Get to the (Stone) Chopper

Finally got to see Prey (2022), the best Predator movie yet. 

The opening title gives the time as 1718, Northwest Plains (looked kind of foresty to me, but never mind). A young Comanche woman (OK, Comanches were more southwestern, but that's not important), Amber Midthunder wants to be a hunter, although this is not really allowed. When she should be gathering medicinal plants, she is practicing tracking and throwing her stone tomahawk. Later, she joins a party hunting a mountain lion. It woumds a member of the party, and she uses her medicinal skills to help. But she notices some huge tracks that aren't mountain lion, bear, or anything else she knows.

Split from the party, she is attacked by the lion. She has a chance, but gets distracted by something she can't quite see. Guess what?

Fortunately, her brother, Dakota Beavers, kills lion earning himself the position of War Chief. But Midthunder is worried about those huge tracks. She takes her dog off to track it down. She falls into quicksand (quick mud, I guess), and narrowly escapes, using her axe with a rope tied to the handle as a hook. This leashed ace makes a cool native weapon. (Not really practical, as a stone edge is quite fragile, but still cool). 

She runs into a grizzly, but that's not her worst problem. The predator shows up (mostly invisible) and fights the bear, letting her escape. But another enemy appears: European trappers, who capture her and her dog. Boy, are they going to be surprised.

I've mentioned a few unlikely or inaccurate events or settings, but again, they don't really matter. Overall, this feels like an authentic story of am almost pre-contact tribe, fighting a monster (from outer space rather than supernatural in this case). The dynamics of the tribe and their surroundings feel real, and so do the hunting and fighting tactics (even with the leashed axe). They hunt as a team, and work together evemn when they disagree. We even have Beavers counting coup on the predator - "counting coup" is to touch an enemy without killing it, or being killed, disgracing him. In this case, it distracted the him from Midthunder. 

It was also a real Predator movie, full of lore - the semi-invisibility, non-aggression to noncombatants, parrot guns, three laser dots, etc. Even the mud bath that Midthunder takes. Her final fight with the monster is great, showing her skill and cunning. Truly a grea warrior.

My only complaint is that they didn't refer to the stone axe as a chopper. 

Damnit Barry!

You know, I didn't think The Flash (2023) was so bad. There, I said it. 

It starts with Ezra Miller as Barry Allen at a coffeeshop, trying to get his usual breakfast PBJ. He preseents as on the spectrum, upset that the usual barista hasn't made it for him already. And of course, he's late for work - classic gag, fastest man alive is always late. Then Batman (Ben Affleck) calls, with an emergency, and all of the other (better) superheroes are busy. A hospital is collapsing, and a maternity ward is falling, with eight babies, a nurse and a therapy dog in peril. This is one of the things I like about this movie - they way they comically heighten the stakes by adding the dog. And Barry's having a blood sugar crash, so he has to raid a snack machine before saving everyone.

We get a flashback of the Allen trauma, where his mother (Meribel Verdu) is kiled while his father (Ron Livingston) is out shopping. Overcome by grief, he accidentally discovers that his powers lets him go back in time. So he makes it so that his father doesn't need to go shopping - and winds up on a new timeline.

In this timeline, Barry Allen is a normal young slacker with no superpowers. Also, there's no Superman or any other superheroes, and Zod is coming to subjugate Earth. So the two Allens try to replicate the circumstances that gave Flash his powers, and it works. Except the old Flash now doesn't have his powers.

It turns out that there is one super(ish)hero: Batman. They head to Wayne Manor and find Michael Keaton, fat, drunk, and unhelpful - except to explain that meddling with time doesn't work out well. But he does let them have his Batplane.

They head to Siberia, where they believe there is a Kryptonian, and find, not Superman, but Kara-El, Supergirl (Sasha Calle). So now they have a chance. But it doesn't work out. So - back to time travel. Guess how that works out.

I guess I can see why people weren't really into this. Of course, there's Miller's history of mental and legal problems (Although Rebekah Jones of Florida feels like these have been exaggrated and/or due to transphobia.) And this movie features Miller playing two Barry Allens, one traumatized and one just a dude. Plus, it's the same old story, time travel and multiverse stuff. 

But for one, it's kind of funny. The hospital rescue is Deadpool-level silly. New-timeline Barry is a normal kid with normal roommates, like Gary, who's just crashing on their couch. There's even a joke where they are sneaking into a secret facility and one of the Allens knocks over some equipment, loudly. And when he gets his powers, the younger Allen never lets the more experienced one finish his sentences, leading to contretemps. 

