Enemy Mine

Enemy of the State (1998) is one of those paranoid, state-run panopticon thrillers that I am trying to survey (I watched Source Code because I thought it was one of these). Although it's only 20 years old, it seems very old fashioned.

It starts with Jon Voight from the NSA meeting a congressman walking his dog in a secluded park. When the congressman refuses to agree to authorize the NSA's expansive powers, Voight kills him and sends his car into the lake. Little did he know, a birdwatcher has filmed the whole thing.

Meanwhile, we meet high-powered labor lawyer Will Smith is working for union officials to take down some mobsters. The bird watcher bumps into him at an art gallery and, unbeknownst, slips the incriminating video into Smith's bag. The all-seeing security state spots this and kills the bird watcher in a traffic "accident". Now Smith is the target.

He's not exactly a hard target - he's a rich man with a wife and an ex(?)-girlfriend (Lisa Bonnet). He is used to having money, and now all his credit cards and bank accounts are frozen. But he is also a strong, resourceful man, used to high-stakes situations. And, he thinks he's being targetted because he has some incriminating video on the mobsters. He hooks up with a paranoid conspiracy nut or ex-spy, played by Gene Hackman (from The Conversation?), and that gives him a bit of an edge.

I'll spoiler the ending because I thought it was cute. Hackman manages to turn the tables by getting control of some of the surveillance infrastructure, then Smith goes to the mobsters, who he knows are under FBI surveillance. He convinces the mobsters that the NSA are after them and vice versa, and lets the FBI clean up after the gun fight.

All in all, this was fun but not all that deep. I was expecting a lot more clever twists and techno-tricks. It was kind of cute that Smith goes most of the movie thinking it's all about something else, and I liked the turnabout when our heroes start surveilling the bad guys, but that's about it. Maybe this was too early in the cycle to be fully paranoid.

Stop Bringing It On

Bring It On (2000) probably ends my attempt to replace violent action movies with dance competition movies. I had basically no information about this movie so it surprised me - it isn't one of those sassy competitive dance movies (well, it kind of is) but it's a parody of them.

It stars Kirsten Dunst as new captain of the cheerleading squad for a rich CA high school. Her hunky boyfriend has just gone off to college and she's a little nervous - and when she pushes her group too hard, one of them breaks an ankle. As a replacement, she picks Eliza Dushku, a gothy gymnast who trasferred from LA. She is only interested because this high school has no gymnastics program. Dushku's brother is wry hipster Jesse Bradford, who Dunst has been flirting with.

When Dushku sees the routines that the squad has been using, she takes Dunst to an "urban" high school in LA, where a black squad. lead by Gabrielle Union, is performing the same routines. It turns out that the previous captain had been stealing their routines and that's how they had been winning so many championships. So now our plucky little band of rich, privileged white kids have to figure out their own routines.

A lot of the humor comes from that inversion - the cheerleaders are mostly stuck-up lazy bitches, tearing each other down and looking for the easy way out. However, Dunst in particular is solidly dedicated to her craft and to sportsmanship. When she finds out the black squad won't be able to make it to the championship in Las Vegas, she gets a sponsorship for them. And they turn around and throw it back in her face, getting sponsored by an Oprah-like talkshow host.

Finally, comes the big championship. Dunst's squad and Union's are the finalists - and that's when I realized: We weren't watching the real movie. The real movie is about Union's squad - they are the scrappy underdogs, whose drive, determination, and pure funk lets them succeed against all odds. We're watching the Rosenkrantz-and-Guildenstern-are-Dead-style look at some minor characters’ story. So Union wins and our protagonists come in second, but with honor.

Actually, this was pretty cute and kind of funny, although more grins than chuckles. The cast was good and they did most of their own cheerleading stunts. However, the stunts weren't quite thrilling enough for me. This really didn't push the same buttons a great martial arts or parkour movie would - or even a mediocre one. I'm officially giving up and going back to Jet Li and Jackie Chan. Unless anyone has any suggestions?

Madness Times Two

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the best deals on Netflix are the old-timey double-feature disks like Before I Hang/The Boogie Man Will Get You (1940/1942). You a pair of short, bite-sized movies, both "classics" (or at least old). In this case, both featuring Boris Karloff, and one with Peter Lorre as well.

