Amazing Dave

Before we get into Dave Made a Maze (2017), a little housekeeping. A few days ago, I wondered what I was going to do when Netflix stops sending out videos. It's a small thing, but I decided to link all streaming videos I watch to their JustWatch page. The way movies come on and off different services, I needed to find a stable link, and I hope this will be it.

So. We meet Dave (Nick Thune) when his girlfriend (Meera Rohit Kumbhani) is out of town. He does some painting, some carpentry, makes a little music, but nothing for very long. We get the idea: He is talented but unfocussed. When Kumbhani gets back, she finds a few boxes taped together taking up the middle of the apartment. It's Dave's fort, or maze.

She can talk to Dave through the vents and airshafts Dave has built in. He explains that he can't find his way out. He warns her not to come in because of all the boobytraps he has built. When she tries to pull it apart, we hear crashes from within and Dave screaming in terror. He asks her to get his friend Adam Busch. Adam in turn calls another friend, and they wind up with two more friends, a documentary filmmaker (James Urbaniak, looking distressingly like a young Kyle MacLachlin), his cameraman and boom operator, two Belgian tourists, and a random hobo who just came along for the laughs. 

Finally Kumbhani gets fed up and goes in - alone, she insists. Of course everyone follows her. The find that it is bigger on the inside - a multi-room cavern of cardboard. They wander around looking for Dave, and find odd wonders, like a giant head and living, flying origami birds. They also find deadly boobytraps. One woman steps on a foot switch and is decapitated by a cardboard sawblade. But instead og blood, red yard and confetti spurt from her neck. She's still dead though.

After many travails, wonders and senseless, yarny deaths, they come across Dave. They decide that to destroy the maze, they need to destroy its heart. But Dave forgot to make that part. He feels that the only way out is to finish building the maze. He's desperate - since he can never finish any of his projects, he just wants to finish this one. Even if it is killing his friends.

This is a fun and interesting movie, although I feel like you get a lot of it from just knowing the premise. It kind of struggled with the girlfriend, of course. So many of these movies are made from a man's point of view, a man who doesn't quite get a woman's point of view, who may even forget that she has a point of view. But Kumbhani gets a better role than that. She is exasperated at Dave for building the maze, but she neither a scold about it, or devoted follower. She's his friend and partner, and will help any way she can. In a lot of ways, it's more her movie than his.

The cast is made up of comics and TV actors for the most part, who do a great job. You'll be happy to know that most of them get out of the maze, but if you die in there - you don't come back.

Cheap Laughs

The Cheap Detective (1978) looks so good on paper - Peter Falk plays a 40s detective in a pastiche of Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. Madeline Kahn, Dom De Luise, Abe Vigoda, Ann-Margaret, Sid Caesar, and a million others co-star. But I forgot one detail: It was written by Neil Simon.

It starts with a murder scene - everyone in a flophouse hotel has been shot. But the murderer was after a detective. His wife calls his partner Peter Falk to let him know. She also tells the police that they were having an affair. Now Falk has to clear his name. 

Madeline Kahn shows up at his office and gives him a long list of aliases. She is looking for a particular treasure, although she's pretty canny on details. Meanwhile, a bunch of American and German Nazis are doing something, and someone needs letters of transit. And a few other plots from Bogart movies.

To be clear, all the character actors and comedians are great. They deliver the way you expect them to. Falk makes a great Bogart, surprisingly. He looks rough enough, and his tough-guy mumble isn't far off Bogart's. The only problem, and I feel that it is fatal, is Simon. Time and again, when it's time for the punchline, he reaches for the most hackneyed, obvious one. A lot of the setups are pretty stale too. Why is he so popular?

This is sort of a spiritual sequel to Murder by Death. I had the same reaction to that one.

Wild Style

We're not big fans of Henry Sellick, but we did watch his Wendell & Wild (2022). If you don't know Sellick, I'd be in the same boat. except the Blank Check podcast did a series on him. He's the stop-motion director who made Nightmare Before Christmas but producer Tim Burton got all the credit. We didn't see that, but liked Coraline, so we figured, why not?

It starts with little stop-motion animated black girl Lyric Ross enjoying a street fair with her parents. The parents own the root beer brewery that the town's prosperity revolves around. On the way home, while their car is crossing a bridge, Ross bites into a caramel apple and screams when she finds a worm. This distracts her dad, and the car goes into the river. Only Ross survives.

Then we meet Wendell and Wild, two demons played by Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele. They operate a hair plug contraption drawn by a giant tardigrade on the scalp of a giant demon, Buffalo Blezer, voiced by Ving Rhames. Peele keeps squirting the hair growth cream into his mouth because it gets him high, and when Key gets some, they see a vision of Ross.

A few years later, Ross has become a rough juvenile delinquent, tortured by grief and guilt for the death of her parents. Her indigenous family friend, Tantoo Cardinal, is taking her back to her home town for a last-chance entollment in a Catholic girl's school. It's run by an old priest (James Hong) and a nun (Angela Bassett). She meets a trio of "mean girls", who are actually kind of nice - when Ross shoves the ringleader, it coincidentally pushes her out of the way of a falling brick, so now the thinks Ross saved her life. Oh, and the brick fell because Raul (ex-Ramona), a trans boy who feels left out in this all-girls environment (the clique doesn't actually exclude him, but does dead-name him "accidentally"). 

This school isn't too bad, but the whole town has fallen apart since the root beer brewery burned down. The land has been bought by an evil corporation for a for-profit prison. 