OK, it's not great. But I enjoyed it - more than say, Shazam II. And in the end, Barry puts everything back the way it was. Except Batman (spoiler) is now George Clooney! No!

Distressed

I remember being pretty excited about Damsel (2024): sword-and-sorcery fantasy about a badass woman starring Millie Bobby Brown. What could go wrong?

Brown is princess of an impoverished kingdom. Her father is letting his subjects go with an armload of firewood, all that's left. But he gets an offer for Brown's hand from a rich kingdom, and he accepts, whether she likes it or not. 

When they arrive at the foreign kingdom, she actually likes it pretty well. The castle is lovely, the prince seems nice enough, the queen is kind of hostile, but mother-in-laws, what are you going to do? On the day of the wedding, they go into the hills for an ancient ritual in a cave. And at the end, the princess throws Brown into a pit. 

It was all a ruse, and she is being sacrificed to a dragon. 

She spends quite a bit of time doing a cave crawl, surviving, finding dead ends, seeing her father come to the rescue and get killed, etc. She is pretty resourceful, but hardly badass. I'm sure she gets better at all this later on in the movie, but I'll never know, because I gave up around here, maybe an hour in. 

This movie had decent production values, and a good cast: Ray Winstone was Brown's father, Angela Bassett her step-mother, the evil queen was Robin Wright, and the dragon was voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo. And I like this kind of fantasy movie. But it felt so slow. At least 20 minutes to get Brown into peril, and who knows how long to get her fighting back. The tagline is something like, "This damself doesn't need saving", but there is an actual rescue party that comes for her, and gets killed. For most of what I saw, she did need saving. 

Also, the idea of a princess that can save herself is not as groundbreaking as these guys seem to think. I think even Disney princesses have been saving themselves for a while now. 

I saw someone comment that Netflix is making Brown a star in the same way the old studio system did. That's great, I love her. But between this and the Enola Holmes movies, I'm not sure they are doing her many favors with the roles they are offering. Oh well, at least she's getting paid. 

Mahvelous!

Here we go with a movie nobody was supposed to like - but I did: The Marvels (2023).

It starts with pink Kree Zaweh Ashton and her crew finding a quantum bangle on an airless planet - but wonders where the other is. She uses the power of the bangle to open portals so that she can rob worlds of their resources. The Kree home world has been destroyed by civil war, so it needs air, water, pretty much everything.

Meanwhile, Ms. Marvel, Iman Vellani, is in her room drawing comics of her and her hero, Captain Marvel. We didn't watch this series, only an episode or two, but we know that she has to other bangle as a source of her power. Also, Monica Rambeau, Teyonah Parris, is investigating strange portal-related activity in space, using SHIELD's space station as a platform. Carol Danvers, Bire Larson, is off in space, doing Capt. Marvel stuff.

Then they all change places: Carol Danvers winds up in Ms. Marvel's bedroom, Ms. Marvel in orbit in Rambeau's space suit, and Rambeau in the Captain's ship. This is kind of a cute Freaky Friday plot. It turns out that Ashton is meddling with space-time (lot of that going around) causing these three women to become entangled, so they switch every time they use their powers at the same time. 

They even do some training to use this to their advantage in a montage during a sleepover on Larson's ship. Larson plays this Captain Marvel as super-serious and dedicated, but also a little more girly - or maybe that's just her coming through. Parris' Rambeau is very pissed off with Carol Danvers. Danvers left Earth when Rambeau was a girl and just never came back. This is resolved in the movie by her just getting over it. Of course, Vellani just plays the fangirl, coming up with team names, etc.

We get some silly stuff, like a planet where every communicsates in song. Captain Marvel is married to the Prince there (Park Seo-joon), but only for diplomatic reasons. Also, Nick Fury's Cthulu-cat, Goose, shows up all over the place, swallowing and horking up all kionds of stuff - a plot point in the climax. Samuel L. Jackson's Fury plays it light and cool as always. We also didn't see the his Secret Invasion series, but I don't think it was necessay. 

Overall I liked this. It was sort of fun and silly, not so much jokey like Gaurdians, just a little light - even with the universe falling apart (again!?!). Director Nia DaCosta makes the body swapping disorienting at first, then nice and clear. She handles the tones shifts as well, I think.

