The Big Bicker

I feel like The Lovebirds (2020) was one of the first movies to skip a theater release because of COVID and to come out on streaming. The previews looked kind of fun, so we streamed it. 

It starts with Kumail Nanjiani leaving Issa Rae's apartment in the morning - their one-night stand is over, they plan to never see each other again. But maybe they should get breakfast first. Five years later they are still living together, but now seething with resentment. They head out to a dinner party, and as they quarrel on their way, they decide it's time to break up. And then they hit a cyclist.

He gets up and runs away like he's being chased, but leaves behind his phone. Then a guy comes up, says he's a cop, and commandeers their car. They chase the cyclist down - now Nanjiani and Rae are into the chase. They didn't almost kill an innocent man, he was a fugitive. Then the cop catches up to the guy, runs him down, then backs up and runs him down again. And again. They start to think that he isn't a cop. 

The cop, Paul Sparks, runs away when he hears sirens. A couple on a date see Nanjiani and Rae standing over the body, and call the cops. So they run.

The rest of this plays out pretty much how you'd expect, with the usual amount of twists and turns. They are afraid to go to the police because 1) the circumstances and 2) the shades of their skin. They have the phone, showing a calendar alert with a name and a bar. So Rae convinces Nanjiani to play detective. And so on. 

Of course, the plot is mostly McGuffin (Eyes Wide Shut sex cult plus blackmail), and a lot of the situations play out in a standard way. For example, they find someone in on the plot and threaten him - a couple of bougie types trying to act street and tough. But sometimes, there's a twist. For example, the police on their trail turn out to be lead by a sweet black woman, who knows they didn't do it - security cameras. She is only concerned for their welfare and wants to make sure they are ok. 

But mostly, this movie is about Nanjiani and Rae bickering. Nanjiani seems to be a compulsive talker, going off on rants about random thoughts. It would have made more sense if he had been a standup comedian again. Rae is a little more nuanced, bringing some real confusion and longing to the role of fed-up soon-to-be ex-lover. Also, she's the one who wants to play detective.

We found this to be fairly amusing. Michael Showalter is directing and he seems to know what he's doing. The main question is whether you find the bickering couple amusing or just irritating. It was a close call for us. 

Also, the movie is set in New Orleans for no good reason, and the setting is barely perceptible. 

Ultra Dope

Speaking of movies we saw previews for. we saw a preview for American Ultra (2015) before the last stupid action movie we watched. I knew about the movie, but had it pegged as a sort of Natural Born Killers. But the "Ultra" isn't for "ultra-violence", it's for "MK-Ultra".

Jesse Eisenberg is a night clerk at a 24-hour convenience store in West Virginia. He likes getting high and drawing stories about an ape astronaut. He loves his girlfriend, Kristen Stewart, and plans to propose to her in Hawaii. But his phobia about leaving town is too strong and they have to abandon their travel plans at the airport. But K-Stew still loves and forgives him.

Meanwhile, CIA agent Connie Britton gets an encrypted message that codename Wiseman is being eliminated by the agent who supplanted her, Topher Grace. So she travels to West Virginia, walks into Eisenberg's shop, buys some cup noodles and recites the activation code to him. He is nonplussed and so is she - nothing happens. So she walks out without her noodles. 

As Jesse is heating up the noodles, he notices some guys messing with his car. When he goes out to tell them to stop, they attack him. So he kills them with the noodles and a plastic spoon. Then screams.

This is sort of the best part - Eisenberg freaking out when he went Jason Bourne on a group of assassins and calling his girlfriend because he needs someone to talk him down. This is definitely a Jesse Eisenberg strength. 

So obviously, they spend a lot of the rest of the movie being stalked by assassins, freaking out and then Eisenberg killing them in improbable ways. I'll drop two spoilers - one is that Stewart was Eisenberg's handler, but fell in love with him and quit to stick with him. The other is that they come out on top.

I liked the idea of "stoned Bourne". Also, John Leguizamo as Eisenberg's dealer and friend was a lot of fun. Stewart's role was the hardest, I think - the "girlfriend" role. It's tough to figure out what she sees in him, although we do see her getting high a couple of times, and she likes to hear him talking about the ape astronaut. That she was his handler and knew him before he was amnesiated helps make it make sense. But I feel like I knew plenty of stoner girls, many of whom loved stoner boys - but you rarely see it done believably in movies. Oh well, it's pretty rare to see a convincing girlfriend in a movie - so many are written by men.

