Completely Unknowable

I'm not a Bob Dylan obsessive - sure, I've listened to most of his albums (but not all), read a few biographies (including his autobiography, Vol. 1), and seen him in concert (once, 2013). And I've loved his various movies: I'm Not There, Masked and Anonymous, and finally, A Complete Unknown (2024).

The movie starts with Bob Dylan (Timothee Chalamet) hitchhiking into New York, arriving with guitar, a harmonica and a notebook full of songs. He has no money, no place to stay, but he has a newspaper clipping about Woody Guthrie. In a Greenwich Village bar, soe blowhard who's probably Dave van Ronk, tells him Woodie is in a hospitsl in New Jersey.

So Bob heads out there, arriving late, and finding Peter Seeger (Ed Norton) visiting with Woodie (Scoot McNeary). Woodie is almost paralysed, but asks Bobo to sing something, so he lays Song to Woodie on him. Next thing we know, Seeger has invited him out to his log cabin to stay the night.

As Bob starts playing around Greenwich Village, Seeger starts helping him out, introducing him to people, getting him stage time, etc. He sees Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), and she sees him. Manager Albert Grossman (Dan Fogler) sees him too, and signs him.

He also runs into serious, protest-oriented Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), who is a composite character, mostly based on Suze Rotolo. They are soon living together. But when she goes away for a trip, Bob starts an affair with Joan Baez.

As Dylan gets more famous, he also gets more frustrated. He doesn't like playing for bigshots on command, and he refuses to play his popular material with Baez at a big show. It all ends up with him getting together an electric band and playing loud rock and roll at the Newport Folk Festival. 

This movie looks like a very true-to-life picture of the 1960s New York folk scene. There's one shot where Dylan walks out of a folk club onto a street lined with folk clubs. There are all kinds of little miniature portraits of the scenesters, like the Dave van Ronk, Theodore Bikel, or Bob Neuwirth. It also takes wild liberties with the actual facts of who met who when and where. The big Newport scene includes events from Dylan's England tour, and puts Johnny Cash into the middle of the decision to go electric. There's some fun stuff where Albert Grossman gets in a fist fight with John Hammond, who's trying to turn down the volume. Seeing two middle-aged men rolling around backstage is a hoot (by the way, I love Dan Fogler a little more every time I see him). 

The music is also pretty amazing. Chalamet sings and plays for himself, filmed live. His version of I Was Young When I Left Home was eye opening. Barbaro's Baez was very strong, considering what a voice Baez had. Barbaro might have even toned the vibrato down a little bit to make it sound a little smoother. 

But I have to say, the big problem with the movie is the emptiness in the center. Dylan, aside from his music and poetry, is a bit unknowable. His dialog in the movie makes him seem like a bit of an inarticulate asshole - Baez calls him an asshole in one scene. And yet the movie doesn't seem to be saying, here's a jerk who makes great music. It's more like, what a misunderstood genius this guy is. 

It also focuses on him so intently that we don't really get much on anyone else, and they are maybe more interesting than this version of Bob. Seeger gets some development: we see him as an open, generous, kind and optimistic man. His failing is that he sees Dylan as a means to an end - to bring folk music and world peace to the people. 

I'm Not There took the approach of totally fictionalizing Bob's life, using different actors, different personas. I think that was a good decision. Another approach might have been to show Dylan through the eyes of the people around him. That gets you a more conventional biopic, but helps preserve the mystery of Dylan.

One thing the movie got right was how much of a cute dandy Dylan was. Not sure that Chalamet nailed the voice, but he looked great. So did the whole movie. I guess Mangold knows how to do that.

Feeling No Pain

Novocaine (2025): another type of Nobody scenario. Or maybe a superhero movie? 

Jack Quaid is Nathan Caine, a mild-mannered bank manager who has a genetic condition: he can't feel pain. As a result, he is rather timid and cautious. For example, he can't eat solid food. If he chews, he might accidentally bite his tongue off. His only friend is someone he met online, who he plays WoW (I guess) with.

There's a girl at the bank that he is rather taken with, Amber Midthunder. One day she bumps into him, pouring coffee all over his hands. He brushes it off, although he's badly burned, because he didn't feel a thing. She invites him to lunch, and he at first refuses, but his online friend has encouraged him to get out there, so he accepts. At a diner, he tells her about his condition - she calls him a superhero. He responds by telling her about all the times he hurt himself without realizing it. But she does convince him to try a piece of cherry pie, which is a transformative experience.

The next day, the bank is robbed. The head manager won't tell them the combination to the main safe, so they shoot him. Next in line is Quaid. When they threaten Midthunder, he gives up the combination. They leave kn two cars as the police arrive, taking Midthunder in one as a hostage. 

