Continuing the "wife's away" filmfest, I watched The Huntsman: Winter's War (2016). I didn't really hate Snow White and the Huntsman, though mostly I liked the look, not so much the story. Still, the "sequel" (prequel? shared universe story?) looked like visual fun, and I knew Ms. Spenser would never stand for it, so I queued it up.
This one focuses on the sister of the Evil Queen Charlize Theron from the last movie (doing a better job of being sinister than last time, I thought). Queen Emily Blunt was disappointed in love, and discovered that she had ice powers. Goaded by evil sister, she founds her own kingdom in the North, where Love is forbidden and all children are orphaned and raised as warriors.
Two of these children, Chris Hemsworth and Jessica Chastain, fall in love and secretly plan to run away from this cold and sterile land. Blunt stops them and convinces each that the other has been untrue (or dead). Then, after the events of the first movie, with Theron dead, Blunt decides to go after the Magic Mirror. Of course, Hemsworth has to stop her.
He's aided by a couple of dwarves (or dwarfs, as my spllechecker prefers), Nick Frost and Rob Drydon, and some she-dwarves, Alexandra Roach and Sheridan Smith help out and provide comic relief - not badly, I thought.
But, really, it wasn't very good. It had a new director, first-timer Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, and lacked the visual charm of the first movie. It was mostly forgettable and soggy, even with all the ice imagery. Not planning to rewatch with Ms. Spenser. Her judgment here was correct.
Addendum: In the end, Ms. Spenser did want to watch this. I liked it better this time, for the visuals, although it still isn’t very good. I caught something I missed the first time around though: There’s an owl made of snow, a snake covered with grass and a hedge hog with little bushes growing out of its back. “Snowy owl”, “grass snake”, “hedge hog”. There were probably a couple more I failed to get. Cute.
Thursday, June 29, 2017
Monday, June 26, 2017
Bag of Donuts
I wait so long to watch My Cousin Vinny (1992), so I've got to watch it now, why? I don't know what gave me the idea, I just went with it.
It's that old story - two kids (Mitchell Whitfield and Ralph Macchio) from the big city get in trouble in a small Alabama town, where they don't cotton to city folk. But Macchio has a cousin who's a lawyer, Vinnie "Bag of Donuts" Gambini (Joe Pesci) who shows up with his long-time fiancee Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei). The catch is that Pesci has never argued a trial in court. He mostly does personal injury, and gets settlements.
Also, he sticks out like a sore thumb in Hicksville, even if he is wearing cowboy boots. His lack of courtroom decorum and a conservative suit disturbs Judge Fred Wynne (Herman Munster, in his last picture). And so on, you get the picture.
This is an old-fashioned writer's comedy, with finely crafted scenes, without a lot of punchlines. Also, there's a lot of improvising going on (I assume), with Pesci and Tomei batting insults and endearments back and forth in deep Brooklynese. These are like music, and I assume the reason that Tomei won an Oscar.
In the end, we enjoyed this, but not a whole lot. It was "nice" - the hicks weren't monsters and found ways to work with and respect the city folk. Tomei's testimony cracks the case wide open. The kids got off without too much trouble, and had a pretty mellow time in prison. Pesci and Tomei look like they will get married, since he promised to marry her after he won his first case. I don't know if that's a happy ending, because he's about twice her age, and not pleasing to the eye. Can't have everything.
It's that old story - two kids (Mitchell Whitfield and Ralph Macchio) from the big city get in trouble in a small Alabama town, where they don't cotton to city folk. But Macchio has a cousin who's a lawyer, Vinnie "Bag of Donuts" Gambini (Joe Pesci) who shows up with his long-time fiancee Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei). The catch is that Pesci has never argued a trial in court. He mostly does personal injury, and gets settlements.
Also, he sticks out like a sore thumb in Hicksville, even if he is wearing cowboy boots. His lack of courtroom decorum and a conservative suit disturbs Judge Fred Wynne (Herman Munster, in his last picture). And so on, you get the picture.
This is an old-fashioned writer's comedy, with finely crafted scenes, without a lot of punchlines. Also, there's a lot of improvising going on (I assume), with Pesci and Tomei batting insults and endearments back and forth in deep Brooklynese. These are like music, and I assume the reason that Tomei won an Oscar.
