Tapping In

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (2025) is another one of those legasequels - sequels of a property from long ago. Quite a few came out during Covid - Matrix, Bill and Ted, etc The appeal is partly nostalgia, partly that these are great stories. STII holds up for both.

Spinal Tap hasn't been talking to each other since the last movie. They all have new lives: Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) has a young wife and a cheese and guitar shop in the country. David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) is composing music for murder podcasts and hold music - he has even won a Holdie award. Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) runs a Museum of Glue - after all, he was the glue that held the band together. 

But a video of Garth Brooks and Trish Yearwood performing Big Bottom goes viral. The daughter (Kerry Godliman) of their late manager inherited a contract that said Spinal Tap owed one concert, and that was now worth something. So she's got to get the band back together, and Marty Dibergi (Rob Reiner) wants to film it. 

They get a new drummer - after getting turned out by every famous drummer they could contact. Since no Tap drummer has survived, this is understandable. They head for New Orleans, where a concert cancellation gives them a venue, and start rehearsing. 

Things are very tense between Tufnel and St. Hubbins. It doesn't help when Paul McCartney drops by and agrees with St. Hubbins that the fiddly bit of Tufnel's new song should be dropped. Elton John comes by to try out Smalls' new song about death - Rockin' in the Urn and to play Flower People, then agrees to join them onstage for Stonehenge. And this time, they have a full-sized prop. Surely nothing will go wrong.

This movie might not be quite as funny as the first one, but it's pretty close. There's no "It goes to 11", although Elton John's "Fuck Spinal Tap!" is pretty iconic. The crew has lost none of their oddball improv skills. The music is great too, both the classics and some new material, like Urn and Small's Hell Toupee, performed with orchestra. I understand this is from a previously released album.

And, of course, this turned out to be Reiner's last movie, as the original was his first. Sadly, this meant that a planned third film, The Final Finale, will not be made. But this was a great bookend to a great career. Glad we go it. 

Wright Man

When I got The Running Man (2025) out of the library, it was because I vaguely remembered it was supposed to be good. When I saw director Edgar Wright in the credits, I remembered why.

It stars Glen Powell as an unemployed prole in a dystopian future. He is begging his old boss at. a foundry for his job back. He has brought his sick baby along for sympathy, and because he doesn't have anyone to look after her. His boss tells him that after blowing the whistle on the company for unsafe practices, he's never getting working there again. Powell gets mad, but controls it.

When his wife get home from her job in a hostess bar, Powell tells her about his plan to get enough money for some medicine. He'll go on one of the sadistic (sometimes deadly) gameshows that are now so popular. She reluctantly agrees, but makes him promise not to go on Running Man, the worst of them all.

He goes in for an interview, and they find him the angriest man who has ever applied. Makes him perfect for - guess what? Running Man. In this show, you are hunted for fun by a group of killers, while anyone can earn a bounty by killing you. Producer Josh Brolin tells him how much money he could make for his family for every day he survives, even if he doesn't live for the whole 30 day duration. So he agrees. At least, during the show, his wife and baby will be protected. The company promises that neither they nor anyone else will use them for leverage. 

And so he starts running. His plan is to go underground, sticking with the dregs of society. He goes to old buddy William H. Macy, who reluctantly helps him out with new ID and some disguises. He also gives Powell a contact in Bangor ME, well off the beaten track.

Another rule of Running Man is that runners have to send in a ten minute video every day. Powell's are so angry that he is beginning to get a following. The show's host, Colman Domingo, has to deride him as a dangerous, violent "welf" (welfare recipient), with a hooker wife and neglected baby.

Up in ME, he meets up with a Michael Cera, a sort of revolutionary. He knows the hunters are right behind Powell, and hopes they make it, because he has the whole house booby trapped. So we get a little lethal Home Alone-ing.

Powell is doing pretty well - lasting longer than most. So Brolin starts a psychological game, claiming that Powell's family is not safe. Maybe they are hostages, maybe already dead. nit sure what the point of this is. To make him madder? Just to mess with him?

On the whole I enjoyed this, but it was rather generic. There were a few Wrightian touches - like when Powell in disguise is standing in front of an animated wanted poster of himself, looking right and left as the poster does the same in sync. But they are relatively few or at least not noticeable. There are a lot of action scenes, but nothing much new or particularly stylish. Well, maybe Wright was going for a generic action feel. There is also more than a bit of politics, even a touch of One Battle After Another. 

