Recent Viewings, Part 2

[lester1/2jr]

Cold Hell (2017) - This is sort of the "foreign film" version of a Cannon/ Michael Dudikoff action movie from the 80's. Generic and implausible plot stuff, but with artsy looking people and situations meant to press all the Friday night at Coolidge Corner Theater buttons. The big selling point is the main actress whatever her name is. She's very pretty and looks like what people think young women in Williamsburg, Brooklyn look like, though she's actually from Uzbekistan.

A cab driver in Austria gets seen by a serial killer who sees her looking out her window at him serial killing someone. Here's the first plot problem: when we first meet her, we learn she is a champion Thai kick boxer, of all things. She beats up 3 different men BEFORE she is seen by the serial killer guy. 100% of the people watching this will not understand why then is she so afraid of one guy holding maybe a knife at best? Why does she think he will come after her? Why would he if he (apparently) kills prostitutes and she isn't one?

This could have been cleared up by him having the thing called a gun and/ or maybe him GRADUALLY getting inside her head some way or something. The rest of the plot movements are similarly clunky, but the acting is pretty decent. You can kind of see it on their faces that they know it's sort of a mess.

A decent effort in some respects, but certainly not a home run.

I'll go 3.8/ 5

Foreign film buffs might put it higher, action/ thriller fans probably lower. Title is random.

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Phantom Empire" (1987)

Cave explorers stumble into a hidden underground world populated by flesh eating mutants, dinosaurs, cave girls in bikinis, and an alien warrior queen who wants to capture the surface dwellers and make them her slaves.
 
There's a lot to unpack in this campy, schlocky flick, which is supposedly based on a 1930s Gene Autry movie serial by the same name. It was written and directed in six days by no-budget maestro Fred Olen Ray, and it's full of corny dialogue, plentiful T&A, and stock footage borrowed from other movies. A few familiar faces like Michelle "Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers" Bauer, Sybil Danning, and Jeffrey "Re-Animator" Combs do their best with the thin material. Hell, there's even a cameo by Robby the Robot from "Forbidden Planet!"

Make no mistake, this movie was crap, but it was strangely entertaining crap.

[indianasmith]

"Strangely entertaining crap" describes a LOT of the movies we watch here!

[M.10rda]

Supergirl (2026)
Not bad. Nowhere near as bad as some are making it out to be. 

I had no idea about how "some" were making it out to be, nor about its poor box office.
I haven't had 3 hours to go to the drive-in and watch it, but I'd been excited and am bummed that much of the spin is anti-DC (not a novel thing), anti-Gunn (unsurprising), and anti-female (the stalest $#!t ever).

I really don't think it should have bombed like it did.  And yes, the criticisms made by a certain type of online personality have gotten even more annoying and bothersome at this point.   

SUPERGIRL (2026):
We finally watched this on Prime - and paid for the rental, and I don't regret it. I think it's Better, or at least an easier movie to enjoy, than 2017's WONDER WOMAN (which I liked) - and maybe for that matter better and easier to enjoy than Gunn's lore-dense SUPERMAN (ditto). The action is terrific, the SFX are terrific, there are a handful of gorgeous shots (courtesy of the director of LARS AND THE REAL GIRL, of all things). A lot of the screenplay (from a first-timer) is deft and well-handled, a bit of it is OTN and could've used a light polish. Milly Alcock (who I disliked on "House of the Dragon", though honestly I checked out of that early) is a sympathetic and multi-dimensional Supergirl; Jason Momoa is an ideal Lobo. (Madame commented at one point that she thought he was doing Michael Keaton as Betelgeuse, and indeed - comic book Lobo unquestionably lent inspiration to the titular BEETLEJUICE and then became more like Keaton's character after the movie was a hit. As in Gunn's GOTG3 and SUPERMAN, the antagonist is truly despicable - a positive thing, I think, in this kind of movie.

In spite of some sub-Gunn needle drops, I'm unsure what a legitimate condemnation of SUPERGIRL might be. We saw Supergirl for 30 seconds in SUPERMAN, thus maybe the smarter move would've been to develop her as a supporting character in that film. But Gunn promised (for better or worse) to do two things w/ his DC movies - one, to refrain from making any one film dependent on another (mission accomplished here) and two, to exploit different genres. On the latter point one might object that Supergirl isn't much of a superhero movie (neither was WONDER WOMAN) - but it's a great sci-fi action movie.

I imagine the final reasonable objection would be that SUPERGIRL wears its non-comic influences on both sleeves and its back - w/ Daenerys Targaryen's great-grandmother and Khal Drogo aiding a defenseless Arya Stark on a revenge mission against Immortan Joe's army of steampunk r@pists - but as an enormous FURY ROAD stan and the world's biggest (o.g.) GAME OF THRONES stan, I am immune.    4/5