Justice for All

After a couple of disappointments and a rousing success from DC, we went into Justice League (2017) with high hopes. Not so high that the movie couldn't match them, at least for me.

After the events of Batman v. Superman, Superman is dead. The world is going to heck, because he's not around to protect it. Batman (Ben Affleck) has noticed weird creatures - he uses a street crook as bait to get one to come out. He needs to find more heroes, and we know he has a database - we saw it in BvS. First he want's Wonder Woman. He meets up with her being a hero, in a scene where she gets to play Bullets and Bracelets, my favorite WW game. But she isn't interested in teaming up, until ...

Back on the island, the Amazons have been protecting this artifact, a cube called the Mother Box. It bursts out of it's container, and a horde of evil demons snatch it. It turns out that they are lead by Steppenwolf, a follower of Darkseid. Now, I was not following DC when Kirby's New Gods introduced Darkseid and the Mother Boxes, but I know enough to be thrilled. If Kirby came up with it, I am behind it.

Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne has recruited Barry Allen, the Flash (Ezra Miller), who is a goofy kid like Tom Holland's Spider-Man - a bit too much like him. He doesn't get Adam Curry, Aquaman (Jason Momoa), who is hanging out in bleak Icelandic bars, wearing cool jeans and cable knits, with lots of hair and tats. He looks cool, but (as expected) doesn't do as much as you might hope. He joins he gang when the Atlantean Mother Cube gets lifted.

Rounding out the hoped-for team is Cyborg (Ray Fisher). His body was almost destroyed in an accident, and his father (Joe Morton) has rebuilt him. But he used Chitauri Kryptonian parts from the crash from BvS, and it maybe has a mind of it's own.

Note on that cross-out above - there are a lot of places where this seems like a Marvel ripoff. Batman is Tony Stark, The Flash is Spider-Man, Steppenwolf is Thanos, etc. I don't exactly mind this - it's no skin off my nose who they steal from. But it's too bad they couldn't be a little more original.

But what about Superman? He's dead, right? Of course, the last act is to bring him back to life, using Cyborg tech and Mother Box energy. Of course, he comes back to life as a mindless zombie, but it all works out in the end.

I guess I'm making this sound pretty lame, but I actually liked it a lot. Especially in the first act, everything is very epic and comicbooky. For instance, every scene seems to end with someone intoning some comic book line, like "I don't understand this world, I just know that I have to save it!" Stuff that only works in a comic book. And it's the kind of stuff I want in a comic book movie.

Jungle Love

I guess it's time to admit it: We love just about everything Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson does. So, we watched Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017).

Since we didn't watch the original, we have no idea how this relates. But it starts with a new back story: a kid starts playing a video game and is never seen again. Then we go to the "present day" and meet our heroes: a nerd who is writing a paper for his black, popular "friend", a selfie-obsessed girl, and a shy girl who doesn't want to participate in gym. They all get Breakfast Club detention together, and find an old video game. They chose characters and are magically transported into the game.

In the game, the nerdy kid is fabulous archeologist Dwayne Johnson. The big black kid becomes schlubby zoologist Kevin Hart. The popular girl is cartographer Jack Black, and the nerdy girl has become Lara-Croftian dance fighter Karen Gillan. So the nerds become hunks and the beautiful people become ordinary. That's the joke.

And it's a pretty good one. Seeing Dwayne Johnson fret because he doesn't have his inhaler, or Jack Black playing a teenage girl in Jack Black's body - funny. Of course, Johnson does it best, because of his gentle giant style. In fact, his role here kind of mirrors another movie he did with Kevin Hart: Central Intelligence. The weakest approximation is the nerd girl turned femme fatale - I'd guess because none of the ~5 writers are women, and they have a little trouble getting inside the character.

They get an explanation of the point of the game from a non-player character, Rhys Darby. He doesn't mention the three lines they find tattooed on their wrists. But when someone dies and re-appears (falling from a great height) with one fewer lines, they realize that these are life counters - and intuit (?) that when they lose the last line, they die for real.

On the other hand, if they don't die or win the game, they might wind up stuck in the game forever, like Nick Jonas, the guy from the opening scene, who has been stuck in the game on his last life for ~20 years.