Around about this time, Wendell and Wild decide that she is their "hell-maiden" (lore on this TBD) who can bring them to Earth so that they can build their amusement park (long story). When she does, her price is that they bring her parents back to life. Wendell tells Wild, "We don't know how to do that!" and Wild replies "But we do know how to lie". But it turns out that hallucinogenic hair cream actually can bring the dead back to life, so they are all set.

Following this? OK, it turns out that Evil Corp is run by the parents of the lead mean girl. They look like a Spiiting Image version of Joanna Lumley and a black Boris Johnson. They were the ones who burned down the brewery, and the priest knows it so they kill him.  But Wendell and Wild test the cream on him, so he comes back to life. 

There is a lot more here - this is a very plot-heavy, theme-rich movie. For example, I've left out the whole Afro-punk theme: Ross and her parents are into Fishbone, Death, X-Ray Spex, and there's a ton of it on the soundtrack. (Remember that other Black lead movie that featured X-Ray Spex?) I'd tell you about the demon hunter in the school basement modeled on older Marlon Brando - if I could figure him out. But, really, there's too much for me to really get into here. In fact, that might be what torpedoed this movie - it didn't get much attention or love, and it might have just been too dense.

But it had a really interesting look. Lyric Ross' face looks something like an African mask. Wendell and Wild look like construction paper sculptures of Key and Peele. In general, I'd say the look combines Constructivism with African Primitivism. Kind of odd inspirations for stop-motion animation - but cool. Also, the cast and characters are very diverse - most are Black, indigenous, Latin, Middle Eastern, etc. The priest seems to be Euro, but is played by Asian James Hong. I know this sounds "woke", but it's just refreshing.

In conclusion, the mean girl clique in this movie were much better that in that last one. 

Pining Away

The best Pinocchio (2022) of 2022 is clearly the stop-motion one by Guillermo del Toro - we'll never know if the Tom Hanks one is any good. We're just not watching it.

In this telling, Geppetto (Dave Bradley) is a toy maker and sculptor in Italy ca. WWI. He has a devoted, obedient son, played by Gregory Mann. When the boy is killed by Allied bombers, Geppetto goes off the rails. After years of grieving, in a drunken fit he cuts the pine tree over his son's grave and tries to carve it into a new son. It is pretty much a botch when he collapses, but a good fairy (Tilda Swinton) with four wings covered in eyes like a biblically accurate angel, brings him to life and names him Pinocchio.

By the way, this story is narrated by the somewhat grandiloquent and learned cricket, Sebastian J. Cricket (Ewan McGregor), who lived in a knothole in the pine. His home is now in Pinocchio's body. The fairy tasks him with looking after Pinocchio, which he is somewhat reluctant to do.  

This Pinocchio is not the obedient son that Geppetto once had. He's rambunctious and troublesome, smashing Geppetto's workshop out of sheer good spirits and the joy of being alive. Geppetto is horrified, and tries to lock him away, but Pinocchio follows him to church. The townsfolk are appalled by this monster, and the children bully him. Local Fascist leader Ron Perlman and his bully son, Finn Wolfhard, are the main instigators.

So when puppeteer and impresario Christoph Waltz recruits him for the show, Pinocchio is glad to go along. (It turns out the real talent and puppeteer is evil monkey Spazzatura, played by Cate Blanchett.) However, he is run over by a truck and dies - temporarily. Because he is not a real boy, he can't die, and Death lets him know he will be returned to earth every time he dies - but with a longer and longer time away each time. 

Meanwhile, Geppetto and Cricket have been searching for Pinocchio, and wind up inside a sea monster. Pinocchio can't rescue them, because he made fun of il Duce in the show, and got killed again.

There's a lot going on, visually and thematically in this movie. The stop-motion animation can be lovely and Pinocchio's character design is wacky and fun. Most everyone else is more grounded. I guess that emphasizes the more outrageous designs (see Spazzatura), but maybe reduces the fun a little. The themes of grief and parenthood, obedience and self-expression, the real and the immortal are interesting, but I thought the best part was Pinocchio's joy. He approached everything with an air of "Oh X, I love X, what is an X?" Whatever it is, he loves it and wants to live it. A good way for both puppets and real boys to live

Last of the Old Year

 Since it’s coming up on New Year’s, I’d better wrap up our recent viewing. I could quit now, since I’ve done all the discs, but I guess I’ll throw in a couple of streaming movies we’ve seen.

We loved Bullet Train. It stars Brad Pitt as a scruffy, sensitive international criminal in Tokyo code named Ladybug. His handler calls to give him a job - grab a suitcase of money on the bullet train. AaronTaylor-Johnson and Brian Tyree Henry are “twins” on the train, bringing the kidnapped son (Logan Lehman) of a Russian mobster home - and it’s their bag of money. Then there is a cute little schoolgirl, Joey King, who has her own mission. And many more.

Pitt has been trying to cut down on violence because he keeps killing people, mostly by accident. But not everybody feels that way. So this movie has a lot of violence. But it’s mostly an action-comedy, with lots of silly banter. Like the twins being arguing over their codenames, and Henry being obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine. Setups, like a water bottle full of knockout drops, pay off nicely, and not always the way you expect (someone gets hit over the head with it). There are absurd stunts and wild fights. Ok, not John Wick level, but still good.

In fact, unlike John Wick, this doesn’t really break new ground, or raise the bar. But it is a goofy joyride. Of course, it misrepresents the actual Shinkansen in many ways, but I think we can forgive that.