So, a fine movie, good entertainment that isn't even that mindless. But maybe my least favorite Edgar Wright. 

Bridgerford Park Abbey

The elevator pitch for Fackham Hall (2025) is "Bridgerton in the style of Airplane! done by Monty Python". Not inaccurate.

It is set in majestic Fackham Hall after WWI. It has been in the family for generations (their mottto is Incestus ad Infinitum), but the families four sons, John, George, Paul and little Ringo, have died in the war (or in a bizarre strangle wank accident). Unless one of their two daughters marries the right cousin, they will lose the hall. Fortunately, older daughter Poppy (Emma Laird) is about to be wed. 

Meanwhile, orphan and pickpocket Ben Radcliffe gets a mysterious letter to deliver to the hall. But as he bicycles up to the hall, he is struck by a vision of beauty, motoring along the road. Struck as in run over, because she has fallen in love with him as well.

When he tries to deliver the letter, he is mistaken for a job seeker, and given a job as footman. Since the girl he fell in love with is Rose (Thomasin McKenzie), younger daughter of the family, he'll do whatever he can to be close to her.

Laird's wedding to her cousin is presided over by Jimmy Carr, who gets some of the best jokes in. But she impulsively refuses to marry him, because she is in love with a filthy door-to-door manure salesman. Now it's up to McKenzie. If she doesn't marry her cousin, the family will lose the hall. If she does, she'll Radcliffe. This becomes pressing when her father is murdered, so the hall will now pass to the nearest male heir, the cousin.

The plot is pretty familiar - of course, since this is a parody. You might even guess where the orphan Radcliffe came from. There are bits of Gosford Park, along with Bridgerton, Upstairs, Downstairs, and Downton Abbey. Of these, I've only seen Gosford Park, so I'm sure I missed some bits. Fine gags abound, like the family worrying the Cyri the butler is listening to their conversation, like Alexa the maid. Some are surreal, like when they are duck hunting, and shooting down foxes and deer from the sky. Also, father is repeatedly shot, without consequence, until his murder later. He is killed, by the way, by being stabbed, shot, poisoned, and drenched in acid. Probably an accident.

Carr, as parson, has the best set of jokes. As part of the wedding service, he says things like, "Know that God is with us, and Jesus is gay." Pause, try again. "Know that God is with us, and Jesus is. Gay though we are..." Carr is one of the writers, and I'll bet he wrote this stuff for himself. 

This was a lot of fun, with great production values. I did feel that the joke density wasn't quite what I had hoped for - not quite ZAZ levels. But enough yuks for me, and it's great to see a clever comedy so well executed. 

Silly Killer

We were pretty psyched for Predator: Badlands (2025) after the success of Prey. It was great, but a whole different thing.

This one takes place on the Predator home world, Yautja Prime. Scrawny pred (or "Yautja") Dek has been cast out as a weakling, and his brother suggests that he should go to the death planet ad bring back a Kalisk, the most dangerous prey of all. Then their father shows up, and kills the brother for being soft on Dek. But before dad gets to kill Dek, he takes off for Planet Death.

He crashlands due to asteroids and bad robo-piloting. He meticulously sets out his weaponry, and then gets attacked by the local wildlife - losing most of his weapons. But he meets up with Thia (Elle Fanning), a Weyland-Yutani robot who is missing her legs. She proposes to help him find the Kalisk, and her legs in the process. So Dek straps her to his back and away they go. 

On the road, they meet a cute little big-eyed pug/frog/armadillo, who Thia names Bud. He rolls up into a ball to roll through the razor grass. Thia insists that they share some of the meat that Dek hunted, earning Bud's trust - which he displays by spitting on Dek. 

We also meet Thia's "sister" (also Elle Fanning), another synth. She has been revived by the company to complete the mission - to capture the Kalisk as a bio-weapon. Unlike Thia, she is cold and well-brainwashed. So who is the real villain in this movie?

I went into this pretty much blind - I only the posters of a predator with a legless body strapped to his back. What I didn't realize was how goofy it was going to be. Thia is a sweet-natured emotionally mature chatterbox. Bud is a cute animal sidekick, and Dek even has a few goofy moments, like when he learns about alpha wolves. 

Another interesting factor is that, although it has all the gore of any Predator movie, there are no humans in the movie. Only synths and monsters. So the pred can kill with abandon, and nobody feels bad. But that makes this less of a horror movie, and more of a fun adventure. 

