Recent Viewings, Part 2

[Rev. Powell]

SIRAT (2025): Accompanied by his young son and companions he meets on the way, a father goes searching for his lost daughter, whom he believes is attending a mysterious rave in the remote desert of Morocco---but the road trip turns into a struggle to survive. Well-made, but strangely pointless. 3/5.

[lester1/2jr]

Altered States (1980) - I'm on a ripping two movie, really good movie streak. I had seen this a number of years ago but, as usual, forgot most of it. I also remember seeing it as a kid, mainly the scene where he escapes from the tank thing. I live near Harvard, I should go see if they still have them there.

William Hurt is a scientist obsessed with our hidden ancient past that's in our DNA molecules or whatever. An, in retrospect, unlikely combination of weird drugs and an isolation tank (which is just being alone isn't it? ) are the only tools he has to try and access his inner primatational ape. Can he get anywhere with this or will he have to be happy just banging hot Harvard women and being a misunderstood genius stereotype? Director Ken Russell aims to makes sure that whatever happens, it will be psychedelicly insane at some point. He massively succeeds.

It's an interesting film to be made in 1980, as it contains the ancient DNA of the 60's with the hippy aspect, but is set amidst the rarefied, professional academic circles where probably a lot of hippies ended up? or something

In short, it's completely ridiculous and awesome. There's no zoo in Cambridge btw.

5/5

[Rev. Powell]

THE SECRET AGENT (2025): A man with a mysterious past hides out in Recife, Brazil in 1977, where he deals with corrupt cops and hitmen against the backdrop of Carnivale and a sensational news story about discovery of a human leg inside a beached shark. Don't let the title fool you into thinking this is a James Bond thing: it's a dramatic thriller about life during the Brazilian dictatorship that feels so authentic (right down to the uncertainty of the conclusion) and true to its period that you would be forgiven for assuming it was based on a true story. 4/5.

[Rev. Powell]

TRAIN DREAMS (2025): The life of a logger in the Pacific Northwest at the dawn of the 20th century is defined by tragedy. Beautifully shot, heavy-handed; it's interesting to observe the gradual social and technological changes over the decades. On Netflix if you're interested. 3/5.

[indianasmith]

BONE LAKE (2024) - I went in to this one half expecting a "college kids getting butchered by a slasher at some wilderness camp" film; instead, I was treated to a fun, creepy romp that was vaguely reminiscent of SPEAK NO EVIL.
A young couple, Diego and Sage, have rented a bed and breakfast for a romantic weekend, only to find that another couple Will and Cin arrive just an hour after them, having rented the same home for the same weekend.  Since the house is quite large, they decide to share. It's fun at first, then things slowly start to slide south . . .

Definitely a fun watch with some nice twists along the way!  4/5

[Rev. Powell]

2000 METERS TO ANDRIIVKA (2025): Documentary following a squad of embedded journalist/footsoldiers as they fight meter by meter to reclaim the village of Andriivka (outside of Bakhmut) during the 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive. Not political, just young men dying, wondering whether there's any purpose to it all. 4/5.

[lester1/2jr]

Side Effects (2013) - The challenge is not to under sell or over sell here. It's a solid story and Jude Law holds it down as the main guy. At the same time, it's not amazing and there's not a ton going on visually. This is partially due to the small budget and also to the gimmicky decision by Steve Soderbergh to use an Iphone to film the whole thing. Should you see it? yes. On a Saturday night? no.

A shrink looking to make a few extra bucks to pay for his fancy pants NYC lifestyle agrees to prescribe Ablixa, a new SSRI, to patients. Well, one of them starts sleepwalking and, wouldn't you know it, stabs her husband to death in this state! Whoopsy. From there, it's a relatively cerebral mystery with some lack of attention to detail on the viewers part implied. (Channing Tatum,the husband, is a pretty big guy, just saying). Catherine Zeta Jones resembles Kathyrn, my sexy liberarian eque college girlfriend as a rival shrink.

