Nobody Else

Love Hurts (2025) is basically Nobody with Ke Huy Quan in place of Bob Odenkirk. But we like both of those things, so we watched it.

Quan is a humble, lovable, nerdy real estate agent. He loves his job and he's good at it (although someone keeps putting mustaches on his picture on the For Sale signs). On Valentine's Day, everyone is decorating the office, except Quan's admin, Lio Tipton, a depressed, nihlisitic young woman. Quan gives her some wise words about loving making homes for people, and she mentions someone is waiting in his office.

That someone is knife assassin and poet Mustafa Shakir. Quan has been getting notes from someone who might have been his ex - someone who should be dead. And Shakir wants to know where she is, for his boss, Daniel Wu, Quan's brother. A fight ensues. Turns out Quan isn't just a real estate agent - he can really fight.

To cut to the chase, his boss wants to find Quan's ex, Ariana DeBose, because he thinks she stole from him. Quan was supposed to have killed her but he let her go. 

After he beats up Shakir, he slips out of the office, letting Tipton find a dead (unconscious) poet there. You see, Shakir keeps a notebook of his deep thoughts, anf Tipton falls for him deeply. Quan fights another couple of bumbling assassins, and also gets a Realtor of the Year award from his boss, Sean Astin. Quan is deeply touched, and sincerely grateful for Astin's mentorship. But also needs to get out fast.

He finds DeBose working in a bar (like Michelle Yeoh!). She wants to stop hiding, take on Wu, and especially, shake Quan out of his civilian complacency, and get back the wild animal she knows is inside him. 

That's the setup, how's the execution? In some flashbacks, we see gangsta Quan, with a skinny mustache like some Jo Shishido crime boss. It's not entirely convincing. His fighting is clearly inspired by Jackie Chan - his goofy look, the tricks and twists - and it is pretty convincing. His romance with DeBose, again, not so much. But his love for the square life of a real estate agent is 100%. He cherishes his award, and even tries to break off a fight to get a couple signed to buy the house he's fighting in. His love for Astin, and Astin's love and pride for him, is goofy but sincere.

And that's one problem with the movie. We buy the realtor, but not the assassin. We love the fight scenes, but does Quan? I wonder if this will get a sequel, and how they might handle it.

We also recognize that this movie, like Section 31, is basically stupid, derivative, and crass. But we enjoyed the heck out of it. A couple of charismatic actors, some action, some romance, a few jokes and we're satisfied. 

Sectioned Out

We are big Star Trek fans, but pretty much only TOS. So I had heard that Michelle Yeoh was in one of the new series, but didn't pay much attention. But when I saw Star Trek: Section 31 (2025) at the library, I figured, Michelle Yeoh, Star Trek, how bad could it be? Actually, I already knew the concensus was "pretty bad." But we watched it anyway, and eagerly. 

It starts on a moisture farm on a dusty planet in the Mirror Dimension. A young version of Michelle Yeoh, Phillipa Georgiu, comes home to her family, and tells them about the Imperial selection process she has been through. Children from all over the galaxy, competing and fighting, until only one was left. She had made a secret partnership with another contestant and it was down to the two of them. The last challenge: kill your family, which she does, and is crowned Emperor.

Back in the home dimension, a team from Section 31 is looking for Yeoh. She has left her dimesion and is hiding out, running a fancy bar outside Federation space. The team is run by Omari Hardwicke, a remnant of the Eugenics Wars. The team also includes:

• Humberly Gonzalez, an irresistibly sexy Deltan
• Sam Richardson, a Chameloid shapeshifter
• Robert Kazinsky, a meathead in an exoskeleton
• Sven Ruygrok, a microscopic intelligence piloting a robot Vulcan body
• Kacey Rohl, a tight-assed Star Fleet rep

These guys are all pretty silly. The meathead (metal head?) is really stupid, but strong. The microscopic guy's Vulcan body acts horny and goofy all the time. The straitlaced Star Fleet officer? Do you remember Annie in Community? Seemingly straight but secretly crazy? Yeoh diagnoses Rohl as being a "chaos goblin", which leads to a not very convincing change in style for her. 

