Silly Berke

When we queued up Treasure of Monte Cristo/Roaring City/Sky Liner (1949/1951/1949), I didn’t realize that we were getting a short seminar on director William Berke. It turns out he was one of those B movie masters who just cranked them out. According to Wikipedia, he once got a big budget and relaxed shooting schedule, and still turned the picture around in 12 days. He also seemed to go for real fun rousing adventure movies.

Treasure of Monte Cristo is a great example. It starts with a little narration about the Edmund Dante’s treasure, now lost. Then we meet Dante’s modern day descendant, Glenn Langan (The Amazing Colossal Man), a sailor on shore leave in San Francisco. He hears a woman in trouble and goes to her rescue. When he drives off her attackers, she (Adele Jergens) tells her story: She is an heiress, but her people control the money until she is 25 or married - but if she dies, they get it. She finally begs Langan to marry her, in name only, so she can get control. When he marries her, she disappears, leaving a note letting him know where she is being held. When he gets there (climbing the building into an upstairs window, a man is murdered, and he is left to take the rap. Crooked lawyer Steve Brodie defends him, but actually throws the case, leaving him on Death Row.

I’m sure you can see where this is going - he was framed so that she, his widow, can get the treasure he didn’t know he had. There are intrigues, courtroom scenes, fist and gun fights, prison escapes, and everything you could want from a B movie adventure.

Roaring City also set in San Francisco. Hugh Beaumont has a place on the docks where he rents boats and does favors. A man comes in and asks him to place a large bet on a has-been boxer, so that word won’t get around that the fight is fixed. But the boxer drops dead, the young defender is found murdered, the bet was placed in the name of... Actually, I couldn’t follow this one. But it was full of exciting stuff. Also, it seems to be based on the old Jack Webb radio shows “Pat Novak for Hire”/“Johnny Madeiro”. There’s even the old drunk professor that does some legwork. There isn’t a lot of Webb’s poetic hardboiled dialog, but there’s enough.

In Sky Liner, FBI agent Richard Travis must retrieve stolen top secret papers from an airplane going from Washington DC to the west coast, aided by stewardess Pamela Blake. The movie isn’t set 100% on the plane, but a good amount is. Of course, since it is the 40s, they land several times, and also, there’s a lot of room to wander around. This may not have been the best of the batch, or maybe it’s just that we were getting Berke fatigue. Still a fun B if you like that kind of thing.

And that concludes by movie blogging for 2018. I’ll try to do a wrap up - after resisting for years, I now embrace the year-end post. See you in the new year.

Cossacks Carrying Horses Around the House

We watched Taras Bulba (1962) for pretty much 2 reasons:

• Yul Brynner
• To hear the immortal line: “Some day Cossacks will have better things to do than carry horses around the house!”

We caught a few minutes of the movie on TV many years ago and caught only that, and we’ve been wanting to watch every since.

It starts with a battle - Poles vs. Turks, and the Turks are winning. Then the Cossacks come sweeping in and save the day. The Poles offer to allow the Cossacks to become subjects to the Polish crown. When they refuse, the Poles turn on them, and take the steppe for their own. Cossacks, in disgrace, cut off their topknots. Cossack officer Taras Bulba (Brynner) retreats to the mountains to live quietly.

Years later, the Poles allow the Cossacks some freedom, even to wear the topknot. Brynner tells his sons, Tony Curtis and Perry Lopez, to go to school in Kiev, to learn the ways of the enemy. They are not treated well there, and get into amusing scrapes. Also, Curtis falls in love with a Polish princess, Christine Kaufman. Finally, they are forced to flee for home.

There, they find that the tribes are gathering. There is drinking and merriment, and a beautiful white horse is presented (inside the house) to Brynner. That’s where one Cossack shows off by lifting the horse off the ground. Ms. Spenser was very disappointed: one horse, not horses, lifted, not actually carried around. Oh well.

The gathering is to decide whether to help the Poles with another fight. Some are ready to go - a fight is a fight, after all. But Brynner wants to attack the Poles when they are pre-occupied. So they go off and route the Poles, driving them into a walled city. The Cossacks set up a siege.

Curtis finds out that his princess is in the city and suffering under the siege conditions. He sneaks in and finally agrees to break the siege for the Poles. So we have a father/son fight, leading to Curtis being killed. The Cossacks prevail, and Curtis is buried there, now on Cossack soil.

Frankly, this is not a great movie. Brynner is amazing, with his bare chest and topknot. But there isn’t enough of him. I don’t know why they keep casting Curtis in these roles (“Yonda lies da castle of my faddah”) - maybe his “dark good looks” used to be considered “exotic”. There are a few stirring battles, slightly marred by obvious dummy men and horses falling off cliffs. Also, the anti-Semitic angle (Pole = Jew) has been erased, but the smell remains.

Still, we do have a Cossacks lifting a horse.

Wasp (Not Wasp)

Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) is a nice follow up to the original. The first was bright and fun and uncomplicated. This one is a bit busier, but still fun.

It starts with Ant-Man, Paul Rudd exploring a microscopic world with his daughter, Abby Ryder Fortson - except it turns out to be an elaborate cardboard fort. Rudd is under house arrest, and having trouble keeping his little girl entertained. When he sticks one foot outside the fence, the Feds, led by Randall Park, come down on him. They are sure that he is a super-criminal, because of the events at the airport in that Avengers movie.

Meanwhile, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) is searching for his wife, Janet van Dyne, the original Wasp, who has been lost in the Quantum Realm. He had given up rescuing her, but since Rudd came back, he is encouraged. While he is trying to open a portal, Rudd has a dream about van Dyne in the realm, and wakes up when Douglas calls him. He is clearly quantum entangled with her.

Pym’s daughter Evangeline Lilly goes to the black market to get some special parts, and sleazy dealer Walton Goggins tries to take the money and not deliver. This leads to a nice fight, but new character enter: a white costumed woman (Hannah John-Kamen) who phases in and out of existence. And she gets away with the goods, a full physics lab shrunk to the size of a suitcase.

So Douglas recruits Rudd, leaving a human-sized ant with the ankle monitor, to provide the proper day-to-day activity. Rudd just wants to serve out his sentence (he has two weeks left, I think), but gets whisked away and stuffed into a glitchy experimental suit. This makes for some fun fights, where Rudd can’t exactly control his size.

The fights are in general, a lot of fun. Our size-shifters shrink to avoid blows and grow to giant size to return them, beautifully choreographed. Add in a character who can phase in and out of existence, and you’ve got a movie.

Michael Pena is back as Rudd’s reformed criminal friend. He has a few good scenes, but not quite as many as the last time. He gets dosed with a mix of drugs that make you talkative and suggestible, but, the bad guys insist, is not a truth serum. So of course, he just starts free associating. Rudd has a similar scene, where his phone keeps ringing during a tense interrogation (by Laurence Fishburne) and he insists on taking it, because it’s his daughter, who lost her soccer shoes.

I’ll skip spoilers, but we do eventually get Jan van Dyne back, and she turns out to be played by Michelle Pfeiffer. She is iconic, of course, but had a kind of bad-ass Earth Mother style. My Janet van Dyne is a fashion-obsessed madcap heiress, which doesn’t really fit. Well, she said she changed a lot during her time in the realm.

And it all ends happily - until we get to the tie-in with the rest of the Marvel-verse. But that’s a story for another time.

It’s a Wonderful Movie

I'll Be Seeing You (1944) is a lovely Christmas movie that I discovered by accident. It also has an interesting link to the last two movies we’ve seen.

We meet Ginger Rogers in prison. The warden lets her know that she can be furloughed for the Christmas holidays because she has been a model prisoner. She gets on a train to her aunt and uncle’s place in the country (Texas?). The train is a rowdy affair with a bunch of soldiers goofing around. But she winds up sitting across from Joseph Cotten, a quiet, reserved serviceman (although he does try to chat her up a bit). She doesn’t want him to know she’s a prisoner, so she tells him she’s a traveling sales lady. He says he’s going to the same town as her to see his sister.

Rogers reception from aunt Spring Byington and Uncle Tom Tully is warm, but niece Shirley Temple (in her teen years) is superficially friendly but doesn’t want her using the same soap as everyone else. When Cotten calls, Rogers invites him to dinner. There he confesses that he doesn’t know anyone in town, he just got off the train to spend some time with her. He doesn’t want to talk about his war experiences. We know that he has been hospitalized for battle fatigue.

Later, on a date at the ice cream parlor, they meet soda jerk Chill Wills, who has a facial tick, due to shell shock in WWI. Cotten can’t stand the thought of being permanently disfigured and runs out. He finally tells Rogers that since his experience, his “timing is shot”. He tells her a little about his experience, and feels better. But then he tries to shy a stone at a lamppost and misses, but Rogers hits it. He rudely rushes off.

This is pretty much how things go. Cotten has to work through his PTSD, and Rogers wants to tell the truth about her incarceration, but she’s becoming afraid of losing him. They have a Christmas with her family, go to a dance, and so on. For instance, there’s a sweet scene in a dress shop where Rogers and Byington vie to secretly pay for Rogers’ dress. I won’t spoil the end for you, but maybe that doesn’t matter. The important things are the joys of family, small town life, and budding love overcoming all. It also features the song, “I’ll be Seeing You (in All the Old Familiar Places)”.

It’s funny, because I thought this was another woman in prison goes to small town on Christmas movie, Remember the Night, with Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray. That one isn’t available through Netflix. Maybe next year.

Merry Christmas, all.

20th Century Schizoid Men

Just by coincidence, last weekend we managed to program three movies about men suffering from symptoms of PTSD. Let me tell you about two from the end of the last century - I’ll save the one from mid-century for separate post.

Gun Shy (2000) stars Liam Neeson. We meet him in an airport restroom, having a freak out. He’s trying to get out of undercover job - he was rumbled during the last meeting, stripped naked and laid on a bed of watermelon with a gun to his head. A DEA team got him out, and killed everyone who could talk, but he isn’t ready to go back into the lion’s den. He has disasterous psychosomatic digestion problems and just wants to retire. But his boss talks him into getting on the plane.

