The End of the Rise

So, after months with so many movies in my queue frozen in Short Wait/Long Wait, Netflix has started parcelling them out to me, maybe one a week from the top of my list. The big one was Star Wars: Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019). I can now say that I've seen all the big movies from 2019 that I wanted to see.

I mentioned at the start of the year that I wouldn't be doing a 2019 in review until I'd seen a few more of the 2019 movies. Now that I have, I still don't think I'll do that.

It starts with the classic crawl. The Emperor Pulpatine is alive! Somehow! And he has a huge fleet hidden in the Unknown Zone! And when Kylo Relly tracks him to the planet Exicle, the emperor tells him to kill Rey! Meanwhile, Rey, Chuy, a cartoon of General Organa, R2 and C3, and... I'm losing steam here.

Look, a lot of stuff happens in this movie. Characters are killed, but not too badly. The robots do some funny things. Mostly, Fink and Dameron Croe and Ray look great. They just do - this series kind of made Oscar Isaac a heart-throb star, but John Boyega and Daisy Ridley both have looks and charisma to burn. I'm sure Adam Driver is feeling pretty silly in this movie, compared to everything else he's been in. And he's been in almost every movie being made. 

I just wish we'd gotten a little more Rose, and a better send off for simulated Carrie Fisher.

Let's just wrap this up by saying I enjoyed watching this a lot, but didn't understand much and remember even less. But I sort of want to see it again. Too bad that this is the end of all Star Wars content, and there will never be any more.

The Old High Hat

I read a great little anecdote about Edward G. Robinson on Twitter the other day. A kid was skateboarding in LA in the 60s, and saw him come out of a store (a blonde on each arm). The kid said, "Look, it's the Boss!" and Robinson replied, "And don't you forget it!". 

This got me thinking about Robinson, who was a cultured, sensitive man, at odds with his classic gangster characters. Of course, he did a lot of comedies, making fun of this character, so I thought I'd queue some up. 

The Little Giant (1933) has Robinson as the head of a gang of Chicago bootleggers who are put out of business by the end of Prohibition. Robinson decides to go straight - he has a lot of money put aside and has been studying culture. He pays off his mistress (well enough so that there's no hard feelings) and punches out the head of the gang who will take over his territory (so they don't think he's running out). With his sidekick Russell Hopton, he heads to Santa Barbara.

He puts up in a swanky hotel, but all the society types give him the high hat. Then, when he's at a tailor, a young wastrel who can't pay his bill overhears the banker checking Robinson's solvency with his bank, and discovers that he has over a million in ready cash. The boy's family decide he should be cultivated. His sister, Helen Vinson, has already been noticed by Robinson, and she starts being friendly. 

Meanwhile, Robinson decides to take a house and real estate agent Mary Astor rents him a beaut, without letting on that it is her family's. It's their last asset after the crash, so she has to work at the agency and rent out the old pile. Robinson decides to take her on as social secretary, even getting her to rehearse his lovemaking. 

It's silly to worry about spoilers here, but Vinson's family find out that Robinson is a Chicago crook. Vinson's dad, who has been selling worthless bonds, makes him a partner in the firm, intending to make him the fall guy for the bond swindle. But Robinson figures that he just has to pay the bonds back - which he does the Chicago way. He gets his boys to work over the crooked officers of the company until they agree to buy back the bonds. And since Vinson threw him over when she found out his past, he's free to look at Astor in a different way.

By and large, this isn't a great movie - there aren't a lot of great laughs, the plot is pretty stale (slobs v. snobs) and it kind of meanders. But, it's got Robinson, and a capable crew of character actors. It's also full of snappy late pre-code dialog, like "a bunch of fags with hankies up their sleeves", and, "I used to own 10% of a French dame". And Robinson's little giant character is a lot of fun - naive but not dumb. He isn't sore that he got taken for a sap, but he wants these people to know that when they pick a sucker, they should make sure he's a sucker. "I have smarter people than you doin' my laundry in Chicago!"

It looks like Brother Orchid isn't available on Netflix, but expect to hear about a lot more Eddie G. movies in the coming weeks. 

Oh, That Sweater!

Knives Out (2019) technically doesn't qualify for this blog. I did not get it from my Netflix queue, but from Amazon Prime. It was wait-listed from Netflix for long enough that I gave up, and with an extra day to play with on the 4th of July weekend, just streamed it.

It starts with mystery writer Christopher Plummer found dead in his mansion, his throat cut. It seems to be suicide, but the police start to question the suspects - all his children or their spouses and offspring. They are here for a birthday party, and it looks like he was going to cut everyone out of his will. He was afraid they were becoming too dependent, unable to find success on their own. 

But this questioning seems to be driven by a shadowy man in the background. It is Benoit Blanc, played by Daniel Craig with an outrageous Foghorn Leghorn accent. Not the same accent as in Logan Lucky - that was more hillbilly - but just as goofy. He is a private detective who was invited to investigate the death as a murder, but the invite was anonymous.