In Before I Hang, Karloff is a scientist (not yet mad?) on trial for a mercy killing. He was trying to cure an elderly friend's disease - old age. Since he couldn't cure old age itself (not yet?), he finally gave in and put the old man out of his misery. When he is sentenced to death, the warden offers him a chance to continue his experiments. If he can cure old age before he hangs, he'll have done mankind a service that might get him pardoned.

With the deadline approaching, he injects himself with a serum derived from the blood of an executed killer, asking that they autopsy him after the hanging to see if it worked. But just as he is being lead out the door, the governor commutes his sentence to life imprisonment. Now that he isn't going to hang, he discovers that he feels younger and stronger. But he is also feeling kind of murdery...

Boogie Man, on the other hand, is a comedy - as you might have guessed. Recent Divorcee Miss Jeff Donnell (as this leading lady with a man's name was styled) buys a colonial inn from mad scientist Boris Karloff. She agrees to let him stay on to continue his experiments in the basement, along with his sloppy housekeeper Maude Eburne and groundsman George McKay, a couple of pretty recognizable character actors. She pays off the mortgage, held by Peter Lorre, the town's real estate agent/sheriff/notary/undertaker.

Meanwhile, Karloff's attempt to create a supersoldier to fight the Nazis has only created a corpse, which he sticks in the secret dungeon with the others (others?). Fortunately, Slapsy Maxie Rosenbloom shows up as a new subject. Meanwhile, a ghost seems to be haunting the inn, and Donnell's ex-husband has shown up and thinks that Karloff and crew are staging it all to get the inn back cheap.

So, two Karloff mad scientists, maybe not his best - only one with a beautiful daughter (Evelyn Keyes in Before I Hang), no hunchback assistant at all. But one is scary, one funny. Lorre in particular is a stitch. Recommended.

Send in the Clones

I am slowly making my way through the Star Wars prequels, and just watched Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002) for the first time. I think I kind of enjoyed it.

Not for the story or the acting - oh no. The story is kind of incomprehensible, at least to me. Maybe it’s my fault for just letting it wash over me. But when I start trying to pay attention and figure out who this Count Dookie and Nute Rocklin and Princess Amygdala are, it just makes my head hurt. Also, we kind of suspect the Christian Haydensen and Ewan McGregor can’t act, but we know that Natalie Portman can, and yet they are equally horrible here. A tribute to Lucas’ direction, I guess.

But then you get an extended action scene, like the sky car chase, and all is forgiven. Because Lucas can direct, at least sometimes. Look at it like this: This is a riff on old-times adventure serials. And those serials had pretty terrible plots and acting. But cool stunts and action.

By setting expectations low (as low as Episode I), I managed to enjoy it. Ms. Spenser almost managed to enjoy it, but she woke up now and then, which spoiled it for her.

Gram Positive

I've been a fan of Gram Parsons since Grievous Angel, but I guess he was dead by the time that was released in 1974. Return to Sin City: A Tribute to Gram Parsons (2005), the film of a tribute concert thrown by his daughter, is also a bit late, bu it’s always a good time for Gram Parsons.

The concert features a broad range of musicians who worked with or were inspired by Parsons, backed by members of his bands. We get Jim Lauderdale, Jay Farrar from Son Volt, Raul Marlo, Jim James of My Morning Jacket, John Doe, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Dwight Yoakum, Norah Jones, Keith Richards, and the House of Blues Gospel Choir. Sadly missing is Emily Lou Harris, his collaborator on the last solo projects.

The songs are both the hits (Drugstore Truck Driving Man, Hickory Wind, Wild Horses) and some of the back catalog (Big Mouth Blues, Sleepless Nights). Some were written by Parsons, some he had sung and made his mark with. I mostly liked the renditions - these folk understand the songs - except for Yoakum’s oddly stretched out phrasing on Sin City.

The backup musicians were pretty hot, as you might expect. Al Perkins, who did a lot to define country rock, played lap and pedal steel guitar. One of the guitarists (I’m pretty sure it was Doug Pettibone) played with a B-Bender - a device that raises the pitch of the B string when you press the guitar down against the strap. It was invented by Clarence White and Gene Parsons of the Byrds, and the almost-pedal-steel effect was a big part of their sound. It was fun to see it in action.

