Sisters are Doing It

Just a quick cleanup before the new year. We are spending the holidays with my sister and family. We had other plans as well, but the Omaha variant foreclosed those. So we’ve watched a fair number of streaming movies. These are all on Netflix, but I don’t think I’ll link them. It turns out to be a pain to get a good link, and they’ll probably all disappear from the service in a few days. 

Croupier (1998) is a Mike Hodges film starring Clive Owen. He’s a wannabe writer in London whose father is a degenerate gambler who gets him a job as a croupier. He tries to stay aloof from it all, but gets caught up in various schemes and deceptions. I’m not sure all the schemes make sense (who shopped Bella? What was up with the money launderers? How did they make money on a failed robbery?) but it was pretty compelling. Owen had an icy beauty that just works - he even starts out a bleached blonde. Also, Alex Kingston has a nude scene. So if you want to see River Song naked, sweetie, check it out.

We expected Fear Street Part One: 1994 (2021) to be kind of lightweight, since it was based on an R.L. Stone series. But it was a teen slasher with a pretty high body count. It’s set in Shadyside, a community with a distressingly high number of serial killers, going back to a curse put on it by a witch in 1660. Some teens, including a lesbian, her ex-girlfriend, her nerdy brother, and her drug-dealing cheerleader friend and her goofy boyfriend, get targeted by the curse. Expect in this case, it’s the undead serial killers from past cases chasing them. It was pretty good, although we aren’t big on slashers. We may or may not watch the rest of the series.

Feeling the need for something a little less harrowing, so we tried Fearless (2006). This is Jet Li’s final wushu movie, directed by Ronny Yu. It’s set in the early 20th century, with Li as Huo Yuanjia, a martial arts teacher. He starts as strong but arrogant fighter, who overreaches and kills the wrong man. When his family is killed in revenge, he goes to north Thailand to mourn. The mountain people (and a young blind woman) restore his faith and he returns to make amends.

He finds that the foreigners are now in control of China. They consider the Chinese to be weak and feckless. So Li enters into competitions to show that he can beat any foreigner. 

It’s a well-worn formula but the art direction is beautiful as always (especially among the Hmong) and the fights are cool. Plus the message of unity and self-discipline are heartfelt and inspiring. 

So that’s about it for this year. We fly home on New Year’s Eve if the airline gods allow. With luck we’ll soon be drinking champagne cocktails and watching Marx Bros. and Three Stooges. See you in 2022. 

Edited to add: I forgot we watched Stanley Donen’s Indiscreet (1958) with Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant. I was surprised that it was in color, and not directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and that there were no Nazis in it - because I was thinking of Notorious. Anyway, the first 2/3s were a swooningly beautiful love story about two super-rich, charming people. Bergman in particular was amazing. The Donenesque twist was not as delightful as he probably thought, but still kind of fun. His sophisticated modern love stories don’t always translate across time that well.

Oh, look it’s 2022. 

Happy New Year!