Actually, I think a lot of people liked this movie, although as a mid- or lower-tier Marvel. That's sort of how I felt - but I like Marvel movies, and grade their mid-tier above the upper tiers of a lot of genres (cf. Eternals). I guess the oversll reception puts sequels at risk, which is too bad, because the previews in the credits looked pretty cool. 

Cries and Vespers

Vesper (2022) is the kind of thing we want to watch more of. Small-scale movies with big ideas.

It stars Raffiella Chapman as Vesper, a young girl livng in a post-apocalyptic world. The apocalypse was ecological collapse, combatted with genetic engineering, which didn't help. We meet her slogging through a muddy field, gleaned turnips that the harvesters missed. As the intro tells us, the upper classes moved to Citadels, where they sell seeds to the rest of the world. But the seeds are one-time only - their seeds are infertile.

Chapman goes around with a cubic drone, about the size of a small microwave. It hovers and has a crude face (two circles and a line for eyes and a mouth). It is run by her father, who is paralyzed in bed, in their little Depression era farmhouse (seems this catastrophe hit around 1930). The house runs on biotech, including a bacteria-based generator for electricity. When it goes out (sabotage?), her father's life support starts going out, so she has to visit her uncle.

Her uncle, Eddie Marsan, is a right bastarrd. He runs a colony that exchanges the blood of his many bastards, wives, etc, to the Citadel for seeds. He also has some gruesome subhuman bioconstructs working for him. While she visits him, he tries to convince her to join his tribe, which she gets out of. But she does steal a few seeds on her way out.

On her way home, she discovers a lovely young woman, Rosy McEwan. She realizes that Rosy comes from the nearest Citadel, because she's not covered in shit. She also has no survival skills, so Chapman takes her home. McEwan wants to find the crashed flyer that carried her and her father, or call the Citadel, but it's getting dark and the only way to contact the Citadel is through her uncle.

First little spoiler: McEwan is a construct, built by the "father", a bioengineer. She tells Chapman that she cared for him, soothed him, and he cared for her. This monologue goes on for a while - we get it, you're a sexbot. But her artificial genes hold a secret that might save, maybe not the world, but some parts of it.

This is not a movie about big tech, although there are flyers and drones, and there's even a shot of a Citadel. But it's more about hardscrabble rural life with weird biotech - the bacteria generator is like a big balky steam heat boiler. There are bags of culture everywhere and most of the food is gruel with some tasty mealworms. Then McEwan shows up, dressed in white, privileged and naive - I haven't seen Poor Things, but I got a similar vibe (maybe it's just that both characters have strong eyebrows). 

I was a little let down by the ending, but Ms. Spenser set me straight on a few things I had missed or misinterpreted, so never mind I guess. I prefer a little more tech in my sci-fi, but Vesper was a biotech genius, hoping to get into a Citadel to help the world. I would like to see that movie, too.

Ghosted

Let me start with what we didn't watch: They Crawl Beneath (2022). I figured Ms. Spenser needed a good creature feature, so we tried this out. It's about a lame-o Bakersfield cop who hangs out with his asshoile alcoholic uncle - played by Michael Pare! - over Thanksgiving, while stressing about his hot ex (but not trying to be less of an asshole to her). While they are working underneath an old Mustang, there's an earthquake, which kills Pare and traps the cop and tears his leg up. And if that's not bad enough, huge nematodes (yep) are coming out of the ground, infinging people's liberties. We watched way too much of this, almost an hour, before we just gave up.

So we decided to watch Disney's Haunted Mansion (2023) - we haven't seen the original Eddie Murphy. This was a surprisingly good choice.

LaKeith Stanfeild is an astrophysicist, developing a camera to photograph dark matter. He meets and falls in love with a New Orleans ghost tour guide. After she dies in a car crash, he becomes bitter and depressed. He in now running her tours, hating it all, and refusing to discuss ghosts.

Meanwhile, widowed Rosario Dawson, and her cute, bowtie wearing son, move into a haunted mansion, planning to fix it up as a B&B. But it's too haunted for them and they run away (smart move, but...)

Soon, unorthodox priest Owen Wilson shows up a Stanfield's place. He wants to try to photograph the ghosts in the mansion with Stanfield's camera. He's reluctant until Wilson offers him money. He shows up and Dawson warns him not to step inside. He does anyway, and doesn't find any ghosts. But he is haunted when he get's home. You see, once you set foot in the mansion, the ghosts follow you everywhere. That's why Dawson is back at the mansion.

