One from the Archives

Archive (2020) is another library borrow, but it has been on our Netflix queue for a while. I was looking for some elevated horror for Ms. Spenser, and I knew this wasn't quite that. But we went ahead anyway. 

It stars Theo James, who is getting a remote AI/robotics facility up and running. The security, in particular, is having trouble. He is alone in the facility, except for two robots - one big, clunky and dumb, the other smaller, still pretty clunky and smarter, but still a work in progress. His boss, Rhona Mitra, makes a few Zoom calls to make sure he's going to have a robot prototype ready on time. But he actually seems to be working on a secret personal project.

Through flashbacks, we meet his wife, Stacy Martin, and see a horrible car crash. Over the course of the film, we find out that he has been chosen to go to a Japanese secret facility (presumably the one he's now at) and that she may be pregnant, and may plan to have the baby. We know she is dead, because he talks to her "archive" over the phone. In the future, they have a way to record a personality and allow you to interact with it for a limited time. Toby Jones and Richard Glover come to the facility because they are afraid James has tampered with the Archive machine. He gets rid of them.

His big project turns out to be a humanoid robot, with a face but no arms or legs. He sets her up with arms, but uses the legs from his smarter, previous generation robot. The robot doesn't like this - she feels that she is being superseded by the newer model. It's clear that he has been running his dead wife's archive on these robots. 

And that's the set up. I thought this would be more like Replicas with Keanu Reeves, and it sort of is - even a scene where an AI is "woken up" and it goes mad and starts screaming. But it also isn't. For one thing, it isn't very plotty. It spends a lot of time looking at the facility - a high-tech bunker on a cliff next to a gorgeous waterfall, with a retractable bridge. It is surrounded by a snowy forest, and yes, we get drone shots of it all. The angle of the almost good-enough robot is interesting and sad, and even has consequences, but I'm not sure how well integrated it is. And there's a final twist that is cute, but undermines a lot of the logic. 

Well, it looked good. It wasn't horror really, or even much of a thriller, but was kind of interesting in a well-done, indie way. 

Silence is Golden

I knew The Great Silence (1968) was supposed to be a grim and bloody spaghetti Western, but hoo-boy!

The movie takes place in the Western town of Snow Hill. The new sheriff is waylaid by bandits on his way to town. They take his horse to eat. These bandits are ragged and starving, but they hold out hope that if they can avoid the bounty hunters, the governor may pardon them. I don't know, I kind of feel like hill bandits are an Italian thing.

The sheriff (Frank Wolff) hitches a ride on a stage coach with two other passengers: Jean-Louis Trintignant, a silent man named Silencio, and Klaus Kinski, a talkative but polite bounty hunter. Kinski's character is called Loco in the Englush subtitles but Tigrero in Italian. I only mention this because it sounded to me like Figorello which made him sound like a Chico Marx character.

Kinski has been working the bounty angle hard, mostly going for the dead side of dead or alive. Trintignant, on the other hand, is on the side of the people, opposed to the bounty hunters. He is silent because he had his throat cut by bounty hunters as a kid. He carries a Mauser C96, a cool pistol with a square magazine and a wooden holster that can be converted to a short shoulder stock. He always waits for a man to draw before he shoots them, and he never misses.

But when he tries this with Kinski, Kinski won't draw - until he punches him through the door. But when Kinski draws, the sheriff arrests him for drawing on a man without a gun in his hand. So the sheriff takes him away to prison in Tonopah. This won't end well for the sheriff.

Silencio is working for Vonetta McGee, because Kinski killed her husband. He also starts sleeping with her. When the judge who runs the bounty system tries to rape her, he fights back, but they burn his hand - before he kills them all. 

That's pretty grim, but I'll just spoil the ending for you so you have a reference. Kinski and the bounty hunters hold all the bandits hostage, demanding Trintignant show up for a fair duel against Kinski. Of course, his gun hand is burned, so not very fair. But that doesn't matter. A random bounty hunter just shoots him with a rifle before the showdown begins. Then they shoot all the hostages - they aren't worth much for bounty, but there are a lot of them, so...

