Like Bulldog Drummond

We had been served Searching (2018) as a preview on many, many discs, and it looked interesting but not really our thing. Then it got a bunch of praise in some random movie podcast episode, mainly for John Cho. Which makes sense, because this is totally his movie.

The gimmick is that the whole movie takes place on a computer screen, or on a few computer screens. It starts with a fresh new Windows 97 start screen. We watch someone save a first video of a child being born. Through stored videos and pictures, we see John Cho and his wife Sara Sohn raise their daughter Michelle La. We see some emails about Sohn's cancer, see it go into remission, the recur, then her funeral. That takes us up to the present day. We see Cho message his daughter about taking out the trash. She Facetimes him from a study group at a friends house, and says she'll be back late. But she doesn't come back.

Cho is a kind of a nervous father, so he quickly starts calling around. He finds she didn't come to school and she hasn't been going to piano lessons. He calls in the police, and get detective Debra Messing assigned. She is a hard-nosed, empathic type, and Cho's internet research shows that she is highly regarded. But he is going to have to help out, so he logs onto his daughter's laptop.

He checks her social media, and finds that she has a lot of acquaintances, but no one really feels like they are her friends. She has been broadcasting on some kind of real-time Tik-Tok app, just talking about life without her mother, and has some followers there. Some even seem a little too close. But they all check out. A few days go by, and they only seem to reach dead ends. Messing thinks it is likely that she just ran away. Then they find her on a traffic cam, and then her car. But not her.  

The format is interesting for a couple of reasons. One is just the formal, technical angles, like in a found footage movie. The other is that we have to see that whole process through a narrow window, and Cho is also looking for his daughter through a narrow window. Although they were close, Sohn's death lead them both to withdraw - we see Cho messaging La that her mother would be proud of her, then deleting it. It seems like nobody really knows her, except maybe Cho's stoner brother. Joseph Lee, who becomes a suspect in a very creepy scene. 

There are also a few nice twists in the third act, and SPOILER a happy ending. But it sort of came at the cost of the character story about Cho and La. But I don't mind because through the whole thing Cho's acting is incredibly strong. He's confused, out of his depth, but never gives up and you can feel it.

Two final points:

• The movie took place in Santa Clara, near where I live and work. And a lot of things were moved around (Pacheco Pass moved north of San Jose, for ex). It's a little distracting. 
• I never got the impression that La liked playing piano, and that one of the beats was that she was only doing it for her mom's memory. But no, the happy ending has her entering Conservatory. Oh well.

Millions Wouldn't

 Since I rashly suggested that I might post about some streamers, here's one from Amazon Prime: The Million Pound Note (1954). It's a British Production of the Rank Organization, directed by Ronald Neahme, but starring Gregory Peck, from a Mark Twain story.

It starts with Peck in London, looking scruffy and starved. He is getting ready to scoop up a bun a baby has tossed on the sidewalk, when two gentlemen call him from a window. They invite him in, explain that they are brothers who have a bet, which they don't explain. He lets them know he is a naval engineer who was out sailing his one-man boat off of New England when he got stuck in a storm. A freighter picked him up and dropped him off in London, penniless. The brothers think this will work perfectly. They hand him an envelope. tell him there's money in it but he can't open it until 3:00 precisely.

Peck heads to the nearest eatery, orders everything and polishes it off. Then the same again, and again. The proprietor is pretty nervous about his ability to pay, so at a minute before 3:00, he opens the envelope. Inside is the titular million pound note (worth around $100 million, today's money). There's also a short explanation of the bet: The note is a loan. If he can return that note unbroken in one month, they will give him any job they can command (they own a boatbuilding firm). Otherwise, he just has to pay back the money. In a prolog we saw that this note is unique: there is only one other in circulation. So he can't break the bill and parley it into another million. It has to be that note.

So he has to pay a restaurant bill of a pound and a few shillings with a million pound note. He tells the waiter he only has a large bill; they say they can change it. He doubts it, they insist. He shows them the note. He was right - but it doesn't matter anymore. He's clearly an eccentric American millionaire. They are more than happy to run a tab.

And so it goes. He goes to a tailor and is shunted to the lowest clerk for a bad readymade suit. He explains that he only has a large note, they claim they can cash it. But they can't - but they fit him out with 20-30 suits on credit. Same with the hotel. And so on.