In the end, we enjoyed this, but not a whole lot. It was "nice" - the hicks weren't monsters and found ways to work with and respect the city folk. Tomei's testimony cracks the case wide open. The kids got off without too much trouble, and had a pretty mellow time in prison. Pesci and Tomei look like they will get married, since he promised to marry her after he won his first case. I don't know if that's a happy ending, because he's about twice her age, and not pleasing to the eye. Can't have everything.
Sunday, June 25, 2017
Phantasmic Breastmaster
We didn't intend on having a Don Coscarelli fest, but Phantasm II (1988) just bubbled up in our queue, so we went with it.
You may remember how the first one ended (SPOILER) - it was all a dream the kid had. But just as he's about to leave with Reggie Bannister, the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) and the dwarves grab him. This one opens 5-7 years later. The kid is now a young man, James Le Gros, in a mental institution. He has been having visions of a cute girl, Paula Irvine, who needs his help. She has been having visions of him and the Tall Man, and seeing her relatives die off one by one. Le Gros claims to be cured of his "delusions" and is released to Reggie.
Reggie still thinks the story about the Tall Man is crazy, but a disaster quickly changes his mind. Soon they are in the Hemi 'Cuda (Ms. Spenser's favorite character) and heading down to Home Depot to steal enough ordinance to deal with any dwarves Angus Scrimm can throw at them. Le Gros goes with a welding torch flame thrower, but Reggie has the best tool: two double-barreled shotguns, hose-clamped together, and sawed off with an angle-grinder - at a 45-degree angle.
So they travel the state, looking for the Tall Man. Everywhere they go, they find deserted towns with shuttered storefronts, which means he has been there, or maybe Reaganomics. Along the way they pick up a cute girl named Alchemy, who Le Gros has seen dead in a vision. Even creepier, she seems to be into Reggie, a balding, middle-aged, ex-ice cream salesman.
They get to Irvine's town, and the four of them go after the Tall Man, with mixed results. We still have the atmosphere of horror, the dwarves, the dimensional gateway, and the flying balls. There's the mix of dream, vision, and reality. But best of all, the low-rent camaraderie between the boys and their new girlfriends. I just like hanging out with Coscarelli's characters.
Believe it or not, I've never seen The Beastmaster (1982) - I didn't have cable in the 90s. It's a fun sword-and-sorcery about an evil wizard (Rip Torn) who steals a queen's unborn son and puts him into a cow's womb, to be killed later. He is saved by a passing woodsman and grows up to be a great warrior.
Now for a minute, I thought this was a Buddhist allegory - isn't there a myth that the Buddha was threatened by his uncle, and so was magically borne, not by his mother, but by an elephant? Maybe not, but this kid doesn't grow up to discover disease, poverty, and death and embark on a life of austerities followed by enlightenment. Instead he becomes Marc Singer, a very fit young man who wears very little clothing. Ms. Spenser liked this a lot - seriously, because he is fit, strong, but not pumped up in a showy way. Functional and strong.
He also communes a set of animals, including an eagle, a tiger painted black (?!?) and a pair of weasels. He does less with this power than you might expect, although it does come in handy.
We love a good sword-and-sorcery story, so of course we loved this. All the nekkid breastses and scantily clad men and women make it fun (and give it my favored nickname Breastmasher). Like so many of Don Coscarelli's movies, it feels like it could have ended about five times before the real ending, but so what, that's just more fun for us.
You may remember how the first one ended (SPOILER) - it was all a dream the kid had. But just as he's about to leave with Reggie Bannister, the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) and the dwarves grab him. This one opens 5-7 years later. The kid is now a young man, James Le Gros, in a mental institution. He has been having visions of a cute girl, Paula Irvine, who needs his help. She has been having visions of him and the Tall Man, and seeing her relatives die off one by one. Le Gros claims to be cured of his "delusions" and is released to Reggie.
Reggie still thinks the story about the Tall Man is crazy, but a disaster quickly changes his mind. Soon they are in the Hemi 'Cuda (Ms. Spenser's favorite character) and heading down to Home Depot to steal enough ordinance to deal with any dwarves Angus Scrimm can throw at them. Le Gros goes with a welding torch flame thrower, but Reggie has the best tool: two double-barreled shotguns, hose-clamped together, and sawed off with an angle-grinder - at a 45-degree angle.