This was made by Sergio Corbucci (Django), which is pretty nihilistic, but sort of funny. This isn't funny at all, and is very nihilistic. I should say, it has some nice shots of the snowy mountains (Italian Dolomites, mostly) - a change from the deserts of Spain that these movies usually use for a setting. 

Ashes of Time

She Will (2022) was another library selection. We've been getting a couple of these a week - I bring home 6-10, and Mrs. Spenser chooses one or two.

She Will stars Alice Krige as an older actress, going on a healing retreat in Scotland along with her nurse and companion Kota Eberhardt. The opening is a train going through deep forests, a now-classic drone shot. Krige arrives at the retreat and is horrified that it is not a solitary retreat, but instead kicks off with a cocktail party full of mystics, holistic medicine fans, pseudo-intellectuals, etc. Some of them don't recognize her, some recognize her as washed up, some are "big fans". When she flees, they all talk about her behind her back. 

At least she has a private cottage with Eberhardt - pretty rundown and dirty, but at least private. We see what the other guests are up to - led by Rupert Everett - including crystals and interpretive dance. I would be pretty happy to get away from that too. But there is something in the black mud everywhere. We find out that it is the ashes of the thousands of witches burned here. As the film goes on, the ashes even show up n the air as a sort of black snow.

For most of this movie, nothing "happens". There is a ton of beautiful cinematography, and some acting mournful by Krige - and acting bemused (maybe?) by Eberhardt. We see Krige staring at herself in the mirror, eventually nude so that we can see that she has had a double mastectomy. That explains the nurse.

In the last act, the "plot" shows up. When Krige was a child actor, she made a big movie directed by Malcolm McDowell. She was molested by him as well. Now, he is remaking that movie, with a new child actor. But she can pay him back - in dreams, with witchcraft (SPOILER).

This is the first feature for director Charlotte Colbert, and certainly an interesting one. It is beautiful and moody, but light on substance. The substance it does have seems disjointed - what are we to make of the retreat, the mud, the ashes. witchcraft? Is the retreat silly and shoddy, or deeply meaningful? Is the mud gross and yucky or empowering? Or are these contradictions the whole point? I tend towards: it's a bit of a muddle that goes off vibes, not consistency. Maybe that's the point, or maybe I just missed it.

Whatever the case, this was an enjoyable watch, although Mrs. Spenser wanted more scares or more anything. I wonder what Colbert will do next. 

Avalon Hill

I think Netflix suggested Avalon (2001) - don't really remember, It's been on my queue for a while. Now that Netflix discs are going away, I figured I should start watching the oddities that would be hard to find elsewhere. This dystopian Japanese/Polish gaming movie fits that pretty well.

It start with a battle scene, with a lone player standing out - our hero, Ash, played by Malgorzata Foremniak. Characters disintegrate when shot, indicating this is a VR game. When Foremniak wins the level, she comes to in a grimy room in a grimy underground VR gaming gallery. She is warned that the next level is hard, she should get a team to go with her. But she works alone.

Her daily life is pretty grim, with nothing to eat but slop - except she has an old basset dog. The dog gets home-cooked meals of real meat and vegetables. Underground VR gaming pays pretty well if you are good enough. She runs into an old team-mate, Bartek Swidereski - a creep who mainly wants to scrounge a meal from her. It seems the reason that her team broke up is because someone pulled the reset in a game, causing big lose of face. The team leader, Murphy, went on a lot of solo missions, and in the end, got stuck in the game. Foremniak goes to visit his comatose body in a hospital ward for those who don't come back from the game.

As you might expect, reality and virtual reality begin to blur. Foremniak becomes obsessed with a hidden game level, where she thinks she can find Murphy and maybe bring him back. But will she rescue him or he rescue her?

This movie has an interesting look - very yellow in the game, and slightly yellow, grimy and dystopian out of it. It reminded me a bit of Dark Portals, which had a very wild cinematography. This isn't at all as radical, but had a similar go-for-broke style. The story was not quite as metaphysical as it could have been, which is probably for the best. It did have an awesome orchestral score with choir and soprano, which even played a minor role in the movie. 