It's on tubi probaby because it's not Gone Girl level as far as the plot and it's not campy or trashy enough for the Law and order SVU/ Lifetime sort of crowd. I love stuff like this though. story guy till the end

4.35 /5

[M.10rda]

JIM RIPPLE'S ROBOTS aka LOSS OF SENSATION (1935):
Letterboxd has this listed as "Loss of Feeling" but my print's subtitles translate it as I've titled it from the native Russian. I often expect 20th century Russian movies to be pure Communist propaganda, but sometimes they aren't and sometimes they're propaganda but in a really smart way, as is the case with this extremely prescient sci-fi film.

"Jim" (played by an actor with a strong Conrad Veidt quality) is a young engineering student in a country that looks like Soviet Russia and is socially structured like Soviet Russia but where everyone has a western/Anglo name like "Jim" and where corporate oligarchs still run the show, so I guess it's supposed to represent "the West". Jim is really concerned about all the labor strikes and decides that he's got the solution to all labor/management disputes - he'll just invent worker robots that will do all the hard work for the laborers, so they can relax all day. Surely that'll make the workers happy and the owners happy and everyone will live in peace... right?   

Yes, "Jim" is an idealist version of the utopian-minded AI promoters who keep pushing AI on consumers, while his industrial and military benefactors of course realize (as big-tech execs do today) that the inevitable supremacy of AI - err, robot workers means the complete obsolescence of human labor.    Nevertheless LOSS OF SENSATION proceeds for most of its running time as if the filmmakers are on the side of poor Pollyanna-brained Jim and want the viewers to be on his side, too. This is confusing and frustrating to watch... but it sets up an incredibly satisfying third act and finale, which is basically a dramatization of SkyNet's takeover of Earth, followed by a bunch of John Connors and flipped T-800s risin' up and fightin' back. Yes, in 1935!

Several reviewers on Letterboxd recommend just watching the last half hour. I say the whole movie works - and the ending works better following the first hour. The robots would look pretty good in a movie made in the 1950s and the themes resonate uhhh right now. 

4/5    Those Communists knew what was up.

[Rev. Powell]

COVER-UP (2025): Bio-documentary of investigative journalist Sy Hersh, who broke stories on the My Lai massacre and Abu Ghraib torture scandal, among others. Hersh understandably reveals little of his methods, making this a survey of American corruption from the 1960s to the present day. Makes you a little nostalgic for the days when the government tried a little harder to cover up its indiscretions and actually cared about public perception. 3.5/5.

RIFFTRAX: THE DARK POWER: Ancient Toltec demons preying on college kids in their 30s didn't count on having to deal with geriatric whip-specialist Lash Larue. A really bad slasher/monster movie, with unlikable characters and an action-free first half, made tolerable by the jokes. 3/5.

[indianasmith]

SUCKER PUNCH (2011) - One of my favorite films of all time, and it gets better with each successive viewing.
The closing monologue is just. . . perfect!

[M.10rda]

CHARADE (1963):
Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, Walter Matthau, James Coburn, and George Kennedy are all chasing a quarter-million dollars of Nazi gold in this fun and fairly classy twist-filled mystery/comedy/romance/thriller directed by Hepurn-whisperer Stanley Donen. It was a big hit and the same screenwriter then went on to pen the similarly twisty (and disappointing) MIRAGE (starring Matthau, Kennedy, and Gregory Peck) and then the similarly twisty and totally batpoop insane ARABESQUE, also directed by Donen and starring Peck and a bunch of actors in brownface.

I arrived at CHARADE in reverse, following the two movies it made possible, and specifically on account of ARABESQUE. That was kind of like watching MULHOLLAND DRIVE or INLAND EMPIRE and then checking out BLUE VELVET out of curiosity: CHARADE is probably a better movie than ARABESQUE, but also CHARADE is just kind of quirky at times though mostly straightforward whereas ARABESQUE is figuratively and sometimes literally an acid trip. Donen and writer Peter Stone clearly gave zero f***s about coherence while making ARABESQUE and were just swingin' for phantom windmills. In comparison, the only truly oddball/inexplicable thing about CHARADE is that the unearthly 34yo Audrey Hepburn keeps aggressively throwing herself at largely dismissive and uninterested 59yo Cary Grant. Yeah, I know, he's Cary Grant aka "Jay Kelly"/George Clooney etc but it's still implausible and kind of off-putting.