Act one is pretty much the setup, where we see that everyone is unlikable and they all had a motive. Except one person, Plummer's nurse, Ana de Armas. When she is questioned, we learn that she is unable to lie without vomiting. SPOILER - then we get a flashback and see how it went down. De Armas was administering cortisone and a dose of morphine to Plummer, but got the vials mixed up and gave him a massive overdose. She can't find her Naloxone, either. But Plummer is a mystery writier - he comes up with a perfect alibi for de Armas. He coaches her through the plan, then slits his own throat so it will appear as a suicide.

So act two is this revelation, and de Armas trying to keep her secret while not throwing up. It ends with the reading of the will and the discovery that everything goes to de Armas. Unless she killed him, of course, since murderers aren't allowed to profit from their crimes.

The last act brings Chris Evans on the scene. He's the bad boy of the family, not trying to suck up to the old man for money. He is going to help de Armas get what's coming to her. And, look great wearing a comfy old white fisherman's knit sweater doing it. 

Honestly, that sweater was some people's main takeaway from the movie. I understand he needed to wear bulky clothes to disguise his bulky body.

Some other takeaways: The mansion that this is set in is gorgeous. It's full of puzzles and skulls and other mystery-adjacent stuff. The big wall of knives all pointed at the head of the person sitting in a particular seat was sort of the namesake of the movie. 

Also: the cast of this was ridiculous. Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Colette, Lakeith Stanfield, Frank Oz, M. Emmet Walsh and so on. They all seem to be having a ball, being evil bitches. 

Rian Johnson also seems to be having fun. He's written a twisty mystery in the old style, subverted it by telling you whodunnit, then twisting it again. His Benoit Blanc, a Hercule Poirot figure, is great fun. He has also filled the movie with little Easter eggs, like the name of Plummer's character. The author is called Harlan Thrombey, named after Chose Your Own Adventure detective Harlowe Thrombey, possibly with a touch of Harlan Corben. 

Finally, it has a sweet, kind, honest protagonist in de Armas' character, a (possibly) undocumented woman of undefined origin. And, to add to the SPOILERS - she comes out fine, and the movie ends with her on a balcony, drinking a cup of coffee. This is getting to be our favorite movie ending, although in Ready or Not, the house is burning behind her. 

Call from the Past

Don't Let Go (2019) is almost one of those small indie SF/Fantasy films, except it has more of a studio gloss. I attribute this to Jason Blum and Blumhouse producing. 

It stars David Oyelowo as an LA policeman and Storm Reid (Wrinkle In Time) as his niece. It is established that her father, his brother, Bryan Tyree Henry, is a bit of a fuck up. One day he gets a garbled call from Reid and rushes to her house. He finds her, her dog, and her mother and father, all dead, with a box of coke under the bed.

The police decide it's murder-suicide, ans Oyelowo goes along. Then he gets another call from Reid. She doesn't get why he is freaking out about it, and he finally figures out that she is calling from the past - a few days before she is murdered. He gets her to do something in the past (stick something under a diner table with a piece of gum) and finds it in his present. So he knows she can change her future.

So we get one little SF gimmick, and a lot of human relationships, the way those little indie films do (I'm talking about, for ex, Fast Color or Kin). The movie also has some pacing problems and some silliness, as Oyelowo, increasingly haggard and wounded, keeps forcing his way into the evidence locker while his boss, Alfred Molina, just lets him. But Blumhouse makes it all seem a little more like a regular movie. I wonder if I would have like it better with a little less polish. Not that Blumhouse is exactly slick, but they do get a solid look for cheap.

So now I want to watch the Denzel Washington time-travel movie Deja Vu. But of course Netflix doesn't have it available without a Long Wait.

Game Over Man!

With Tag (2018), we have finished watching the three adult game movies of the last few years (see Ready or Not and Game Night). This is probably the one that started them all, or at least it is based on the Wall Street Journal article about the real-life game players that started it.

It starts with Ed Helms getting a job as a janitor, applying a fake mustache, and trying to get close to executive Jon Hamm. While he's being interviewed by Wall Street Journal reporter Annabelle Wallace, Helms tags him. The game is on! They explain to Wallace, who tags (!) along: ever since they were kids, they have played a game of tag for the entire month of May. Now, one of the gang, Jeremy Renner, is getting married. And he has never been It, never been tagged. So this is their chance.

They collect Jake Johnson, a divorced stoner who lives with his dad, and Hannibal Buress, who they pull out of a therapy session. Helms' wife, Isla Fisher, joins the crew, although she isn't actually in the game, because of a game by-law: "No girls allowed". Also, she has impulse control issues and gets pretty intense. They all head to their home town, to crash a wedding. 