When he realizes that the police aren't prioritizing the hostage, he steals a police car and takes off after them. He's just an ordinary guy, but he can't feel pain, which gives him an upper hand.

This is a pretty good premise, leading to some fun action. For ex (it's in the trailer, so no spoiler), when the gun goes into a fryer, Quaid just pulls it out, burns be damned. He gets shot, and pulls the bullet out without a quiver. And so on. But it also seems like he has Wolverine-level recuperative powers. Even without the pain, a bullet hole or a serious burn would make it hard to use that body part, wouldn't it? Anyway, as the movie goes on, he does get weaker, and has to resort to epinephrine and a defibrulator to keep going (shades of Crank!). 

However, the leads are good - Amber Midthunder (Prey) was particularly fun and empathic. It wasn't the greatest action movie, but it had a good hook, and, I guess, you could dance to it. 

Amateur Hour

The Amateur (2025) is sort of another Nobody, except sort of in reverse. Rami Malek is a spy, but a nerdy codebreaker and IT security type with no fighting skills - until he's pushed too far.

We meet Malek and his wife Rachel Brosnahan just as she's leaving for a conference in London. He would go too, but he's sort of scared of flying. That's why his wife gave him a broken down Cessna to fix, which will conquer his fear (?). He heads to work at Langley, where he spends a little time bantering online with the mysterious Inquiline. Inqy sends him some clues that show his boss is disguising drone attacks as suicide bombings.

Then the news comes. There was an attack on the conference, and Malek's wife was taken hostage and killed. Malek demands that his bosses get him some field training and let him go after them. He has used his online skills to identify the killers. When they refuse to let him go, he blackmails them with the suicide bomber false flags. So they send him to train with Laurence Fishburne.

This training mainly serves to show that Malek can't hit the broad side of a barmaid at point blank range. Meanwhile, his bosses are trying to track down the incriminating files. When they fail, they notice thart Malek has taken off to Europe already. 

So now he has to kill three skilled terrorists without being able to fight or shoot a gun. The takedowns are pretty epic, although there aren't that many of them. Of course, when Fishburne shows up to help, as well as Inquiline, plus Jon Bernthal, a cool superspy that Malek did some IT work for, we get a few more fighters on the board. 

I'll spoil the last one - when Malek finds the final boss on a yacht in the Baltic sea, he jiggers the navigation to take them into Finnish waters and lets Interpol and EU immigration handle it.

I found this fun but kind of slight. There weren't a lot of fights, or hacking either. But Malek and the rest of the cast were good, which made up for a lot. My main issue is the laughably outdated idea that false-flagging drone strikes could be used as blackmail material. Now, that would be just another day. 

In conclusion, it looks like this is a remake of a 1981 Canadian movie starring John Savage. Any good?

Thunder Butts

Like a lot of geeks and weirdos, I was excited to see new MCU movie Thunderbolts* (2025). Not enough to see it at the theater of course, but enough to get jazzed when it showed up at the library.

It starts with Florence Pugh as the new Red Widow attacking a lab in a skyscraper. She kills a bunch of guards, and sort of accidentally the scientist trying to tell her that Valentina had it all wrong. Then she blows the place up. All the while, she is internal-monologing about how bored and dissatisfied with this life she is. 

Valentina is Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, a government official who has been doing off the books research into creating new Avengers. Now she is being impeached by congress, including newly elected representative, Sebastian Stan, Bucky Barnes. To cover her tracks, she has her agents, like Pugh, going around blowing up all her clandestine labs, and killing all participants. 

On one of these missions, Pugh meets up with: 

• U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), a cutrate Captain America (from Falcon and Winter Soldier)
• Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), a skilled fighter (from Black Widow)
• Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), who can phased in and out of her physical form (from Ant-Man and the Wasp)
• Bob (Lewis Pullman), apparently an amnesiac, bipolar mental patient in hospital gown

They figure out that Louis-Dreyfus has sent them all to kill each other off, then be incinerated. Somehow, Bob manages to get them all out (except Kuruylenko, who John-Kamen kills right away). They are picked up in the desert by Red Guardian, David Harbour, to Pugh's dismay. He runs a lino service now, so he has plenty of room.

That's the setup, pretty much. Harbour and Pugh reminisce about her Pee Wee soccer team, the Thunderbolts, who never won a game. That became the name of this team, because they are a bunch of losers and second-raters. 

Meanwhile, Stan is trying to turn Valentina's secretary, Geraldine Viswanathan, to his side, using a little humanitarian appeal, a little sex appeal. He tracks down the Thunderbolts, and joins them.

But what about Bob?