There he meets a psychiatrist, who convinces him to seek help, so he starts going to group therapy. He also goes to a doctor for his stomach and meets Sandra Bullock, who gives him an enema and tries to get him to try alternative therapy.

Meanwhile, he is in the middle of a deal between the Colombians and the Mafia (Oliver Platt). These guys are serious, but the money man, Andrew Lauer, keeps trying to ply them with women and champagne. But maybe they are trying to cut out the booze, and they actually respect women. And the Colombians don’t want to seem like stereotypes.

There’s a lot of fun, sharp writing in this - it has a Shane Black feel. The writer, Eric Blakeney, who also directs, seems to have mainly done TV. He did a lot of Moonlighting, which kind of makes sense.

Sadly, Bullock is very under used - she is barely a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. But she does give Neeson the confidence he needs to get back in the game.

Tom Hanks in Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) doesn’t have an exciting job like Neeson. He works in a disgusting anal probe factory. He has a depressing office, a horrible boss (Dan Hedaya), and a vague set of psychosomatic ailments. He goes to the company doctor and discovers the horrible truth: his symptoms are psychosomatic, probably due to his previous high-stress firefighting job. But he actually has a symptomless brain disease which will kill him in weeks. So he quits his job, invites the secretary to dinner, and gets ready to die.

His new devil-may-care attitude fascinates the secretary (Meg Ryan), but when she finds out what’s up, she can’t take it, and dumps him. Then a mysterious millionaire (Lloyd Bridges) shows up: His company needs a mineral only found on an isolated Pacific Island. The natives, descendants of an ancient Roman expedition and their Jewish and Celtic passengers, need to sacrifice someone to the volcano. Hanks is going to die anyway, so Bridges offers him a large sum of money to take the leap.

So Hanks goes on a shopping spree, buying everything he can think of, and four waterproof steamer trunks to put it in. He meets with Bridges daughter, the kinky, freaky Meg Ryan again. She is also intrigued by Hanks until she finds out he has a fatal illness and splits, delivering him to her half sister, Meg Ryan again, who will be sailing Hanks to the island in the family yacht.

The yacht is struck by lightning and sinks, but Hanks and Ryan survive - the steamer trunks float and serve as a raft. Hanks gives the unconscious Ryan sips of Pelligrino from the bar in the trunk, until he succombs to the sun and thirst. When he wakes up, Ryan has revived and is touched by his sacrifice. And together they watch the moon rise over the wide Pacific.

They get to the island and meet chief Abe Vigoda and his right-hand man Nathan Lane. Now he must make the ultimate sacrifice, although he may have met the love of his life. The ending is unbelievable and fantastic, in the literal sense. But a lot of fun.

I thought it interesting that men’s emotional pain was such a big seller at this time, but the next post will show that it isn’t particular to the end of the century.

It Conquered the Invasion of the Puppet Masters

I’m not sure I should admit it, but I’m a big fan of science-fiction author Robert Heinlein. Although he was a bit of a kook and politically questionable, I’ve read and enjoyed pretty much everything he wrote. So I’ve been eagerly awaiting a chance to see The Puppet Masters (1994), based on his 1951 novel. In fact, I was surprised that this was made in 1994 - I feel like I’ve been waiting since the 70s.

Donald Sutherland plays “The Old Man”, leader of a secret US intelligence operation. He calls on Eric Thal, his best agent and son, and exobiologist Julie Warner to investigate a flying saucer that supposedly landed in Iowa. When they get there, they find a crude mockup, built as a tourist trap. They almost go in, but Warner has a bad feeling and they skip it. Good thing too, because they soon find that there was a real flying saucer, and the aliens are stingray/slugs, who attach themselves to your spinal chord and take over your mind.

These aliens are pretty fun, although they do kind of call to mind the flying bat-rays of It Conquered the World. Come to think of it, so does the plot.

Of course, each of the main characters gets taken over by the slugs, as they are called. When Warner is taken, Thal goes into occupied territory to get her back. The infection spreads outside of Iowa, leading to paranoia - anyone could be infected. Of course, if you get them to take of their shirts and turn around... It’s funny that enforced social toplessness was acceptable in a 50s novel, but beyond the pale in the 90s. I guess it would have been a little uncomfortable for the only woman in the cast, though.

Also, it’s funny that the original novel has more character development than the modern movie, since early sci-fi was famous for strong plots and wooden characters. In the original, there was a real sense of dread and paranoia, and the horror and unclean feeling of being mind-raped by ther slugs. That’s present in the movie, but far in the background. In exchange, you get some pretty fair action, car chases and helicopter fights.

Donald Sutherland was probably the best thing in the movie, but even there, he might remind you of his role in Body Snatchers. I’m afraid I’m going to have to mark this as “for Heinlein completists only”.

Ready or Not

Before we watched Ready Player One (2018), I had listened to several podcasts about it, including the Mike Nelson/Conor Lastowka “372 Pages We’ll Never Get Back” podcast about the book. Now I haven’t read the book, nor do I intend to. But I was perfectly ready to hate the movie. Actually, it wasn’t that bad - I’ve enjoyed worse.

It is set in the Future - 2045, when everything has gone to pieces and people all live inside virtual reality, called OASIS. OASIS was invented by Mark Rylance, an uber-geek who has recently died. As his will, he set up a massive puzzle game in OASIS, with three Easter eggs. The person who solves the puzzles and finds the eggs will inherit control of the OASIS and a bazillion dollars.

Teen Tye Sheridan is Parzival, an egg hunter, or “gunter”. This neologism seems to annoy most people more than anything else about this story. He has a friend who he’s never met in person, Aetch. They are typical teens, doing typical teen things in virtual reality. Sheridan meets up with Art3mis, a cute and somewhat famous gunter, and they bond. Together they solve the first puzzle, a racing game. Then they visit the Archives, where a robot curator shows them everything known about Rylance. This lets them solve the second puzzle, set in The Shining’s Overlook Hotel.

This gives director Steven Spielberg a chance to do an extended riff on Stanley Kubrick, which is rather sweet.

Meanwhile, the evil IOI corporation headed by Ben Mendelssohn is trying to solve the puzzles too, by throwing armies of gunters at it. When they see Sheridan getting close, they try to buy him off, then threaten him, bombing the stack of trailers where he lives in real life - so big body count here. He survives, but Art3mis is captured and forced into virtual servitude. With the help of a pair of virtual ninjas, they break her out, and go on to win the game (oh, SPOILER).

When Sheridan meets Aetch in real life, it turns out that “he” is a large black woman, Lena Waithe, which is cool. But what if Art3mis isn’t hot in real life? As it turns out, she has a birthmark over her right eye, but is otherwise totally hot. Again, cool.

The hook to the book is that the puzzles are all based on Rylance’s obsession with the 1980s. So Sheridan drives a Delorean, flies the Millenium Falcon, and Aetch builds an Iron Giant, which, wait a minute, wasn’t really 80s at all. But there really wasn’t a lot of this. I figured Spielberg would stuff his frames to bursting with references. But it was all very restrained.

In fact, we enjoyed this quite a lot. There were some plot deficiencies, but nothing that took me out of it. It was fun, exciting, well made. I don’t think I’ll watch it again, but it’s not as bad as it sounds. Like Wagner.

Vanishing Innocence

The Vanishing (1988) was Ms. Spenser’s idea: I figured it would be too scary. I was right. I had also made a point of not learning too much about this movie, so I was a little surprised out it worked out.

A Dutch couple, Gene Bervoets and Johanna ter Steege, are on vacation in France. They tease and bicker, and they run out of gas in a dark tunnel in the mountains. Bervoets starts walking back to the last gas stop, but ter Steege is frightened and begs him to stay. When he gets back, she is gone - but when he drives out of the tunnel, he finds her waiting in the sunlight.

They stop at a crowded gas station and rest stop. It’s full of other vacationers, mostly following the Tour de France. Ter Steege goes to get sodas and when she is out of sight for a second, she vanishes. Bervoets searches for her, more and more desperately, but she is nowhere to be found.

Meanwhile, we get to meet Bernard-Pierre Bonnadieu, an ordinary man who seems to be practicing to abduct a woman. We noticed him at the gas station, but now we see him testing ether on himself, trying to get women into his car, and so forth. His wife wants to know what all of his traveling is about, but he claims he is working on an old farmhouse. He seems almost comical, getting shunned as creepy by most women, or getting noticed by his daughter’s gym teacher.

Three years go by. Bervoets has a new girlfriend, but he hasn’t given up searching for ter Steege. He even says he probably would have broken up with her, but has to know what happened. He has been getting notes from someone who might have been the perpetrator, asking for meetings but never showing up. Finally, Bonnadieu meets him, and shows him what happened. SPOILER - it is very bad.

I had assumed that this was one of those existential movies, where you never find out what happened. Oh, if only.

Last of the Independants

Charley Varrick (1973) is another movie I’m just getting around to seeing. Directed by Don Siegel, and starring Walter Matthau, it’s about the cutest heist movie you’ve ever seen. It starts with Jacqueline Scott and Matthau in a car outside a small town New Mexico bank, where Matthau, in old-age makeup, is going in to cash a check. Two more men in masks jump up and the robbery gets going. But some cops make the Scott’s getaway car as stolen, she starts shooting, they shoot back, the guard shoots one of the robbers in the bank, and Charley and the remaining robber, Andy Robinson, pile in and they take off.

They get away clean, to a van stashed in the hills, but Scott has been wounded and dies. Matthau tells the story of their lives together: He was a stunt pilot and she was a wing walker. When that work dried up, they went into crop dusting. That didn’t pay, so they augmented their incomes with some bank robbery. She was one hell of a getaway driver. They put leave her body in the car and blow it up. This is a beautiful way to show Varrick’s tenderness and love for his wife, and his ruthlessness.

When he and Robinson get back to their trailer, they discover that their haul is much bigger than they expected - so big it must have been a mafia bank they knocked over. That’s bad news, because the police will stop looking some day, but the mafia won’t rest until they are dead. And indeed, we discover that the mob has assigned Joe Don Baker as “Molly” to find and kill the robbers.