Anyway, the team needs to get this destructive McGuffin, and Yeoh agrees. Her technique involves dimensionally phasing it so no one but her can pick it up - with consequences similar to the scene in Valerian. So her plan goes wrong, "mysterious" stranger (yes, we guessed who, too) takes McGuffin, and so on.

This was a dumb, not very good movie. In fact, the screenwriters kept admitting it - "So tacky - just what you're known for." Also, they are at pains to remind you that Yeoh was a genocidal tyrant, wiping out whole planets for power. And she didn't really seem to regret it. Just to spoil the ending, she solves the problem of the McGuffin by using it to sterilize the Mirror Dimension. But because the movie was so clearly dumb, because so much of it was just silly, and because it's Michelle Yeoh, we enjoyed it. A lot, actually - it was perfect for Big Dumb Friday, when we turn off our brains. 

But I wish it had been a little more Star-Treky. There were transporters and tricorders, sure, but none of the traditional sound effects. At least, they did actually fly in a garbage scow.

Going Platinum

I've sort of worshipped Jean Harlow ever since college film society. Partly for her beauty and charm, partly for her sad end, partly for her distain for undergarments. But I hadn't seen Platinum Blonde (1931) until now. 

It stars Robert Willians as Stew Smith, newspaper reporter extraordinaire. We meet hiding from his editor, playing a kid's game with his work pal, Loretta Young. His editor wants him to look into the story that the scapegrace son of the wealthy Schuyler family is in a breach of promise situation with a chorus girl. His competition, sleazy Walter Catlett, gets there first but is bought off. He fast talks his way in and refuses to be bought off, so daughter Harlow tries to vamp him. He plays along and then calls the story in, with them watching. He gets tossed out, but got his story.

He returns, and manages to see Harlow, with the compromising letters that he stole from the chorus girl. She offers to pay, but he refuses. The story was news, but the letters are blackmail. Soon they are bantering with each other, and Harlow says something might be made of this guy.

On one visit to the Schuyler manse, he is confronted by a headline on the competitor's paper - he and Harlow have eloped. The rich family is aghast, and his newspaper friends start razzing him about being a kept man, a bird in a gilded cage. He insists that she will be moving to his flat and living on his salary - but winds up living with her in the west wing of the mansion. Harlow hires him a valet, and even puts a canary in his room. In a gilded cage.

All through this, he keeps up with his enemy Catlett and friend Young. A wild party of his friends in the mansion causes a rift between him and Harlow, so he moves out and starts working on his play - with the help of Young. It's only in the last few minutes that he -- SPOILER -- figures out that Young is in love with him, and he loves her. 

Harlow is wonderful in this, as usual - luminous, sexy, appealing. She could be frosty, but warm and human when approached honestly. Sadly, once Williams moves in,  she becomes sort of a stereotyped bossy rich girl. I would have liked to see her stay human until the end. There's a hint that she has important men buzzing around her - she won't stay single long. So I guess there's that.

Williams is interesting. He's kind of similar to Lee Tracy's character in Bombshell, a fast talking, sure of himself guy with solid, if somewhat skewed, morals. Also, not exactly a looker. Director Frank Capra gives Williams a lot of chatter. He talks about anything and everything when he's not doing serious reporting. He even befriends the butler, Smythe (Halliwell Hobbes), who tells him about "puttering". Sadly, Williams died of complications of appendicitis shortly after this film came out.

I don't have much to say about Loretta Young, who was 19 when this was made, and very cute. Her role of silent infatuation isn't very strong, but she does it well. In fact, this movie really didn't do justice to either female lead. But it looked like Williams had a great time, and Harlow looked amazing, and that's good enough for me.

Hi-Yah!

Readers who have been reading know that when Ms. Spenser is busy, she requests that I watch something she isn't too interested in, so she can tune out and work, tune in for breaks. We find Asian action fantasies to be perfect for this. Ms. Spenser has been busy a lot recently. 

Immortal Demon Slayer (2017) is the old Monkey King story. Eddie Peng plays Wu Kong, who shows up in Heaven to eat a peach and generally make trouble. It is the end of the epoch and the new Immortals are being chosen. It turns out that Peng is trying to destroy the Gizmo of Destiny that lets the gods contol the earthly realm - Wu Kong doesn't like being controlled. 