Anyway, this was a lot of fun - excitement and laughs. I don't know if it was as deep as they were going for, though. There's some funny stuff after Jesse finds out about who he is and wonders if he's actually a robot. But they didn't really do much with this. I don't care - maybe they didn't either. 

Protect Harder

The last movie we saw with Tony Jaa in it had a big problem: Not enough Tony Jaa. But it also had a trailer for The Protector 2 (2012),which we hadn't seen. So, problem solved. 

It starts with Jaa in small village with his elephant, Khon. They've been living there quietly (as quiet as an elephant can be) since the last movie. Some big time slimeball tries to buy the elephant, but Jaa refuses. So the slimeball takes the elephant while Jaa is eating. He tracks him down, but finds him dead - and his nieces think Jaa killed him. The nieces are Jeeja Yannin and Theerada Kittiseriprasert, who get into a good two-on-one fight with Jaa.

Jaa gets away and runs into his old partner Sgt. Mark, who is working for Interpol to protect the peace talks between East and West Katana. And it turns out the whole thing has been masterminded by ... The RZA! He is running an underground fight club, as well as sundry other nefarious activities, and uses Khon as a hostage so that Jaa will fight for him.

The plot is very complicated and never made much sense to me. But the incredible fights and stunts sure did. I don't think there was a lot that was groundbreaking, although one stunt was filmed POV, like with a GoPro. Jaa jumps off a roof to a grab the balcony railing of the building across the way, then pulls himself up to the roof. 

The boss fight is vs. The RZA, which is pretty incredible - I don't think RZA is a master martial artist, but he knows enough to fake it. His style is very formal: He stands ramrod straight and kicks head-high. Unless they used a stand-in, he's been working.

So, good fights and stunts, especially from Jeeja and The RZA. I'll skip the ending with the exploding elephant - don't worry, unlike the original, the elephant lives in this one. 

Mexico Sings

 If you are a cinema fan, and I tell you we've just seen a film by Luis Bunuel, you'll have a pretty good idea of what it is like - some surrealistic story with sexual, religious, and/or social themes. Gran Casino (1947) is nothing like that. It's a Mexican oilfield Western musical.

It starts in prison. Jorge Negrete and Julio Villarreal are locked up with some drunks, and the only person who can let them out is the mayor. And the mayor has gone to the oilfields, where there is money to be made, and probably won't be back. So Negrete strums a guitar and sings a ballad to cover the sound of the Villarreal sawing through the bars. Soon. they are on their way to the oilfields too.

There, they stop into the Gran Casino, where Agustín Isunza, a charming drunk, tells them they can work for his boss, Francisco Jambrina. The rich owner of the Casino has been keeping him from working his wells, to force him to sell out. Since Negrete is pretty tough, and Villarreal is an engineer, they start work.

Things are going well, when the boss disappears after going upstairs with a woman at the Casino. Then his sister appears, Libertad Lamarque - she plays an Argentine tango singer, as she was in real life. She suspects Negrete and co. of killing her brother to take over the field. So she gets a job singing at the Casino to do some investigating. 

Of course, she will find out that Negrete is innocent and they will fall in love in the end. But not without a lot of peril, and many songs - and a few dance numbers. 

If you like old Westerns, this should appeal, even though there are no horses, cows, or gunfights. If you like old-fashioned Mexican music, you'll love it. Remember de la Cruz, from Coco? Negrete is the type of guy he was modelled after (although not evil, I guess). 

It seems Bunuel couldn't get his kind of movies funded, so he took this as work-for-hire in Mexico. He wasn't proud of it, and I guess it wouldn't make the film books. But as an adventure yarn with songs, it's great. 

Meanwhile, I'm Still Thinking

The truth is, I was seeing a lot of ads for the sequel to The Hitman's Bodyguard (2017), so I figured we should watch the original. I even made this decision after hearing some derisive comments about it on podcasts. 

It starts with Ryan Reynolds in a modernistic house, putting on a fine suit, selecting some fancy guns, kissing Elodie Yung, still in bed, goodbye, and heading to work. He is getting a rich marked man (named Kurosawa?) to the airport safely. The operation goes flawlessly - Kurosawa and his two wives get into their private jet. Reynolds and a corps of 8-10 bodyguards are just waving goodbye when a shot through the plane's window hits him square in the head.

In the next scene, we find Reynolds in considerably reduced circumstances. A bodyguard who loses a client doesn't get the same kind of jobs. In fact, he looks like a bit of a loser, although we find out that some of that is camouflage - helps him blend in. He is still meticulous and cautious, anticipating every angle. 