Baker, who we know mainly from the MST3K movie Mitchell, gets to be pretty chilling in this. He suspects an inside job, because otherwise how did the robbers know about the money? He doesn’t take coincidence into account.

Meanwhile, Charley is making plans to get away, including going to the dentist to get his wife’s records (so her body can’t be identified). He pulls a little shuffle on some other records as well. He unsubtly digs up someone who can make phony passports, and I’m going “Charley, no!” But he has a plan.

It turns out to be pretty clever at that. In some ways, it’s the best part - we all love it when a plan comes together. In others, it’s too bad because we don’t see so much of his state of mind, just his cleverness. He is established as an old-timer - his crop dusting motto is “Last of the Independants”, and that’s Don Siegel’s motto too.

Blind Justice

Girl in the News/Tread Softly Stranger (1940/1958) is a nice double bill of English noir or noir adjacent movies, both worth your time (if you like that kind of thing).

Tread Softly Stranger features Diana Dors, a platinum bombshell called the British Marilynn Monroe, although probably closer to Jayne Mansfield. It starts with gambler George Baker leaving London to escape his bookie, for his hometown of Rawborough, a bleak industrial wasterland. His brother, Terence Morgan, has been diligently working away as an account at the steel mill. He has also been carrying on with Dors, a cabaret hostess who goes by the name Calico. It turns out Morgan has been skimming from the company to buy Calico jewelry, and now the audit is coming. He wants to rob the company to cover up the embezzlement, but Baker thinks he can win the money at the track. As you might guess, it all goes horribly wrong.

This movie isn’t really much of a noir - it’s more of a “kitchen sink” crime drama, depicting the sad and sordid life of the British lower classes in the 50s. But it does have Dors as a toothsome femme fatale, and a decent crime plot.

Girl in the News is an early Carol Reed film, and a bit more classically British. Margaret Lockwood is nurse to an invalid woman who is very depressed and has trouble sleeping. When Lockwood is out, the old woman manages to get out of bed and gulps a handful of sleeping pills, killing herself. Of course, Lockwood is blamed, especially when it comes out that she has been added to the will.

She is defended at trial by Barry K. Barnes, a bit of a Leslie Howard type. He gets her acquitted mainly on the grounds that “look at that face. Is that the face of a murderer?” But even though Barnes and Lockwood become friendly, she can tell he isn’t quite sure.

Although she is acquitted, she can’t get any nursing work because of suspicion (and she won’t touch the bequest). So she changes her name and gets a job nursing a sweet old man. However, his wife and butler recognize her and plot to kill the old man and frame her for it. So it’s back to court. This time, lawyer Barnes is going to need more than her pretty face to get her off.

SPOILER - it’s funny that the climax of both these films hinge on the same plot device. In both, there is a surprise witness who panics the perpetrators into confessing. But in both cases, it’s a bluff - the witness is blind.

Big Fat Crazy Asian Wedding

When I queued up Crazy Rich Asians (2018), Ms. Spenser thought it wasn’t like the usual fare I go for (whatever that is). But I actually love a well-done rom-com - much more than she does. She prefers horror movies, car movies and action movies where well-built guys take their shirts off. Well, who doesn’t? But, genre aside, a great movie is a great movie.

It starts with economics professor Constance Wu teaching her class how to bluff at poker, as part of a lecture on game theory (which isn’t what game theory is, at least when I learned it). Her boyfriend, Henry Golding, invites her to go to Singapore with him for his best friend’s wedding. She agrees, and plans to see her old school friend Awkwafina. Someone in the coffee shop overhears this, and starts texting the gossip around. It seems that Golding is Somebody. When they get on the plane and are given a first class sleeping cabin, Wu starts to get the idea that maybe he’s richer than she thinks.

In Singapore, they head straight for a hawker center (Singapore local color), where she meets his friend Chris Pang, and his bride-to-be, Sonoya Mizuno. Then Wu goes off to meet Awkwafina, who lives in a mansion based on Versailles, with her goofy father Ken Jeong and mother and stalkers brother. She’s a funky punk with a blonde bob wig (“Asian Ellen”) who is very impressed that Wu is dating Golding - she lives in a mansion, but is trailer trash next to his family.

Wu meets Golding’s mom later on, and it’s Michelle Yeoh. She’s formidable and polite, but clearly won’t warm to Wu, who isn’t Chinese-Chinese. Later, Wu meets Grandma, who is much warmer, but ultimately forbids Golding from seeing her. So the question is: Can two crazy kids make it together in the world of Singaporean Chinese wealth?

OK, of course, they will. But the fun is in getting there. There are some great scenes (especially involving Michelle Yeoh). There’s a scene where the whole clan gathers to make dumplings by hand, to remind them of the hard work that’s the basis of their fortune. I especially liked this because I just made potstickers from scratch for the first time.

The scenes with Awkwafina and Jeong are good old zany fun. Gemma Chan plays Golding’s cousin, beautiful, poised and, as Golding says, she has heart. And she does. Nico Santos plays gay cousin Oliver, the “rainbow sheep of the family.” And dozens more characters.

It climaxes with a mahjong game between Wu and Yeoh, bringing it back to game theory.

Two final things I enjoyed about the movie. One is that I’ve been to Singapore two or three times, and even stayed at the Carlton Hotel, where several scenes were filmed. So that was fun for me. And finally, Michelle Yeoh is amazing in this and everything.

Some people love the fact that so many Asians are cast in this mainstream movie. Some people don’t care for the ostentatious wealth on display. Some have trouble with the erasure of the non-Chinese in Singapore. Look, it’s just a movie, and a very well made and fun one.

We’re Going to Need a Better Movie

The way I heard it, Jason Statham swore he’d never work on a film against CGI monsters. Then came The Meg (2018).

It starts with Statham trying to rescue a bunch of sailors from a crippled sub. When he sees a mysterious creature crushing it, he leaves before everyone gets out. He is ousted from the Navy Rescue Squad (or whatever) in disgrace.

Some years later, Elon-Musk-like tycoon Rainn Wilson is showing off his underwater research lab to Winston Chao, his daughter Li Bingbing and her little girl. When the girl is alone looking out through the transparent walls, a giant shark attacks and nearly smashes through.

Meanwhile, Li is leading a project to send Statham’s ex-wife Ruby Rose, Masi Oka and Olafur Darri Olafsson take a sub to the bottom of the ocean, which has been obscured by a thermocline of hydrogen sulfide (I don’t need to explain these terms, do I?). And of course, they get struck by a mysterious creature and get stuck. Li heads down to save them, but a giant squid attacks - and gets chewed up by a giant shark. It’s time to call in the cavalry: Jason Statham, who has been drinking in Thailand since his last disgrace.

He rescues most of them, but Masi Oka stays behind, sacrificing himself for the rest can get away. This seems to be a pattern for Statham’s rescues - he can’t seem to get to 100%.

Anyway, we eventually get to the Jaws tribute, when the Meg (the big shark is a prehistoric megalodon) shows up at a crowded Chinese beach resort. This is mostly played for laughs, with a silly little dog swimming around being menaced, etc. In the end, Statham swims over and stabs it to death. The end. Or is it?

There’s a lot to like about this movie: Wilson’s dopey billionaire, Statham’s swimming, special effects, humor... But it doesn’t really add up to much. It was probably put together by a committee, and one that had its eye on the global market - it’s a Chinese production with an international cast and an American director, Jon Turteltaub (National Treasure). 

Maybe it would have been better with the Rock.

Solo Act

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) was definitely a fun movie. It’s faults all seemed to be related to the fact that it is “A Star Wars Story”.

It starts on Corellia, the factory planet Solo famously came from (“famously” = it was mentioned once maybe, and the super fans latched on to it). Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) and his girlfriend Qi’ra (Emilia Clark, not Keira Knightley as I guessed) anger a mob boss/giant armored worm (Linda Hunt) and have to get off the planet. Solo makes it, but Qi’ra gets left behind. So Solo joins the Imperial Armed Forces, and promises to come back for her.

Three years later, he’s fighting in some kind of WWI battlefield and meets up with roguish Woody Harrelson as Tobias Beckett. They spar a little, then he gets thrown into a Wookiee pit to be eaten. But he talks Wookiee, and convinces the monster down there (guess who) to escape with him. Harrelson’s crew let him come along. So now we get a kind of Guardians of the Galaxy section - they even have a talking four-armed monkey (Jon Favreau).

The criminal Crimson Dawn organization, run by Paul Bettany, hires them to steal some starship fuel. But he wants them to take along his girlfriend - ta-dah! - Qi’ra. She’s been through some stuff, doesn’t want to talk about it. But she’s happy to see Han.

To get a ship, they go to meet Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover). Him and Solo play a high-stakes game of Sabac for the ship, known as (SPOILER) the Millenium Falcon. Solo loses, but Lando lends them the ship for a cut.

So, it’s off to a mining planet with Calrissian’s sassy sexdroid (OK, maybe just a protocol droid) - Phoebe Waller-Bridge plays her as a feisty android-rights activist, but her CGI body has some great big chicken legs. First, they need to make the Kessler run, taking a shortcut that will let them do it in 25 parsnips. Then they have to rob a train. And we’re only about a third of the way in.

This is a great space adventure, with nice touches of humor and pathos. I’m not sure I cared for Solo having a great love affair, but I liked the way it kind of fizzled out - and she wasn’t in any of the lore, as far as I know. Because the whole thing of explaining or referencing everything we know about Solo from the other movies gets tedious. We even see him shoot first.

I wonder - would this be as enjoyable if it weren’t tied into a beloved franchise? It’s pedigree is impeccable: director Ron Howard, always competent, taking over from Lord and Miller (The LEGO Movie), who were judged to be too jokey. The script is by Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark, and several Star Wars movies, along with his son Jonathan. It could have been a fun new franchise or even a one-off.

Of course, it probably couldn’t have been made outside the Star Wars Universe. Never mind.

Wunnerfull, Wunnerfull

I guess the reason I’ve never seen Wonderwall (1968) is that pretty much no one has. Directed by Joe Masson in 1968, it was semi-famous for George Harrison’s score. But it didn’t get much distribution until it was re-released in the late 90s.