All that said, there was something weird about some parts. I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise, but Keef was fairly creepy, leering and mashing on Norah Jones and any woman who got too close. And Parsons’ daughter, who had some good things to say about the dangers of drugs and self-harm, seemed kind of on edge, a little wired. It could just have been stage fright.

All in all, some great songs, great musicians, and if I got some weird vibes, well, Parsons was at best, a grievous angel.

Matrix Algebra

I think we’re doing some kind of Keanu Reeves retrospective. So we’re rewatching The Matrix (1999).

I don't really have much to say about it. The movie-making holds up, I think. The special effects, which were pretty special at the time, are now widely used. But they don't seem dumb here, they look great. Keanu is at the height of his Keanu-ness here. This is four years after Johnny Mnemonic - a somewhat similar role in a similar film, but now Reeve's seems to be in control of his instrument.

This time around, the plot seemed kind of random - I think it might make more sense dramatically if you don't already know what is what. I remember thinking how perfectly it worked the first time I saw it. This time not so much.

I've heard a rumor that there are sequels to this movie, and that I watched them. I assume that this is an illusion of the matrix.

Snowfall

Nightfall (1957) is a nifty little daylight noir, with a great cast, directed by Jacques Tourneur. That was all it took to get us to watch.

It starts with Aldo Ray dropping into a bar, where Anne Bancroft tries to borrow $5. She claims that she lost her wallet and just wants to pay for her drink. They spar a little, then have dinner. Outside the restaurant, Brian Keith and Rudy Bond jump him, and tell Bancroft to get lost. They are looking for their $350,000. Ray assumes that Bancroft was bait to set him up.

Ray gets away, and we get a flashback - He had been on a fishing trip in Wyoming with his old doctor buddy. They come across Keith and Bond in a crashed car and help them out. It turns out they are bank robbers, and they shoot Doc and Ray, and take off with the loot. Except 1) Ray isn’t dead and 2) they took the doctor’s bag instead of the loot. When they come back, Ray runs into the snowy landscape with the money. The problem is, when he finally gets away, he’s so cold and exhausted, he never noticed that he had put the bag down, and doesn’t know where it is.

All along, Ray has been followed by the workman-like insurance investigator James Gregory, who could take him in at any time, but he doesn’t really believe he’s a bad guy. Also, he wants to get the money back.

There are a few things in the movie that don’t really pay off - the meet cute at the start, for instance. What was that about Bancroft’s wallet? That sparring/flirting thing kind of went out the window. But a lot does pay off, like the Wyoming and LA locations.

In conclusion, maybe not Tourneur’s best, but more than good enough.

Bad Company

Why we decided to watch Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves (1984) is a bit of a long story.  When we lived in Tokyo in the late 80s, there was a store in Shibuya that sold nothing by simple cotton clothes in one shade of orange - mostly T-shirts. I think later they switches to T-shirts in a rainbow of solid colors, but just solid colors. They also played only one album in the shop, which we somehow figured out was Danielle Dax. She was a kind of a gothy operatic new-wave diva, somewhere between Diamanda Galas and Souixsie Souix. We even went to her show when she came to Japan.

Just recently, I happened on the tidbit that she played a werewolf in a Neil Jordan movie. We'd never heard of it, but we queued it up.

The movie starts with a family coming home to their big house to find that the youngest daughter (Sarah Patterson) is locked in her room asleep. We see her reading trashy magazines and drifting off to dream land. She dreams of a medieval village where her sister is killed by wolves. She spends a lot of time her old granny, Angela Lansbury. In this dream, granny tells her the story of a woman who marries a werewolf, played by Jordan regular Stephan Rae. All the while, granny is knitting Patterson a hooded red cloak.

The movie winds through several dreams and stories within dreams, mostly based in the fairytale village. There are wolves (both real and played by German Shepherds with dye jobs), huntsmen, frogs, local boys and beautiful noblemen. When Dax shows up, she has no dialog - she is a wolfwoman protected by a local clergyman, who meets a horrible fate. It all ends with her waking up, and a wolf smashing through her bedroom window - or was it the family shepherd?