Glass Onion: a Knives Out Mystery Featuring Benoit Blanc doesn’t break new ground either. But it does help to reviving the old genre of a star-studded, glamorous mystery, like the old Poirot movies, as well as The Last of Sheila. We start by meeting the suspects… that is, cast. Each one receives an elaborate puzzle box, and they all join a Zoom call to solve it. They are:

• Katherine Hahn, a soccer mom and political candidate
• Leslie Odom, Jr, head of an engineering co. 
• Kate Hudson, a washed up model turned sweatpants designer and party girl
• Jessica Henwick, Hudson’s put-upon gopher
• Dave Bautista, a muscle-head, misogynistic social media influencer 
• Madelyn Cline, as Whiskey, his girlfriend 
• Janelle Monae, a mysterious woman who opens the box with a hammer
• Finally, Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc

The box reveals an invitation to a party on a Greek island, hosted by these people’s mutual friend. Billionaire disrupter Ed Norton. When they arrive, we discover that Craig had not been invited - how he got the invite is a mystery. But  Orrin accepts him, because he has planned a murder mystery weekend.

So the games and puzzles show the influence of Sheila, while the setting reminds you of Evil Under the Sun. The planned play murder is quickly dispatched, but someone is shortly murdered in actuality, followed by chaos. There is a big twist in the second act, but I felt like there should have been a few more.  The solution is a bit unsatisfying - intentionally, because the culprit is an idiot. In fact, they all ate, except Craig and Monae. This is a bit on-the-nose - everyone is some kind of obnoxious internet type, easy targets for the online crowd. But it is fun and funny. And Monae handles her role with a lot of style and dignity. She’s my favorite part, except for a few cameos, like Serena Williams.

I should also mention that we also saw Amsterdam as well. This is a historical romance set between the world wars. Christian Bale is a badly wounded veteran and doctor, and John David Washington is his brother-in-arms. After the war, they meet nurse Margot Robbie, and she is added to their bond. Back in the states, they are confronted by a murder and a mystery, which involves an plot against America, and they enlist general Robert Deniro to help out. The cast is great, but the script seems somehow unfocused and the pacing odd. The ending, for instance, is given almost entirely in voice over. So it’s sort of too quick, but also seems to go on forever. The political message is also a bit clunky, as in Onion. We didn’t find it bad, but can’t really recommend.

We saw all these on streaming, as well as a few more. Since this blog is technically about our DVD queue, consider this a bonus. 

See you in the new year!

Strange and Stranger

We got Disney+ to watch the Marvel TV shows, but we’re pretty psyched to realize that it meant we could watch Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022).

It starts with the good Doctor and a young woman (Xochitl Gomez) in the madness dimension, a realm of floating mountains - very Ditko. They are being chased by a demon, and Strange is about to steal Gomez’s power to get the book of Vishanti when he gets killed. Gomez somehow creates a portal to another universe, and drops onto our Dr. Strange’s rooftop, along with the other Strange’s corpse. 

Turns out that she is America Chavez, who can move between universes, although she can’t control it. That’s why she’s being chased. Strange figures there is witchcraft at work as well as magic, so he goes to consult with Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen). She has retreated to an orchard to heal after the events of her TV series. See, I knew watching that would pay off. But she soon reveals that she is behind this whole setup. She wants to travel to a universe where her two sons are real.

So Strange and America chase her and are chased by her throughout the multiverse. This includes some split-second scenes of universes of bones, or animated universes, etc. it also includes universes that were de-stabilized by “incursions”, visits by Wanda or others that destroyed logic and physics. In one, it was their Strange that did it. That universe is protected by the Illuminati, lead by Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor). (I like Ejiofor in the role, but I think he should be a Baron, and wear that pointy beard.) This group includes Agent Carter, Mr Fantastic, Maria Rambeau, and Black Bolt. I think these are mostly throw-always, not setups for future movies.

Since this is Sam Raimi, there’s a touch more horror - but not much really, until the end (I’ll just say “zombie”). There’s a lot more about making the right choices for the right reasons, and making sure you don’t become the villain. But it’s stuffed with other stuff as well, including Wong being awesome, multiple evil Stranges, his old flame Rachel MacAdams. Also, since it’s Raimi, Bruce Campbell. Strange puts a spell on him to make him punch himself over and over. He does love beating up poor Bruce.

In conclusion, this is a visual tour de force - something all the Dr. Strange movies do so well. Best Marvel movie yet!

Moon Spinning

When I was a kid, I loved Hayley Mills, although I’m not sure if I saw the The Moon-Spinners (1964) when it came out. I saw a few of her movies as an adult, and always felt guilty about admiring her. In Moon-Spinners, is 17 (playing 14, it seems), so I’ll try to keep my admiration in check. 

It starts with Mills and her aunt Joan Greenwood are visiting a small Greek village. They want to stay at the Moon-Spinner Inn, but the landlady, Irene Papas, doesn’t want them. Maybe it’s because she’s hosting a wedding. (Pushy English.) But it is actually because her brother, the shady Eli Wallach forbids it. Later, they meet another guest, dreamy Englishman Peter McEnery, who seems to be having some kind of sub rosa argument with Wallach.

This is all a bit uncomfortable but Papas’ pre-teen son takes their side (like kids often do in these movies). Also, Mills wants to stick around to hang with McEnery. The plot soon unfolds - McEnery is under suspicion of stealing some jewels, but has figured that Wallach did the deed. He needs to find them before Wallach manages to kill him.

There’s a bit more stuff with the British consul, John Le Mesurier, who looks a bit like Boris Karloff here - so you know he’s crooked. And it all ends up on Pola Negri’s yacht- yes, that Pola Negri, lured out of retirement. She plays a much married, jewel-hungry play girl type, with a pet cheetah. Swoon.