So Wilson decides to gather a Dream Team of ghostologists, including psychic Tiffany Haddish and historian Danny Devito. Of course, he doesn't tell them about what happens when you cross the threshold...

This wasn't a laugh riot or anyrthing, but it was fun and cute. The scares are mild and the special effects mostly low-tech - which was nice for such a big movie. There are a lot of nods to the Disney ride, some of which I got, most probably not. The ghosts were not quite the characters I would have expected, except for Jamie Lee Curtis, a New Orleans spiritualist trapped in her crystal ball. Even Jared Leto as Hatbox Ghost didn't make that big an impact.

But the actors playing the main characters were all charismatic and seemed to be having a lot of fun. Wilson and Devito, in particular, seemed to be just running with it. Now I'm curious about the 2003 Eddie Murphy version.

Society Girls

Ms. Spenser let me pick the movie, and I picked Polite Society (2023). Might be my last pick for a while.

It stars Priya Kansara and Ritu Arya as the Khan sisters, living in London with their parents of Pakistani origin. Arya, the older sister, wants to be an artist, but has lost confidence. But the real star is Kansara, a high school girl who wants to be a stunt woman. She has her sister filming her attempts at a spin kick, with little success. 

Kansara has two friends at school, and a bully. The first big action scene is a fight between the bully, the physically imposing Shona Babayemi. It's full of martial arts posturing and wire work. And she is defeated. Also, her guidance counselor doesn't think she should intern with famous stunt woman Eunice Huthart (who she emails daily, getting no reply). Her parents agree, she should become a doctor, or at least a receptionist.

Their mom is a bit of a social climber, and gets an invite to Nimra Bucha's fancy Eid party. At this party, Arya meets son of the house, Arkshay Khanna, a handsome eligible doctor, who is obviously being shopped for a wife. Soon, they are dating. Arya gives up art, and seems to be in love. Kansara is not having it, and with her friends, schemes to sabotage the relationship.

The hijinks are mostly fun, but a little low-key. They are pretty much high-school attempts at James Bond super-espionage. But it's been awhile since the last action scene. 

In fact, there are only two or three of those heightened action scenes in the whole movie. There is a dance scene, but it's quite short. I've heard this movie described as Bend It Like Beckham mixed with Scott Pilgrim, directed by Sammo Hung. It's more Bend It with a pinch of Scott Pilgrim. 

Of course, Bend It was a great movie, and maybe this is too. Kansara is a very appealing star, and so are her friends (and bully). Bucha has real presence as the sleek, sophisticated, evil mother-in-law to be. Reminded me a lot of Shohreh Aghdashloo, with less warmth. 

But we were set up to expect a lot more action, or at least hijinks. Ms. Spenser's analysis is that it didn't know what it wanted to be. When they got a little more crazy, it was more fun - except the ending, which was pretty crazy, and felt unearned. I'd say more, but it wouldn't be polite.

The Writers Done It

On the library shelf, Invitation to a Murder (2023) looked like just the thing. An Agatha Christie pastiche period piece, but not a Branagh spectacle - a small movie with no actors we recognized. We jumped right on it.

It starts in a 1930s London bookshop, because they know the audience will love a cozy, book-filled shop. Mischa Barton is chatting with a friend over the latest "Inspector Poirot" (he wasn't a detective). We learn here that she is the amateur detective type. When she gets home, she finds a mysterious invitation from Lord Findley, a reclusive billionaire (there were no billionaires in existence in the 30s - from these clues, we know that the writers weren't reying that hard). All will be explained if you come to his mansion on a remote island. Travel arrangements have been made.

On the train to the island, she meets the other guests, introduced by chatty Seamus Dever (who I labelled not-Cillian Murphy). There was a young doctor, Giles Mathy, canoodling with exotic Bianca A. Santos. A mysterious Asian, Grace Lynn Kung, and gruff American journalist, Chris Browning (who I labelled not-Christopher Walken). This confuses Barton, because she had a theory that there would be only five invitees, based on a clue in the seal on the invite. How right she turns out to be. Before we get off the train, I knew - they all done it! I was wrong.

They are met at the launch to the island by a valet, Alex Hyde-White. In fact, there are only three on staff, including butler James Urbaniak and maid Amy Sloan. Lord Findley has been detained by weather, but should be flying in shortly (he does not). The staff seem rather cold and not very good at their jobs. Now, I'm thinking the butler done it. Well, we'll see.

