Beaver Trap

Can't believe I forgot to blog Hundreds of Beavers (2022), which I saw a few weeks ago. Or maybe I can. In addition to being one of the funniest and most unusual movies of the ... century?, it's also a light-weight piece of fluff.

First of all, understand that this is a low-budget, black-and-white, near silent (no dialog, SFX only) movie. It is set in the snowy woods of Canada. The protagonist, Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, is the happy proprietor of an apple jack distillery and bar, until it burns to the ground, leaving him alone in the wilderness. 

After many desperate attempts, taunted by local wildlife, he manages to catch a fish. Seeing distant smoke, he takes the fish to a trading post, where he trades it for a knife. There, he notices two things: the trader has a lovely daughter, and a burly trapper is earning more than him with beaver pelts. In fact, the trader has a computer-game-like menu of pelt to goods exchange rates. 

And so he goes off to earn pelts for the love of his life, the trader's daughter. His early attempts leave him naked and freezing, but undaunted. He meets a First Nation native, fights off rabbits, raccoons and wolves, and is hunted as a serial killer by a pair of beaver detective. But he prevails.

Note that the beavers and other wild life are played by people in athletic mascot costumes. I suppose it's pretty easy to find beaver costumes in Canada. The winter wilderness scenes were achieved, as far as I can tell, by filming in the wilderness in the winter. Considering that Tews was often naked, this is impressive. But the scenes are often augmented by simple effects, like cut out hills in the background. 

The jokes are dopey and slapstick, with Tews falling in holes, getting stuck in his own traps, and so on. So there is a real silent-era feel. But there are also gamer touches, like the trading system. So a mix of Chaplin/Keaton/Three Stooges and modern video games. 

As well as making us laugh a lot, we were often amazed at the cheap yet clever effects. Director Mike Cheslik and his buddy Tews made something wonderful and fun. But it was also feather light, so it didn't really stick in my mind. But, since everyone is raving about it, at least I don't feel too bad about failing to promote it myself.

A Few Yen More

Sakra (2024) is another one of those Hi-Yah movies we saw in a Coming Attractions preview. But this one stars Donnie Yen.

First off, I should mention that I watched this last weekend, and I have only the sketchiest of memories of how it all went. Basically, the Song dynasty of China has been conquered by the Liao of Khitan. Donnie Yen was born Khitan but raised Song. He grows up to be the head of the Beggars, a band of martial arts experts and bandits who fight the Liao. An early scene has Yen getting into a slanging match with a Buddhist monk in a restaurant, which turns into an all-out wire-fu fight. 

Yen then finds out that he has been framed for the murder of a fellow Beggar and is stripped of his title. He will framed again and again, as well as condemned for being Khitanese by birth, He even has to fight the Shaolin temple. There is also a nobleman with three daughters skilled in the martial arts. 

The fighting style is, as I've said, wire-fu, with lots of jumping over roofs, punching people through walls and Vajra Palm Punches. It's very old-school, based on a novel from 1966, "Demi-Gods and Semi-Demons". This is just the kind of thing that I like. It might not be the best of the best, but with Donnie Yen, it should satisfy. 

She Tried to Kill Them with a Forklift

Got Project Dorothy (2024) thinking it would be a little, low-budget horror/thriller. Right on the money.

It starts with some shots of a roboticized factory (empty) and some office drones in a cubicle farm. Then something terrible happens (but is not shown).

"Many years later", we meet our protagonists, two crooks running through farmland from sirens. The older one, Tim DeZarn, has a bullet in his leg. The younger one, Adam Budron, is kind of an idiot. They duck into an abandoned fatory - guess which one? The police arrive a little later, but before they go in, the radio dispatcher tells them to get away from there - fast.

Our friends hang out in this huge deserted factory, poking around, looking for food and medical supplies. Up in the cubicles, they find an old computer that starts playing a video. A perky young doctor tells them that this video was recorded in case their artificial intelligence, Dorothy, can't be contained, they should ... static hissss.

Dorothy starts tauntung them in an evil bitchy voice. It turns out that they have something she needs. She also controls everything in the factory, including the forklifts. Then they find the piles of skeletons.

This is all pretty low-budget. They had the factory, but that's about it. There are no scenes of carnage, just an empty factory with screams on the soundtrack. This gives the movie a horror/ghost story feel. When we get to meet Dorothy, she seems less like an AI, more like an evil bitch. They could have motivated this by having her be modelled after an HR boss or the doctor on the video (if she were evil), but no. Just your run-of-the-mill evil robot mastermind. 

There's a bit of surrogate father/son stuff between the crooks, but I'm not sure it works that well. A little trickery with the McGuffin isn't very special either. There's also the problem that the forklifts don't seem that menacing - they don't move that fast and aren't that maneuverable, so the threat is kind of weak. 