So they travel the state, looking for the Tall Man. Everywhere they go, they find deserted towns with shuttered storefronts, which means he has been there, or maybe Reaganomics. Along the way they pick up a cute girl named Alchemy, who Le Gros has seen dead in a vision. Even creepier, she seems to be into Reggie, a balding, middle-aged, ex-ice cream salesman.
They get to Irvine's town, and the four of them go after the Tall Man, with mixed results. We still have the atmosphere of horror, the dwarves, the dimensional gateway, and the flying balls. There's the mix of dream, vision, and reality. But best of all, the low-rent camaraderie between the boys and their new girlfriends. I just like hanging out with Coscarelli's characters.
Believe it or not, I've never seen The Beastmaster (1982) - I didn't have cable in the 90s. It's a fun sword-and-sorcery about an evil wizard (Rip Torn) who steals a queen's unborn son and puts him into a cow's womb, to be killed later. He is saved by a passing woodsman and grows up to be a great warrior.
Now for a minute, I thought this was a Buddhist allegory - isn't there a myth that the Buddha was threatened by his uncle, and so was magically borne, not by his mother, but by an elephant? Maybe not, but this kid doesn't grow up to discover disease, poverty, and death and embark on a life of austerities followed by enlightenment. Instead he becomes Marc Singer, a very fit young man who wears very little clothing. Ms. Spenser liked this a lot - seriously, because he is fit, strong, but not pumped up in a showy way. Functional and strong.
He also communes a set of animals, including an eagle, a tiger painted black (?!?) and a pair of weasels. He does less with this power than you might expect, although it does come in handy.
We love a good sword-and-sorcery story, so of course we loved this. All the nekkid breastses and scantily clad men and women make it fun (and give it my favored nickname Breastmasher). Like so many of Don Coscarelli's movies, it feels like it could have ended about five times before the real ending, but so what, that's just more fun for us.
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
Apocalypse Nu?
I've heard that the latest episode in the series is pretty good, but we just watched the second one: Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004). Is this one of those things like Star Trek, where only the even episodes are good? Except in this case, it's the odd ones?
If you recall, when the zombie virus got loose in the Umbrella Corp. underground lab, Mila Jovovich barely escaped with her life - and an immunity to the virus. She wakes up in a hospital, and when she ventures out, she realizes that the zombie plague has gotten out with her. It is starting to run wild in Raccoon City.
Meanwhile, a top Umbrella scientist's little daughter is stuck in the city, and the corp. is hiring bounty hunters to get her out, including Valentine Guillory and a trio of redshirts. So we have a number of zombie fights, the redshirts get bitten one by one and turn, and the city is sealed off. There are also some genetically altered living weapons, being tested on the ... survivors? Not used to clear out the zombies. Because the survivors would be a better test. Not buying this.
It goes on like this, fight-fight-run-run, silly twist, fight some more. The original had a body count, but also an original feeling, due to the enclosed setting, maybe. This felt much more generic. Not bad (though silly), but not memorable. Also, needed more Mila Jovovich.
We still plan to watch up to the Final Chapter, completing Paul W.S. Anderson's six-movie trilogy. But we're not in a big hurry.
If you recall, when the zombie virus got loose in the Umbrella Corp. underground lab, Mila Jovovich barely escaped with her life - and an immunity to the virus. She wakes up in a hospital, and when she ventures out, she realizes that the zombie plague has gotten out with her. It is starting to run wild in Raccoon City.
Meanwhile, a top Umbrella scientist's little daughter is stuck in the city, and the corp. is hiring bounty hunters to get her out, including Valentine Guillory and a trio of redshirts. So we have a number of zombie fights, the redshirts get bitten one by one and turn, and the city is sealed off. There are also some genetically altered living weapons, being tested on the ... survivors? Not used to clear out the zombies. Because the survivors would be a better test. Not buying this.
It goes on like this, fight-fight-run-run, silly twist, fight some more. The original had a body count, but also an original feeling, due to the enclosed setting, maybe. This felt much more generic. Not bad (though silly), but not memorable. Also, needed more Mila Jovovich.
We still plan to watch up to the Final Chapter, completing Paul W.S. Anderson's six-movie trilogy. But we're not in a big hurry.