We enjoyed this, but nostalgically. Mills’ character was more than a bit of an airhead, but that was her general type at the time. It had an interesting location and a great cast. And that Hayley Mills - I was in a London pub near Covent Gardens once, and heard a gentleman talking about hanging around a stage door to see her in the early 2000s. I think she might have said a few words to him. He held his companions rapt with this simple tale, and they all sighed when they heard it. Such is her power. 

Oh, I just remembered - I didn’t see Moon-Spinners when it came out, I saw another, non-Mills Disney, The Moon Cussers. 

Harlem Soul

We recently got Disney+, so we could watch Summer of Soul (2021) - OK, not the main reason, but a nice benefit.

In the summer of 1969, the same year as Woodstock, when whitey walked on the moon, there was a huge outdoor free music festival in Harlem. But because it was Harlem, it went largely unnoticed by the outside world. It had been taped, and some of the tapes had been shown on TV that year, but it was mostly forgotten. Then Questlove heard about it, got his hands on the footage, and made this movie.

It's mostly a documentary, not a concert film. They interview people who attended and talk about the times and the context. But there is also a lot of music. It starts with an outrageous Stevie Wonder drum solo. There was a lot of gospel: Edward Hawkins Singers, Staples Singers, Mahalia Jackson, who invited Mavis Staples to join with her, a great honor and a thrill for the audience. The Fifth Dimension showed that blacks could be pop, Chambers Brothers were psychedlicized, Sly and the Family Stone were integrated - and wild. B.B. King played the blues. David Ruffin showed off his solo chops and an amazing falsetto range - sounded like Minnie Ripperton! Africa was represented by Hugh Masakela, and a troupe of dancers. Mongo Santamaria showed black and brown solidarity. Herbie Mann and Max Roach played jazz, and Nina Simone was Nina Simone. Wow!

So you can guess my complaint: not enough music. Very few songs played in their entirety. Most acts only got a few minutes. I think there are music clearance issues - there are bound to be. But mostly this made me want to see the reported 40 hours of tape. OK, maybe whittle it down to 4 hours. Special features!

Beneath Notice

I pretty much forgot that I had watched Red Notice (2021) and that I should blog it. It's a Netflix special - big names, looks like a movie, but something hollow at the core. 

It starts in a museum in Rome. FBI agent Dwayne Johnson and Interpol officer Ritu Arya are concerned that the Egg MacGuffin is going to be stolen by famed jewel thief Ryan Reynolds. And so it comes to pass, leading to a long chase through the museum and adjacent Rome. I mainly mention this because there is a scaffold fight - not as great as the one in Shang Chi, but OK. It lets the movie display its sources. Sadly, they are things other movies do better.

Reynolds gets away to his home in Bali, but Interpol crashes in and retrieves the egg. But other international jewel thief, Gal Gadot, AKA the Bishop, is masquerading as a member of the Interpol team, and she makes off with the egg.

Reynolds goes to a remote Russian prison, and Arya puts Johnson there as well, for good measure. So they decide to band together to get the egg and it's partner (needed for the full set). They will be working against or teaming up with Gadot to get these eggs. But someone may not be what they seem. Maybe everyone.

This is not a bad movie. I'll buck the trend and say that I like Gal Gadot - she may have limited range, but in that range, she's great. Johnson does what he does best here, and so does Reynolds. Of course, Reynolds wisecracks his way through the movie, and gets pretty meta. He calls the egg the MacGuffin, for goodness sake. He says things like, "This is the part where we have a big chase" nd so on. If you like Reynolds, you'll like this. But don't expect anything new or interesting. 

I'm just here for the scaffolding fight.

Adam Bomb

I dropped down to 2 DVDs at a time, with the intention to watch more streaming. So we tried the new Ryan Reynolds, The Adam Project (2022).

Adam is Walker Scobell, a twerpy 12-year old. His dad has recently died, he gets bullied at school and suspended when he fights back. He torments his mom, Jennifer Garner, but like in a loving way. Adam is also Ryan Reynolds, a fighter pilot in the future who uses his time machine to go back to before the death of his father, against orders from Katherine Keener, ruler of the world in the future.

But he miscalculates and crashes in young Adam's backyard. (By the way, he lives in a very cool modern house in a temperate rainforest-like environment. His dad must have been a Seattle millionaire.) Young Adam figures it out pretty quickly - actually, their dog does, now just a pup.

Reynolds is very annoyed at Scobell, and Scobell wants to know how a skinny 4-foot 12-year old grows up to be Reynolds. Garner thinks he's sort of cute, which is embarrassing. Anyway, Reynolds needs to find his lover, Zoe Saldana. It turns out that she got stuck in the same past, and when they re-unite, they are pursued by futurians on space bikes. This is the action scene we saw in the trailer, and about the only one in the movie.

Anyway, they go back again to find their father, who is Mark Ruffalo. It turns out that he discovered time travel, and Keener stole it from him when he died (or was he killed?). They try to get him to destroy his invention, but he doesn't want to disrupt the time stream any more than it has been. But He bonds with his son, older and younger, in a tender and extremely manipulative scene. At least Reynolds has the grace to be embarrassed by it.

Finally, Keener from the future shows up and they, along with de-aged present-time Keener, have a big showdown at the particle accelerator. As she threatens them with a gun, Ruffalo nobly tells them to get behind him. When Keener says it's an armor piercing round which will go right through the three of them, he suggests they spread out. SPOILER - She shoots, the magnetic field of the accelerator attracts the bullet, it goes through younger Keener, so older Keener vanishes, never having existed. More bonding and personal growth, happy endings all around.