The story was written by Angela Carter, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jordan. She writes surrealistic, erotic fairytales, and this is sure one of them. It has layers of story, symbols all over, and some feminism. Patterson, for instance, swears she would never let a man hit her, and thinks it's silly that girls need saving. It is perhaps unfortunate that the budget is so low, but the blatant soundstages may help the dreamy atmosphere.

As far as the transformation effects, they are a little silly, but definitely go for it. You could compare them to American Werewolf in London, I think. Generally, a face splits open and the skinned wolf head pops out. In one scene, this looked suspiciously like the tip of a penis sliding out of a foreskin - but maybe that's just me.

Infinity Gauntlet

The Gauntlet (1977) is one of those Clint Eastwood movies that we've never seen, but figured we would eventually. So here goes.

Drunk, semi-washed-up police detective Clint Eastwood gets an assignment to go to Las Vegas and collect a prisoner to bring them back to Phoenix. He's pretty happy to be getting this plum, easy assignment, since he showed up late for work after an all night bender. But when he gets to Las Vegas, he discovers that the prisoner is 1) going to testify against powerful, connected figures and 2) is Sondra Locke. She tells him that there is a bounty on her head, and the bookmakers are giving long odds against her surviving to testify.

He doesn't believe her, until the car that he was going to take her to the airport in is shot up to hell and gone - and by the police. So now he knows what he's dealing with. They go to her house and find themselves surrounded by police. While they sneak out through a bolt hole, the police open fire - and fill the house so full of holes that it collapses. So we know what we're dealing with.

They go on the lam together, meet up with some bikers, etc. Finally, Eastwood hijacks a bus at gunpoint, then builds a heavy iron box for the driver and a passenger, and announces that he is bringing Locke in, giving the route he'll be taking - so the corrupt police set up the titular gauntlet, lining the streets with officers firing into the bus as it approaches. I'm not sure why Eastwood chose this tactic - I thought it was a diversion at first, with Locke arriving in a cab while the police concentrated on the bus. But no - he just wanted to do it the hard way.

Eastwood's character is pretty obnoxious and a bit misogynistic throughout, but I guess he was supposed to be. Locke has a better role, scared but tough, a hooker with a heart, not of gold but a human heart. Neither of them are winning any acting awards, I'm afraid.

What this movie really wants to do it spend long minutes pumping an infinite number of bullets into a car, a house, and a bus. In this, it succeeds.

In conclusion, should we watch Bruce Willis in Sixteen Blocks?

Picnic Basket Cases

Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1979) is one of those movies that I always knew I should watch. We just decided to watch it now randomly. And randomly is kind of how we watched.

It’s set in Victorian Australia, at a girl’s boarding school. Today is special, we learn. It’s Valentine’s Day and the girls are all giving each other cards and poems. They are also excited because they are going on a picnic at Hanging Rock, a local geographical landmark. The school is full of beautiful young woman flitting about in white frocks, and honestly, I didn’t really distinguish amongst them. One was recalcitrant - she wouldn’t copy poetry, but wrote her own. She would not be allowed to join the picnic. One is chubby and a bit whiny. There is also a young French teacher that some of the girls may or may not be pashing on.

And so it goes. The girls take a horse cart out to the rock. An older English couple and their young son and servant notice the girls, but don’t really speak with them. Everyone eats and becomes drowsy. A few of the girls climb the rocks to take measurements. It is all rather disconnected and dreamlike. The whiny girl girl goes along, but when the other climbers remove their shoes, and maybe their frocks and slip off into the cracks and crags of the summit, she stays behind. These girls never come back.

The whiny girl can’t really explain what happened. The English boy and his servant search. The servant talks about the time he and his sister were in the orphanage, and how he has missed her since they were separated. The recalcitrant girl talks about how she misses her brother from when they were in the orphanage - but they never meet. One girl is found, but she is too hysterical to tell anything. There are suicides. The mystery is never solved.