Meanwhile. Yung, who works for Interpol, is trying to get Gary Oldman, an Eastern European dictator, convicted at the Hague. They need to get a witness to the court. That witness is Samuel L. Jackson, who figures he would be safer if he went alone, seeing as how he is an international hitman. Sure enough, they get ambushed, and Yung now knows that someone in Interpol is compromised. So she goes to her ex-boyfriend, Reynolds.

There you have it - the bodyguard, the hitman. They have to get Jackson to the Hague from London in three days, with Oldman's henchmen all out to kill him. And Jackson is motivated by the promise that if he testifies, his sweetie, a psycho played by Selma Hayak, will be let out of jail.

So we have Reynolds being an uptight, by the book type, constantly griping about the loss of his "triple diamond executive protection" status. Jackson is a loose cannon, just jumps in guns blazing and always makes it out. Reynolds figures that bullets must be allergic to him. We have extravagant chase scenes, cars, boats, and busses full of nuns. There are hand-to-hand fights. gun fights, and all kinds of fights. It isn't quite John Wick, but the existence of hitmen (who only kill bad guys) and bodyguards with triple diamond ratings indicates that it is that kind of world. 

Plus, it has a fight scene choreographed to Chuck Berry's Little Queenie, and they don't cut a single verse. 

Anyway, we had a blast with this. Jackson's charisma and bad-assery were a big part, but the film definitely gave him a role with room to move. So yes, we will be watching the sequel

Under the Sea

Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar (2021) was getting a lot of good buzz, so we figured we'd check it out. The buzz was right - it's good.

Barb and Star Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig, two middle-aged single women (one widowed, one divorced) living in Nebraska. They are best friends who work at the hottest spot in their little town, Jennifer Convertibles. They sit on the couch and talk all day, even if someone wants to buy the couch. They are timid, quiet types, but when they get fired, they decide to do something crazy, and go to Vista Del Mar Florida.

But someone else is heading for Vista Del Mar. A black haired, albino femme fatale evil supervillain has a plan to destroy the town by releasing venomous mosquitoes. She has dispatched her henchman, Jamie Dornan to do the deed. She promises that if he does this, they will be an official couple. So the girls run into him in the bar, and they share a very large tropical drink, with a surprise at the bottom - I'm guessing X. There's a montage of the three dancing furiously that ends with them waking up in a naked pile. So these woman are getting a chance to live a little.

But they each want to get some time with Dornan alone, which Wiig manages. Soon, she's making excuses to Mumolo to stay in the room (and later sneak into his) sending Mumolo out to have a good time. So we see Mumolo enjoying the resort amenities, including firewalking and getting high with some bikers, and even meeting the mysterious Tommy Bahama (Andy Garcia), while Wiig is getting it on.  

But don't worry, their friendship is strong enough to weather this. And their culottes are powerful enough to save their lives when the villain shows up. By the way, Wiig plays her too. I didn't figure it out, but I'm not that good at recognizing actors (I just misidentified Martin Landau as Martin Balsam). 

There are sort of two things going on in this movie. In some ways, it's a Coen Bros. version of Grand Budapest Hotel - all neon colors and musical dance numbers, very choreographed. It's also a loose improv comedy between Wiig and Mumolo. Their chatter can be a lot of fun, as they share old memories that are either crushingly banal or bizarre. But I sometimes think that they took something from improv that just wasn't that good and ran with it - the stuff about turtles, for ex. My common complaint about this style of modern comedy.

But the bizarre and surreal twists (Reba McEntire as a mermaid) just keep coming, and you don't get much time to worry about little things like that. Or that Barb and Star have Minnesota accents. Do they talk like that in Nebraska, too?

Sweetheart Deal

Speaking of monsters, here's one from streaming that we've been meaning to get to: Sweetheart (2019).

It starts with Keirsey Clemons, a young black woman, washing up on the white coral sands of a deserted island. Someone else washes up next to her, but dies after saying, "Did you see it?" She walks down the beach until she gets back to where she started - so she knows it's an island. She explores a little and finds indications that others have been there. Mainly, their graves. She buries her friend by the beach. In the morning, she finds that the corpse has been dug up and dragged into the water. She now knows that she isn't alone on the island.

At night, she spies the monster, the large humanoid silhouette of a sea monster. She spends the next few days trying to get a better look, and trying to keep herself safe from it. This is probably the best part of the movie. There is no dialog, because she is alone. So Clemons has to use acting to show you who her character is. She's strong and brave, but maybe not as survival-savvy as she could be. She has ~5 matches, and she doesn't build a fire and keep it going all day to preserve them. But even though she's afraid of the monster, she sets out to learn about it and to figure out how to kill it.