But the overall atmosphere and basic idea are pretty good. The movie is short, even though it feels padded in places - they spend a lot of time walking from one big empty room to another. But it does get you in and out. I enjoyed this, while conceding that it isn't that great. I hope writer/director George Henry Horton gets some money for more movies.

Blind Luck

We saw a preview for Eye for an Eye (2022) on the disc for The Night of the Assassin (probably). We said something like, "we could watch that". So when I saw it at the library, I scooped it up. 

It stars Miao Xie as a blind bounty hunter. In a tribute to the Zatoichi series (I guess), we meet him in a gambling den, detecting cheating with his hearing alone. Then, when the gamblers ambush him, he kills them all.

Then we meet Weiman Gao, a young woman who makes wine and is about to be married. When Xie asks her for a drink, she invites him to her wedding, where the wine will be free. He stops for a while, dropping his burden, an outlaw in a burlap bag he's taking for the bounty. But her gangster brother shows up, followed by some worse, enemy gangsters, who kill him and the groom, and take the bride prisoner. 

This annoys Xie, but he doesn't think it's his business at first. Against the advice of his agent, he decides to free the girl. In doing so, he finds that the gang's connections go right to the top.

He also gets to do a lot of fancy fighting. Most of it is pretty conventional, if excellent, but there are a couple of cute tricks. In one fight, he sprays his opponents with wine so that he can smell their locations. In another, he tosses a jar of liquor in the air, slices it with his sword, then strikes a spark with the blade against his scabbard, igniting a fireball, and letting his swing around a flaming sword. That scene was in the trailer, and maybe why we decided to watch. 

It seems that these movies, and a bunch more, are part of the Well Go film distributors' Hi-Yah streaming service. I don't know if they are financing or just buying, but they do seem to be boosting the output of these recent martial arts movies. We'll be seeing more, I'm sure. I'm even thinking about subscribing. 

Right On

Ride On (2023) is one of Jackie Chan's latest - a too-old-for-stunts story, all about stuntmen.

Jackie is a retired stuntman who lives with a stunt horse in a rundown courtyard, maybe more of a stable. Every morning, his horse, Red Hare, grabs him by the collar and gets him ready for work. This consists of going into town in movie costume to pose for pictures for the tourists. They are not that popular and there is a lot of competition.

Jackie was given the horse as a colt with twisted legs by the head of his studio. He corrected the legs and trained the horse himself. But the studio head died, and the new studio execs claim the horse as their property. When Jackie is eating lunch, some toughs try to repossess it. There is a nice old fashioned restaurant fight here. Jackie is even doing most of his own fighting, I think.

When video of this fight goes viral, a hot young director sees it, and recognizes Jackie as a legendary stuntman. wants Jackie and Red Hare in his movie, for the throwback cool. This could mean enough money to keep Red Hare. Jackie also gets his estranged daughter (Liu Haocun), a law student, involved. Since he can't afford a lawyer, he asks her to help, and she gets her fiance, a more advanced law student to represent him. The fiance is Guo Qilin, who plays a nerdy little chubby guy with glasses. One thing I liked about the movie is that this character was not played as a dupe or foil, and was never replaced by a cooler boyfriend. He might be a nerd, but Haocun seems to love him, and he tries to live up to Jackie's challenges.

The big conflict is Jackie's reckless approach to stunts. The reason he had to retire, and why he is broke, is that a stunt gone wrong put him in a coma for months, and he is still a little rattled in the brain. But for the new movie, he wants to do some horse jumps without wires, even if it is dangerous. His daughter particularly emphasizes how dangerous it could be for Red Hare. Will he stick to the code of the stuntman, or will he back down. As the script says, "Jumping down is easy, stepping down is hard."

One of the funniest things about this movie is how much it is dedicated to honest stuntwork, and how much has to be faked due to Jackie's age. We see him "galloping" against a green screen, jumping with wires, being doubled by other stuntmen, etc. I'm pretty sure it's intended ironically. 

But you want to know - how is the horse? She (pretty sure she was a mare) was great! Had a real independent personality, and also great chemistry with Jackie. Really, the best part. Other than that, this was just fine, with some interesting bits and some boring stretches. But never when the horse was working. 

Keeper

The Beekeeper (2024) is part movie, part fever dream, part event. We watched largely to better enjoy the How Did This Get Made podcast. But also because an unhinged Jason Statham is just fun.

It starts in bucolic western Mass. Statham is a humble beekeeper, with a warm relationship with his older African-American landlady, Phylicia Rashad. But Rashad gets phished by a ring of hackers, who wipe out her savings and the money she controlled for a charity. When Statham drops by for dinner, he finds her dead, having shot herself. 

