Summer Time

I mentioned that I am a Robert Heinlein fan. I was surprised to find that there was a movie version of one  of my childhood favorites, The Door into Summer (2021). And it was made in Japan.

It stars Kento Yamazaki as a young robotics engineer. He works obsessively at a big drawing board at home, often in the company of his pet cat, Pete, and his high-school aged step-sister, Kaya Kiyohara. He has designed an advanced autonomous robot that his small company is almost ready to go into production. Note that this takes place in 1985 - the past for the filmmakers, but the future for Heinlein.

He is visited by his fiancee, Natsuna, the office manager at the company. She is bitchy and controlling, and jealous of Kiyohara. And she has some paperwork, which transfers some of Yamazaki's stock in the company to her. I'm sure that won't be a problem.

The next day in the office, Kiyohara's partner, who runs the business side of the company, calls a shareholder meeting: that's him, Kiyohara and now Natsuna. Him and Natsuna immediately vote to fire Kiyohara and sell the company, robot and all. Kiyohara is stunned - he rushes to his lab to find all of his notes and prototypes gone. He's been screwed iout of his job and his inventions. 

So he gets drunk, and decides to go into cold sleep for thirty years. In this futuristic 1985, that is an option. He arranges for a sleep cradle for him self and Pete, but is rejected because he's drunk. He'll need to come back sober. But when he sobers up, be decidesto fight instead of run away. 

When he confronts Natsuna and his partner, they drug him and put him into cold sleep, using the paperwork already set up - using a sleazier company, who don't mind taking an unconscious customer. So he wakes up in 2025. He's broke - his investments went south. He is lost, with no friends, no cat, and no way to get in touch with his step sister.

To help ease his transition to the modern world, he is gived a robot companion for five days. This robot, named PETE, played by Naohito Fujiki, is very human, to the point that he seems to be malfunctioning, with humor, whims and sarcasm. 

So, even with his robot friend, he is still stuck in a future he doesn't know. But he thinks about his cat Pete. Pete didn't like snow, and would refuse to go out in the winter. Instead, he would meow at every door in the house, hoping that one would be the door into summer (based on Heinlein's actual cat). So Kiyohara starts looking for the door into summer - and finds it (SPOILER - time travel). 

This is a sweet, fun movie. Our hero is good and virtuous, the villains evil, and his revenge is sweet. The cat actor who plays Pete is appropriately scornful, but could have used a few battlescars. The retro-futuristic way they handled tech is good, especially when we get to 2025 where everyone has a smart phone, and maybe also a robot.

Also, their are plenty of nice, friendly people in the movie. For instance, in 2025, Kiyohara meets the CEO of a robot company who had met him in 1985 as a child, and considered him an idol. So he doesn't need to do everything alone (or with only a possibly malfunctioning robot).

The romance between Kiyohara and his step sister is tricky - it's clear that she is in love with him, but he doesn't seem to have any evil intentions towards her. In the end, due to cold sleep and time travel, they end up the same age, so they can get together - if you don't mind the spoiler.

I have only one minor quibble: In the book, our hero makes a new fortune by designing a robot drafting table. So Heinlein anticipated CAD, but on paper, not on screens. In the movie, Kiyohara is always behind a drafting boatd, but never automates it. I guess you can't put everything into a movie. 

Triple Plus Two

I've tried to watch Triple Threat (2019) a half-dozen times or so. JustWatch.com says you can watch on Amazon Prime video. Then when I get to Prime, they either haven't heard of it, or let me know I could watch if I signed for a trial subscription to Hi-Yaa or some other service. Finally, I realized that I could look under "Other Ways to Watch", and there it was. Thanks, Prime.

Anyways, this is a monster mash of a movie. It stars martial artists Tony Jaa, Iko Uwais, Tiger Chen, Scott Adkins and Michael Jai White. (The German tagline was "Expendables without the retirees"). 