This wasn't bas at all. But it wasn't great, especially considering the stacked cast. I have complained about movies with daddy issues before, but this one really wallowed in it. Also, I thought Reynolds and maybe Ruffalo would be a lot funnier. The whole thing could have been much better. Typical streaming movie. 

Femmes Fatales

So the wife was out for an evening, so I thought I'd watch one of those female assassin movies. I picked Ava (2020). It stars Jessica Chastain in the title role, an elite assassin, mentored by John Malkovich, in a role that the older Donald Sutherland might have played. Chastain has started asking her targets if they know what they've done wrong before she kills them, so Malkovich's boss, Colin Farrell, decides to have her taken out, while telling Malkovich he won't.

But Chastain has other problems. She started out as a hard-drinking party girl and junky, with a sharp-tongued fading beauty for mother, a sister following in partying footsteps, and Common for an ex-, now engagrd to said sister. Chastain just wants to try to connect to her family, but they are more fucked up than she is, and she's a hired killer. SPOILER - she finally gives in and gets drunk, just when Farrell comes after her. It hurts her accuracy, but increases her pain threshold. 

Really, this seemed like a weird family drama smushed together with an action film. I preferred the action.

I wouldn't have chosen it for my next movie, but Netflix decided to deliver The Protégé (2021). This stars Maggie Q as the assassin, with Samuel L. Jackson as her mentor. There isn't really a Farrell counterpart - her bosses are trying to kill her, but are sort of forgettable. I can only remember the one called Vohl ("We must feed Vohl!"). But Michael Keaton shows up as a fellow assassin, and there's a cute scene where they start fighting and end up fucking. 

Jackson found Q in Vietnam as a child. She had murdered four crooks who killed her parents and kidnapped her. Jackson raised her up, and lets face it, he makes a better mentor than Malkovich, always laughing and living it up in an English manor, playing blues riffs on rare guitars. That's part of what makes this a better movie: the quality of the leads, or possibly their roles. The locations and situations are all very high-class - Maggie works in a rare bookshop, and so on. Also, Maggie Q makes a great action star - very sexy in a black body suit. 

Still, I wonder if I've seen enough of these. There's another on my Netflix list, Kate, with Mary Elizabeth Winstead. But maybe I should wait awhile before watching that one.

Three Hot Librarians and Other Topics

As I've said, we're watching more streaming - and Ms. Spenser let me choose this time. So we watched Gunpowder Milkshake (2021).

It stars Karen Gilllan (Dr. Who's Amy Pond) as a young assassin. It starts with her waiting in a diner for her mother, drinking a milkshake. Her mother, Lena Headey, late as always, comes in, pursued by gangsters. They don't get her or Gillan, but Headley has to go away for a while. She leaves Gillan with her handler/booker, Paul Giamatti, and the "aunts at the Library".

So now Gillan is a young woman, killing people on her own. This job gets a little out of hand, and it turns out she has killed the son of a big mobster. But before she figures this out, she gets the job of retrieving some money an accountant has stolen from the mob. In the struggle over the money, she shoots the guy, and he reveals that he needed it to ransom his kidanpped daughter. So Gillan pledges to get the kid back.

To do this, she'll need guns, so she goes to the Library. It turns out that the Library is a front for an armory, with the guns hidden in certain books. The aunts are librarians: Carla Gugino, the motherly one, Angela Bassett, the strict one, and Michelle Yeoh, the awesome one (she doesn't really fit any librarian archetype, but she's Michelle Yeoh, so who cares). 

As things get more and more out of hand, Gillan eventually needs to bring her estranged mother into the mix.

So this takes place in a John-Wick-like world, with assassins who have diners, librarians and hospitals that cater to them. Except in this world, it's largely women kicking ass. This results in some cute stuff, like the way Gillan, and later the little girl she assuredly rescues, are always drinking vanilla milkshakes - except they never actually seemed to drink them. Some on! Life's too short in this world to diet. 

It was mostly a little better than forgettable, while not being close to as good as, say, John Wick. I'm a little torn by touches like the library. The filmmakers (ex: Israeli director Navot Papushado) knew that most of the audience, male and female, would love libraries and librarians - at least I do. But it was a little too cute, maybe, like something Noah Wylie would be in. 

Ms. Spenser spent her time handling emails andother screen-oriented chores while the movie was on, but actually watched a lot of it in between. So I guess it wasn't that bad. 

Lucky 13

We had a different movie planned for this night, but the disc was cracked. Always check as soon as they arrive! So we dug around in our Netflix streaming list and found Thir13en Ghosts (2001), a modern remake of the William Castle schlock-fest.

It starts in a junkyard, with F. Murray Abraham hunting a ghost. He has a gang of goons and twitchy psychic Matthew Lillard to help. Things get out of hand and the ghost gets trapped, but F. gets killed.

We now meet Tony Shaloub, his wife, and two kids, moving into a new house, which immediately burns down, killing said wife. In the next scene, he's living in a tiny apartment with a sassy black young nanny (Rah Digga) taking care of the kids. The daughter is a normal young teen, the son a grade-schooler with a bit of an obsession with death. 

Then a miracle occurs: a lawyer shows up to let them know Shaloub's uncle F. Murray has dies and willed them an expensive house. So they head over to check it out. The house is a modernist geometric building covered in windows ("Hope the bathroom is in the basement"). There's also a guy from the electric company trying to get in - but it's actually Matthew Lillard in a jumpsuit. 