Not that great, actually, but definitely unique. Glad we saw it.

Crazy, Man, Crazy

I queued up Crazy Mama (1975) for two reasons: I heard Joe Dante on a podcast talking about cutting the trailer and it was one of Jonathan Demme's (Stop Making Sense) first films - made for the Cormans, of course.

It's about three generations of crazy mamas. Ann Sothern (1940s comedienne) plays grandma, Cloris Leachman plays the mother, and Linda Purl as the teenager daughter. We meet Purl at the beach, telling her surfer boyfriend Donny Most, that she's pregnant - and he might be the father. We meet Sothern and Leachman getting evicted from their beauty parlor by Jim Backus. So they decide to head back to Arkansas and buy the old family farm. They take off with Most following in his woody.

They finance the trip by robbing - gas stations at first graduating to banks. They also pick up a suitor for Leachman, Stuart Whitman (Sands of the Kalahari) a Texan on the lam from his wife. Purl also picks up an admirer - a greasy biker named Snake. Most isn't too happy about this, but Purl insists that she gets both if she wants them.

This movie is pretty much Big Bad Mama - except without the nudity. But you still have the women with strong family ties, self-determination and loose morals, on a road trip/crime spree. Except this is set in the early sixties, so you get lots of R&R oldies instead of banjo music. I always think of Demme as a musical director, probably for Stop Making Sense, but also because I kind of confuse him with Jacques Demy.

We didn't hate this, but it was pretty forgettable. Jim Backus was out of the picture too soon, Dick Miller's part was also too small, and nobody was really giving their best, except maybe Gidget reject Most. Still, Corman (and his wife Julie, who produced) knows how to get you watching. 

Slash and Burn

Here's another from the public library: Slash/Back (2022). A very cool Inuit indie from the Canadian province of Nunavut.

It is set in a small isolated village in the Arctic. The stars are four teen women, and a pre-teen girl who wants to tag along. We meet Maika, Tasiana Shirley, swindling the girl out of her $15 life savings. When Nalajoss Ellsworth notices this, she and the rest of the crew chase her down on their bikes and make her give it back. Shirley is a young beauty, discontented with life in the isolated North, and all the Inuit crap. She's also ashamed of her hunter/fisher father, although she loves him as well. Ellsworth is a little tough, with cornrows and face paint. She's interested in the old stories, the old ways. The other girls are Alexis Wolfe, the fat, funny friend (not really fat, but pretty funny). and Chelsea Prusky, who looks a bit Anglo, and has parents who take her to Winnipeg every year. 

A lot of this movie is just a hangout with these kids. All are young first-time actors (I think), but play their parts very convincingly. Out of boredom, they borrow Shirley's dad's boat and hunting rifle, and head out to explore. While fooling around, they spot a polar bear acting strange - like, with tentacles coming out of its mouth and eyes. It takes some doing, but they manage to kill it. 

Strangely, the rest of the movie isn't about them trying to convince the community of the danger. Basically, they just try to forget it. There's time here for a sub-plot about the cutest guy in the village - Wolfe likes him, but gets tongue-tied. He likes Shirley, but she can only put him down, maybe out of loyalty to Wolfe. 

But Ellsworth is too much of a hunter and a warrior to let this whole thing go. She sets out to confront the beast or beasts, and kills an infected ermine that attacks her. Perhaps this was the young of the other monsters? Anyway, now they are angry.

As far as the horror goes, this is not that extreme. The special effects budget keeps the monsters to a minimum, and the children are menaced but never harmed too badly. Only adults are killed - and the loss of the dumb Anglo cop isn't much of a tragedy. The gore is mostly black monster blood, not red human.