It starts with Tony Jaa and Tiger Chen, local guides, leading a team of western mercenaries, led by Michael Jai White through the jungle. When they get to the village, they attack. One of the villagers, Iko Uwais, wakes up to see his wife get killed. He comes out fighting and starts fighting Jaa. The mercenaries meanwhile break Scott Adkins out of his cell - although everyone warns them that he is a terrorist. Duh. So are they. They leave, and blow the place up, separating Jaa and Uwais - and possibly killing them. 

Some time later, Jaa and Chen are doing some underground fighting for money, having survived the massacre. Uwais finds them, and tracks them down to their small apartment, looking for revenge. But they explain to him that they were tricked and they want the same thing as him: revenge on White and Adkins. So they all get drunk together - then Uwais turns them into the police for illegal fights.

Meanwhile, in Maha Jaya (made-up Malaysia/Indonesian country), rich Chinese heiress Celina Jade is pledging her fortune to develop police infrastructure in her adopted country. This makes her a target of Maha Jayan crime. (Haven't we seen this setup before, maybe with Jackie Chan?) When her car is attacked, she runs to a police station, where she can't communicate - the police speak Bahasa, she speaks Chinese. So they get Tiger Chen to translate. Then Adkins, White and gang show up to get rid of Tiger and Jaa. 

And it's a big fight. When the dust settles, the bad guys have got Jade, and Chen and Jaa are free. Uwais tells them that he had them arrested to use them as bait. So now they are united, and need to get Jade, and their own revenge. 

It's fun to see Uwais, Jaa and Chen, all fighting in their personal styles. Adkins and White make decent villains, although maybe their fighting skills and styles could have been better used. They were sort of generic heavyweights. In fact, a lot of this movie was sort of generic. Not a complaint, really, I enjoyed this. But with that much talent, I might have set my expectation too high. 

Super Duper

I don't know if I'm alone in this, but I liked Supergirl (2026).

It stars Milly Allcock as Kara Zor-El, supergirl. She's on an interplanetary bender - under a red sun, she's no longer super, and alcohol gets her drunk. Superman Facetimes her sometimes to see if she is coming back to Earth, but she's not done drinking. 

On this same planet, a band of Brigands, led by Mattias Schoenaerts, are menacing a farm family. They kill the parents and son, but their young daughter, Eve Ridley, survives.

Allcock is drinking in a mercenary bar when Ridley comes in with a sword and announces that she is after vengeance, and whoever helped her could have the family's valuable sword. It's a sort of "My name is Inigo Montoya" speech. Most of the crowd laughs at her and Allcock ignores her. But one big bruiser just walks up and takes the sword, and goes outside to leave, Allcock finds this impolite, and says she'll go out to talk to him. After trying reason, she beats him up and takes the sword back. Even under a red sun, she can kick ass. 

The next day, while Allcock is nursing a hangover, Ridley shows up at her spaceship RV, and unfortunately, so do the Brigands. In the fight, the Brigands shoot Superpup Krypto with a slow poison. The Brigands use it for torture or extortion - the victim will die in three days unless they can get the antidote from the Brigands. So now Allcock has to catch the interplanetary bus to go after them. Will Ridley tag along? 

On their way, they run into a dirtbag bounty hunter named Lobo, played by Jason Momoa. Ridley wants him to join their quest, but Allcock warns her not to make eye contact, because he's a jerk. Will he be in on the final battle?

OK, the questions are a bit ingenuous. Of course Ridley comes along, and her innocence inspires Allcock to be a bettr superhero. And I mention Momoa, because he's got the best line in the movie. When he meets Allcock later, he says, "Hey, you're that ditz from the dive bar!" and she replies, "Funny, that's what I've been calling you."

I like slightly silly interplanetary adventures with fun characters and interesting dilemmas. I don't really know why everyone hated this - or did they? It didn't do much in theaters, but that happens a lot these days. Then there's the problem some (loud) critics have with strong female protagonists. Or is the problem that she isn't strong enough? After all, she's a drunk with PTSD from losing her whole planet. But a hero "refusing the call" is a standard trope. Some people complained that -SPOILER- Momoa saves her ass in the last big fight, but that's not such a big deal.

And of course, Krypto lives to piss on the Fortress of Solitude again. 