It’s a beautiful, spooky, dreamy movie. There might be mysteries that have solutions within, like the two orphans, but I wasn’t studying it looking for answers - just taking it in. Its beauty is slightly marred by the low budget, giving it a made-for-tv look sometimes. But what does that even mean, in these days of prestige tv. But some simple gauze over the lens can be quite effective.

In conclusion, I’ve been getting Peter Weir mixed up with Nicholas Roeg, who also makes beautiful, mysterious movies. I think I’ve got them straight now.

We Never Do Anything Nice and Easy

Although we are big fans of Taraji P. Henson, we haven't seen her most popular movies. We prefer her in kick-ass mode, like in Proud Mary (2018).

Henson is Mary, a Boston-based hitwoman, working for Danny Glover. She hits one guy in his apartment, then discovers he has a son. Over the years she keeps an eye on the kid, who has become a runner for a Russian mobster who beats him. Finally, she steps in and takes him under her wing - killing everyone in the Russian gang while she's at it.

This starts a gang war, and she has to make sure Glover doesn't find out that she started it.

Basically, this is Henson playing Pam Grier, in a blaxploitation remake of Gloria. She has the hair and the outfits, and drives a restrained Maserati. She kicks ass like crazy, but treats the boy like he is her own... not her own child, because she's not much of a mother figure. But hers, to protect at all costs.

Also, it is shot in Boston for Boston - at least there are plenty of Boston establishing shots. I think the building that Mary lives in was actually in Lowell. As an ex-Masshole, I get very nostalgic for the brick, concrete, and chain link fence back lots and waste lands.

Then there’s the cool soundtrack, including of course Tina Turner’s Proud Mary, for the climax.

Sadly, however, the movie doesn’t quite make it. It’s a little too underwritten, depending on Henson’s charisma to pull it through. Maybe if it had leaned a little heavier on the blaxploitation angle, but a lot of it was just a middling action movie - not even as strong as an episode of Luke Cage.

In conclusion, everyone in the movie has an extremely normal name: Mary, Danny, Tom, Walter - even the Russian is just called Uncle. I have no idea if this is significant in any way.

Eagle Rights

It's hard to believe that The Eagle Huntress (2016) is documentary - the story it tells is so perfect. On the other hand, its portrait of a strange world is so compelling, that it has to be real.

It is set in the Altai Mountains of Mongolia, where Khazaks hunt and herd. Some men train eagles to hunt game, mostly for fur. Now, a 13-year-old girl named Aisholpan wants to learn to be an eagle huntress, the first ever. The community of hunters don't like this - woman aren't tough enough, she'll get hurt, or just give up. But her dad loves her and just wants her to be happy, so he agrees to train her.

They head up to the mountains and find a nest where a pair of eaglets have been weaned, but haven't started flying yet. Aisholpan courageously climbs into the nest and steals one, who she then raises by hand and trains to attack and to return to the hand.

As the training progresses, she decides she wants to enter the great Golden Eagle Contest - to chose the best eagle and hunter. And indeed, she wins, and her bird sets a speed record. Then they go for their first hunt.

This movie is great for the views into the land of Mongolia and the everyday life of the Khazaks. It would have been great without the story or Aisholpan. But Aisholpan is such a radiant kid, strong, full of smiles and good humor, that the story draws you in.

And it's a great story, with some thrills but no tragedy - the elder hunters disapprove of Aisholpan, but only mildly, and they are comically silent when confronted with her tournament win. There is no dying mother, the family is pretty middle class for hunter-herders. And it ends happily for everyone (except the foxes that the eagle kills - sorry!). Even the eagle will be returned to the wild after seven years, as is the custom. A great watch.

Hela Cool

Thor: Ragnarok (2017) is a different beast from the Thors that came before. I love Kenneth Branagh, but his Thor was kind of a disappointment. He was hired to bring an operatic or Shakespearean feel to Thor, and it wound up kind of boring. Dark World followed in its footsteps. Ragnarok, directed by Taika Waititi, goes in a completely different direction.

It starts in the middle of things, with Thor (Chris Hemsworth) giving a little soliloquy to a skeleton, while trapped by some sort of demon. It's silly and cute, and you can tell right off, this is not going to be dull. After he defeats the demon (duh), he heads up to Asgard, and finds that Odin (Anthony Hopkins) is off somewhere. He and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) find him on Earth, and he dies. Well, he's been poorly for the last few movies, so no big surprise.