The whole thing has a great mix of premise, character, and just plain jokes. The action isn't bad either, especially Gillan's dance fights, choreographed to "Baby I Love Your Way." But I kind of feel that it's Johnson's charisma that does a lot of the work here. He's just that likable.

Train in Vain

I wanted to watch The Great Train Robbery (1978) to see Donald Sutherland in outrageous side-whiskers (Sean Connery too, although his facial hair is a bit more restrained). Then I saw that it was written and directed by Michael Crichton, I knew I was in for a treat.

Sean Connery is a Victorian gentleman thief. Along with his paramour, Leslie-Anne Down, he convinces pickpocket Donald Sutherland to join him in an attempt to rob the train carrying the payroll for the Crimean War. To do this, they'll need 11 men... No, that's a different movie. But it will take a crazy process to get through the security precautions in place.

First, no one has ever robbed a moving train before (do Butch Cassidy and Sundance count?). Second, four keys are required to open the safe: two in the bank, two held by two bankers - one hidden and the other around his neck. Getting these keys is the middle part of the movie.

They get close to one banker through his love of the Victorian sport of ratting. Here is where the Crichton kicks in. He has obviously done a ton of research into ratting (basically, terriers fight rats in a pit, with bets on how many it can kill in a certain time), and he puts a neat condensed version on screen. As a science kid, I love the way he researches the odd and obscure, and lets you in on the results. I realize that not everyone appreciates this style...

Any way, they need a good second story man, so they break break Clean Willy out of Newgate. The clever plan they use seems to be just him climbing up a wall and getting his hands hacked up on the spiked fence. To get another key, they use the old badger game, where they let the guy get naked with Down, then burst in dressed as cops. For another, they need to break into a heavily guarded train dispatcher's office. And so on.

Once they get on the train, everything goes wrong, but our anti-heroes improvise. Connery does a tense run over the train top, doing his own stunts as the train flies through the countryside and under very low bridges - it looks kind of clunky compared to the super stunts of today, but it was really dangerous. And so on, until success - or failure.

As a movie, I'm not sure this is very good. But as an artifact, a representation of a barrel of historical research, it's great. Costumes, facial hair, period thieve's argot (my favorite!), sports and trains. Also, Donald Sutherland is always great, here with a very wobbly accent, seemingly an Irishman who spent a lot of time in America and is trying to sound Londoner. Him and Connery have a nice rapport, as do Connery and Down.

In conclusion, not related to the OTHER great train robbery of the 1960s.

Maddin's Hockey

I've read a lot about Canadian avante-garde director Guy Maddin. I finally got around to watching, starting with Cowards Bend the Knee (2003). It was something.

In form, it is a shortish, hour-long film in 10 chapters, in distressed black & white without synched sound (not silent, but near as never mind). Chapter One: The Sperm Players! A gentleman in a lab coat puts a slide into a microscope, and looks in to see: A hockey game! Player Guy Maddin (played by Darcy Fehr) takes a hit to the head and is concussed. He forgets that his mother is in the hospital! He takes his girlfriend to the beauty salon that is an after hours abortion clinic, and leaves her to die on the table while he runs off with the madam's (it's also an after hours brothel) beautiful daughter. She won't let him touch her with any hands, but the blue hands of her dead father (his cheap hair dye caused the blueness, not his death). So he lets the abortionist transplant her father's hands onto his arms! But when Maddin is under the anesthetic, the doctor just paints his hands blue! And then there's the deserted wax museum of hockey greats!

Whew! It's over-the-top old-timey, with broad overacting. The editing is mostly old-timey, too, except there's a touch of hip-hop in the way he repeats a few seconds over and over, like scratching. The girlfriend has a very Mary Pickford look, the madam is Gloria Swanson and her daughter is more Anna May Wong - both von Sternberg dragon ladies.

In conclusion, I now feel I know what Maddin is about and don't feel a strong need to watch much more.

Screwy

We watched Foul Play (1978) because I want to love 70s screwball comedy. Also, Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase!

It starts with Hawn at a San Francisco engagement party. She doesn't look very happy, but her friend catches her before she can leave and tells her she needs to try to connect with guys. Across the room, she spies Chevy Chase and their eyes meet. Then he pours his drink on himself and she isn't encouraged to follow up.