Hunka Hunka

I was looking for a musical concert type film, and remembered EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert (2025) in my JustWatch.com watchlist. It was directed by Baz Lurman from outtakes and other footage from Elvis' early seventies shows, including a lot in Las Vegas. He used this trove as research for his Elvis movie, but here he has assembled a sort of narrative documentary. 

It starts with Elvis getting out of the Army and making a bunch of bad movies. At some point he decides he needs to go back on tour, do some concerts, connect with the audience. And so he does, and we go along with him. We see him sing, rehearse and meet the audiences. Seeing one Vegas audience is a little funny - it seems to be all 40-year old women and 60-year old men. But there are some screaming girls at other shows (maybe cheaper than Vegas dinner theater?).

We do get to see plenty of his performances, although this isn't quite a concert film. We also get to see some rehearsals, and you get to see a lot of his goofy side, always with the funny faces, the grimaces when he messes up, and so on. You see this in the performances as well. I'm a bit dismissive of Elvis' work on stage - it's pretty campy. But EPiC made me think he knows how camp it is, and he's leaning into it. It's a little embarrassing, but he knows he's got to go over the top to sell these songs the way he wants to.

And they are some great songs. Always on My Mind, In the Ghetto, Poke Salad Annie, Suspicious Minds, the first public performance of Hunk of Burning Love. He has the TCB Band, along with a male choir and the Sweet Inspirations for back up. He's not my favorite musician, but there's no denying his power. 

Lurman cuts the material he has together in a fun but not to showy way. Every now and then, he'll hit a "plot point" - Elvis's mother's death, or his frustrated wish to tour to world - and he'll do a sort of psychedelic effect, with heavy echo and some camera distortion. Just keeping his hand in.

I think I might have liked this more than Elvis. but it's certainly a great appendix to that movie. 

Classic Black and White

In the mood for some more black and white, I queued up Woman Chases Man (1937), picked more or less at random from Prime Video. 

Charles Winninger is a tycoon who is broke. He needs money to complete his housing development, or he will be wiped out. His son, Joel McCrea, has money from his late mother, but thinks his father is a crackpot, who will only lose the money. He's on a cruise, but is on his way home. 

Enter Miriam Hopkins, a newly graduated architecture student who has houses designed for the development, looking for a job. When she finds out Winninger has no money, she faints. She hasn't been eating.

Once she has brought up to speed, she comes up with a simple plan. She'll vamp McCrea into coming across with the money. She has seen paintings of him looking noble, and wimpy, and figures it will be easy. She doesn't reckon with him being Joel McCrea.

Once McCrea shows up, with his golddigging girlfriend and her Russian "uncle" (lover), the usual screwball antics take over. Wininger hides (for some reason?), pals are brought in to play servants (Broderick Crawford as Hunk), meals are cooked without food ot gas, etc. Frankly, it isn't exactly hilarious. 

But it is bright, cute and cheerful. It ends with McCrea getting drunk - which he never does because it makes him want to spend money, and winds up in a tree. So, a happy ending. 

I watched Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (1934) on Archive.org - a good resource for random out-of-copyright movies. In this movie, Ronald Coleman makes an excellent Drummond, while Charles Butterworth is his pal Algy. Algy is getting married to Una Merkel, and Drummond promises police inspector C. Aubrey Smith that he is giving up adventuring. 

But walking home from the wedding in the fog, he stumbles on a corpse. But when the police show up, there is no corpse. just the home of a wealthy Asian (Warner Oland, of course). As usual, he ropes C. Aubrey in, and gets Butterworth out of his honeymoon bedroom to join his quest to get to the bottom of this. All this adventure needs is a beautiful woman - and who should walk in but Loretta Young.

This adventure all takes place in one night, with the inspector getting no sleep and Algy getting no chance to sonsumate his nuptials. Along with the disappearing corpse, Young's hotel room, and whole identity disappear. There is a secret code that only Algy can break, and of course, Deadly "orientals", including Mischa Auer! 

Coleman makes a great Drummond, the greatest perhaps. This movie isn't afraid to be silly, but there's still plenty of action. 