He also encounters her semi-estranged daughter, Emmy Raver-Lampman, an FBI agent. She arrests him, but he is soon freed - to go after the people who conned and killed his friend. He gets in touch with the Beekeepers a shadowy intelligence operation, who give him the address of an office building. This is no boiler-room operation - it is lit with neon like a night club. He gives everyone a chance to leave, then blows up the building.

This brings in the obnoxious kid who runs these conmen, Josh Hutcherson, who calls in his head of security, ex-CIA director Jeremy Irons. Irons realizes that Statham is a retired Beekeeper (in the assassin/spy sense) and that they are potentially screwed. He gets his contacts to send the current Beekeeper after him. 

This is Megan Lee, an ultra-violent nutcase, leading to a fun gas station fight. When she is defeated (blown up), the Beekeepers declare neutrality. 

I'll skip a bunch of fights, and get right to the meat. Hutcherson's mom is Jemma Redgrave, the president of the United States. Her campaign was funded by the phishing profits, laundered as "digital security". So that's who Statham will be up against.

I skipped over most of the action scenes, but I hardly have to tell you: They are wildly violent. Statham doesn't seem to mind killing whole bunches of FBI, police, and secret service. He saws off finger, blows up buildings, drives people off buildings, with a minimum of dialog or facial expression. He is tracked by the FBI, whose dumpy office (with the leaky ceiling in the background) is a great contrast to the phishers 1980s-style neon and mirrors offices. 

Director David Ayer is mainly known for Suicide Squad, the first one. So it makes sense that this would be violent and somewhat incoherent. Who are the Beekeepers? How many are active at a time? Do they all take up literal beekeeping when they retire? Why didn't Statham ever use bees as a weapon? Like, throwing a hive of bees at someone, or trapping them next to an angry hive? We'll probably never know or care. Unless there's a sequel...

Sunday! Sunday!

To continue my bachelor weekend, I thought I'd watch a real Guy's Movie. I picked This is Me ... Now (2024), J. Lo's directorial debut. This is an odd film. After a bit of talk about a Puerto Rico legend of a hummingbird and a red flower, we find Lopez in a steampunk factory, feeding red flower petals into a giant metal heart. This turns out to be a dream, possibly symbolizing the death of her true love, Ben Affleck, in a motorcycle accident. She discusses this with her therapist, Fat Joe. She has a new guy, but when he gets abusive, she smashes their modern glass house. 

The problem was probably zodiacal. In fact, we meet the heavenly zodiac council, which includes Sofia Vergara as Cancer, Post Malone as Leo, Trevor Noah as Libra and Neil deGrasse Tyson as Taurus. Lopez goes on to marry three other times, to different signs. These weddings are intercut as a single wedding, with just the groom changing. 

Single again, she comes home with a sleazy dude to find her friends staging an intervention - they think she's a romance addict. Then she meets up with her self as a child and they bond. And so it ends ... for now.

This is sort of a musical, with six or seven songs. Or maybe it's a long form music video? I'm not a fan of J. Lo's music, but I don't hate it. But I did like the mix of stylish surrealism, banal self-help and goofy humor. This movie looked great, was a ton of fun and was only 66 minutes long. 

I felt like a little more surrealism, and I had a copy of Fellini's The Clowns (1970) that I hadn't cracked open, so out it came for a rewatch. This is one of Fellini's semi-documentaries. It starts with scenes from his (fictional) childhood when the circus came to town. He also showed us the people from his town who were clownish enough that he never felt the need for circus clowns. This includes the evil clowns of fascism. Then in the present day, he takes a documentary film crew on a search for the surviving classic clowns of the great circuses of Europe. His thesis is that the circus, and the classic art of clowning, were dying out. We meet several old performers or their descendants, and learn a little about the white-face clown and the August clown. It ends with the performance of a funeral for a clown.

In addition, Anita Ekberg shows up to buy a tiger. Also, the score is by Nino Rota. But somehow, I wasn't as charmed as I was the first time I saw it. Then, I might not have noticed Fellini's dismissive and cynical approach to clowns. I suspect this is part of the put on, but it sort of spoiled the fun. I enjoyed the historical discussions, but I think that was even meant to be dismissive - what clowns we are, talking seriously about clowns. So I was left a little dissatisfied. 

I ended up with Tabu (1931), directed by F.W. Murnau with assistance by Robert Flaherty. Flaherty is best known for the Nanook of the North, a semi-documentary made with Inuit locals. Tabu began with the same idea, made in Tahiti with locals, but Flaherty dropped out when he felt that Murnau was imposing too much directorial influence on the actors, ruining the authenticity. Nonetheless, we do get a movie about Tahitian life, filmed in Bora Bora with Tahitian actors. 

It is the story of Anne Chevalier as the Girl and her lover Matahi. They live a carefree existence, but an aged emissary from the high chief arrives and tells Chevalier that she has been selected as the sacred virgin. From now on she is tabu, and any man who touches her or even desires her will be put to death.