Taking a drive, she picks up a good looking hitch hiker Bruce Solomon, and lets him invite her on a date. What she doesn't realize is that he is being chased, and has slipped a McGuffin into her purse. When they meet for their date at the movies, he tells her, "Beware the dwarf" and dies.

When she tries to get the manager and police, the body has been moved and nobody believes her. Classic screwball setup. Hawn is attacked by any number of sinister fiends, including an albino and a Turkish chauffeur, and escapes through luck and spunk. And nobody believes her.

The best part - almost a separate movie unto itself - is when she gets Dudley Moore to help her hide from the baddies. He thinks it's a pick up, and takes her back to his hilariously set up sex apartment. When she realizes what's up, she escapes, and gets attacked again. This time, police detectives Brian Dennehy and -ta-da - Chevy Chase come to interview her.

I guess I don't have to tell you that Chase and Hawn wind up in bed on his fabulous Sausalito houseboat. That there is a plot to assassinate the pope, and that light opera plays a significant part. It's all part of the screwball game.

In the end, we enjoyed this without exactly being bowled over. For one thing, Hawn is a librarian, not an airhead. She has a tart put-down for every one of Chase's come-ons, and not the type Gracie Allen was known for. She does get a little flustered when romance is involved, and when targeted for murder.

All in all, not a bad movie, with the Dudley Moore interludes pushing it into the good category - not great maybe, but a solid watch. We will continue to check out Ms. Hawn's work.

Forgive Us Alien Trespass

Alien Trespass (2009) is a spoof on the old SciFi movies of the 50s, with the broad shouldered scientists, rock 'n' roll crazed teeners and aliens both monstrous and humanoid. Unfortunately, it isn't very funny or even much fun.

It stars Eric McCormack, as an astronomer, barbecuing steaks for his anniversary with Jody Thompson. He's distracted by a meteor, while his wife is trying to get him to be romantic, or just maybe do her. He finally heads up to the crash site, along with the usual teenage hot-rodders and an old drunk. There he has his body stolen by silvery humanoid Urp. Urp is trying to find his pet monster, the Ghota (pronounced "fish").

His wife is alarmed by his transformation, but discontented waitress Jenni Baird takes a liking to him. If only they can convince the dumb cops, who think it's all a prank that the kids are playing.

A lot of this is swiped from The Blob, down to the movie scene - and the movie playing is The Blob. A lot of it is spot-on, and a lot of it is funny. But I didn't think enough of it was funny enough. I feel like it didn't have a sharp point - it didn't quite know what it was making fun of. Maybe it would have been better as an almost-straight tribute.

In conclusion, I think a better watch would be Invasion! or any of the Larry Blamire movies.

Again?!?

Dead Again in Tombstone (2017) stars Danny Trejo. That's really all we needed.

Of course, we had seen the original Dead in Tombstone. Synopsis: Western badguy Danny Trejo gets killed and makes deal with devil. He will deliver other badguys to hell before their time, in return for being sent back to Earth. In this sequel, he is still alive, still killing badguys, but the devil is asking for more deliveries.

Meanwhile, Jake Busey as a Confederate veteran with a gang of other soldiers are looking for a mystical book to cure Busey's consumption (?) and generally allow them to take over the world. That book is being guarded by ... Trejo's family, something nobody saw fit to tell him. He looks up his mother and daughter - Michelle Rios and Alysa Rotaru - who don't much look like him.

So, while the last one had a nice clean spaghetti-Western revenge plot, here it is family-in-peril. And I just don't feel like Trejo's character should even have a family. Certainly, he shouldn't have a family secret, and if he has to, it shouldn't be about cosmic mysticism. Although I guess it answers why the devil was willing to give him a deal.

Still, we enjoyed seeing Trejo be a bad ass. Likewise Rotaru as his daughter, not taking any from anyone.

In conclusion, Mickey Rourke did not come back to play the devil.

Flat, I guess

We were pretty psyched to watch The Shape of Water (2017), but I wasn’t sure I was quite in the mood. Bear with me here - I wasn’t so much in the mood for a heavy fraught Guillermo del Toro movie. I felt more like watching something more quirky and whimsical, like a Wes Anderson movie. Actually, I got it.