And the last scene is a hoot.

So, a goofy Predator movie. Very different from Prey, which is pretty serious. I like it - but I hope this isn't going to be the direction for the franchise. Superhero movies were saved by silliness, and now they are all silly. Keep changing it up, Predator people!

Real Kids

Finally got aroiund to watching A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001). I'd been putting it off because it's quite long, and also I expected it to be emotionally devastating. Right again.

It starts with an info-dump. Global warming has lead to eco-catastrophe. Shorelines are flooded, population decimated. Of course, rich countries are fine. Just a little short of cheap labor. Robots help with that. Then we have robotics scientist William Hurt proposing the design of robots that love us - not sex-bots, but a real emotional connection. But, he asks, will we love them?

Sam Robards and Frances O'Conner have a young son in a coma. One day, Robards comes home with a proposition: The robotics company he works for offered him a robot kid, fully capable of loving. It's Haley Joel Osment. O'Connor is appalled at first but comes around to the idea, and uses to code for him to imprint on her. Now he will love her forever.

But something wonderful happens - their son gets better. And so he comes home, and he's not too happy about the robot. He doesn't exactly bully him - he has his mother read him Pinocchio, sort of to taunt him. He encourages him to do some things that go wrong. Soon the parents are worried about their sons safety. Osment has got to go. And since he has been imprinted on O'Connor, he must be destroyed. 

And so O'Connor drives Osment to the robot factory. She is silent, he is just happy to be with his mother. But she can't give him up to be destroyed. So she dumps him like a kitten, tearfully telling him she will never see him again, as he begs her not to go. 

So begins his journey through this new world. He is picked up by a band of robot hunters and taken to a Flesh Fair, where anti-robot humans gleefully destroy robots in a monster truck rally/tent revival show. There he meets Gigolo Joe (Jude Law), a sexbot who sort of takes him under his wing. 

He survives the fair, and goes on a search for the Blue Fairy, who he has learned from Pinocchio casn turn him into a real boy. Things get pretty crazy.

SPOILERS! The search takes them to flooded New York City, where he meets Hurt. Hurt shows him how successful his design has been - rooms full of Osment robots. Osment discovers that he is not at all special, and certainly not a real boy. But he later finds the Blue Fairy - a statue in the submerged Coney Island. And so he prays to her - for two thousand years, as an ice age freezes him solid. 

He is revived by a race of Brancusi-like (I think I mean Giacometti?) humanoids (I thought aliens, but Wikipedia says robots). Humanity has become extinct, and he is the last being who knew them personally. They clone his mother for him, to give him one perfect day. They spend it alone together, then they go to sleep together - forever.

As expected, the mother/"son" stuff is heartbreaking. It's interesting in light of what I've heard about Spielberg's mother from The Fabelmans. The design work is great, more understated than, say Minority Report, but of similar quality. But honestly, I would have appreciated more adventures, more exploration of the flooded world, and less mother/son stuff. Look, it's a long movie, let's keep things moving. 

Barbaric Yawp

Here's how I came to watch Red Sonja (2025). It started with Conan comics, issue 5 or so. I fell in love with Barry Windsor-Smith's art, and soon found his Red Sonja. And what comics-loving little boy doesn't love a warrior woman in an steel bikini? Later, I got into the Conan movies, and loved Red Sonja with Brigitte Nielsen (while understanding that it wasn't very good). So was pretty psyched for a new, maybe better version.

It stars Matilda Lutz as Sonja. She lives with her Hyrkanian tribe in the forest, at one with nature. But a horde of barbarians come and destroy her village, and the people have to scatter. She grows up alone, always searching for her people, worshipping their nature goddess. 

She comes upon a hunting party capturing and torturing a horned monster for the gladiatorial arena. But when she tries to free it, she is captured as well. She is sent into the arena with the worst weapons and a chainmail bikini. She's told that it won't protect anything, but the crowds will love it. 

Well, she escapes, chased by Emperor and mad assassin (Wallis Day), finds her people, blah, blah, blah. It's all pretty generic, especially Sonja being in tune with nature and all. But I don't really mind that. My major beef is that Lutz just doesn't impress me as a warrior. Nielsen wasn't much of an actress, but at least she looked fierce. I want some of that for Sonja. In fact, there nobody struck me as impressive - maybe Wallis Day. The monsters were kind of cute - there was a Harryhausen cyclops - but not great. There were some mandrill men, but they didn't come to much, just added a little color. Oh well. We kind of liked director M.J. Bassett's under-the-rsdar Solomon Kane. 