Thursday, June 15, 2017
Contact? Contact!
I'm a little conflicted about Arrival (2016). It's strong science fiction, beautifully filmed (with an excellent score), but also left me a bit cold from the story perspective. Which was the same way I felt about Contact, come to think of it.
Amy Adams is a linguistics professor who gets called up by Col. Forrest Whittaker when the aliens arrive. Their ships are gigantic matte black pebbles, hovering on end 20 or so feet above Montana, among other places. On the team with Adams is mathematical physicist Jeremy "Lumpy" Renner. Sadly, he is pretty much absent in this movie - I wouldn't have minded at least a little bit of the old "math is the universal language" stuff.
The aliens are called heptapods - seven-legged cthuloid walking squid. They live in a smokey vapor environment and communicate with low groans and rumbles. Adams never figures that out, but their written language, which looks like the ring a coffee cup leaves on a napkin, is more amenable to analysis.
The analysis is all scientificy and the movie doesn't really get into it. We seem to pick it up very fast. But understanding is hampered by the difference in the aliens' perception of reality - and vice versa. Yes, this is a movie about the Whorf-Sapir Hypothesis, that the structure of your language determines what you can think about. Perhaps, as she learns their language, she is absorbing their world view, and maybe even ...
There is another thread that runs through the movie, about Amy Adams daughter, from her birth to her early tragic death. I took it for a flashback at first, but that doesn't match some of the things she says. I guess I'll leave out the spoiler, except to say that the "twist" made Adams seem like a bit of a monster to me. Kind of like in Passengers (different circumstance, but similar stakes).
So, I wasn't all that thrilled by the plot, Whorf-Sapir Hypothesis included. But I loved the movie in general. It is beautifully photographed, full of big landscapes back-lit by a low sun, the air hazy with light. The score by Johann Johannson is also great, full of deep, droning ostinatos. It mirrors that spoken language of the heptapods, which has more than a touch of whale song.
So, even if the plot didn't do it for me (and Renner was wasted), we liked this movie a lot. Feast for the eyes and ears, but maybe not as much for the brain as expected.
Amy Adams is a linguistics professor who gets called up by Col. Forrest Whittaker when the aliens arrive. Their ships are gigantic matte black pebbles, hovering on end 20 or so feet above Montana, among other places. On the team with Adams is mathematical physicist Jeremy "Lumpy" Renner. Sadly, he is pretty much absent in this movie - I wouldn't have minded at least a little bit of the old "math is the universal language" stuff.
The aliens are called heptapods - seven-legged cthuloid walking squid. They live in a smokey vapor environment and communicate with low groans and rumbles. Adams never figures that out, but their written language, which looks like the ring a coffee cup leaves on a napkin, is more amenable to analysis.
The analysis is all scientificy and the movie doesn't really get into it. We seem to pick it up very fast. But understanding is hampered by the difference in the aliens' perception of reality - and vice versa. Yes, this is a movie about the Whorf-Sapir Hypothesis, that the structure of your language determines what you can think about. Perhaps, as she learns their language, she is absorbing their world view, and maybe even ...
There is another thread that runs through the movie, about Amy Adams daughter, from her birth to her early tragic death. I took it for a flashback at first, but that doesn't match some of the things she says. I guess I'll leave out the spoiler, except to say that the "twist" made Adams seem like a bit of a monster to me. Kind of like in Passengers (different circumstance, but similar stakes).
So, I wasn't all that thrilled by the plot, Whorf-Sapir Hypothesis included. But I loved the movie in general. It is beautifully photographed, full of big landscapes back-lit by a low sun, the air hazy with light. The score by Johann Johannson is also great, full of deep, droning ostinatos. It mirrors that spoken language of the heptapods, which has more than a touch of whale song.
So, even if the plot didn't do it for me (and Renner was wasted), we liked this movie a lot. Feast for the eyes and ears, but maybe not as much for the brain as expected.
Sunday, June 11, 2017
I Love the Dead
We sort of just discovered that Val Lewton produced 3 movies with Boris Karloff, so we queued up Val Lewton: Isle of the Dead/Bedlam (1945/1946). We watched The Seventh Victim, again for me, first time for Ms. Spenser, and she wanted to see the included video essay on Lewton - that clued us in to the Karloffs.