They flee in a canoe to a colonized island, where tabu is not the law. Matahi quickly becomes the best pearl diver on the island, and holds a big celebration. But he doesn't understand that he is being billed for all the drinks that the Chinese restaurant owner is serving the party. When the emissary finds them, he will need money to get away again. And the only way he knows is to dive in the shark-infested waters of a tabu bay.

My feelings on this are somewhat mixed. This is essentially a silent movie (synchronized music and SFX), and Murnau uses letters, etc. in place of intertitles when he can. He has a good visual style, but nothing breathtaking. He definitely imposed a melodramatic plot, which was pretty cliched. But we do get some lovely scenery (including some bare-breasted maidens for a celebratory dance). And our leads are very charismatic and surprisingly naturalistic. And the old emissary, Hitu, is a fierce, silent force of nature. So, worth watching.

To sum up my experiment in intensive solo movie watching: I might not have the stamina I thought. Also, I might not be that great at picking movies when I wasn't trying to please someone else as well as myself. I should either be more careful, or just roll with. Or maybe I would have enjoyed some of these more if I had seen them one at a time. Oddly, my favorite of these was the (critically despised) This is Me ... Now. Although the Grillo Boss Level was kind of fun. 

Still, I wouldn't mind trying this experiment again. I might get it right. 

Saturday Night's All Right

Ms. Spenser was out of town for the weekend, so I figured I'd have a video orgy. She enjoy watching a movie on an evening, but her interest flags after one or two. She doesn't have my stamina. Let me run down what I watched Saturday:

I started off with The Scribbler (2014). Technically a comic book movie (based on a comic by Daniel Schaffer), and involving superpowers, this is more of an indie horror. It stars Katie Cassidy as a young woman with Dissociative Identity Disorder. She has been released from the mental hospital to a halfway house, a huge, rundown apartment building called Juniper Towers. It is also known as Jumper Towers, because of the suicides. 

She is being treated with a machine the burns alternate personalities, and one day she comes to and discovers that someone, possibly an alternate called the Scribbler. has modified the machine into a monstrous contraption. The Scribbler writes backwards all over everything, with "Killer" being the main motif. She shows up in dream sequence walking on walls and performing other feats (but only in a few short scenes). Her dilemma: Is she as the Scribbler throwing her fellow inmates off the building? And if she burns out her last alternate, will she be the one left, or will it be the Scribbler?

This wasn't a bad horror/thriller, but not much of a superpowers movie. The atmosphere is suitably horrific, there's some humor, and an interesting take on madness. There are even a few name actors (Eliza Dushku, Billy Campbell, Gina Gershon). But not exactly what I was hoping for.

I picked up MacGruber (2010) because Paul Scheer thinks it's funny. I suspected that it wasn't. Guess who is right? Will Forte is MacGruber, his take on MacGyver. This take is more or less limited to the vest and the mullet. His penchant for improvising gadgets from random objects is sometimes referenced, but rarely in a funny way. The joke is mostly MacGruber is obnoxiously overconfident, then abjectly begging when thwarted. The biggest gag is tearfully offering to suck someone's cock to get his way. 

I refer to this kind of humor as "joke-shaped objects" - they seem like jokes, but aren't actually funny. Steve Martin was an expert at this type of anti-humor, but he uses it for good, instead of evil. 

But this left me wanting a real action movie, and I had Boss Level (2021) in my watchlist. It's a Frank Grillo time loop story by Joe Carnahan. The set-up: Every morning, Grillo is woken up by assassins. But when he is killed, the day resets, so after getting killed a few times. he figures out the routine and how to defeat them. We see him avoid the assassins while making coffee - just another day. Soon, a helicopter gunship will shoot up the apartment, and then it's out the window and onto a passing truck. But he never manages to live past 12:47. 

We learn a lot about Grillo as he runs through the same day over and over. He had a wife (Naomi Watts), who left him over the drinking and womanizing. The woman in bed with him when the assassins come is a dental technician on a one-night stand. He has a son who doesn't know he is his father. And he is a certified bad ass. 

There is a cute scene where he can't get past a sword woman named Guan Yin (Selina Lo). Her kill-phrase is "I am Guan Yin and Guan Yin has done this." So he finds the world's greatest sword's woman (Michelle Yeoh, of course) and takes lessons. Like Bill Murray learning piano, he takes a lesson for every repeat day, and becomes good enough to beat Guan Yin. 

He also spends some time getting drunk in Ken Jeong's diner (since he's going to get killed anyway) and later, bonding with his son, who decided to skip school that day. But he finally gets to confront the head of the evil corp - the Boss - Mel Gibson. In the end, he figures it all out - he just has to execute without getting killed. But he if he is, he gets to try again.

This was fun - not the greatest thing I've ever seen, but it was a big step up from MacGruber.