So the lawyer gets them in, gets the papers signed, then tells them about the twelve ghosts in containment in the basement. He doesn't mention the fortune in cash somewhere as well - he's going after that himself. So is Lillard. 

So of course, the ghosts get out and start menacing everyone. They have a few pairs of glasses that let them see the ghosts - and I kept thinking that if they just took them off, they wouldn't be so scared. But the ghosts can kill even if you can't see them. Castle's gimmick in the original is that he handed out glasses to the audience that made the ghosts invisible. You could put them on when you got too scared. I could see the attraction.

So aside from having an interesting cast, this movie had at least two things going for it. 

1. Cool modern/deco glass architecture.
2. Goofy enough to qualify as horror comedy, so I could take it, with enough thrills for Ms. Spenser. 

Just to spoil it for you - the lawyer's kill is probably the best in the movie. A glass wall descends on his head and bisects him front from back. Later, someone wonders where he went, and someone else says, "He probably split".

Red House Over Yonder

Edward G. Robinson is famous as a gangster, but he had a lot more roles than that. Like The Red House (1947), a horror movie.

It starts by describing a small rural town as full of twisty roads that lead to deadends, and farms where families keep to themselves. But these days, it just a normal country town. (It looks like California, of course.) The school bus is dropping kids off. Julie London (the singer, but as a high school girl) is inviting Lon McAllister to go swimming, just the two of them - and they can change at the lake. But first he has to help out Allene Roberts. She lives on a lonely farm with her adoptive father (Robinson) and mother. They are considered reclusive by the townspeople, but welcome him warmly and feed him well. Robinson has an artificial leg, and Robertswants him to hire McAllister to help out. Since his widowed mom isn't making much with the general store she runs, he could use the money.

It all goes fine until McAllister decides to take a shortcut home through the woods. Robinson tells him it's dangerous and gets more and more anxious to keep him from going through. He might stumble upon the Red House - which would be bad for reasons he won't explain. McAllister goes anyway, but gets spooked and heads back, and winds up sleeping in the barn.

The next time he comes, he's determined to make it. He comes to Robinson's place through the woods to work out the route. He heads home that way again against Robinson's wishes. But this time, he's conled over the head. Turns out that Robinson has let local layabout Rory Calhoun hunt the woods if he keeps everyone else out.

Roberts and McAllister start getting curious, and start combing the woods for the Red House, along with London. It's getting pretty plain that Roberts is actually trying to steal McAllister away from London (whose character has the ridiculous name of Tibby). But when London makes McAllister take her out, Roberts goes house hunting herself.

Calhoun spots her, thinking it's McAllister and starts shooting at her - aiming to miss, but getting too close. Roberts falls and breaks her leg. This really gets to Robinson. It seems he lost his leg in the woods, something about the Red House, or the ice house. He starts acting strange, calling Roberts "Jeannie", her mother's name. When Roberts' leg heals, everything comes to a head.

As horror goes, this is mild enough. But as a thriller, it's great. The cast is solid, the setting beautiful and creepy when it needs to be. And Robinson is charming and sweet, until he isn't anymore. Director Delmer Daves did all right. 

Staying Alive

Ms. Spenser specifically asked to see No One Gets Out Alive (2021) because she's a fan of Adam Nevill, who wrote the novel that this is an adaptation of. Of course, she sort of prefers his short stories.

Cristina Rodio is an undocumented Mexican immigrant, working in a garment sweatshop in Cleveland. She finds a creepy old boarding house to live in. The landlord, Marc Menchaca, doesn't ask questions but does want first and last month's rent, which hits her savings very hard. There is only one other woman in the place, and she is quiet and hostile. Rodio hears crying coming from her room, but it isn't her. Also, there's a hulking man wandering around - Menchaca says it's his brother, who's sick.

Other than this creepiness, two things are troubling her: She needs papers, even if they are fake. Even her aunt and uncle, who live out in the suburbs, believe that she was born in Texas and don't want anything to do with illegals. The other thing is dreams and memories of her mother, who she nursed for years through a fatal illness. 

The other boarder moves out (or disappears?) and two Romanian prostitutes move in - Machaca is clearly taking the rent in trade. This ups the creepy to the point where she runs out, but she needs her deposit back. Machaca takes her back to the house to get it, and that's when the killing starts.

SPOILER, I guess. We get a home movie to do exposition on an archeological expedition in Mexico, which unearthed a box. The archeologist discovered that human sacrifices to the monster in the box restored health. Now Menchaca and his sick brother are feeding it the women who come to the boarding house. 

So big fights, running around, killing, and then the monster - supposedly an Aztec goddess associated with moths - and human sacrifice. But I have one serious complaint (also, big SPOILER): The monster design is ludicrous. It has a face covered with a fleshy membrane veil, two human arms for legs, with a vagina dentata between them to bite off the heads of the victims. I think the Aztecs had more class than that.

Actually, the movie is fine. It has the usual humans-are-the-real-monsters theme and it works. The setting is suitably creepy, and the scares are scary. I wish that the Aztec god aspect had gone a little deeper - none of the art direction really said ancient Mexico. The moths that flew around when something was about to happen were atmospheric, but didn't do much. And that monster, ooh.

Also, someone does get out alive. I can actually imagine a sequel.

The Only Way Out is Not to Play

We continue to watch streaming horror - this time we picked As Above, So Below (2014). Although it had some elements in common with the last batch (young persons researching the supernatural), it was mostly completely different. And perhaps not altogether successful.