I enjoyed this, although (or because) it's pretty silly. It was clearly made with (the) Suicide Squad in mind. I'm a little annoyed with the Valentina role, because I remember her as the Contessa from the 1970s Steranko's run of Nick Fury - a sexy super-agent. But why not? If you want an amoral sleazy wheeler-dealer, she fits pretty well. Her dialog is pretty fun, all political BS and buzzwords. At least, I assume this was supposed to be satirical - a lot of the movie is like that. Is it written tongue-in-cheek or sincerely?

I don't mind the type of MCU movies that are cynical and silly. Some of them I like a lot. I would like them to try a different tone sometime. Any different tone. 

Land of the Lost

We didn't need to see any reviews to know that In the Lost Lands (2025). It was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson and stars his muse and wife Mila Jovovich, with Dave Bautista along for the ride. Obvious junk, but just the kind of junk we love.

It's set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland - everything outside of the one city is the Lost Lands. That city is ruled by the Overlord and his queen, and under the control of the church. Arly Jover, the church enforcer is hanging Mila Jovovich. Jovovich is a witch named Grey Alys - her powers allow her escape, with Jover in pursuit. 

Bautista is a bounty hunter (?), dressed in cowboy hat and bad-ass long coat, who is being ambushed by a gang of baddies. He dispatches them with his two-headed snake and several fire arms. He meets with the queen (Amara Okereke) and her protector (Simon Lööf), and over his objections, sleeps with her.

The queen finds Jovovich and asks her to go on a mission - find a shapeshifting werewolf, and bring his power to her. Jovovich must accepts all commissions, and so she accepts this. She will need a guide in the Lost Lands, so she hunts up Bautista.

I'll leave off describing the plot. Of course, they go adventuring through various locales such as the Trading Post, the Pit of Despair, Evil River, umm... Nasty Ravine? There are ruins aplenty, and steampunk contraptions like a schoolbus turned into an aerial tram. I've seen comments that it's confusing, but I didn't find it to be - maybe I was missing something. Anyway, it's based on a George R.R. Martin story, although it a a touch of the Stephen King Gunslinger to it. I liked to steampunk Western fantasy feel.

I also like Mila Jovovich. She looks lovelier than ever, with a line of tattoos across her face. I bought her as an ageless witch. Bautista looks fine, but is a little po-faced and serious. I think he does better in a comic role. Still, he looks reliably bad ass, and does have a two-headed snake.

I was expecting something more knowingly dumb, like Borderlands. Instead, it was done totally straight - any humor was unintentional. It was also darker in lighting and grimier in design. But it was just as much fun. Maybe a little less, because it didn't have the same budget. Maybe a little more, because of the auteur P.W.S. Anderson.

K and the Dagger

More Asian movies while Ms. K is working. First, Detective K: Secret of the Lost Island (2015), the second of the Detective K series. 

It starts with Detective K exiled on an island - if he leaves, he may be executed. But an old buddy tries to convince him to help out in a counterfeit silver crisis. A lot of the silver being imported from Japan turns out to be bogus. But K refuses.

There is also a young girl who turns up, begging K to help find her sister who has gone missing. Again, K won't help, so she moves in and starts cooking and cleaning for him. Her name means "Do everything". 

He is finally convinces to sneak off the island, and bumos into a beautiful geisha. His comment: "Squishy." He later accepts a slap as the penalty for copping a feel. This is funny, until you realize that young girls are being trafficked for sex, and rejects are being used to work the poisonous process of fake silver. Sexual assault not so funny now, hm?

I enjoyed this, but the jokes didn't always sit well with some of the horrors being depicted.

Nine-Ring Golden Dagger (2024) is not funny at all. It starts in the Song dynasty with a battle, where the General of the Song forces takes on all comers with his nine-ring golden dagger - actually a glaive - like a heavy sword on a pole. He kills many but is finally brought down. The weapon goes to the Liao.

Years later, his daughter vows to retrieve this "nation-stabilizing" weapon. Her sister fights her (big wirework number), and finally agrees to assist her. 

At an inn on the border, we meet the owner, a Song veteran living in a foreign land. His patrons always want to fight him because he's unbeatable. He fights then sings a song about just trying to entertain his customers as an exile in a foreign land. Of course, the sisters will find him, fight him, and then join with him to retrieve the weapon.

This is full of fights, mostly well staged if not astounding. There is one fight, however, that is staged more as a dance - just the two warriors in the empty inn, with a spotlight, trading attacks and parries in a stylized choreographed way. This was a nice treat, and I would have liked to see more interesting treatments. 

This is director Feng Xiaojun's first film. He can definitely film action - his battle scenes are particularly good. There's a little extra creativity there as well. I'd like to see more. 

Only a Dream

I got Laura (1944) out of the library thinking it was The Uninvited. That's the one with Stella By Starlight, this is the one with the theme Laura.