We first meet Sally Hawkins, waking up. She seems to have a very regular schedule, putting eggs on to boil, setting a timer, getting in the bath and masturbating until the timer goes off. When she brings egg and toast to her neighbor in the next apartment, we realize that she is mute, communicating with him using sign language. Her neighbor is Richard Jenkins, an older illustrator whose little affectations and love of old musicals codes him as gay.

She leaves her apartment, which turns out to be above a movie theater, and takes the bus to her job. She works as a night cleaning lady at a government installation, along with Octavia Spencer. So Hawkins is not wealthy, and her job is not easy or glamorous, but she seems content. She has friends and a life. Then she discovers what secret the installation holds - a Gill Man.

Now, this is all set in the Fifties, during the height of the Cold War. So the guy who is running the program, Michael Shannon, gets to be a total dick to "the coloreds", "the help", and pretty much everybody in the name of America. His plan is to vivisect the monster and see if it will help with the Space Program, because... His chief scientist, Michael Stuhlbarg, is actually a Soviet double agent - who has also been ordered to kill the monster.

Meanwhile, Hawkins has been forming a bond with the Gill Man (Doug Jones, in costume), and decides to break him out.

I guess I'm being a little facetious when I call this movie whimsical. Compared to the crushing horror and despair of some of del Toro's films, it is somewhat justified. The Gill Man (they don't call him this in the movie) only commits one horrible act, and it's a misunderstanding that is quickly forgiven. The Fifties setting makes it nostalgic in a funny way, even though that decade wasn't great for the marginalized.

And that isn't glossed over - the main protagonists are a disabled woman, a black woman, a Communist, and a gay man - and a monster, of course. The antagonists are bigots. But this is far from a social message film. It's mood is mostly meditative, light at times, and above all, hopeful. It was just what I wanted.

In conclusion, afterwards I felt like watching Paul T. Anderson make a Coen Brothers movie, so I watched Inherent Vice again.

Source Spot

Source Code (2011) is a Duncan Jones action/sci-fi movie that I had confused with a few others, but once we watched it, it was great.

It starts with Jake Gyllenhaal waking up on a train, in mid-conversation with Michelle Monaghan. But he doesn't know where he is, and he isn't who he thinks he is. Monaghan is talking like she is his girlfriend and he is an architect. But he thinks he is a soldier, who was just leading a squad in Afghanistan. But when he looks at his reflection in the window, he sees a stranger.

We see him taking in his environment, getting a good look at the other people on the train, looking for answers - and then a huge explosion rips through the train, killing him and everyone else.

He wakes up in a strange science chamber, with Lt. Vera Farmiga giving him a little bit of the background: The train bombing happened earlier that day. They have a new process that lets them inject someone into the mind of one of the deceased victims. They need him to figure out who did the bombing, because he's getting ready to do much worse - a huge dirty cobalt bomb in Chicago. And she puts him back on the train.

So it's sort of a time travel story, except he can't change the past. He can only observe and hope to avert another disaster. While this is going on, he is falling in love with Monaghan, and Farmiga is finding it hard to be a dispassionate minder.

This is all done in a smart way, with Gyllenhaal both sharp and smart, but not super-humanly. He is a good soldier doing what he does best, even if it takes getting blown up over and over again. The ending maybe goes off the rails a little, but in a good satisfying way. Just turn off some of your critcal facilities and enjoy.

Welcome to the Jungle

I feel a little bad that we went and watched Sorcerer (1977), William Friedkin’s remake of The Wages of Fear, without having watched the original. The luck of the Netflix queue.

It starts with several vignettes:

• In Mexico, a man (Francisco Raban) enters another man’s hotel room and silently shoots him dead.
• In Jerusalem, a group of terrorists set off a bomb. Only one (Amidou) escapes capture.
• In Paris, a business man (Victor Manson) frantically tries to cover up a financial indiscretion.
• In New Jersey, a gang rob a church (with Mafia connections) and crash on getaway. Only Roy Scheider makes it out alive, and the mob is after him.