It starts in Iraq with star Perdita Weeks clandestinely searching the underground tunnels for mystical artifacts - right before they blow them up. When she tragically survives (hah!), we segue to Paris, where she is being filmed by Edwin Hodge - so this becomes sort of found footage here. They meet up with her friend Ben Feldman, an eccentric researcher and guerilla clock repairman. The goal - to find the philosopher's stone hidden by alchemist Nicolas Flamel. This section here is sort of a combination Indiana Jones and Dan Brown.

The search will lead to the catacombs of Paris, so they hire a rogue spelunker guide, along with his girlfriend and friend. So this crew of 6 descends into the catacombs. It takes a while for the horror to take over from the adventure. There are tunnel collapses, squeezes through piles of human bones, and a meeting with a tunnel rat who was supposed to have died down there years ago. He is pretty much mad.

Then the cameraman dies, falling off a rope down a hole. Then a few more, and all along they have to keep heading down. It becomes a mantra - The only way out is down. By the third act, the horrors get more metaphysical: moving gargoyles, rivers of blood, a burning car. Then, shall I spoil it? OK, here goes.

They find the philosopher's stone. It actually heals one of their wounded. But an alchemical symbol reminds them it is not the real stone - they get that as well. (I won't spoil it, but it's pretty stupid). The survivors, now only Weeeks, Feldman, and the spelunker's friend, keep going down and down, through more and more claustrophobic and, I guess, symbolic and mystical passages. Finally - big reveal - they find a manhole in the floor of the cavern. They climb down it and come up in a street in Paris. Upside down of course. The end.

I sort of like the whole idea of the catacombs - we recently saw the Lupin episode that went down there. I also love alchemical mysticism, but not when done no better than Dan Brown. Also, the wait to get to the horror was interminable. Then the horror was weak, So I guess I'm saying this one didn't work out.

Horror-ween Kick-Off

Ms. Spenser has declared an early start to the Halloween scary movies season. So we watched a bunch of recent (ish) streamers.

Demonic (2015) takes place in two time frames. Frank Grillo is a cop heading to his girlfriend's place when he gets a call. There was a disturbance in an old mansion, and he finds several dead kids, and one live but traumatized one. He calls his girlfriend (Maria Bello), a psychologist, to talk to the kid while he searches the scene. 

Then there's the "how they got there" time frame. A bunch of college kids want to investigate a house where a mass murder occurred. They include Dustin Milligan (the survivor), his girlfriend, her ex-boyfriend, and the usual cameraman, gadget guy, etc. Turns out Milligan's mother was the lone survivor of the murder, and there's a demon involved.

Malevolent (2018) also has a bunch of kids investigating haunted houses, but in this case, they are charlatans. Working in Scotland, they pretend to investigate, make some spooky noises, tell the "ghosts" to go in peace and collect a fee. Florence Pugh wants to quit this scheme, because she's getting too many real ghost vibes. But her brother. Ben Lloyd-Hughes has to keep going because he owes a lot of money. So they take a job investigating a house where several children were killed - ostensibly by the now dead son of the woman who hired them. They died with their mouths sewn shut. Hope this doesn't happen to any of the ghost busters... 

Temple (2017) takes place in Japan. A young woman wants to research and photgraph Japanese country temples. She convinces her boyfriend to come along, along with her longtime platonic male friend. He has been a little depressed lately, and speaks a little Japanese. They find an old book with some info about an old temple, but the shopkeeper won't sell it to them. They buy it from a little boy who just kind of appears.

They go to the temple (against everyone's advice, and of course, bad things happen - including platonic boyfriend stepping through the floorboards and breaking his leg. So they are stuck for the night - until they freak out and leave Platonic on his own. Bad decision.

It's odd that these movies shared so many elements. Of course, there's the young-people-doing-research/making-a-documentary angle. That's a pretty common setup, I guess. But two of these have a real boyfriend/ex- or non-boyfriend dynamic, and Malevolent has a brother/wannabe boyfriend thing that is somewhat similar. And both Malevolent and Temple have someone fall through a floor and break a leg, so the group can't run away. Maybe everyone is working from the same template somewhere. 

Tomorrow Never Thinks

Like a dope, I had to go and watch The Tomorrow War (2021). I'd heard some off-the-cuff comments about it ("It wasn't as bad as Tomorrow War, was it?"), but I figured, what the heck, how bad could it be?

Chris Pratt is an ex-Green Beret, high-school science teacher, husband and father. His ordinary life is interrupted when visitors from the future appear all over the world. The message: In the future, the earth will be invaded by monsters from outer space. Humanity is being creamed. They need soldiers to help prevent the extinction of humanity. The world comes together and sends a thousand soldiers into the future for a one-week tour. Not many come back. The world institutes a universal draft.

Of course, Pratt gets drafted. His wife, Betty Gilpin, convinces him to try to run, and get his estranged father's help. His father is J.K. Simmons, with a buffed bod and bushy beard, an underground conspiracy nut. He could get Pratt out of the draft, but antagonizes Pratt so much that he just leaves to go to the future.

There's a basic training section, where Pratt meets Sam Richardson, a soft genius type. Between them they realize that everyone drafted has a death date (known to the futurians) before their target date, and all the futurians are young enough so that they weren't born here in the present/past. This is the first and last intelligent point in the movie. They also note that they aren't being told anything about the monsters or how to fight them. It seems nobody really cares. 

They get sent to the future and it's an immediate cluster. The monsters are everywhere and can take a lot of machine gun fire. Which made me wonder right off - why are they sending soldiers with machine guns against them? They barely work, and soldiers are not expendable in this world. Human population is rapidly approaching zero. Have they considered different weapons and tactics? Here's an idea - they have a time machine! Could they use that in any way?

