Punishment

Have I mention the podcast How Did This Get Made? They not only recommended Punisher: War Zone(2008), but interviewed Lexi Alexander, the director. She's a great storyteller, with a cute German accent. The basic story is that the crew from the original Punisher movie wanted the sequel to be more realistic and gritty. Alexander took it way in the other direction, comic-book ultra-violence.

You might know Frank Castle, the Punisher, from the previous movie (we liked it OK) or the comic book, or maybe just from the skull logo (which Alexander thought was cheesy, and tried to leave out, but the fans wouldn't allow it). If you don't, tough, because this movie doesn't re-do the origin story - but it does establish the Punisher as a guy who metes out savage violence against criminals. But on one mission, he kills an undercover agent, and worse, lets the boss live after sending him through a glass crusher.

The boss (Dominic West) needs so much plastic surgery after this that he takes the name Jigsaw. And he gets so mad, he decides to get his brother, Loony Bin Jim (Doug Hutchison), out of the loony bin to help get revenge.

Jigsaw and Jim are both scary and goofy. The whole movie is bloody, scary and goofy (if you have a hard-hearted sense of humor). I recommend watching it, then listening to the interview.

Wolf Pact

When Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) came out, I saw previews - I thought it looked like a brainless gore-fest. Which is not what I like, although I know tastes differ. But some film bloggers (I forget just who) started talking about it, and I got the idea that it was a superior sort of cult movie.

The story takes place in France, after the Enlightenment but before the Revolution. Our heroes are Samuel Le Bihan, a royal naturalist and rake, and Marc Dacascos, his Mohawk companion and blood brother. We meet them arriving in a backwater of France, in the rain. A gang of men in dresses are beating up an old man and young woman. They come to the rescue, but it is already apparent that nothing is what it seems.

The naturalist has come to find the truth about the Wolf of Gevaudan, a creature that has been terrorizing the countryside - and to capture it, if possible. In the process he will meet the local nobility, priests, whores, soldiers and gypsies. But will he capture the beast?

In some ways, this is a classic costume swashbuckler. I savored phrases like "les crimes de la bête" - we watched the French version with subtitles. Sometimes, it seemed like a costume comedy of manners - a Ridicule with wolves or Liaisons Dangereuses - tres dangereuses. Then again, there were grisly horror scenes and martial-arts-style action  scenes. The direction style that ties this all together slides in and out of a dreamy trance state.

Finally, the question of the reality behind the wolf - monster, hoax, demonic presence, something else? This is handled adroitly; at least it kept me guessing for longer than I would have thought.

So, loved it. It looks like the director and Dacascos, the Mohawk, made a version Crying Freeman, from the Japanese comic strip - we used to read this when we lived there, and it was just a naked man floating in a void, so it should be interesting.

Mondo Kane

It's funny, I'd never heard of Solomon Kane (2009). I mean, I knew the character, created by Robert E. Howard for the pulps. I don't remember reading any of his stories, but I definitely read some of the Marvel comics. But I hadn't heard about the movie until Netflix suggested it. Well done, Netflix.

Kane is played by James Purefoy, an actor with a bit of Hugh Jackman or maybe Jason Statham going on - or is it just his accent? Maybe I'm thinking of Henry Cavill. Kane is a vicious mercenary for Queen Elizabeth, until the Devil comes for his soul. He resists and retreats to a monastery. When they kick him out, he joins up with some Puritans, aiming to be a man of peace. But there is a demonic presence in that part of England ("the border of Devonshire and Somerset") that he must face conquer - even if his soul be damned!

This is a good swashbuckler, if not a great one. We watched it on streaming, so we couldn't really see the details, but parts looked a bit cheap. Still, lots of fun if you like this kind of thing, which we do.

Side note: Ms. Spenser is back from her summer term in Florida! So posting, never very frequent, might get a little lamer. I plan to re-watch a lot of the movies I liked with her, and of course, expect to have a bit of a social life. Please let me know if you notice.

Do the Hu$tle

The Monkey Hu$tle (1976) is a cute little blaxploitation comedy set in Chicago. Yaphet Kotto plays small-time hustler Daddy Foxx, who mentors a gang of kids in "gettin' over". They all hang out at Momma's soul food restaurant, worry about the expressway that's going to demolish the neighborhood, make time with girls, etc. There's a crooked cop, a community organizer, an unemployed drummer, and Rudy Ray Moore as Goldie, the big-time hustler.

There isn't much of a plot. There's a lot of  jivey dialog. There's one quick hustle that's pretty cute, but you don't get much idea of how Kotto rakes in the bucks. He's pretty interesting as a hustler - I don't think of Kotto as a light, nimble actor, but he does great here. I thought at first he was doing Rudy Ray Moore, but when Moore shows up, halfway through, the difference is like night and day. Kotto is a hustler, but Moore is The Hustle.

Not a great film, but a fun look at the long ago time when a teenaged boy could wear a crop-top tee-shirt, tight cut-off jeans and red Cons and be considered cool.

Centurion 21 and Up

The Eagle (2011) is the other Lost Legion movie made in 2010-2011 (Centurion is the first one). I had heard that one of these movies is great and the other one stinks. I still don't know which is which.