The surprise is Odin's daughter, Hela (Cate Blanchett). She was from an older generation than Thor and Loki, and has been secretly exiled. Now she intends to rule Asgard and all the worlds. And she has black patent leather outfit and awesome Kirby headress to pull it off. When Thor and Loki try to fight her, she crushes Mjolnir and tosses them into space, where they get siphoned into an interdimensional funnel onto a garbage world. I just wish they had used the expression "Sargasso in Space."

A bounty hunter type, Tessa Thompson, picks up Thor, puts a shock collar on him and takes him to the Grandmaster, to be a gladiator in the arena. Now, the Grandmaster is Jeff Goldblum, at his Jeff Goldblumiest. Loki hit the planet early and he's Grandmaster's new buddy. Then Thor gets a haircut and it thrown into the arena - and his opponent turns out to be "a friend from work", the Everlovin Hulk (Mark Ruffalo). Hulk has been on the planet for a while, and likes it. He gets to SMASH, then hang out with Thompson. So Thor will have to get Hulk on his side, and with Loki's help, break out of the garbage planet, and get back to saving Asgard.

One of the things that surprised me about this Thor is that it didn't reboot the Thorverse. It wasn't just the same actors, but also the same design for Asgard. It carries on with the story arc of Thor's evolution from an arrogant self-centered godling to real hero. It includes a cameo of Dr. Strange, and some hints about the goings-on in the rest of the Marvelverse. So it wasn't such a great departure.

But, because it's directed by Waititi, it's also full of fun, silly slapstick and deadpan humor. There are goofy side characters, including a rock person voiced by Waititi himself. There are jokes, like the friend from work line. There is fun. Ever since Guardians of the Galaxy, or maybe Deadpool, it has been ok to have fun in a comicbook movie. It doesn't have to be all portentous and grimdark. I'm not sure I want that in all my movies, but I loved it here.

Phantom Menace

Phantom Thread (2017) by P.T. Anderson isn't quite our usual fare - although you could argue that it is a horror movie. But Farran Nehme and Marilyn Ferdinand both liked it, and they have very good taste.

It stars Daniel Day-Lewis as Reynolds Woodcock, a high-fashion couturier in mid-50s London. He lives with his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) in the townhouse where they design and sew his creations. We meet him at breakfast - a stuffy silent affair. A model, who has apparently been cohabiting with him tries to get his attention, to get him to acknowledge her existence, fruitlessly. Later, Manville suggests that it is time for her to send her off. And since Day-Lewis is exhausted from finishing a commission, he should go up to the country house.

On his way, he stops at an inn for breakfast and the waitress, Alma (Vicky Krieps). She is a bit clumsy, and doesn't have much of a figure, but he tells her that he likes that type. He invites her to dinner, then back to his house. There, he doesn't try to seduce her (as such), but designs a gown for her. So their relationship begins.

It looks like it will end like the last one, and all the ones before that, but she is a bit different, more assertive, within her role, at least. Then comes the turn - I won't reveal it except to say: The Beguiled.

But never mind all of that - what are the frocks like? In my opinion - lovely. They can be extravagant, but all show a certain restraint, usually in the muted or dark color scheme. The day frocks and business wear have that lovely mid-century hint of severity with touches of frivolity, like some antique lace, while the evening gowns and the climactic wedding dress is luxurious without being frothy. We also get a glimpse of how Lewis relates to his customers, bolstering their confidence, bringing out their personality. Then, he makes a gown for a clownish, drunk millioairess Harriet Sansom Harris somewhat against his will. When she passes out drunk in it at her wedding reception, Krieps encourages him to confiscate it as she isn't worthy.

We also learn about his late mother, who he worships. As a boy, he sewed her wedding dress for her second marriage when no one else would - there is a superstition that single women who sew or wear a wedding dress will never marry. He also sews secrets into all his dresses - a message or treasure in the lining of each creation. That's the phantom thread right there.

It turns out that this movie was right up my alley - I live for fashion. This is now my second favorite fashion movie, next to Pret a Porter.