Anyhow, Pratt meets up with his superior officer, who turns out to be his grown-up daughter, Yvonne Strahovski. They have a bunch of bang-bang adventures together, trying to get a toxin that will kill the female monsters. They achieve this goal, but Strahovski dies sending Pratt back to the present with the toxin.

He is one of the last ones to return. The time machine is fried. The world is ready to give up. They have the toxin, but nobody knows where the aliens come from or how to get at them when they arrive. Then Gilpin does the incredible: She thinks things over for a minute. Something no one else seems to have done. 

So they realize that the aliens are here now, they just haven't come out. They need to get to Siberia to kill them in their cradles. Fortunately, Simmons is a pilot. Oh, you thought they would go to the  governments of the world with this? Why would they do that, when they can attack this world-ending menace with 5 or 6 randos and an old guy?

They find the alien ship and surprise, it looks like a Giger knock-off. Also, the monsters, like the xenomorphs, are weapons for clearing out populated planets. Or maybe pets, who knows? The monsters are in embryo sacs (not eggs, so it isn't a total Alien rip off) so they start administering the toxin. They get one or two, but they start waking up. So they just blow them all up. I guess they didn't need that toxin after all. And we all live happily ever after, including in the future, where Strahovski presumably doesn't die. Oh, but Simmons does, but he was old.

I understand that time rravel is hard, but I've rarely seem it done so stupidly. The idea that the world wouldn't exploit future knowledge but just throw cannon fodder at the enemy is - ok, pretty believable. But not at all satisfying. 

All that aside, we enjoyed it when things were asploding and Pratt was yelling, "Move move!" But even there, while Pratt was clearly a super competent soldier, he never figures out that spray-and-pray was not working. Oh well, he can't think if the writers won't.

This seems like a perfect example of a streaming blockbuster. Big, loud, stupid and released without a thought to whether it's good or not. People will stream it when it comes out and forget it immediately I guess I should too.

Nothing 2 Conjure With

Ms. Spenser was looking for a reliable horror movie, and picked James Wan's The Conjuring 2 (2016). We hadn't really been won over by the first one, but hope springs.

We started with a little reprise of the Amityville story to introduce the psychic investigation team of Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson. Then we meet the next haunted contestants - a family in England is being haunted. One of the daughters is having visions and dreams about the gross old man who lived in their house before they did. It eventually gets pretty wild, and the church calls in Farmiga and Wilson - because the church can't get in involved if it's a hoax.

Now, this family is pretty broke - the dad left them for another family, the place is kind of a dump, and maybe they are looking for publicity, a little money, or at least a nicer place to live. But we, the audience see too much to make that seem likely. Still, Farmiga doesn't detect any ghosts, and she's usually very sensitive. But she has also been having dreams - of seeing Wilson impaled. So she would rather that they didn't get involved. 

The Farmiga/Wilson team are sort of growing on me. I especially like Wilson's mid-70's look. The English family is a bit of a downer - squalid house, troubled kids, son who stutters, and so on. Some of the fun of these movies is the business with the family while they're not being haunted, and I just didn't take to these. 

Ms. Spenser was pretty disappointed too. Besides, it gets dark so late these days, it's hardly worth watching a scary movie. 

The Big Bicker

I feel like The Lovebirds (2020) was one of the first movies to skip a theater release because of COVID and to come out on streaming. The previews looked kind of fun, so we streamed it. 

It starts with Kumail Nanjiani leaving Issa Rae's apartment in the morning - their one-night stand is over, they plan to never see each other again. But maybe they should get breakfast first. Five years later they are still living together, but now seething with resentment. They head out to a dinner party, and as they quarrel on their way, they decide it's time to break up. And then they hit a cyclist.

He gets up and runs away like he's being chased, but leaves behind his phone. Then a guy comes up, says he's a cop, and commandeers their car. They chase the cyclist down - now Nanjiani and Rae are into the chase. They didn't almost kill an innocent man, he was a fugitive. Then the cop catches up to the guy, runs him down, then backs up and runs him down again. And again. They start to think that he isn't a cop. 

The cop, Paul Sparks, runs away when he hears sirens. A couple on a date see Nanjiani and Rae standing over the body, and call the cops. So they run.

The rest of this plays out pretty much how you'd expect, with the usual amount of twists and turns. They are afraid to go to the police because 1) the circumstances and 2) the shades of their skin. They have the phone, showing a calendar alert with a name and a bar. So Rae convinces Nanjiani to play detective. And so on. 

Of course, the plot is mostly McGuffin (Eyes Wide Shut sex cult plus blackmail), and a lot of the situations play out in a standard way. For example, they find someone in on the plot and threaten him - a couple of bougie types trying to act street and tough. But sometimes, there's a twist. For example, the police on their trail turn out to be lead by a sweet black woman, who knows they didn't do it - security cameras. She is only concerned for their welfare and wants to make sure they are ok. 

But mostly, this movie is about Nanjiani and Rae bickering. Nanjiani seems to be a compulsive talker, going off on rants about random thoughts. It would have made more sense if he had been a standup comedian again. Rae is a little more nuanced, bringing some real confusion and longing to the role of fed-up soon-to-be ex-lover. Also, she's the one who wants to play detective.

We found this to be fairly amusing. Michael Showalter is directing and he seems to know what he's doing. The main question is whether you find the bickering couple amusing or just irritating. It was a close call for us. 

Also, the movie is set in New Orleans for no good reason, and the setting is barely perceptible.