Then a survival raft washes up. Her boyfriend and the girlfriend of the dead guy are inside, wiped out. They are pretty glad to be on the island, with food and water available, and away from the sea. They are traumatized by their time on the sea, and dismiss Clemons when she tells them about the monster. Her boyfriend is pretty condescending, bringing up her past as an exaggerator and time in therapy. When the girl gets eaten, he changes his tune fast.

The introduction of the other survivors is almost too bad. The one woman, one monster showdown was brilliant. It's possible that the second part was the original idea, bringing class (Clemons' boyfriend was paying her rent, and tried to use that as leverage - on a deserted island) and race (only Clemons is black). Then in the writing or production, they discovered the first part. There is even a hint that the two on the survival raft may have killed one of the survivors - but it isn't explored. It's just one more thing that makes these guys repulsive. 

Since this is Blumhouse, the monster is a bit cheesy - they keep it in the dark mostly, but we get to see a little too much of it. I wonder if they used CGI to get that "guy in a rubber suit" look. It was directed by JD Dillard, who also directed Sleight, We like his stuff so far. 

Desert Planet

I mentioned a while ago that we got another movie because it had a similar movie to Monster Hunter (2021). We watched this one because a few previews made it look like fun. I don't think it even registered that it was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, and starred his wife Mila Jovavich and Tony Jaa.

It starts with Mila leading two or three transports worth of American Rangers in Afghanistan. One of her men shouts - "Look! On your twelve!" At this point Ms. Spenser asked, "Isn't your twelve right in front of you?" As it turns out, their twelve is their most vulnerable spot. What was approaching from dead ahead is a wall of dust, clouds, lightning, etc. They can't outrun it, and wind up engulfed. When they come out, they are in another world.

It isn't immediately obvious, because this world is another desert - but different from the Afghan one. More dunes. Also - monsters. These monsters aren't that cool or creative, but they are big and hard to kill. They retreat to a cave, and some cave spider monsters attack them, killing everyone but Mila. She seems pretty hard to kill. I actually expected to hear some nonsense about healing times in this dimension, but no - just a badass.

We've seen glimpses of another badass, Tony Jaa, up on the cliffs silently sighting down an explosive arrow. When he meets Jovavich, they fight, but eventually come to a truce, when she offers him chocolate. That's the only English word he speaks. I guess he's speaking Otherworldly, or maybe Thai.

So that's it - Jaa will help her get back to her world. There's a gather-weapons montage, which puts a superbig blade in her hands. Because badass. They also find Tony's people, lead by Ron Silver, who can speak English, and also helps out.

I was hoping they'd get back to Earth so Tony can get more chocolate, and they do. But SPOILER some monsters come with. Sequel setup?

Anyway, this was fun, if not quite as much fun as it could have been. Mila is good, although everyone seems too into being a soldier, with "Hoo-rah", Jodie songs, and the perennial "On your twelve!". Jaa is underused, and there isn't anyone else except monsters for most of the movie. But that's pretty much what we signed up for. This is Paul W.S. "Not that other" Anderson.

At least we didn't get any sandworms.  

Chaos Theory

I queued up Chaos Walking (2021) based on a preview that didn't give much away, and the stars: Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley. It was a reasonable choice.

The setup turns out to be: When humans colonized a fertile, earth-like planet, they came down with the Noise. All men's thoughts were audible (and visible as a kind of colorful cloud) at all times. The local humanoids were the same way. This didn't affect the women, but that's a moot point. They were all killed by the locals. So Tom Holland was the last child born on the colony. Now a teen (or young adult?), he mostly mopes around with his dog. His two fathers ride him hard to get the crops in, but he seems to be looking for approval from Mads Mikkelsen, the mayor. But the mayor's son, Nick Jonas, has it in for him, and Daniel Oyelowo, a sort of mad preacher, suspects him of non-approved thought.

Meanwhile, in space, Daisy Ridley takes a shuttle down to the planet but crashes. Holland catches her stealing food (barely catches her) but keeps her a secret from the community. She is traumatized from the crash, and for most of the first act, Holland thinks she can't talk.

When the mayor does find out about her (remember, everyone can hear Hollands thoughts), he plans to take over her ship, killing everyone on. So she makes her getaway, along with Holland.