Other than that, though, very nicely made and entertaining, and even tense in a couple spots.
3.5/5
Hepburn was really quite something. Grant is still perfectly amiable and fun in spite of the forced romance bits, but he only made a couple more movies then hung it up for the last 20 years of his life.

[M.10rda]

BLACKMAIL (1929):
The first 10 minutes play out practically like a silent movie, and indeed there's apparently an entirely Silent version of BLACKMAIL, which I guess Alfred Hitchcock was tasked to then hastily reshoot with sync sound. (The mostly-Talkie version is what I watched on Prime.) Hitch made this a year before MURDER! and yet BLACKMAIL seems more sophisticated and advanced in some regards (and there is violent death in the bargain, if perhaps short of "murder!"). MURDER! is more complex in plot and construction yet more stagey, as early talkies tended to be. BLACKMAIL is shot simply for the most part - probably quickly, due to its circumstances - and the plot is pretty simple... and yet I found it ultimately more effective and suspenseful than MURDER!, and much more like what we'd later come to expect from a Hitch movie. So good for Hitch for working quickly and cannily under pressure.

It does take a long time to reach full speed. The first half hour is mostly committed to a goofy meet-cute/date night that rather tried my patience. But as we enter Act 2, one of the potential lovers is dead and the other will become the target of (...) blackmail! (It occurred to me that BLACKMAIL might be one of the Hitchcockian inspirations for DePalma's opening to SISTERS...)

From that point the plot builds methodically but persuasively in a couple of locations over the course of the following day. It isn't exactly a nailbiter but I was invested by the final scene - and the last shot is a really delicious turn-of-the-screw worthy of Hitchcock's reputation.

I had a good time w/ BLACKMAIL, though I could criticize it for how Hitch seems to frame his blonde female protagonist as a flighty, faithless idiot who deserves her predicament. She definitely put herself in a foolish position, but modern viewers are likely to excuse her response to what is unequivocally the behavior of a male predator. Then again, Hitch is reputed to have had a lot of predatory behavior of his own towards his lead actresses...  So lead Anny Ondry appears required to have a lot of overwrought and unnecessary breakdowns in cutaway. But when she's in wide shots with other actors, going about her business, Ondry acquits herself very nicely. She's also spunkier and cuter and more appealing than the ice queen ciphers that began headlining Hitch movies in later decades.

3.5/5    Maybe Hitch just couldn't stomach a girl with a personality!

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Terminator" (1984)
A time traveling cyborg from the future (Arnold Schwarzenegger) comes to 1984 L.A. to rub out a woman who will give birth to the man who will save Earth from the 21st century machine uprising. Bullets fly, cars crash, stuff blows up... a LOT of stuff.
James Cameron's classic sci-fi action flick turned Arnold into a legit movie star and created a franchise that's still going to this day.

[Rev. Powell]

CHARADE (1963):

I've never seen it, but I do own (and enjoy) the Henry Mancini soundtrack.

THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR (2025): The story of how a neighborhood conflict with Florida woman, the ultimate "you kids stay off my lawn!" grump whom the kids universally call "the Karen," escalates into homicide, told mostly through police bodycam footage. Everybody has had a neighbor like this, but nobody expects to be killed by one. The footage of the immediate aftermath is emotionally devastating. On Netflix, worth checking out. 4/5.

[indianasmith]

CARMILLA HYDE (2010)

Millie Jackson is a rather uptight young English girl living with a roommate who likes to party. After her roommate's boyfriend slips her a mickey and spends the night in her bed, she goes to therapist who unleashes her violent, sexy alter ego, Carmilla Hyde. And things go south from there . . .   This one could have been good, but it was cheaply done and the performances were pretty much rote. I've watched worse.  2.5/5