It stars Jack MacGowran (Fearless Vampire Killers) as a kind of mad scientist. He works all day peering through a brass microscope at what looks like a power station. He comes home to an apartment decorated with Pre-Rafaelite poetry and crowded with dusty stacks of books. When he turns out the lights, he notices that light from the apartment next door was projecting an image on the wall, camera obscura style. The image is of hippie chick and model Jane Birkin.

Maybe you know her as mother of Charlotte Gainsbourg. I know her as the girl who sang the orgasmic “Oui, je t’aime” in that French song. She is a very 60s girl, young, skinny, wild and innocent. Most of the movie is really just MacGowran watching through chinks in the dividing wall while she poses, dances, parties and makes love.

So that’s about it. There are some other characters, but not many. There’s some action, and it is both creepy and a little sweet. But mostly there’s George Harrison’s Indian classical music score, plus a little rock, including a song by the Remo Four, who sound a lot like Harrison.

There’s also some nice set decoration, both for the professor and for Birkin’s hippy pad. Note that she goes by the name Penny Lane in this. All in all, only worth it for the psychedelia.

Dark Tale

Dark Was the Night (2015) is one I picked for Ms. Spenser, what I hoped would be a classic creature feature. We were satisfied.

It starts in a logging camp, with the foreman checking in each team, but finding one logger missing. When he goes looking, he only finds body parts. But he finds out why pretty quickly, and fatally.

We now move the nearby town of Maiden Woods (isn’t that the ancient term for a grove dedicated to the Virgin Goddess? Needs research). Sheriff Kevin Durant and his deputy Lukas Haas are visiting a local farmer and crank about his missing horse. He claims it was stolen, they figure it just got away. We get to meet some of the townsfolk, and learn that Durant is depressed and, when he picks up his kid from his estranged wife, separated. We later learn that he let their other son drown while he was supposed to be watching him. Hope that doesn’t count as a spoiler.

Anyway, his living son hears a monster in the backyard, but Durant doesn’t find anything - though he does hear it. The next morning, he finds odd tracks of a huge bipedal hoofed beast. In fact, everyone in town has found them.

So we follow the usual pattern of unusual wildlife behavior and people going missing, or turning up gruesomely dead. Actually, there isn’t as much of a body count as you might expect. Also, there isn’t as much of a Wendigo factor as we hoped. Got to love a good Wendigo story, but this isn’t it.

It all ends up with the survivors gathered in a difficult to defend church - even though the Sheriff works out of a brick townhall with barred windows. Oh well, if you want find out how it comes out, you’ll have to watch yourself. This didn’t break much new ground, but it did its job well, with a minimum of fuss or grossouts. Just good old-fashioned horror.

Way of the Gun

The first scene in Winchester '73 (1950) explains the setup: for the Centenial, Dodge City was holding a shooting competition, with the titular rifle as prize. It was not just the finest repeating rifle made, it was a “One of a Thousand”, a rifle that came our just perfect, one of a thousand. We see the rifle and the crowd gathered to check it out, including a bunch of kids and some extras who actually looked native. Sadly, we wouldn’t be seeing much of them.

Also in the crowd are James Stewart and his sidekick High-Spade played by Millard Mitchell. They are looking for Dutch Henry, and expected him to show up for the contest. But first they have to surrender their guns to Will Greer as Sheriff Wyatt Earp - as Ms. Spenser said, derisively, “That’s not Wyat Earp”. Still he was enforcing the West’s famous gun control regulations.

The contest winds up of course with Stewart against Dutch Henry (Stephen McNally). They seem pretty evenly matched, until Steward shoots the face out of a postage stamp glued to a ring tossed high in the air, without touching the ring itself. So he wins the One in a Thousand. Then he goes to the saloon and beats up Dan Duryea as the villainous Waco Johnny Dean. But before he can get out of town, Dutch and his goons steal the rifle and hightail.

Now the movie shifts focus to follow the rifle on its own journey. Dutch and gang go meet up with some traders and try to buy guns, since they left theirs back in Dodge. The traders gouge the heck out of them, refusing to sell them anything, although they’ll give them all guns and $300 cash for the Winchester. Out of options, they take the deal - and then Dutch loses the money playing poker.

The traders are selling arms to the Indians, but you won’t be seeing any of those native extras - instead we get Rock Hudson as the chief. He sees the Winchester and when the trader won’t sell, he kills him and takes it.

Meanwhile, Stewart and High-Spade have been tracking Dutch, and are now worried about the Indians. They run into Shelly Winters and her coward husband, but they might as well not be in this movie, so I’ll skip them. They join up with the cavalry, but they are all green men, expecting to get wiped out when the Indians attack.

It all ends up in a big shoot out, but I was more interested in the way the movie decided to follow the rifle as it went from hand to hand. It was almost like the tailcoat in Tales of Manhattan. It also showed a touch more understanding for the damage a gun can do, even to those who aren’t killed by it.

A Gala Day

I got a recommendation for The Relic (1997) from a Tor.com article, and they didn't steer me wrong. B-movie creature feature with a little bit of style.

It starts in the Amazonian jungle, where a white man sits and quietly chuckles at the antics of the natives. When they offer him a brew made with weird leaves (bannisteria caapi?), he shrugs and drinks it. Soon, he is freaking out. At the harbor, he begs a ship’s captain to take some cargo off, and when he won’t, he sneaks aboard and starts going through the crates. What he finds...

Cut to Chicago. The ship has arrived (I guess you can sail from South America to Chicago?) and everyone one board has been mysteriously killed - and Chicago detective Tom Sizemore is on the case.

Meanwhile, at the Chicago Field Museum, researcher Penelope Ann Miller is losing her grant, and her job unless she can get the patronage of the Drysdales at the big Gala. Her competition will be semi-comic relief Chi Muoi Lo. They find the crates from South America, one with an ugly statue, the other empty except for some weird leaves used as packing material.

Then a security guard is killed horribly, leaving nothing behind but a half-smoked joint. Could deadly marijuana be the cause? Sizemore shuts down the museum. But the mayor calls to tell him he better have it open in time for the Gala. The director of the museum, Linda Hunt, is of the same mind. So the police start searching the basements.

There are a couple of kids down there playing hooky. So when the police hail bullets down on a suspicious shadow, you fear the worst. But it turns out to be a homeless ex-con sex-offender, and everyone feels like they have their man. Everyone but Tom Sizemore.

As the Gala gets under way, Sizemore and crew continue searching the basements. When one of them is found murdered, he sends someone up to halt the Gala. But he’s too late, one of the policemen guarding the Gala gets killed in front of everyone. There’s a panic, the alarm is tripped, and they are locked in! Sizemore’s plan is to go under the museum, through the sewers, and come up next door. Because if there’s one thing we know about museums, it is that they are wide open to secret passages through sewers.

Of course, when they are all chest deep in water and the monster is sneaking around, they begin to wish they’d stayed upstairs.

All in all, lots of fun. The monster (the “Kothoga”) is kept mostly hidden, and revealed bit by bit, as you want in a creature feature. The museum setting is nice, and Penelope Ann Miller is one of those plucky women scientists who don’t need rescuing. This is just as well, because Sizemore is a bit out of his depth.

Of course, Linda Hunt steals all of her scenes, but that’s just a little something extra.

Going to the Dogs

I was kind of worried about Isle of Dogs (2018). How many sad dog deaths were there going to be, and how emotionally damaged would I, and especially Ms. Spenser, be? SPOILER - not as bad as expected.

This is a stop-motion animation, directed by Wes Anderson. It is set in a near future Japan, where a bad strain of dog flu is going around. As a result, Mayor Kobayashi and his major domo Mayor Domo order all dogs exiled to a garbage island. He starts with his own son, Atari's dog, Spots. Spots is put on the island in a locked carrier, and can't figure out how to get out.

Then, it's six months later. We meet some of the dogs eking out an existence on Garbage Island, lead by black dog Chief. They all long for the life they once had, in comfortable homes with beloved masters - except Chief, who is his own dog.

Then Atari Kobayashi crashes on the island. He has stolen a plane to save his dog. He gets help from the dogs (except Chief, who has gone feral). They find the cage with a pile of bones and a name tag, so it looks like Spots is dead - dies of starvation and thirst in a locked carrier. Nightmare!

Shortly after this, one of Atari's classmates, an American exchange student, comes out to the island as well. She's a student journalist who thinks something fishy is going on with the dog edict.

I'll skip the spoilers. except to say that Spots is actually fine. The movie isn't really so much about the plot (or I just missed a few pieces). It's about the setup and the visuals. The setup is cute - the dogs speak English, so we can understand them. The people only speak Japanese, and if dogs are listening, they aren't subtitled. Just like the dogs, we don't understand people-talk. Actually, I understand a little Japanese, and it really isn't necessary. It's obvious what they are talking about, even if you don't know the words.

There was some concern about how stereotypically Japan is portrayed. Sumo wrestlers, poisoned wasabi, and a boy named Atari. However, my Japanese friends like it well enough, so if they don't have a problem, I guess I can live with it.

Can’t We Get Beyond Anarchy?

Death Race: Beyond Anarchy (2017) seems to be more or less a sequel to Death Race: Inferno, yet somehow manages to have nothing in common with it (except Danny Trejo).

In this round, the prison is a huge walled-off city called the Sprawl (see: William Gibson), run by the Weyland Corporation (see: Alien franchise), run by the prisoners. Danny Glover runs the Death Races, which are now illegal. He broadcasts them on the Dark Web with the help of his tech Fred Koehler (from Inferno). Danny Trejo is their man on the outside, who delivers weapons in exchange for a cut of the profits.

A new prisoner shows up, Zach McGowan. He quickly fights his way into the elite, for a chance to drive in the Death Race against Frankenstein. He also makes a connection with Christine Marzano, while all the other females are chasing him as well. But it’s revealed that he is actually a Special Forces commando, sent in by the warden and Weyland Corp to kill Frankenstein. Frankenstein will race him, but he takes Marzano as navigator, so McGowan can’t kill him.