The Eagle starts with Channing Tatum arriving at a small Roman fort in the north of England. He is the new commander and he is going to whip them into shape. There's a rumor that his father was in the Ninth Legion when they were overrun by the natives and lost the eagle standard - bringing dishonor on the army. But a skirmish with the locals both proves our hero's worth and gets him seriously wounded. He is put out to pasture at Donald Sutherland's villa.

But he is soon fed up with hanging around with politicians and parasites and comes up with a plan to head north, past Hadrian's Wall, with a single local slave (Jamie Bell). This 2-man guerilla operation might succeed where a legion would fail.

In many ways, the two movies are alike. The Eagle could almost be a sequel, since it takes place a generation or so after the Legion was destroyed in Centurion. The depiction of the Picts as naked tattooed savages, a little punk, a little Native American, is similar in both. The overall feeling of the two are quite different. Where Centurion was edgy, gritty and low-budget, The Eagle has a more prestige feeling, with more open, contemplative scenes.

There were a lot of fights in both, and I'm not going to score those any differently. I will say that Tatum seems too cute to be a soldier in several scenes. Bell is much more fun.

In conclusion, a spoiler: The eagle standard is being held by an odd tribe of "seal people". I am sure this is a mistaken translation for "seilie", Scots for "blessed" or "happy".

Pick Up the Pieces

I just got the news today - Elmore Leonard has died. By coincidence, I just saw one of his movie, 52 Pick Up (1986).

It stars Roy Scheider as a cool industrialist, who drives an old Jag to his factory in East LA, and Anne Margaret as his wife, who will be running for LA city council. Scheider comes home one day to discover three masked men with a video showing him and his stripper mistress, demanding blackmail money.

I don't want to give too much away, but it doesn't go too smooth for any of them.

As is typical of Elmore Leonard, the joy is in the characters, especially the crooks. The trio includes:

• John Glover, as the smarmy b-school dropout pornographer who leads the crew. I was convinced that he was Gary Busey for most of the movie, and I mean that as a compliment.
• Robert Trebor, as the chubby, whiny, sweaty gay peepshow operator. He was kind of a Jon Lovitz type.
• Clarence Williams III, as the coke-snorting pistol-cleaning bad-ass stone killer. Very scary. I was expecting him to be the Final Boss.

I guess I don't have much else to report, except there are some scenes that are very hard to watch. Violence against women, let's just say. So rough that I can't really recommend this whole-heartedly. But if you can stomach that, this is a great movie.

Directed by John Frankenheimer, who I'm kind of starting to like.

There Will Always be an England

Sometimes, I want something cozy, fun and not too hard on the brain cells. For that, there will always be British comedy. The Ealing Studio/Alec Guiness stuff is my favorite, but I don't mind second best.

Mary Had a Little (1961) is considered to be the first of the modern British sex comedies. It stars Jack Watling as broke and shiftless promoter Scott Raymond (?!?). He plays it handsome but sweaty, a bit like a blond Patrick McGoohan in desperate Danger Man mode. A psychiatrist claims that he can make a pregnant woman bear the child genius through hypnosis, and Waling bets him a five thousand pounds he can't. His plan is to get a beautiful actress to play the mother-to-be, but she isn't really pregnant, so he can't lose.

Now, the mechanics of this bet are dubious on so many levels - won't they have to wait at least a few years before determining whether the child is a genius? If the woman isn't pregnant, doesn't that void the bet? Hypnosis, really? But so what - it is just a means to introduce lovely Agnes Laurent as the fake mom.

Of course, Watling has a girlfriend who wants to marry him (the lovely Hazel Court, apparently a horror queen for J. Rank and Roger Corman). Agnes Laurent has a boyfriend, a big bloke who plays rugby. People get into compromising situations and it all ends in the police station with everyone shouting - how traditional.

You'd think that Cottage to Let (1941), a spy movie made in the middle of the war, would be more serious. Only barely. It takes place in the hielands of Scotland, at the eponymous cottage and the manor. A number of strangers converge - a wounded RAF pilot, a nurse/daughter of laird, two London evacuee boys, a new butler with flat feet, a lodger (Alistaire Sims!) who has let the eponymous etc. Since the household is run by a vague old Ladyship, this seems quite natural, until you discover that his Lairdship is the inventor of a famous bombsight, and begin to suspect espionage.

And you get it, with many a twisty turn, as evacuee boy George Cole starts sleuthing. There's a lot you'll figure out right away, but I bet some twists will trick you. Here's one that fooled me. The scientist has a very shifty weedy assistant, who is in love with the mad scientists beautiful daughter. But she is nursing the wounded pilot, who is in every way dashing, witty and handsome. Guess who she kisses?

It's a silly movie, with a plot full of holes and tropes. It was taken from a stage play, and shows it, with few sets and fewer locations. Well, it was wartime, you cannae ha'e great expenses. But Syms is having so much fun with his role, and so do the rest of the cast, that you can't resist it.

I discovered both of these because Netflix pushed them on me. They were available on streaming and there when I wanted them. Well done, our Netflix!