The village this is set in is real, Pangnirtung. It's a hotbed of native arts and culture, which Shirley is rebelling against, but other kids take pride in. The soundtrack includes a bit of Tanya Tagaq, who sings in a mesmerising breathy Inuit style. This would be a fun movie without the Attack the Block monster plot. But it's great with it. I don't know if any of these actors, or director Nyla Innuksuk will have a mainstream breakthrough, but I'm glad we got this, 

Double Trouble

Netflix has been on us for a while to try The One I Love (2014), so I gave in. I actually wanted to watch Palm Springs or Infinity Pool, but they weren't available, and this one does involve a couple and a pool, so...

We are introduced to our protagonists, Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss, at their couples therapy session with Ted Danson. They recount their "origin story": They left a party to sneak into the pool of a house in a rich neighborhood - then have to run when the owner wakes up. They used to be fun, crazy, spontaneous. They went back to the same house recently to try to replay it, but the owner isn't home, and it just feels stupid. 

Also. Duplass slept with someone else.

Danson doesn't seem to think they don't have much chance, so he recommends a retreat at a nice country house. It's beautiful, and there's a nice guesthouse as well. When Moss visits the guest house, she finds Duplass there, without his glasses, and with a lot more charm and less grievance. So they have sex, and marriage is good. When she goes back to the main house, she finds Duplass already there - and he denies that they ever had sex. She's so mad, she kicks him out. So he goes to sleep in the guest house. 

In the middle of the night, Moss comes to him, apologizes and makes up to him. The next morning, she cooks him eggs and bacon for breakfast, although Moss hates him eating bacon. He goes back to the main house, where Moss asks him what he wants for breakfast. He begins to figure it out. If they go to the guest house alone, they meet a doppelganger of their spouse - one that is more lovable, more ideal for them. 

Moss is intrigued by this, and wants to experiment a little. Although they set "no intimacy" with the doubles as a groundrule, it's possible Moss wants payback for Duplass' infidelity. Although is it unfaithful to sleep with an idealized copy of your spouse?

As the movie develops we see Moss getting more and more into the Duplass copy. Duplass, funnily enough, never seems to take advantage of the more loving Moss copy, at least after he's figured it out. 

We get some more exploration of the rules, we find out what's up with the copies, and it all ends up how you might guess.

Although this is a 2014 production, it would have been easy to film during Covid. There are only three main actors and a short diner scene. The main location is the house and guest house, which belongs to Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen. I don't think I've seen anything produced by the Duplass Brothers, but I guess they like to keep things simple.

Yes, Chef

In our search for Ms. Spenser's type of horror, we considered The Menu (2022), but weren't sure. Once our nephew assured us that there was no actual cannibalism, we decided to give it a try.

It starts with the guests to a super-exclusive restaurant assembling on a dock. In particular, we meet Nicholas Hoult, a somewhat Shkreli-looking type and his "girlfriend", Ana Taylor-Joy. Hoult is in ecstasy over the upcoming experience, and Taylor-Joy is not. The hostess, Hong Chau, notes that Taylor-Joy is not the guest that Hoult had signed up to bring. We later learn that his first date broke up with him, and that Taylor-Joy is a hired escort.

The boat arrives at the restaurant's private island, its beaches littered with driftwood roots. Chau gives them a tour, including the cooks barracks. Their life looks pretty austere and cult-like, and Chau is professionally welcoming, but very cold and controlling.

At the modern restaurant building, they guests are seated, and we overhear their conversations. They include John Leguizano, as a washed-up actor in the mold of, say, Mickey Rourke, and his PR person/personal assistant. There is a table of three finance bros, who have been supporting the restaurant. There's an old rich couple who have been there more than once. There's a food critic and her agent. There's a very drunk old lady, who turns out to be chef's mother. 

Chef himself is Ralph Fiennes. He speaks warmly, poetically about the food he serves. But he does have an overbearing style. Hoult loves all this, although he keeps taking cellphone pics of the food, which is strictly forbidden. But the second course, the bread, has a twist. Since bread is for the common man, and these diners are anything but common, they will get no bread, just the spreads. Hoult is in raptures over this twist, but Taylor-Joy understands that they are being intentionally insulted. But that's nothing compared to the next course.