We watched Deathstalker (2025) mainly because Patton Oswalt was the second lead. We were only aware of the Deathstalker franchise from the MST3k riff on the third one, so we figured a remake was going to be fun. And we were right. This movie did not take itself seriously at all. It is full of info dumps about how the Dreadites of Abraxeon were working for the evil Nekromemon - We could never see the name Nekromemnon without laughing. 

It stars stuntman and model Daniel Bernhardt as Deathstalker. He starts out stealing the magic thingie from a corpse (well, he was coughing up blood) on the battlefield. As he walks in a nearby tavern, everyone fears him - but they can't say his name without being interrupted by a giant two-faced monster who wants the MacGuffin. He kills the monster, but throws away the MacGuffin. 

But the MacGuffin won't be thrown away. It keeps re-appearing in his pockert He needs a wizard to remove the curse. Enter Draedalad - a tiny wizard with a rubber mask, played by Laurie Field but voiced by Oswalt. He's not much of a wizard, but he's all we've got. 

There are two things that I loved about this movie, aside from the obvious joy they got from stupid sword and sorcery names. One was Bernhardt - he has a long lined face, looking something like Danny Trejo, or even Dave Grohl. He has a nice deadpan delivery, and serious martial arts chops. The other was all the practical creature and gore effects. Director Steve Kostanski is known for that kind of thing, like sawing people's heads in half. Unfortunately, this was mostly too gross and slimy for Ms. Spenser, who decided to listen only. He even put some fighting skeletons in (I think CGI, but still a nice tribute).

 So my advice is: Deliver on action and special effects. Don't take yourself too seriously. Should be enough for us. 

The Chosen

We've been watching old TV concert serties shows as our dinner viewing, like Midnight Special (Wolfman Jack Aooo!) One of the things we noticed is how great Teddy Pendergrass is. That made Ms. Spenser think of Choose Me (1984), where he sings the theme song, and quite a bit more.

After a nice title sequence set outside a sleazy nightclub named Eve's, we meet Keith Carradine. He is being released for a mental institution, primarily because they need the room. He heads for Eve's, looking for the Eve. That would owner Leslie Ann Warren - but she's not his Eve. His Eve is dead, and Warren bought the bar because it had her name. Carradine also meets Rae Dawn Chong, who reads him bad, horny poetry and generally acts weird.

Intercut with this is Genevieve Bujold as a radio relationship counselor, Dr. Love. She has a deep, sexy voice, but a detached, rational approach. It turns out that Warren has been calling into the show and talking about how messed up her love life is. 

Bujold is moving in with Warren as a new roommate. Since she works days and Bujold nights, it should work out. But Bujold's call to her psychiatrist (she'll only talk to him on the phone) hint that she may have some kinks that don't show up on her show. 

It turns out that Chong is married to a Euro-trash gangster, and he is sleeping with warren, who also has a fling with her bartender, John Laroquette. Carradine winds up sleeping with Chong, Bujold and Warren. And he always asks a woman to marry him if he kisses her - or as he says, he only kisses women he wants to marry. But he also tells people he was an air force ace, combat photographer, spy, Yale professor of English, etc. So you don't have to believe him. 

And this all takes place in 80s LA. It has a sort of La Ronde feel, with everyone making love in many combinations. Dr. Love is everywhere on the airwaves, and all the women love to listen to her, and imagine what she is like. And all women fall for Carradine, because he seems to be a terrible liar and the only honest man. 

He is a lot of fun in this. He goes through the movie with a lopsided Jack Nicholson grin (or maybe a cuter Steve Buscemi). He wanted to find his last great love, but has a plan to go back to Las Vegas, gamble up a stake and move on from there. Will he be able to find a woman to share this plan with?

We saw this back in the 80s, on VHS, not in theater. The delirious, love-and-neon drenched atmosphere was intoxicating then. Now, 40 years later. it still delivers.

The movie was directed by Alan Rudolph (Love at Large). Super-agent Shep Gordon (Supermensch) wanted him to direct a music video for Pendergrass, who had just been paralyzed in a car crash and needed money. Rudolph told him that for a few more dollars, he'd make it a feature. Rudolph even took a directing job no one else wanted so he could pay for a few more Pendergrass songs that Gordon didn't control. I hope it worked out well for them.