very fascinating flick indeed, tons of good ingredients (including great acting) even if they might not congeal successfully. W/o real spoilers, I'm an easy target for a STALKER-alike w/ more action and suspense, though ANNIHILATION makes an uneasy transition late in the game into a final act that's much closer to (another one of my favorite films) Zulawski's POSSESSION. There are also a lot of similarities to PHASE IV, throughout and specifically at the end. Those are three phenomenal films to pastiche, so even it didn't really hang together and pay off for me, I can't fault Alex Garland on his taste. Definitely worth seeing.

[Dr. Whom]

Please Baby Please (2022)

Set in 1950s New York. After an uptight young couple witness a murder by a street gang, they get all sorts of sexual ideas and an intense relationship between them and the gang develops.

This is a bit as if you took a 1950s movie with social criticism and turned it into a musical with art direction by Pierre & Gilles. The whole thing is high camp, with caricatural characters spouting platitudes about society and the patriarchy. For all its queer and genderbending posturing, the underlying vision seems to be quite traditional. Also, for something that advertises itself as  about erotical liberation, there is no actual sex in the movie. The period setting makes the whole thing strangely dated.

Still, it is watchable, especially if you like your movies so artsy it hurts. And one of the songs has the unforgettable line 'The lake is like a cake when you're hungry in love'

[Rev. Powell]

Please Baby Please (2022)

Set in 1950s New York. After an uptight young couple witness a murder by a street gang, they get all sorts of sexual ideas and an intense relationship between them and the gang develops.

This is a bit as if you took a 1950s movie with social criticism and turned it into a musical with art direction by Pierre & Gilles. The whole thing is high camp, with caricatural characters spouting platitudes about society and the patriarchy. For all its queer and genderbending posturing, the underlying vision seems to be quite traditional. Also, for something that advertises itself as  about erotical liberation, there is no actual sex in the movie. The period setting makes the whole thing strangely dated.

Still, it is watchable, especially if you like your movies so artsy it hurts. And one of the songs has the unforgettable line 'The lake is like a cake when you're hungry in love'

Andrea Risenbrough is amazingly unhinged in this.

[Dr. Whom]

Andrea Risenbrough is amazingly unhinged in this.

She is. In fact, one of the main reasons to keep watching. Harry Melling (last seen as Edgar Allan Poe in the Pale Blue Eye) also does a good job, although there is a chance now he will be stuck playing soft spoken tortured souls.

[lester1/2jr]

The Penalty (1920) - pretty decent dark horror-ish thing starring the great Lon Chaney. As a little boy, a doctor amputates his legs for some reason. The rest of his life he plots revenge and also becomes a feared gangster named "Blizzard". Chaney has his legs taped in a way that makes him look like an amputee. It must have been rather uncomfortable. I wonder if there wasn't some resentment towards WW1 being expressed here.

I liked the dark energy and the plot was solid enough, but it didn't add up to anything amazing.

4/5

[RCMerchant]

^ Try Chaney's the UNKNOWN (1927) with Chaney and Joan Crawford.

[lester1/2jr]

I saw that but might as well watch it again.

[Rev. Powell]

THE COW WHO SANG A SONG INTO THE FUTURE: Cecelia travels to her family's old dairy farm after her father is hospitalized after seeing her long-dead mother appear on the streets of town; meanwhile, fish are dying in the local river and the cattle are acting strange. Fans of cows singing songs will not be disappointed by this strange, lightly surreal Chilean film with a scattered but generally positive message about the rejuvenative powers of dealing with buried secrets. 3/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Vigilante" (2023)
A lady Marine returns home from serving in Afghanistan, and finds herself fighting a whole new battle when her teenage sister is kidnapped by sex traffickers.
This cheap looking Tubi "original" has a few decent action sequences, but eventually it starts to feel like an ultra-violent Lifetime Channel movie. Not terrible, but nothing I'll ever sit through again.

[indianasmith]

65 (2023) Captain Mills is piloting a colony ship full of cryogenically suspended settlers across the galaxy when an uncharted field of asteroids damages his ship and sends him crash landing on EARTH, at the end of the Cretaceous era.  All his passengers but one young girl are killed, his ship is broken in half and scattered across miles of dinosaur-filled jungle, and of course the emergency escape craft is in the other end of the ship.  Adam Driver stars in this watchable bit of dinosaur mayhem and does a pretty good job portraying a grieving father protecting a child about the same age as his own lost daughter. Nice lenght, good dino effects, very contrived plot, this is basically an A-budget B-movie. 4/5

[Rev. Powell]

BIRTH/REBIRTH (2023): When her daughter's fresh corpse goes missing, an obstetric nurse confronts--then collaborates with--an odd mortician conducting experiments on the dead. Not horror per se, but more a dark medical drama hearkening back to Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein," this solid chiller is anchored by two fantastic performances, from a grieving Judy Reyes and (even more so) a superbly awkward Marin Ireland. 3.5/5.

[RCMerchant]

65 (2029) Captain Mills is piloting a colony ship full of cryogenically suspended settlers across the galaxy when an uncharted field of asteroids damages his ship and sends him crash landing on EARTH, at the end of the Cretaceous era.  All his passengers but one young girl are killed, his ship is broken in half and scattered across miles of dinosaur-filled jungle, and of course the emergency escape craft is in the other end of the ship.  Adam Driver stars in this watchable bit of dinosaur mayhem and does a pretty good job portraying a grieving father protecting a child about the same age as his own lost daughter. Nice lenght, good dino effects, very contrived plot, this is basically an A-budget B-movie. 4/5

(2029)?

[Rev. Powell]

65 (2029) Captain Mills is piloting a colony ship full of cryogenically suspended settlers across the galaxy when an uncharted field of asteroids damages his ship and sends him crash landing on EARTH, at the end of the Cretaceous era.  All his passengers but one young girl are killed, his ship is broken in half and scattered across miles of dinosaur-filled jungle, and of course the emergency escape craft is in the other end of the ship.  Adam Driver stars in this watchable bit of dinosaur mayhem and does a pretty good job portraying a grieving father protecting a child about the same age as his own lost daughter. Nice lenght, good dino effects, very contrived plot, this is basically an A-budget B-movie. 4/5

(2029)?

Looks like Indy got an advance copy.