One thing about this outing - it is way bloodier and grosser than the others. Of course, they all have ridiculous kills, so when the guards invade the Sprawl, they all get slaughtered like you’d think. Then, big guys in leather aprons come in with chainsaws and hack up the dead and wounded. That’s extreme.

Other than that, there isn’t much new in this outing. Danny Glover seems to be having fun. Trejo, less so. Zach McGowan makes no impression, and I’m not even sure we see Frankenstein without the mask. The plot isn’t actually that bad, but everything else seems played out. It might be time to let the franchise die.

Hell is Other People

The Legend of Hell House (1973) went on our list due to the Netflix Haunting of Hill House series (which, by the way, we started watching but gave up - too generic, not enough Shirley Jackson). Someone compared the story to the 1963 movie to the series, and threw this one in as a side note. So we watched it.

It starts with psychic researcher Clive Revill getting the assignment to bring back proof of life after death from an eccentric tycoon. He immediately recruits mental medium Pamela Franklin and physical medium Roddy McDowell to spend a week in the “Mount Everest of haunted houses, Bellasco House”. All members of previous expeditions to this house had died, except Roddy McDowell, who was left a little peculiar. Revill also takes his wife, Gayle Hunnicut.

The house set is certainly both sumptuous and spooky. It was built by “Beast” Bellasco, a sadistic, perverted murderer and cannibal, who disappeared in the house and may haunt it still. Our intrepid researchers get chandeliers dropped on them and all the usual, plus Hunnicut gets a bit possessed by a sexy spirit. Franklin thinks the spirit haunting the place is Bellasco’s bastard child, and McDowell mostly just wants to hunker down and survive.

There isn’t that much of Shirley Jackson in this, although the makeup of the party does have some similarities. There are some twists to the plot, some scares and a body count. But mostly I thought it had a nice glossy 70s Euro look - fun and attractive. As long as you don’t try to compare it to Jackson’s book or movie.

More Boris

The Walking Dead/Frankenstein: 1970 (1936/1958) are a pair of Karloff horrors. One of them is pretty good.

That is, The Walking Dead. Karloff plays a recently released convict - convicted for what isn’t  mentioned, I think. He is a gentle, humble man, and an accomplished pianist. But a bunch of gangsters, lead by Ricardo Cortez, frame him for the murder of the judge that originally convicted him. As he is being lead to the chair, another prisoner plays a melody on a violin - and in another part of town, a group is working to get him pardoned. At the last minute, the governor calls for a stay of execution, but it’s too late.

Scientist Edmund Gwenn convinces them to let him have the body for dissection, but instead revives it with an artificial heart. So he comes back to life, bent on revenge. And he gets it, too, mostly by giving the crooks his Boris Karloff glare, and letting them throw themselves out the window.

Directed by Michael Curtiz, this has all the little touches you look for in a B-movie, like Eddie Acuff as Betcha, the gambling henchman comic relief. Karloff is as charismatic as you would expect, both before and after his demise.

Frankenstein: 1970, made 20 years later by Red Barry, isn’t so great. It has a typical monster movie start, and that’s because we’re watching a movie company making a monster movie. The current Baron Frankenstein (Karloff) is renting his German castle to them to get the money to buy an atomic reactor. Which is an interesting premise, at least. He was tortured by the Nazis and has horrible facial scars, which also adds something. There’s quite a bit of gore, as the good doctor starts killing the actors and crew for parts. But it doesn’t add up to much more than the trashy movie they are making.

It also doesn’t seem to take place in 1970 (the Future!), although TV movies may have been a little futuristic.

Feel free to skip this one, but catch Walking Dead.

Get Your Boots On

Sorry to Bother You (2018), written and directed by Boots Riley, is another one of those Black/black comedies of manners that seem to be all the rage now. OK, there's really only one other example, Get Out. But I think that one counts a lot.

It starts with Lakeith Stanfield as Cassius Green in bed with his girlfriend Tessa Thompson as Detroit. Then the garage door opens because he is living in his uncle’s garage. He needs money badly.  A friend helps him get a job as a telemarketer, which looks hideous. But Danny Glover explains that he just has to use his “white voice” and people will buy from him. And it works. He climbs the corporate ladder to become a Power Caller, selling “life contracts” - in this version of America, you can sign up to have all your food, housing, and clothes supplied in exchange for a lifetime labor contract - which is different from slavery in some way.

Meanwhile, Detroit is rocking some amazing earrings and getting ready for her gallery show, and Steven Yuen is unionizing the telemarketers. Will Cash make it to the show? Will he cross the picket lines? Of course, but that’s not what’s weird. What’s weird is what the life contract people, lead by celebrity entrepreneur Armie Hammer, are really up to.

That’s the outline of the setup, more or less. It leaves out a lot of the absurdity - like when Stanfield telemarketing someone, his desk crashes into their home. It leaves out the Left Eye rebels, fighting the system. It leaves out the incredible cuteness of Detroit and her awesome earrings. Mostly, I just can’t describe the density of this movie, the rich, realistic picture of a crazy world, pretty much like the one we’re living in. I don’t think it’s as funny as Get Out, and maybe not so focussed, but it’s beautiful.

And if you don’t think it’s a horror film, just wait until the end.

Crooked Tale

When we saw the previews, we had hoped that Crooked House (2017) would be at least horror adjacent. We got a good old Agatha Christie movie, with just a smidge of horror - and a great cast.

It starts when Stefani Martini visits private detective Max Irons in post-war England. Her grandfather, a super-rich business tycoon Aristide Leonides, is dead, and she fears murder. Irons is reluctant - it seems he has history with Martini, when he was a diplomat in Cairo. But he goes along and heads out to the mansion of the title.

There he meets Leonides' various offspring, wife and ex-wives, and related hangers-on. First and foremost is Glenn Close, his sister-in-law, who is a no-nonsense gardener type lady. There's also Julian Sands writes plays for his wife. Gillian Anderson. But Leonides would never give them the money they need to produce them. They also have several children, including one who likes to spy and gossip.

Another son is Christian McKay, who has been managing the company, and doing a poor job of it, leading to low self-esteem - he's also held in low esteem by his wife.

There's also sexy showgirl Christina Hendricks, who be having an affair the children's tutor. She was also the one who administered the poison that killed her husband, although it looked like an accident.

And then people start getting killed, a new will shows up, and someone tries to kill the gossipy little girl, maybe because she knows too much.

This is all done in the most lovely luxe style. The titular house is beautiful, with the private quarters of the different sub-factions done in different, fancy styles. McKay's wife, for instance, has their quarters done in mid-Century Modern.

All in all, pretty much your standard Agatha Christie movie: High production values, some big names in the cast, and a few twists in the ending. We did not get much in the way of old-dark-housiness, but that's ok, this was fine.

Warwilf?

You know, I should have tacked The Undying Monster (1942) onto the last post, or combine it with The Lodger. They both have the same director, John Brahm, who later did a ton of TV. Also, I don't really have much to say about it, even less than about The Lodger.

It breaks down like this: The Hammond family has been cursed for centuries, and now someone or something is killing members of the family and threatening folk round the mansion. James Ellison from Scotland Yard, along with Heather Thatcher, his lab assistant and comic relief, are called in to get to the bottom of it. We get the usual old dark house adjacent stuff, like dungeons, clanking chains and hidden compartments, as well as a werewolf rhyme that isn't about what happens when the wolfbane blooms.

This entry in the werewolf chronicles (SPOILER?) is good, but sort of unnecessary. It looks very atmospheric, and the cast gives it their all. It doesn't seem to add to the canon, or bring anything new, except maybe a non-mad scientist and his comedienne sidekick. However, at one-hour three-minutes long, it does it all pretty quickly.

Random Movies

Random Harvest (1942) is a classic, sure, but we generally aren’t big on melodramas, and so we had missed it. But it stars Ronald Colman and Greer Garson, directed by Melvyn LeRoy, so we figured it would be good. And then we found out about the double amnesia.

It starts with Coleman going AWOL from a mental institution. He was apparently a soldier in WWI who lost his memory - and no one knows who he is. While hungry and broke, he meets music hall dancer Greer Garson, who starts taking care of him. To help him recuperate, she takes him to a cottage in the country, where he starts writing.

When he sells a story, he rushes to Liverpool to get a job with a newspaper. But he is struck by a cab, and - BOOM! - double amnesia. He now remembers who he was before the war, but not what he’s been doing since. Since he doesn’t have any ID, he heads back to his rich family and takes up his role as captain of industry. He has a cute teen-aged cousin of some sort who wants to marry him when she grows up - I mainly mention this because she’s played by Susan Peters, who is astonishingly beautiful. He is even running for Parliament.

But did you notice his secretary? It’s Garson. She took the position to be close to him, hoping he will recognize her, or maybe just fall in love with her. But she won’t tell him what was going on during his first amnesia, because she wants him to want her for herself, or something. I think you know how it comes out.

This is truly a romantic film, with great stars. But it is far from perfect. I had problems with the structure - in the second amnesia, it seems like Garson just sort of appears as Colman’s secretary, without showing how she got there (unless I fell asleep for a scene or two - it happens). It makes the second part seem disconnected from the first, and not in a good way. For double amnesia movies, I prefer the Joseph Cotton/Jennifer Jones Love Letters.

Speaking of men in tragic relations with music hall dancers, we also caught up with The Lodger (1944). While loose women are being killed all over Whitechapel, formerly well-to-do Cedric Hardwicke and Sara Allgood take in a lodger. It is Laird Cregar, a devout but somewhat mysterious man. Although they sometimes think he may be up to something, their daughter, dancer Merle Oberon, is quite taken with him. She keeps insisting that he come see her show, although he thinks such goings-on are ungodly. She should have left him alone.

I was quite taken with the atmosphere of this one, and of Cregar’s menace. I now feel like the Lodger should have been a member of the classic monster cadre, at least a junior member, like the hunchback.

The Bus that Couldn’t Slow Down

OK, here’s on that has been on my Saved list for a long time that finally came off: Speed (1994). Yes, even though I am a legit Keanu Reeves fan, I’d never seen this one.