The rest opens the story up a lot - as one character asks Holland, "You thought this whole planet had only two small towns?" There's still a weird reluctance to question anything or comment on weirdness. All of Holland's beliefs turn out to be wrong, and he doesn't actually ask about it for a day or so. 

So I'd have to say this wasn't very good - too scattered, too many ideas, not enough follow through. But, I still kind of enjoyed it. Tom Holland gets to do his self-conscious and un-self-confident teen, except here, everyone can hear all of his thoughts. Daisy Ridley gets to be beautiful, scared and strong. And even though she is the only woman Holland has ever met, she lets him know that she isn't going to let him kiss her.

Paranormal and Out

With Paranormal Activity 4: Unrated Edition (2012), we have completed the series. This one fits in pretty well with the rest, and I honestly don't have much to say about it.

Let's see, it starts with a recap of the end of PA2 - about the kid who gets abducted by his possessed aunt. Then we meet a normal family with a little boy. There are some strange goings-on at the house across the street, and the little boy who lives there keeps turning up in their yard. He's a silent, emotionless odd kid. When his mother has to go to the hospital, they take him in for a few days, where his weirdness gets on everyone's nerves, except their little boy, who seems to get along with him ok.

Then, the little odd occurrences get much more extreme, the body count mounts, and we find out that the house across the street holds a coven of child stealing demons or consorters with demons. See PA5. 

I guess this one was not one of my favorites, mainly because the family at the center just isn't that much fun. These movies always have a lot of just hanging around, people filming parties or security cam footage of people living their lives. In this, the dad was estranged from his wife and sleeping on the sofa a lot of the time, which isn't that interesting on security cam.

But it was an interesting series, both in terms of the found-footage style and of the overall mythos. And they make Ms. Spenser happy, so it's all right with me. 

The Quick and the Dead

The streaming revolution continues, and we've dropped to 2 discs a week so that we can add a streaming slot. Just a few weeks behind the crowd, we watched Zach Snyder's Army of the Dead (2021).

It starts with a military convoy outside of Las Vegas meeting a guy getting road head, head on. The convoy's payload turns out to be a fast fierce zombie, who kills or turns everyone, then heads for Vegas, baby. We get a credit sequence montage of Vegas getting taken over by zombies, then a montage of various heroic types, including Dave Bautista, rescuing women and children. But last few of these woman and children are Dave's wife and daughter, and they get zombie chomped. Then a shipping container is lowered onto them, squishing them. These containers form a wall around Las Vegas.

Fast forward a while (months? years?). Dave is a short order cook outside of zombie occupied Las Vegas. Hiroyuki Sanada shows up and wants him to get a team together for a heist. The president plans to nuke Las Vegas in four days. They are going to pull $20 millRion out of a casino before the bomb falls.

So he puts together his team, starting with his estranged daughter, the one he didn't have to kill, Ella Purnell. She leads him to Mattias Shweighofer, a German-accented fancy boy safecracker, and Nora Amezeder, a coyote who gets people into and out of Vegas. Then there's some muscle who I'll skip, and Theo  Rossi (Shades from Luke Cage) as a creepy, rapey security guard, who Amezeder invites along for reasons that become clear later.

Then there's Tig Notaro as helicopter pilot, for the extraction. She was brought in after the movie wrapped, because the guy who had done her role turned out to be a sex pest. She fits seamlessly in, although she worked almost exclusively against green screens and tennis balls on sticks. She is also the most fun character in the movie. Then there's Garret Dillahunt, as Sanada's stooge, who is plainly the guy who is going to betray them all for his own gain.

So that's the crew, and we haven't even gotten into Vegas. It's a long movie, folks. 

But it's a funny one, and cool - there are shambling zombies and fast zombies, a zombie tiger and a zombie horse, a king and queen zombie, zombie showgirls and gamblers. There are supposed to be robot zombies, but we didn't spot them. They do find a set of corpses that look a lot like them - like they are in a time loop or something, which they discuss for a little, go "Whoa, heavy" and move on. 

There are also major lapses in logic, logistics, credibility, and pacing. Also, Snyder did a lot of his own cinematography with old Canon "Dream" lens, with a very narrow depth of field, so backgrounds are very out of focus and dreamy. It's a look, but maybe overdone. There are also some (3?) clever rack focus shots going from a face in focus to the gun pointing at the screen - racked too fast to be real, probably CGI. So a lot of Snyder just goofing around.

Sadly, Bautista didn't get to goof around much, mostly being angsty over his dead wife and child. But he does dream of someday owning a food truck: Maybe tofu, or lobster rolls.