Now, really what I wanted to watch was Madame Satan on Archive.org,  but I couldn't get it to play correctly. I've found a different version, though. I hope to see this classic soon. 

It's Stinks

I've had a copy of Freejack (1992) in my library for a while (bought it together with Performance), and I decided it was time. What a great idea.

Emilio Estevez stars as an upcoming racecar driver named Alex Furlong. He lives with Rene Russo, and plans to marry her if he wins some races. But instead, there is a terrible. But a group from the future are ready - they grab him and pull him into the dystopian, diseased future. You see, in this future, they can transfer the minds of the wealthy into young, healthy bodies. The problem is there are no healthy bodies anymore - too much drugs and pollution. So rich Anthony Hopkins goes to the past for his new body.

But before his mind can be wiped for transfer, her escapes, becoming a "freejack" in the awkward parlance of the future. Hopkins sends his best freejack hunters after him - a guy dubiously named Vacendak, played by Mick Jagger! 

After bumbling around through the various routine firefights and tank battles of the dystopia, he finds his old manager, David Johansen. Will he help Estevez find Russo, or sell him out? Come on, take a guess

I've known about this movie for a while, mainly from bad movie podcasts. How Did This Get Made did an amazing episode on it, where Jessica St. Clair talks about her Philadelphia family's Faberge egg collection. But the movie seemed very MST3K coded to me. The goofy mini-tanks, the squad leader shouting "Move, move, move!", and Mick Jagger himself, looking at Estevez's racing, and saying, "He's good!" If only he'd made an OK sign and said, "It stinks!"

This is a bad movie, no two ways about it. It was clearly made with some money, and the cast list looks pretty solid for a B movie - not even counting Jagger's stunt casting. (He isn't bad, although I'm sure he can smell the stink on this.) But it isn't so bad it's hard to watch. In fact, it's so bad, it's good. 

Honey Murder

I've mentioned my love of Dorothy Sayer's Lord Peter Wimsey stories. I recently discovered Busman’s Honeymoon (1940), a movie version of the last of the series existed. Not only that, but it stars Robert Montgomery and Constance Cummings and is available on YouTube. 

Montgomery plays Lord Peter, an aristocratic amateur detective and Cummings plays Harriet Vane, a mystery novelist who Peter wooed for 4-5 books. They are getting married, and they both swear that they will abandon detecting in favor of matrimony. Cummings mentions that she loved the old house she was brought up in, Tallboys in Cornwall. So Montgomery nips out and secretly buys the place for her.

The owner was William Noakes, a nasty and miserly sort. He meets with a number of people that night, all of whom he owes money to - and none are paid. 

The next evening, the newlyweds arrive in Wimsey's Dusenberg, with Bunter (Sir Seymour Hicks), their butler, tenderly protecting a case of wine. They can't raise anyone, although they expected to be given the keys and perhaps a bite to eat. Finally, they get a key from Noakes' mousy niece.

The next day they are settling in, trying to get the chimney to draw, meeting the Reverend, and so on. This seems to go on for days, before they discover Noakes' body in the cellar, bludgeoned to death. Will Lord and Lady Wimsey be able to resist detecting when a murder is found, right under their feet?

First, let me say that American Robert Montgomery is an odd choice for a British aristocrat. But we do like him, and if you ignore his American-ness, his light style works rather well for Wimsey. Cummings as Vane works better, but is a bit less interesting than she could have been. It was originally going to be Robert Donat and Maureen O'Sullivan, but the film was shelved during the war, and recast when things quieted down. It would have been a different movie, and probably better.

But what's here is quite enjoyable. The eccentric locals, played by some fine character actors (including Robert Newton, using his local accent), are fun to watch. It takes way too long to get to the murder, and the resolution is ridiculous - but it was in the original story. In fact, it's a famously far-fetched murder method. 

I guess it wasn't very good as a Peter Wimsey movie (although better than the last one we watched). But it was a fine as a pleasant, black-and-white cozy mystery. And it did have Harriet's beloved Tallboys, and Peter's beloved Dusenberg, and of course, everybody's beloved Bunter.