All these men wind up in a dumpy little town in Mexico, along with Karl John, who might be a Nazi hiding out. They all want to leave, but they don’t have enough money or any way to earn it. But there is an oilwell fire 200 miles away, and the only thing that will put it out is dynamite. Unfortunately, the dynamite has been improperly stored, and is “sweating” - the TNT has come out of the sticks and is pooling in the bottom of the crates. It is too unstable to be carried by helicopter. It will need to be driven.

So our cast will drive the explosives 200 miles over bad roads, take a big paycheck and go home. Actually, the maybe-Nazi gets the job, but Raban, the assassin, shoots him and takes his place. So this is not a happy team. But they build up two jungle buggies out of the best parts of trucks they can find, name them “Lazarus” and “Sorceror” and head out.

I was surprised by how long it took to get them on the road, but once they do it becomes one of the most tense and intense movies imaginable. They suffer bad roads, bandits, rotten rope bridges, and everything the jungle can throw at them. Schneider, who is kind of the protagonist, even starts to hallucinate - not a good thing, when you are driving a truck full of explosives.

This is a gritty, sweaty, rainy, tooth-gritting, nailbiter of a movie. I’m not sure if I exactly enjoyed it so much as lived through it. It is a bit slow to set the scene, showing us how these men got to Mexico. Once they get there, it has a touch of Treasure of the Sierra Madre. In the jungle, it gets crazy.

I’ve got Wages of Fear in my queue now. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Put Me In Coach

The Golden Coach (1954) is our latest Jean Renoir movie, the first to star Anna Magnani. Lovely movie with a magnetic leading lady.

It takes place in the 16th century in a dusty colonial capital town in South America. The Viceroy (Duncan Lamont) has ordered a magnificent golden coach from Europe. He plans to pay out of government funds, because he will use it in matters of state. His lover, Gisella Mathews, rather thinks he may give her the coach.

On the same boat (even sleeping in the coach), a troupe of commedia dell'arte players, with Anna Magnani as their Columbina. Soon, the Viceroy is enchanted by Magnani, giving her a rich necklace. This causes her lover to up and  join the army, to fight the peasant insurgency. She is also wooed by a bullfighter, the town’s hero.

The Viceroy is not quite infatuated, but he does give her the golden coach. This happens late in the movie, so the synopsis, “Viceroy causes scandal by giving golden coach to actress,” is somewhat misleading. Or at least, it leaves a lot out.

The best part for me was the commedia. I am a lover of moldy old comedy styles, and the odd, stylized world of commedia dell’arte is one of my favorites. Renoir has made a point of letting his movie mirror a commedia play, with Magnani playing the same role in the troupe and the framing, “real” world. When she is cast out by the ruling elders, she tells them that there is a tradition that when the comedians throw out Columbina, they bow to her. At this, the elders all bow.

Magnani is an interesting choice for the diva. She is rather plain, making men love her by acting. Her “affair” with the Viceroy seems mainly based on him feeling comfortable with her, and her making him laugh. The resolution to the whole mess is clever and satisfying. A fun movie.

Will the Circle Be Unbroken?

We watched Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) because we had so much fun with the first movie. Maybe we should have known better.

It starts with Eggsy (Taron Egerton) getting attacked by a baddy from the first movie (?). There's a great car chase through London, and he "wins", but the bad guy's cybernetic arm hacks into the Kingsmen's system through Eggsy's car. The information is passed to druglord Poppy Adams (Julianne Moore), who lives in a 50s-diner-themed compound in Cambodia. Using the information, she launches a missle attack, destroying all Kingsmen, except Eggsy and techie Merlin (Mark Strong).

They open the last-chance all-hope-lost safe, and find a bottle of whiskey inside. OK, that makes sense. But then they realize that this is Kentucky whiskey made by the Statesmen distillery - they must be the American counterparts to the Kingsmen. So it's off to America.

The Statesmen are run by Jeff Bridges, codename Champagne, Channning Tatum: Tequila, Pedro Pascal: Whiskey, and Halle Berry, Ginger Ale. They also discover that Colin Firth, Galahad from the last movie, was not revived by Statesmen technology, but with total amnesia. They soon find out what the Golden Fang, er Circle's plan is: Moore has poisoned the world's supply of illicit drugs, and will only release the antidote in exchange for total decriminalization, worldwide. A cute twist is that several government officials, and Channing Tatum (a bit of a bad boy in the agency) start showing symptoms of the toxin.