It starts with Reeves and partner Jeff Daniels as a bomb squad trying to get a bunch of businesspeople off of a bomb-boobytrapped elevator. They succeed through a combination of action movie banter and unlikely contrivance. But the bomber (Dennis Hopper), even though Reeves shoots through a hostage to get him.

Later, Reeves gets a call from the bomber, telling him about a bus that is rigged to blow up. The bomb will be armed when they first go over 50 mph, and blow when they go below 50. He makes it onto the bus and tries to keep things cool until he can figure out what to do. That doesn’t work out, and the driver gets shot. So America’s Sweetheart Sandra Bullock has to take over the wheel.

And that’s about all you need to know about the plot. The movie was directed by Jan de Bont, from a script by George Yost, with quipped dialog by Joss Whedon. The “elevator pitch” of Die Hard on a bus” is pretty accurate: cool protagonist in impossible situation, lots of amazing set pieces and cute banter. But it doesn’t all take place on a bus - it starts on an elevator and ends on a subway.

There’s also a cute romance, and one of the better quips: Bullock tells Reeves that relationships built on extreme experiences never work out. “So we’ll have to base ours on sex.”

Encore?

Deadpool 2 (2018) is sort of the answer to “What do you do for an encore?” Deadpool itself was a kind of new thing when it came out, all goofy and meta. So, where do you go from there?

Well first, they kill off the love of his life before the credits. So instead of being written by “The Real Heroes Here”, the writing credits go to “The Real Villains Here.” Then Deadpool commits suicide. You know what they say about suicide: What do you do for an encore? It’s a pretty good suicide, but it doesn’t take - he heals too well, even if it means growing a new body. Colossus takes him to the X-Mansion where again, the only X-Men he meets are Collosus and Teen-age Negasonic Warhead (because all the other X-Men are hiding from him). They offer to take him on as a Trainee, with the first mission to calm down an encounter between a young mutant and the authorities.

The young mutant is Julian Dennison as Firefist, and chubby adolescent who can hurl fire and is being treated in the Icebox, a sort of anti-Xavier School. He is rounded up and re-imprisoned, but Deadpool thinks they are abusing him in the institution and decides to break him out.

This requires a new team of heroes that he decides to call X-Force, in a fit of unoriginality. He holds tryouts and picks up quite a group, including Domino (Zazie Beets), who is just very lucky, and Rob Delaney as Peter. Peter doesn’t have powers, he just thought it sounded fun and a good way to meet people.

I haven’t mentioned Cable (Josh Brolin), the cyborg from the future whose family was killed by the older Firefist. Guess what his agenda is.

Even though this movie shares a lot with the previous (including running gags), it has a bit darker tone, due to the death of his love, and later —SPOILER— the death of Peter and pretty much the entire X-Force. But it also has plenty of laughs and thrills, plus real feelings and a happy ending - believe it or not.

This may even be a better movie than the last - more focused, better plot, no origin story. But it didn’t feel as fresh as the first one, which really seemed to be breaking new ground. Be interesting to see where they take this next - maybe just integrate Mr. Pool into the overall MCU. That should be interesting.

Songs in the Key of Death

Now that we’ve seen Insidious: The Last Key (2018), that wraps up the Elise Quadrilogy. We will miss her.

It starts with a nightmare Elise is having about her childhood. She is woken by a phone call asking her for help with a haunting. She turns the request down (as she so often does) because the house being haunted is her old house!

Of course, she realizes that she will need to go there to get closure, and sets off by bus to her childhood home in New Mexico. The house was next to a prison, where her abusive father worked. He would beat her when young Elise saw ghosts. Her brother was so traumatized that their mother gave him a whistle to blow when he needed help. One time, when her father locked her in the basement, she accidentally released a demon that killed their mother. At this point, Elise fled, leaving the brother and father behind.

Once she starts checking out the house, she finds the whistle, and it leads her to a hidden room, where a girl is chained up. It seems the guy who owns the house is a serial murderer, and now has to kill them. Specs and Tucker save the day, and the police take down the killer.

But that’s not the end of it. Elise still has to lay the demon with keys for fingers that haunts this place. And it all ends with a vision of the start of the first movie.

All of these movies have sort of disjointed, rambling plots. But they are held together by a decent metaphysics, the comic relief of Specs and Tucker (Leigh Wannell and Angus Sampson) and the indomitable Lin Shaye as Elise. We’ll miss her.

Now, what other James Wan movies are worth watching? We won’t be watching Saw, but how about Conjuring?

Bayne in Vain

We queued up Wolvesbayne (2009) for one reason: Marc Dacascos - known to many as the American Iron Chef. But we like him as a martial arts actor. But I have to guess that the reason it was made was an Asylum-like attempt to cash in on Bloodrayne by matching the title.

Jeremy London is a high-powered businessman who wants to buy Christy Carlson Romano's occult bookstore and tear it down for his development. One night on a lonely road, he stops to help a woman with her car and is attacked by a beast - and soon he develops lycanthropy. He goes back to Romano’s shop, and finds out that she is not only truly occult, but a secret werewolf. But she has learned to control and channel her wolf powers, and can teach him.

Because they, and the whole world, are threatened by vampires! Dacascos is the king of the vampires, looking for ancient amulets to revive the queen, Yancy Butler. Also, there is a van Helsing in there somewhere.

This is all pretty silly SyFy channel stuff, and doesn’t even have any good Dacascos fights. But, hey, we’ve seen worse. We haven’t seen it, but I bet Bloodrayne isn’t any better.

Like a Rock

Rampage (2018) is a modern Dwayne Johnson movie. I think we know what that means: An incredibly sweet and heavily muscled man finds himself in the middle of a catastrophe of some sort, and triumphs. Why mess with what works?

It starts in space, with a scientist frantically trying to save her experiment while a beast is killing everyone on the station. She gets into an escape pod, but the mutant beast manages to start tearing it up, and they all go down in a blaze of glory. But pieces of the experiment land on Earth, and infect an alligator, a wolf, and...

The Rock is a primatologist, working with an albino gorilla who knows sign language and likes practical jokes. Note that the gorilla is all CGI - too bad we don’t have a charismatic animal star, but thank god they didn’t subject a noble creature to a film set. Johnson is brilliant, noble, an Special Forces vet and ex-member of an African anti-poaching team. Leading a tour of the facility, you get to see all the girls going gooey-eyed for him, to the annoyance of his buddy PJ Byrne.

And the gorilla gets infected by the mutation from space. He starts going and getting mean. Johnson tries to calm him down, but he goes on a rampage. A government team swoops in and carries him away. Naomi Harris, a disgraced scientist, explains to the Rock about the whole plot, and her plans to reverse the process.

Meanwhile, EvilCorp, who funded this research, tries to lure all the mutants to Chicago by broadcasting a particularly annoying frequency. This technique was developed by Peter Graves to use against giant grasshoppers in The Beginning of the End.

The last act is, of course, a big fight, with Chicago taking a beating, and the Army ready to blow it off the map. There’s some fun stuff where the evil corporate overlord, Malin Akerman, gets fed to the ape. Now that’s justice.

This is pretty disposable stuff, directed by Brad Peyton (San Andreas). But with the Rock providing his super-nice-guy charisma, we don't care. Bring on Skyscraper.

Her

I’ve told you how Ms. Spenser is always asking me to queue up more scary movies, and how my choices don’t always frighten. I was pretty sure Hereditary (2018) would satisfy.

The credits start by showing you a complicated, detailed doll house. It zooms into a boy’s room, and the boy inside wakes up. That’s how you know you’re in an art house kind of horror movie. The family who lives in this house includes Toni Collette (Fright Night), looking very Frances McDormand. She is an artist who creates miniatures, like the doll house in the credits, and she has a lot of problems. Her husband is Gabriel Byrne, a bit of a nobody. They have a teen son who mostly likes to get quietly high, and a younger daughter named Charlie (Millie Shapiro) who is a bit odd. She draws all the time and prefers to stay in the treehouse.

They are going to the funeral of Collette’s mother, who had been living with them. In Collette’s “eulogy”, she talks about how abusive her mentally ill mother had been, and basically says good riddance. But are they rid of her?

I’m going to skip the spoilers for some reason (I don’t think anyone is going to read this) - let’s just say that a horrible event occurs, leaving Collette with more grief and the rest of the family numb. Collette goes to a group grief counseling session, which everyone thinks is about her mother - they can’t keep up with the tragedies. At the session, she meets a woman who might have a way to contact the dead. This might not be a good idea.

From there it gets quite freaky, but maybe the best parts are in the first acts, when the horror comes from the kind of family you can get stuck with, and the things that can happen to your kids and loved ones.

But there are two things going for this movie. First, it is a well-crafted story, directed by first-timer Ari Aster with real artistry. But Toni Collette really carries this movie, and that’s what makes it great.

Streaming Pile

Newsflash: We have dropped Netflix streaming, and will be only doing DVDs. Mainly, we’ve run out of TV shows on Netflix to watch while we’re eating dinner, which was all we used it for. So now we’re on Hulu.

I must say, the Netflix interface is good compared to Hulu, but neither is great. We get Netflix streaming on our DVD player, but we have to use Chromecast for Hulu. Also, I don’t know how the Hulu movie selection holds up, especially for Kung Fu movies, which are about all I used to stream, outside of TV dinners.

Still, I don’t think I’ll miss it much. When we’ve watched everything Hulu has to offer, maybe Netflix will have recharged with content and we’ll go back. On the other hand, it sounds like they are cancelling all the Marvel shows, so maybe not. Maybe we’ll have to pay for the Disney channel to get that.

Shallow Ocean

I’m not a great fan of the “Ocean” franchise (not even the original), but I have enjoyed them. So I was looking forward to Ocean's 8 (2018). It was all right, I guess.

It starts with America’s Sweetheart, Sandra Bullock, getting out of prison. She immediately does a little shoplifting and hotel room scamming, so you can tell she’s not planning to go straight. She goes to her prison pal Cate Blanchett  - looking deliciously butch. The target is a Cartier necklace, and they will need 7 women...