Both movies were based on artworks. Isle of the Dead was based on the Boecklin painting of the same name, showing an island at dusk with a white robed figure approaching on a boat. It is set during the Balkan Wars, when Greece was fighting for its independence. Karloff is a Greek general, who has just won a battle. An American reporter, Marc Cramer, convinces Karloff to take him to a nearby cemetery island to visit Karloff's wife's tomb - while his men struggle to clear the corpses from the battlefield, to avoid plague.
On the island, they find a few people living with an archaeologist, including a sickly woman, her husband (Alan Napier, a Lewton favorite, but we love him as Alfred, TV's Batman's Butler), and her companion, Ellen Drew. The housekeeper, Helene Thimig, hints darkly that the companion is so full of blood and life, and her mistress so pale and sickly, perhaps someone is a vorvolaka, a vampire like monster of the region. Not sure how it compares to the Wurdulak. That's not bad enough, but soon someone dies of the plague, and the general declares a strict quarantine. He is sure that science and medicine will save them. But when it doesn't, he too begins to look for evil influences.
Bedlam is based on a different artwork, the last painting in Hogarth's Rake's Progress, when the rake has wound up in the fearsome London institute, St. Mary of Bethlehem, or Bedlam. Here, Karloff runs Bedlam but wants to be a writer. He is looking for the patronage of Lord Mortimer (Billy House), and may have killed Mortimer's last pet writer. Mortimer has another protege, a witty young woman, Anna Lee. Although she is a sophisticated cynic, she doesn't approve of the modern practice of treating the asylum inmates as a source of entertainment. She lets Karloff know, and he takes a disliking to her.
When the head of a lunatic asylum doesn't like you, they can do some nasty things. In fact, by treating some of her jokes as serious, he has her committed. Will the stonemason Quaker she met help get her out?
Both of these movies show Lewton's literary side and the subtlety of his horror. Karloff is a presence that can go from foolish, kindly, or genial to terrifying with no disconnect. The art-inflected cinematography is great, although you sometimes can see the lack of money on the screen. We also watched the commentary on Bedlam - it was fun and informative but mostly an info-dump that rarely connected to what you saw on the screen.
Both movies were based on artworks. Isle of the Dead was based on the Boecklin painting of the same name, showing an island at dusk with a white robed figure approaching on a boat. It is set during the Balkan Wars, when Greece was fighting for its independence. Karloff is a Greek general, who has just won a battle. An American reporter, Marc Cramer, convinces Karloff to take him to a nearby cemetery island to visit Karloff's wife's tomb - while his men struggle to clear the corpses from the battlefield, to avoid plague.
On the island, they find a few people living with an archaeologist, including a sickly woman, her husband (Alan Napier, a Lewton favorite, but we love him as Alfred, TV's Batman's Butler), and her companion, Ellen Drew. The housekeeper, Helene Thimig, hints darkly that the companion is so full of blood and life, and her mistress so pale and sickly, perhaps someone is a vorvolaka, a vampire like monster of the region. Not sure how it compares to the Wurdulak. That's not bad enough, but soon someone dies of the plague, and the general declares a strict quarantine. He is sure that science and medicine will save them. But when it doesn't, he too begins to look for evil influences.
Bedlam is based on a different artwork, the last painting in Hogarth's Rake's Progress, when the rake has wound up in the fearsome London institute, St. Mary of Bethlehem, or Bedlam. Here, Karloff runs Bedlam but wants to be a writer. He is looking for the patronage of Lord Mortimer (Billy House), and may have killed Mortimer's last pet writer. Mortimer has another protege, a witty young woman, Anna Lee. Although she is a sophisticated cynic, she doesn't approve of the modern practice of treating the asylum inmates as a source of entertainment. She lets Karloff know, and he takes a disliking to her.
When the head of a lunatic asylum doesn't like you, they can do some nasty things. In fact, by treating some of her jokes as serious, he has her committed. Will the stonemason Quaker she met help get her out?
Both of these movies show Lewton's literary side and the subtlety of his horror. Karloff is a presence that can go from foolish, kindly, or genial to terrifying with no disconnect. The art-inflected cinematography is great, although you sometimes can see the lack of money on the screen. We also watched the commentary on Bedlam - it was fun and informative but mostly an info-dump that rarely connected to what you saw on the screen.
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