Throughout this, Eggsy is still dating Hanna Alstrom, the Swedish princess he saved and sexed at the end of the last movie. I liked this a lot, because it was kind of a throw-away - the girl James Bond beds at the end of the mission, who you never see again. He not only doesn't love her and leave her, he meets her formidable royal parents, and makes a very good impression.

It all leads up to a showdown at the Golden Circle compound. Moore has been keeping Elton John a captive there, forcing him to play for her amusement - lots of "Crocodile Rock". Funny, after Spice World, this is the second movie in a row with an Elton John cameo.

Although it was a lot of fun, I think this sequel was missing something. Maybe it was just surprise - the original had a lot of flaws, it's just that you didn't care because it was all so new. This one, the same muddled plot, odd pacing, fuzzy characterization are there, along with the amazing action and oddball premises, but now we are expecting more. And I don't think we get it. We do get some styling western wear, though.

So what's the sequel? EU spies? Russian? I'm guessing Chinese, so there can be some kung fu action (and that big foreign box office).

The Spice Must Flow

Spice World (1998) hit the top of the queue more or less by accident, and I was somewhat appalled when it arrived at our door. But it turns out to be a fairly awesome movie.

It features the five Spice Girls (remember them? Can you name them? Real names and matching nicknames? I can't) driving around London in their tour bus, driven by Meat Loaf. Outside, it's just a bus. Inside, it's the size of a loft apartment, with beds for each of them. They are being overworked by the mysterious Chief (Roger Moore), who only talks to them on the phone (while petting a white Persian) in cryptic koans. They long for the simpler days before the stress of their upcoming concert at Albert Hall. Also, their (non-famous) friend Naoko Mori is having a baby and they want to support her (Girl Power!) but keep getting pulled into rehearsals, photo shoots and performances.

So, basically, female Hard Day's Night in color. Not as good, to be sure, but pretty good. It's full of silliness and fun, like when they run into Elton John, hugs and kisses, and then as they leave, he just looks at the camera and rolls his eyes. Or when they go into a bar and the bartender is Elvis Costello. They say, "Fame is so fickle," look right at him and order a double. He's great in this role, polite and utterly unselfconscious.

There are fewer songs than I expected - wait, I just checked and there are about a dozen. But I feel like only 3-4 get a full treatment. I don't really know any of their stuff, since I wasn't a young girl in the nineties, but I found most of it enjoyable if forgettable. I really liked their garage-y, Runaways-like "Leader of the Gang" - too bad it was penned by noted sex-offender Gary Glitter. My second favorite was Millie Smalls' "My Boy Lollipop." Respect the classics.

I left out several subplots: The sleazy tabloid publisher (Barry Humphries) who is trying to get pictures. The pretentious documentary film-maker (Alan Cummings) who never manages to get near them. George Wendt and Mark McKinney endlessly pitching more and more absurd ideas for a Spice Girls movie. This is all fun, but kind of feels like filler. Wanted more of the Girls.

What Did Robinson Crusoe do with Friday Saturday Night?

Did you know that wildman filmmaker Luis Bunuel made a family-friendly Robinson Crusoe (1954) in Mexico? True story.

It stars Dan O'Herlihy as Crusoe. We see him shipwrecked (on a slaver), then marooned on his island. We see him swim out to get as many tools and supplies as possible, then slowly build his home along with the ship's cat, a dog and a local parrot. When the dog dies after many years, he begins to go mad from the loneliness. More years pass, and he rescues a native from cannibals, who only visit his island for feasts. Here, he goes from loneliness, to mad fear of strangers, to savior of Friday (Jaime Fernandez).

The movie follows the book fairly well, which emphasizes the long time scale (marooned over 20 years) and loneliness, as well as a little bit of the technology of survival. Also faithful to the book is the racism and condescension towards the savages. This is more than a bit disturbing, and made it impossible for my wife to enjoy the movie. I saw it differently, as a document of the time - but I'm not sure if the time in question is the 1700s or the 1950s.

There are a few crazy dream sequences, but very little of the Bunuel you might know from his more famous works. This is almost Disney in style and flavor, if a little more literary. But not really much of a classic.