First they get Helena Benham Carter, a ditzy fashion designer with a punk/baroque Vivienne Westwood vibe and serious money problems. They would position her to dress actress Anne Hathaway for the Met Gala - and get Cartier to loan them the necklace. Then they’d need jeweler Mindy Kaling , punk hacker Rhiannon, pickpocket Awkwafina, and suburban mom and fence Sarah Paulson. The plan is to slip Hathaway some barf drops and switch the necklace for a fake while she is in the toilet (the only place not covered by cameras).

Of course, it turns out the job isn’t about the job - it’s about Bullock getting revenge on Richard Armitage, who let her take the fall for a heist that they committed together. So, we have all the ingredients that made the original series. The Met Gala stands in for the glitzy casinos, the team of larcenous, lovable buddies are there, and there are always a few twists to the heist plot.

But I came away kind of underwhelmed. I think I missed the improvised (I guess) banter between the old 11/12/13 crew. Maybe Steven Soderbergh is just a better director than Gary Rosss. On the other hand, it was nice to get cameos from Elliot Gould and Shaobo Qin, but neither was really necessary - I didn’t think, thank God, one of the men.

And Danny Ocean? Why, he’s dead - they go to his tomb and everything.

Infinity Pool

Ok, we’ve seen Avengers: Infinity War (2018). You can tell us spoilers. Actually, there wasn’t anything to spoil in this one, since everyone heard about the Snap - “Mr. Stark, I don’t feel too good”.

It starts in space, with Thanos attacking the Asgardian’s space ark to steal the Tesseract Power Stone. He kills Loki and pretty much everyone else, but sends Hulk to Earth. There, he tells Dr. Strange about the situation, and they get Tony Stark in on the project, who brings along Peter Parker. When Thanos’ goons attack, Dr. Strange and Spider-man wind up on their spaceship.

Meanwhile, the Gaurdians of the Galaxy rescue Thor, who takes them all to a Troll planet so that a giant Peter Dinklage can forge him a battle axe. Also, Vision and the Red Witch go to Wakanda to preserve Vizh’s Soul Gem.

And ... I am relying heavily on the Wikipedia plot summary to get this far. A lot of Marvel movies are overstuffed with character and plot, and this one tops them all. At least I was awake for the whole thing. Ms. Spenser conked out about 10 minutes in.

In the end, what with all the hurly-burly and goings-on, I remember almost nothing about this 2-1/2 hour movie. I enjoyed it, loved watching it, but took almost nothing away. Of course, since I expect most of the movie’s consequences to be reversed in the next one, maybe that’s OK. But I suspect this odd amnesia will only make it more fun to re-watch.

Slash Fic

The Final Girls (2015) is one of those self-aware slasher movie spoofs. One with a heart.

Taissa Farmiga is a young girl whose mother is an aspiring actress, who’s big role was as a scream queen in cult slasher movie Camp Blood Bath. But her mother Malin Akerman is killed in a car crash.  Cut to 3 years later. Obnoxious friend Thomas Middleditch convinces her to go to a midnight screening of Camp Blood Bath as a special guest. She reluctantly goes, along with Middleditch’s (half-)sister, Alia Shawcat, and Farmiga’s maybe-boyfriend, Alexander Ludwig. To her dismay, Ludwig’s ex-girlfriend, Nina Dobrev is also along.

At the theater, some rowdy fans cause a fire, and Farmiga leads her friends through the screen to escape. But through the screen turns out to be into the movie.

They find themselves beside a road, when a van full of camp counselors drives by - the opening scene of the movie. After 92 minutes, the length of the movie, it drives by again. Finally, they pretend to be counselors too and jump on board.

Middleditch, a confirmed horror hound, is very psyched to be in the movie. When Farmiga realizes that her dead mother is now the bubbly, scantily clad girl asleep in the back, she is terrified but filled with a great longing to be with her again.

Soon, the slasher shows up. Middleditch isn’t worried, because he doesn’t get killed in the movie (he isn’t even in it). But it turns out that the rules don’t work that way, and he is bloodily slaughtered. SPOILER- he comes back to life, and is immediately hit by a car.

So we get the usual “What to do if you find yourself in a slasher movie” stuff - mostly they try to keep the teens from having sex. They find themselves in a flashback, which is fun and even comes back as a plot device. Mixed in with this is Farmiga’s chance to get to know her mother as a young woman, as a peer and friend. Also, trying to keep her alive.

This may not be the greatest example of this genre, but it is pretty funny. It’s also pretty generous and has a good ending - SPOILER - it was all a dream, no it wasn’t, but everyone (who wasn’t from movie world) is still alive. And there’s a hook for a sequel.

Two Girls

Night Editor/One Girl's Confession (1946) is another one of those nifty B-movie double features. The theme is "Bad Girls"

Night Editor starts with a framing story. A guy stumbles into a newspaper office after midnight, and sits down with his head in his hands. The night editor and other boys playing cards start telling a story about another guy they knew with problems. It was William Gargen, a policeman with a sweet wife (Jeff Donnell) and son, and a socialite girlfriend (Janis Carter). While making out with the girlfriend in lover's lane, they see a guy in another car bludgeon his girl to death with a tire iron and run off. Since he's in a compromised position, he doesn't try to catch the guy. Carter, meanwhile, is kind of excited by the violence - she wants to see the body. She is a real psycho.

The upshot is that Gargen has to investigate the murder, while hiding the fact that he was a witness - and if they scope his tire tracks, he'll be a suspect. He quickly finds that the victim ran in the same circles as his psycho girlfriend, Carter. One of her men friends looks a lot like the guy they spotted running. But when he calls him in for a statement, his alibi is Carter.

It ends with a moral and the reporter with the problems heads home to his wife and kids with a bounce in his step. But at least we got some really depraved sex and violence in the upper classes on the way.

One Girl's Confession is a different type of story. It stars platinum blonde Cleo Moore, a B-movie Marilyn Monroe. She is waitressing in a low dive run by the man who cheated her father, and who raised her. One night, she steals the money he makes on shady drug deals. When the police come, she confesses freely, but won't let anyone know where the money is.

She does her prison time well, making friends, keeping her nose clean and working the prison garden. As a result, she gets let out after serving only a year. But she's convinced they are still keeping an eye on her so she can't get the money. She gets a waitress job at director Hugo Haas' joint. Haas plays a Balkan wiseguy, who cares more about some complicated Balkan card game than running the restaurant - and maybe his girlfriend Smooch, Helene Stanton.

Things are looking up for Moore. She meets a nice sailor, Glenn Langan (AKA Glen Manning, The Amazing Colossal Man). She even considers giving Langan her money. Then Haas has a bad run of cards and loses everything, including the bar. So she offers the money to him, telling him where to dig it up - she thinks she is still being watched.

But he comes back empty handed, thinking she's playing tricks, and throws her out. She is so distraught at losing the money and her job that she gets holes up in bed for three days. When she comes back, the restaurant has a new owner, but only because Haas has sold it. He is now living in a penthouse and having a big party. Moore goes to confront him, assuming he stole the money and hid it from her. When he drunkenly mashes on her, she hits him with a bottle - and Smooch tells her he is dead. And he got the money from a card game the morning after he lost the bar.

She runs to the hiding place and finds the money under a tree's roots. She is so upset that she gives the money to an orphanage and goes to the police. But when she confesses, they call Haas and he answers the phone - he had just been knocked out - I'm not sure if Smooch was kidding or mistaken, but the police turn her away, and after she kind of tries to get the money back, she winds up with her sailor.

This is a fun movie with a lot of suspense and twists, and a slightly mystifying happy ending. But Cleo Moore is the best part - a down-to-earth beauty, honest to a fault, and open to love. I'd love to see more of her, but there doesn't seem to be any on Netflix.

The Raid

We watched Tomb Raider (2018) mostly out of nostalgia for the 2001 Angelina Jolie version. That felt like it started a new style of action movie. This one feels like just one more - but a pretty good one.

It starts with Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander) as a bike messenger in London. Her father is missing, presumed dead, and she can't access his fortune because she won't accept his death and take control of the firm. She is the usual tough as nails type. When the other messengers declare a "fox hunt", she volunteers to be the fox - she will ride with a dripping can of paint hanging off her bike, and if she can avoid getting caught by the other riders, she wins. It's short but fun, but maybe not as much fun as Premium Rush or Quicksilver.

Vikander finally opens her dad's will and finds some clues that lead her into a secret room under the family vault - yes, in a tomb, but it technically isn't a raid. That sets up the McGuffin, the tomb of Princess Himiko, an ancient Japanese godess who killed everyone she touched. This tomb is hidden on Yametai Island (Japanese for "I want to quit"), so she heads out.

After some goofing around in Hong Kong Harbor (done better in a dozen Jackie Chan movies), she gets Daniel Wu, a washed up drunk, to pilot her to the island - where they immediately wreck. Now, she must spend seven years on this hellish island... Wait, that's the intro to Arrow.

Here she meets the bad guy, Walter Goggins, a Nazi archeologist - wait, not Nazi, that's Indiana Jones - an archeologist searching for the same tomb. She also finds her father, Dominic West (Jigsaw), who has been trapped for seven years on this hellish - sorry, I did it again.

Now we get into some serious tomb raiding, in the underground tunnels. I got a very Lovecraftian, cyclopean, non-Euclidean geometry feel here, which is good and a bit unexpected.

I've skipped over what is the best part of these movies - the action and stunts. They are mostly well-done. although there is obviously plenty of CGI and greenscreen - same as in the game. Vikander is a much more convincing action star than Jolie, who relied a lot on stuntpeople and editing. She is also more realistic. She gets beat up a lot, and she doesn't make every shot she takes. (Of course, Jolie played a more experienced, well-trained Croft.)

In fact, my conclusion is that this movie is not that good, but Vikander is great. She brings immediacy and depth to her role, really more than is in the script. She is so much better than the movie.

Also, the music for the original was great - full of "jock jams", pump-em up grooves. In this version, nothing special.