He meets and fights with Shawn Yue, who is in a romance with immortal waitress Ni Ni. At some point they are all cast out of Heaven to live mortal lives on Earth, which is in basd shape, due to the arrogance of the gods. 

I liked this a lot, for the hoary old story, but also for the gorgeous art direction. 

Detective K: Secret of Virtuous Widow (2011) is the first in a series of Korean comedy/mysteries, clearly based on the Detective Dee movies. Except, this detective, Kim Myung-Min, is sort of goofy. We first meet him flying to the rescue in one of those kung fu leaps - but he lands in a heap on everyone's head. "Got to work on my landings." The guy he rescues is a dog napper who only steals dogs to save them from the pot (and for money). 

The mix of goofiness and period thriller was a little bumpy - maybe it works better for a Korean audience. But I am definitely planning to watch a couple more.

Finaly, Knight of Shadows: Between Yin and Yang (2019), a later period Jackie Chan movie. It starts with Jackie telling a thrilling story about a demon hunter, who lets good demons fight for him and entraps the bad demons with his Yin Yang brush. He is telling this to a group of children, trying to get them to buy his book. 

The police are looking for a jewel thief, but are pretty corrupt or incompetent. The incompetent is Austin Lin, a junior officer assigned to find the guy scaring kids with stories of demons. Of course Jackie is not just a story teller, but actually a demon hunter. He has a few cartoon demons who work for him. Since one of them is a little fart monster, you know this movie is for kids. There is also a story about a spirit orb, and a human who was a demon in love with a demon who could become human, or maybe the other way around. 

It's fun and silly. Jackie doesn't do much in the way of fighting (not any?), but is as charming as always. There's a cute scene where he gets his body cut in half, so his feet are runnng around while his head and torso try to connect up. The goofy CGI demons worked pretty well too. 

All in all, a few good days of movies. I treat these as sort of disposable and forgettable, which is sort of too bad. I want to watch more. Should I subscribe to Hi-Yah, the martial arts movie streaming service?

Michael Fassbender is Michael Caine in Smiley's People

Ms. Spenser likes le-Carre-style spy thrillers, and I like Steven Soderbergh, so I picked up Black Bag (2025). It was very much that, on several levels. 

It stars Michael Fassbender as a legendary spy owrking out of London. We see him visiting a Soho club to meet a connection. He has one week to find out who stole the McGuffin. After getting his info, he tells the guy to go back to his wife and maybe stop cheating on her. He says he wishes it wasn't so easy to cheat - just tell them it's "black bag", and you can't talk about it. 

Fassbender is planning a nice dinner at home for four of his colleagues. He tells his wife, Cate Blanchett, that he is going to use the dinner to see if he can figure out if one of the guests is a traitor. he doesn't mention that Blanchett is also one of the suspects. At the dinner, he mentions that he can always tell if someone is lying. 

I'll skip the machinations fort the rest of the movie. This is not an action movie, so we mostly see discussions and meetings. Blanchett looks more and more likely as a suspect, but Fassbender isn't fooled. The movie ends with another dinner, this time, with a gun on the table. 

So I've skipped all the suppotting cast, because I didn't know any of them (except Naomie Harris, whp plays a psychologist). I. skipped almost all the plot because I don't remember it well, and probably didn't understand it at the time. At some point, I decided this was a bit of a deconstruction or parody of a spy thriller, and decided to just go with it. I don't think that is really true, but it is a stylized, heightened version. In some ways, I was reminded of Soderbrgh's Haywire, with the chill EDM score and twisty betrayals. 

But the best parts of the movie were the two leads. Fassbender wears heavy black-rimmed glasses like Michael Caine, and acted like George Smiley - mild, mannered, ans sharp as a scalpel. Blanchett was glamorous, with long blonde hair and nice frocks, but with a little less to do. The directing was fine, starting with a long tracking shot that must be a tribute to Goodfellas. I don't remember anything flashy like that in the rest of the film.

So, I had fun and Ms. Spenser kind of wants to see it again. Mission: successful.