I won't spoil the rest, except to let you know that it gets deadly, then deadlier. No one is expected to leave the island alive. But for a long while, the guests take it in stride. Maybe the violence is faked - just stagecraft. Anyway, the food is still delicious. But the taco course has the guests sins laser-burnt into the tortillas - custom for each guest, except for Taylor-Joy, who wasn't supposed to be here. Will she die like a guest, or, as a working girl, should she be part of the staff?

It's pretty easy to see the social trends that this movie criticizes and satirizes: Celebrity chefs, foody culture, Instagram experiences, social inequality, and so on. It does this very well. The guests (villains or victims? Both?) are more that a bit stereotyped, but that's to be expected. I actually liked Leguizano's actor. He was a blowhard and a "name-dropping whore", and pretty clueless. But he takes a simple pleasure in the food, and I think he's the only one. 

Hoult's role is kind of interesting. I think he is well suited to playing nerdy creeps or creepy nerds. Although this role and Beast in the X-Men series are the only roles I can think of off the top of my head.

In conclusion. Ms. Spenser's reaction to this was to never want to eat again. It kind of made me hungry. 

Making Fletch Happen

They just don't make this kind of movie anymore: Confess, Fletch (2022). This is basically a minor comedy in a semi-forgotten franchise, with a few name actors, just being charming and a little goofy. It's entertaining, fun but almost forgettable. It seems like there should be dozens of movies like this every year, but instead it's a rarity.

John Hamm is Fletch. He enters a nice Boston apartment with Miros and Chagalls on the walls. He pours himself a drink, then finds a dead woman on the living room floor. He calls the police.

The police that show up are Roy Wood Jr. as Detective "Slo-Mo" Monroe and Ayden Mayiri as trainee detective Griz (short for Grizelda). He explains that he is renting the apartment while he investigates some stolen paintings. His girlfriend in Rome (Lorenza Izzo) is daughter to a count who has a nice art collection and a new wife who likes to be called "Contessa". 

Since some of the paintings have shown up in Boston, Fletch has been staking it out. He is a retired investigative journalist, so that's the kind of thing he does. The police don't hold him, but consider him a suspect. He considers them to be a goof - he loves tweaking Wood for having a crying baby at home, and Griz for being a rookie. 

He meets up with Kyle McLachlan, an art dealer, who offers to sell him one of the missing paintings, a Picasso. This is because Hamm is pretending to be a rich buyer. He also buys a cheap van and has it graffitied up (this doesn't pay off as well as you might hope). He interviews a woman who lives next to the apartment. She's Annie Mumolo, a dope-smoking messy bad cook with a very unsanitary dog. There was something very Massachusetts about her. 

Eventually, the Contessa (Marcia Gay Harden) shows up and moves in with Fletch, following him into the bathroom and climbing into his bed, while telling him to stop trying to seduce her. Of course, his girlfriend finds out and comes out from Rome to make sure it's all on the up and up. And through out, Hamm is tracking down the paintings and trying to find out who murdered the girl.

We, on the other hand, did not particularly care about the paintings or the dead girl. We were just along for the ride.

Fletch is an interesting character. He doesn't like wearing shoes or authority. He lies with gleeful abandon. He gives a fake name to the graffiti artists, and when they ask him his name again, he just says, "I don't know, what did I tell you?" He's also fairly irresistible to women, which Hamm plays very well.

We enjoyed the first Chevy Chase Fletch, and maybe his second. Hamm plays it different, a little more realistic and less goofy. I also read a few of the books, by Gregory MacDonald, and enjoyed them at first. But they got a little nihilistic, especially the endings. Here, I should note that several paintings spend a lot of time on boats. This is a problem, as wet environments aren't good for paintings. I've read that this is a serious problem on yachts - rich owners ruin priceless works of art by putting them on boats that sink, spring leaks or catch fire.

In conclusion, Gregory MacDonald is the famous third MacDonald on the mystery shelf. He comes behind Ross MacDonald and John D.