Half a Movie

Half a Sinner (1940) is a neat little no-name B-movie comedy, directed by Al Christie, who at least directed the Ruggles Charlie’s Aunt. It was based on a Dalton Trumbull story, but that’s about it.

Anne Gladden is a prim and proper school teacher who decides to kick over the traces for one day. She buys a nice outfit and goes to sit out in the park. When a masher tries to get fresh with her, she escapes driving his car. But it turns out he’s a killer, and the corpse in the back seat has evidence in the pocket of his coat that incriminates his boss.

Ms. Gladden feels a little bad about stealing a car, but decides to make the most of it. She passes a John “Dusty” King. who pretends that his car has broken down, and gives him a ride. He seems to be interested in her, but when he notices the corpse in the back, he has second thoughts. She still hasn’t noticed it but when he points it out, she is more philosophical than hysterical. She takes King for a criminal, and decides that she will be a criminal now, too.

They crash the country club, which she fits into because she is fashionably dressed. He fits in because, we are figuring out, he is a member and not a crook. They go to an empty house to hide out (it’s his house, but he doesn’t let on). And so on.

I’m sure you guessed how it all ends: with the crooks caught and King and Gladden a couple. Oh, and SPOILER it was his car that the crooks stole in the first place. That’s why King pretended his car broke down when he saw it.

I wouldn’t call this an unexpected gem, but it was pleasant. Gladden has a nice role, spinsterish but with a sense of fun, willing to go along with the craziness to see where it leads. Dusty King, mainly a singing cowboy, does fine as the male lead, but it is all pretty generic. Still, it was short.

Insidiousest

Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015) is another sequel to the Insidious saga - or prequel rather, since the protagonist dies in the first entry. This entry will be the origin of Specs and Tucker.

Stefanie Scott is a normal teenage girl who’s mother has died. Her father, Dermott Mulroney is coping by working too hard and ignoring everything. Scott starts taking up Ouija and eventualy visits Elise, Lin Shaye, the psychic from the other movies. But Elise’s husband has died and she has quit the business.

But evil spirits are hunting Scott, and she winds up with broken legs and a bad haunting. So her younger brother gets her father to hire YouTube ghostbusters Specs and Tucker. This pair’s comic relief is my second favorite part of the series, next to Shaye’s desolate spiritual strength.

This is where we get Elise’s classic working style, where she goes into the spirit world while Specs and Tucker record her.

Like the second entry, this doesn’t match the intensity of the first - although at least it doesn’t try to use “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” as a scary effect. We’re ready for the final entry.

Running on the Rims

Sorry about the delay in posting. I had keyboard problems - but also a movie that I didn’t have much to say about. Of course we had to see Pacific Rim Uprising (2018) even if Guillermo del Toro wasn’t directing (it is Steven DeKnight’s feature debut). But we didn’t have high hopes.

It starts with John Boyega, son of the mighty Stacker Pentecost from PR1, leading a sketchy group to steal some tech from a Jaeger junkyard. But plucky little Cailee Spaeny got there first. She needs the part for her funky little one-pilot Jaeger. So we get a nice little three-way battle that ends with the police coming done and forcibly inducting them into the Jaeger forces, working with Scott Eastwood and Rinko Kikuichi.

So, only one returning character (Kikuchi). So I was pretty stoked when the two mad scientists, Burn Gorman and Charlie Day, showed up. Smarmy Day is working with some megacorp doing ethically ambiguous work on the kaiju. Gorman, more hunchbacked and lumpy than ever, is still working with the Jaeger forces.

I’m just going to cut to the spoiler and let you know: Day has a bit of kaiju cortex and he’s been having drift-sex with it. In fact, he may be married to it, it isn’t clear. But he’s definitely had his mind taken over.

A lot of the movie is about a plot by megacorp to replace Jaegers with drones, possibly drones with kaiju brains. Since the rift was closed in the last movie, there aren’t a lot of kaiju fights for most of the movie. Then Charlie Day and the kaiju brains start opening rifts everywhere, and then there are some fights.

The first movie was pretty much a fun piece of noise, fluff, and special effects. So is this one. I liked the traitor to humanity stuff, but the rest of the movie was not that original. So we had fun and immediately forgot it. We will probably rewatch and it may even improve with time. But it was better when del Toro did it.

I Want Candy

Before I get into Candy (1968), I’d like to say a few words about my Netflix queue - specifically about the Saved queue. That’s the list of films that I want to see that Netflix doesn’t have. It includes some new movies that aren’t out on DVD, but there are a lot that are just ... there. My Saved queue is usually just a little shorter than my regular queue - 100-150. A lot of movies have been there forever. I think I queued Candy up shortly after I joined Netflix. It’s probably been there around 10 years.

Recently, things have been coming off the Saved queue, into the real queue. Saved is down to ~80 titles, although some have probably gone away because Netflix isn’t even offering the option of saving them. But I have seen some old choices popping up (like Straight to Hell). Then I have to decide if I really want to watch them.

I was pretty worried about Candy, a famously counter-culture sex farce from the high 60s. It was taken from a Terry Southern book, adapted by Buck Henry, directed by Christian Maarquand, a French actor. Would it still be funny? Would it be inept? Would it be gross? Well...

Candy is Ewa Aulin, a Swedish beauty queen. There’s a slightly psychedelic intro, indicating that perhaps she is a being from another planet. But we soon find her in high school, day dreaming through the class taught by her father, John Astin. She’s probably thinking about the poetry recital she’s going to attend, with sexual poet McPhisto (Richard Burton), whose hair and ascot are perpetually blowing in the non-existent wind. She catches his eye and he drives her to her house, where, for reasons I forget, he has to take his pants off. But he doesn’t have his way with her.

That’s because Candy gets the Mexican gardener, Ringo Starr, to help. He rapes her. But the rape probably isn’t as offensive as Ringo’s accent, with is vaguely Italian mixed with maybe Dutch? Anyway, his sisters are angry that he has been defiled, and chase Candy to the airport, where she takes off on a military flight with General Walter Matthau. He presses the Jump button while chasing her around the cockpit, and everyone on board parachutes out, including him.

And so it goes - Candy bounces from one situation to another, making men horny all around her. Some are sexy like surgeon James Coburn. Some are gross, like her leering uncle, also John Astin, or the hunchback Charles Aznavour. She also meets a New Age guru who has a temple in the back of a tractor-trailer truck - Marlon Brando.

I won’t spoil the ending, but that’s kind of impossible.

So - this wasn’t inept. It’s a well made film with good production values. It’s counter-culture, but not sloppy counter-culture. (Ringo’s accent is inept, but on purpose, I assume.) It’s pretty funny, although maybe not laugh out loud funny. It’s pretty gross, what with all the rape and harassment, but there’s a lot less skin than I expected: maybe a few breasts and possibly some Brando butt. All in all, a fun watch. Not my favorite movie written by Buck Henry, but I’m glad it came off the Saved queue.

Hare with Body

Burke and Hare (2010) sounds like a sure thing: John Landis directs Andy Serkis and Simon Pegg as celebrated body snatchers Burke and Hare. It comes off as a pretty good pilot for a comedy series that never got picked up.

Pegg and Serkis are two Ulstermen in Edinburgh, a city famed for its medical community. In dire need of funds now that the canals are all dug, they come up with the idea of selling corpses to Dr. Knox. Since one of the lodgers in their tenement has died, they happen to have one handy. This works so well that they try graverobbing, but find it too risky (they dig up an ancient skeleton instead of a fresh corpse). They find another dying lodger, but this time they help him along.

They celebrate by getting some nice clothes and going to a finer type of drinking establishment, where Pegg meets Ilsa Fisher, a whore who wants to take to the stage - be the first woman to play Hamlet.

And so it goes, with Burke and Hare comically killing for corpses, while Burke (Pegg) romances Fisher. It’s funny but not all that funny, and the whole Ilsa Fisher theater subplot kind of takes over the second half. Considering that it was made by Ealing Studios, it just didn’t live up to its potential.

I guess it couldn’t have been made into a series, since Burke is hanged at the end (SPOILER!).

Winchester 2018

Before I start discussing the movie Winchester (2018), I want to talk about the Winchester Mystery House that it is based on. It is a mansion in San Jose built by Sarah Winchester, of the Winchester Rifle fame. She believed that she was haunted by all the people - especially Indians - shot by her company's guns. She thought she could avoid these spirits by continually building a confusing mansion with stairs leading nowhere, doors that opened to walls and windows between rooms. It is now a tourist attraction that we've never visited, although we only live a few miles away. When we moved here many years ago, we thought about going and found out it cost $17 - a fortune in those days. Who knows how much it costs now?

Anyway, we can see it in a movie now.

We meet louche psychologist Jason Clarke at his home, doing laudanum with two whores. A representative from the Winchester company comes with a business proposition: Interview Mrs. Winchester, have her declared unfit to manage the company, and be paid handsomely. He resists, but they offer to pay his debts and opium bills, so he finally agrees.

Although the makers did get permission to shoot at the house, I think we see him show up at the CGI mansion. It’s a beautiful gingerbread contraption, but he immediately senses strangeness. He hears thumping coming from a cabinet, which turns out to be a hidden door and the maid is cleaning the other side. But that night he sees more scary stuff that can’t be explained so easily. Of course, he has had a nip at the laudanum...

But when he meets Sarah Winchester (Helen Mirren!), she sternly lets him know she does not hold with the “soldier’s disease”, that is, abuse of opiates, and makes him go cold turkey. That does not make the apparitions go away.

So that is pretty much the rest of the movie: the cast is pretty much Clarke, Mirren and Sarah Snook as Winchester’s daughter/secretary, and the little boy who is her son. They all experience more or less violent apparitions and possessions, until the San Francisco earthquake knocks down half the building. That’s OK, though, it was perpetually under construction anyway.

On the positive side, Mirren is great as always, and the look and setting are sumptious. Also, this is a real ghost story, with real scary spirits, not one of those “she’s probably just crazy - or is she?” type movies. On the negative, it’s all kind of scattershot and unfocused, and it doesn’t add up to much in the end. Also, of all the angry spirits killed by the Winchester, only two or three are Indians, plus a few slaves. Needs more Indians.