Their first attempt to catch Renner fails, but not because they suck at tag, as Renner says. He has the speed and agility of a ninja, with the strategic awareness of Jason Bourne - but that's a different movie. Any way, his bride-to-be meets them and is guardedly cordial, begging them not to interrupt the wedding. So they add that to the by-laws. But they still plan to tag Renner.

This is kind of fun in a conventional way. We get to meet a quirky bunch of very old friends, with very different lives, but a shared history. Rashida Jones shows up as the girl that both Hamm and Johnson were in love with, possibly invited by Renner to sow dissension in the ranks. 

By the way, even though I knew better, I kept thinking of Helms as Steve Carrell - the same earnest dweebiness. Also, I kept thinking of Rashida Jones as Illeana Douglas and Isla Fisher as Rachel McAdams. I'm not good with names and faces.

I guess we're done with game movies. 

If You Go Into the Woods

The Woods (2006) is almost the perfect template for a girl-in-spooky-boarding-school movie. (See, for ex, Down a Dark Hall.) 

It starts with Agnes Bruckner setting fire to a tree in the forest, to the strains of Leslie Gore. Next we see her parents taking her to boarding school in a big old Buick - the movie is set in the 60s, although that's not really important. Her dad, Bruce Campbell, seems nice. Her mom, Emma Campbell (no relation?), is a piece of work who is dying to get rid of her. The school is a mansion set deep in the woods. The headmistress, Patricia Clarkson warns her not to go into those woods.

Bruckner tries to settle in. She makes a close friend of the Weird Girl, suspected lesbian Lauren Birkell. Popular girl Rachel Nichols bullies Birkell, but Bruckner stands up to her. The real spooky part is the dorm, where there is an empty bed. The girl who slept there had tried to kill herself. But she would be coming back when she is out of hospital. But Bruckner has already met her, in terrifying dreams.

She learns the history of the school from a couple of expository lumps - founded in colonial days, witches came out of the forest, took over the school from within, killed all the girls, etc. I wonder if there will be any truth to this old story.

Not to give too much away, the woods are evil, and the trees do grab a few girls. To give more away, Bruce Campbell comes to the rescue. Just in case you didn't get the Evil Dead reference with the trees grabbing people. 

I thought this movie was a lot of fun. Bruckner's evil mother and the teachers who were both strict and sympathetic gave the movie a nice psychology. The story moved right along, although the horror doesn't really kick in (outside of dreams) until the last act. It had a number of side plots that didn't go anywhere (Bruckner had telekinetic powers, which she never used) but added atmosphere. Ms. Spenser wasn't so kind - she thought it was mostly silly. Since she is the one who wants horror films on the queue, that was too bad. Better luck next time.

Also, the movie included 3-4 Leslie Gore songs. Since Ms. Gore was a closeted lesbian in the day, that may mean something. Or just some great songs.

Astral Plane

I haven't been having much luck with my Netflix queue lately - seems like every movie I'm interested in in Long or Short Wait. So I decided to take a flyer (heh) on Soul Plane (2004).

Kevin Hart is a kid who loves airplanes, and grows up to be an adult who still does, even though the experience of flying is pretty pathetic. On one trip, his dog is sent to checked luggage, he gets a bad meal, has his ass sucked into the toilet, and watches his dog get sucked into the engine. So he sues the airline, and with the money. builds his own airline.

We see this mainly through the eyes of the Honkee family - the whitest people imaginable. Dad Tom Arnold, his trophy second wife Missi Pyle, his almost legal daughter and his blinged-out wannabe rapper son are bumped from their regular flight onto the new airline. The plane has hopper hydraulics, spinner wheels and a hot paint job. It has a luxurious Upper Class, but the Honkees are stuck in Low Class, with overhead coin lockets and one bottle of water per row ("Take a sip and pass it on").

Hart's cousin, Method Man, has hired Snoop Dogg as pilot, but it turns out he's never flown. He got his training on Flight Simulator in prison. Also, Hart's lost love is on board. Once airborne, Meth turns the Upper Class lounge into a strip club, then a casino. Add in a raunchy blind man, a couple trying to join the mile-high club, lots of toilet and sex humor (including sex in the toilet humor), and there you go.

This was pretty bad. It was insulting to woman, gays, the blind, Muslims, white people, black people, rappers, strippers - did they miss Asians or did I just forget? The jokes mostly aren't funny (or even really jokes - just awkward or silly situations). Even the hip-hop soundtrack was weak (to my non-expert ears). There are a lot of funny people in this movie, like D.L. Hughley and Mo'Nique, but they don't have much to work with. Snoop was pretty funny too.

Strangely, Tom Arnold gets to be quite sympathetic, giving the black side of life a chance. Sure, he's depressed when his new wife finds out what black men have in their pants, and he's worried when his birthday girl hits the plane's nightclub, but he takes it philosophically. They try to give Hart the same kind of human reality with his ex, but less successfully.

So. not exactly a success. Now I must ask, do we watch Undercover Brother or not?