After a little faffing around, Dever is found dead, stabbed in the neck with a preposterous push dagger. He is carried inside, and when they steel themselves to search him, his body disappears. 

Barton sort of takes over the investigation, to the disgust of tough guy Browning. But she soons wins him over as he wants to investigate this situation too. They find many odd and interesting clues, both on the estate and in the backstories of the guests. I'll skip ahead a bit and let you know that Dever shows up alive and the Hyde-White gets killed. So the butler didn't do it, I guess.

The next morning, they decide to call the police. That was an option? And you didn't do it when the first murder was committed. Okay that murder didn't take. But they didn't know that.

I won't spoil the ending, except to say that the way it is discovered is ridiculous (closed circuit TV - in the 1930s!). The whole plot is preposterous, which actually isn't disqualifying. The same could be said for most of Christie's mysteries. But really.

I will say that the movie looked very nice, mostly set in a lovely wood paneled mansion. Ms. Spenser noticed the costumes, and noticed how well they fit the sets. For instance, Santos wore blue, and was always photographed in front of a blue background, like a blue leather chair. Her swain, Mathy, wore a dweeby brown cardigan (indicative of his personality). and tended to be photographed in front of earth tones. Nice touch.

Barton (who I labelled not-Amy Poehler) was a bit of a stock character, the nosy but gifted amateur detective, but I'm afraid was just a bit too annoying for us. Browning was better as the gruff, unmannered war correspondent, who hates Findley as an evil capitalist. Alex Hyde-White (not to be confused with Hyde-Pierce or Park) made a bit of an impression. Ms. Spenser recognized him as the son of Wilfrid Hyde-White, a classic British stuffy upper-class type - he played Col. Pickering in My Fair Lady. 

So it looked good, and had a nice cozy feel, but in the end was just too silly. The reason we get stuff out of the library is that they are supposed to have standards. But in the end, it was the writers who are to blame. 

Farewell to Marlowe

I picked up Farewell, My Lovely (1975) after seeing Murder, My Sweet. They are both based on the Raymond Chandler story Farewell, My Lovely - They changed the name for the Dick Powell version because they didn't want it to sound like a fluffy romance. This version stars Robert Mitchum and no one would suspect him off being in a fluffy romance.

It starts with Moose Malloy, this time played Jack O'Halloran, a big ex-pug, but no Mike Mazurki. Once again, he takes Marlowe to the place he last saw Velma, 8 years ago. Velma is still as cute as lace pants, but in this version, the place is now a colored joint, which allows for a bit of cynical racism. This is more faithful to the book, although toned donw qite a bit for 1970s audiences. By the way, I re-read the book to compare to these movies.

Here are some differences: In the book, there's a cute girl reporter who helps out. In Murder, she becomes the femme fatale's daughter, which works better, I think. The character is eliminated in Farewell, possibly because Mitchum is too old for that stuff. He's replaced by a newsie, as sort of a sidekick for Marlowe. 

In this version, Amthor is a butch madame, played by Kate Murtagh (the waitress on the cover of Supertramp's Breakfast in America). I don't know if this is an improvement. I like the oddball idea of an evil Spiritual Advisor. Actually, in the book, he turns out to be sort of irrelevant, just mixed up accidentally, Anyway, Mitchum still gets doped, and Murtagh attempts to frame him. But Sylvester Stallone (!) shoots her for knocking around one of the girls he's sweet on, Ranbeaux Smith (!).

Farewell also includes the gambling boat scene, with Anthony Zerbe as the gambling boss. This was in the book, but left out of Murder, because the studio bosses didn't want any trouble from the mobsters ran actual gambling boats. I guess that racket was washed up in the 70s.

The femme fatale in this version was played by Charlotte Rampling. She's certainly as cute as lace pants, but I see her as too refined to be the best Helen Grayle. 

Mitchum makes a tired, tough Marlowe, not as snappy as Powell. Both are great with the patter, both worthy of the title gumshoe. Murder used the framing story of a blinded Powell telling the whole story in an interrogation, which wasn't in the book or in Farewell. In Farewell, Mitchum is kept going my Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak, getting a hit in 56 straight games. 

I think I noticed a few times that the later movie copied from the earlier (Jessie Florian's excessive decolletage), but in most cases, it went back to the original book. That book is full of cute expressions, like "crazy as two waltzing mice". "liquor dies painless with me. Doesn't know what hit it", and "cute as lace pants”.