It stars Dana Andrews as the detective investigating the death of young socialite Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney). He interviews Clifton Webb (Mr. Belvedere) in his bath. Webb is a columnist, a wit, a stylemaker and a prickly, effete eccentric - Webb at his Webbyest. He proceeds to tell Laura's story in flashback. She came to him as an aspiring ad woman, and he took her under his wing. He dressed her, styled her and introduced him to influential people. He became her constant companion. 

But Vincent Price came on the scene and wooed her - even though he was being kept by Laura's aunt. They were to be married until she was found in the doorway of her apartment, with her face shotgunned off. 

The more Andrews hears about Laura, the more intrigued he becomes, until he finds himself in her apartment, drinking and staring at a portrait of her. He is falling in love with a ghost. 

The twist is a great one - and I won't spoil it. You either know it or ought to get to enjoy it. The mystery is OK, maybe a little obvious. But the real attraction is Tierney, Webb and Price giving you the force of their personality. Andrews is a little less mesmerizing - after all, he's supposed to just an everyman in with this batch of crazies. Directed by Otto Preminger, you can bet it will be full of eccentrics. Of course, there is the problem of Laura having bad taste in her men. Andrews calls them a remarkable collection of dopes

We enjoyed it and plan to watch The Uninvited soon. 

Starvation Vacation

We were getting a jump on Spooky Season, which runs from September to Halloween in our house. SInce it was the end of August, I picked a horror comedy: Get Away (2024). It starred Nick Frost, but we were also interesting in seeing Aisling Bea, his co-star.

Frost and Bea, with their two teen children, are on vacation, heading to an isolated island in Sweden. In the 1700s, it was quarantined for an epidemic, and the British maintained the quarantine even after the disease had run its course, and the islanders resorted to cannibalism. Our vacationers are hoping to see the ceremony the islanders hold every year to commemorate this event.

At the ferry, they try to get something to eat at a diner, and meet only hostility. When they mention they are going to the island, everyone tells them to stay away. But they have ferry tickets and a rented house, so off they go. 

At the island, they meet oddly dressed villagers who also warn them to leave. But Eero Milinof, their landlord, comes to tell them not to worry about them, he'll bring them around. But, although he's friendly enough, he's a bit creepy too.

I guess you can see where this is going (even before human sacrifice is brought up), but it might surprise you. But there is definitely a blood bath for the third act.

It's a good premise and pretty well delivered. Frost and Bea are good as the clueless and entitled tourists, and Sebastian Croft and Maisey Ayres make good annoying teenagers. Croft is sullen and withdrawn, and also vegetarian. Ayres is a little too into Milinof's creepy stares. And this all plays into the third act twist. 

Two complaints, though. One, the premise was decently handled, but not great. There was a touch of the old improv problem - some of the lines and scenes seemed to be made up on the spot, or in early rehearsals, and kept in, due to lack of a better idea, maybe. Or maybe they liked what they came up with. Frost and Bea are that good. 

Two, they didn't make anything of the starvation/cannibalism angle. When they can't get a decent meal at the diner, then discover the house they rented doesn't have the groceries they were expecting, I was waiting for them to get hungry. Well, maybe that's on me. 

Rom-Com Warriors

Once more, it's time for Ms. Spenser needs to work, and wants a movie that won't distract her too much: An Empress and the Warriors (2008).

Nominally starring Donnie Yen, the movie is set in the Warring States period of Chinese history. The Yan clan loses it's leader in battle, and asks Donnie Yen to take over. One of the ruler's nephews wants the position, but Donnie Yen doesn't try to take it - he lies and says that the ruler wanted his daughter, Kelly Chen, to take her place. Although the army is uneasy with a woman leader, she is well liked. She pledges to train to be a soldier, with Yen as her trainer. Although he is very correct, he is also plainly in love with her.

The training goes well, but some weird warriors attack with poison blowgun darts, and manage to wound her. She rides deep into the forest and is rescued by a strange hermit doctor. The doctor, Leon Lai, lives in a kind of Ewok treehouse and is building a hot air balloon. There's a sort of silly scene where she refuses to let him change her dressing because he would see her naked back. This causes unbearable itching, so she finally, humiliatingly, relents. Later, he gives her a backscratcher that he calls "No need for a good man". 

But when she is well, she has to return to her duties. She only wishes for peace now, but the Zhao kingdom has attacked, and she must lead.

Although there are some battle scenes, this is almost more of a rom-com than military movie. There are a few jokes, like "There's no fighting in the Hall of Swords!" But the humor is mostly from slightly silly situations. Fortunately for everyone, Donnie Yen accepts Chen's love for Lai, and doesn't try to fight for her himself. That wouldn't be funny.