In society, he meets with Jane Griffiths, a rather Felicity-Kendalish daughter of a duke. (I suppose I need another reference for gaminesque British actresses with breathy voices - Glynnis Johns? But I like Kendal, os...) He also meets an old friend from the states. He's trying to develop a gold mine, but needs capital for equipment. He doesn't even need Peck to invest - he just needs to use his name, and the price will skyrocket. So everything is going well, until an interfering old nobleman hides the note as a prank.

This movie (or the original story?) spawned a number of remakes and spin-offs, like Millions to Juan. The eccentric brothers making a better shows up in Trading Places, and maybe Brewster's Millions. I'm not sure this is my favorite version, though. I like Peck in comedy, because he's such a stiff, and it was fun to see him in formal wear, but that isn't much of a joke.

In conclusion, shouldn't Peck have been able to wire home for some money? Maybe he needed ID?

Scout's Honor

I don't know why I keep going for the zombie comedies, but I queued up Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015).

It starts in the usual way: A scientist working with monkeys, a janitor lets the zombie virus loose. All it needed was "Bela Lugosi's Dead" on the soundtrack (instead of Iggy Azalea?). 

Then we meet our protagonists: Three young teenaged Boy Scouts and their scout master, trying to recruit an AV geek at high school. They fail - these three are the troop. To summarize:

• Tye Sheridan (Cyclops) is the nice normal one
• Logan Miller is the sarcastic bad boy of the bunch - he doesn't really care about scouting
• Joey Morgan is the fat one - he is totally into scouting

These three have been friends since childhood, and since Morgan's dad died a few years ago, the other two have been supporting him by sticking with scouting. Tonight, Morgan is going to be promoted to Buzzard at a campout for the three of them and the scout master. On the way to the campground, they hit a deer, then meet Miller's cute sister, some of her cute senior friends and their douchey boyfriends. They don't even notice that the dead deer gets up and runs away. Miller gets the address for the secret Seniors Party from one of them, and he wants to ditch Morgan for the party after he falls asleep.

They stop at a liquor store across from a strip club and try to find someone to buy some beer for the party. Sarah Dumont, a stripper from across the street comes by and Sheridan fixes the strap of her handbag, using his scouting skills. She takes a liking to him.

They get to the campground and find Morgan all set up. The scout master isn't around, because the zombie deer bit him. Late that night, Sheridan and Miller try to sneak out, but Morgan catches them and is very disappointed.

The two boys happen to stop by the strip club, and notice that the bouncer is gone. They don't notice that everyone else seems to be gone. They sneak in to the club and find it empty except one zombie stripper - Miller thinks it's just makeup until she attacks them. Fortunately, Dumont saves them with a shotgun. At last, our leads have figured out that there are zombies, and they go on the run with Dumont.

So, kind of a slow buildup, but it's kind of fun if you like the kids. They are ~15-16, still young enough to have fun goofing around at the campout. But Miller is kind of an Evil Ed type, Morgan is a bit of a sad sack, and Sheridan, just a regular kid, figuring out where he fits in the world (and secretly nursing a crush on Miller's sister). 

As for the zombie stuff, a lot of it is based on other movies. Even the dead deer coming back to life was in Train to Busan. It's a horror comedy, comes with the territory. 

All in all, this wasn't great - maybe not even good. You could see that the director was going for old-style young friends confront monsters movie, and almost succeeding. But I don't think this will be considered a cult classic like Monster Squad in another 15 years. 

You're So Vicious

I have a several horror movies set aside for Ms. Spenser, and the list is kind of random. Also, I've sort of picked a lot of the best ones. Grave Encounters (2011) is kind of a leftover.

It is a found footage film, and it starts with a reality series producer explaining that what you are about to see is real, only edited for time. Right. It stars Sean Rogerson as the star and producer of the low-budget reality TV series Grave Encounters. For this episode, he is going to be locked in a haunted insane asylum with his crew of four: another ghost chaser, a camera operator, a surveillance tech, and a phony psychic. The psychic, Mackenzie Gray, is sort of a Criswell type, except he looks a lot like James Coburn. 

They start out by doing some interviews that are pretty lackluster. They even have to slip a groundskeeper $20 to say he's seen a ghost. Of course, the asylum is pretty gristly. The windows are all barred except one that keeps opening even if you lock it (according to one guy - not like we see it). There's a bathtub in the hydrotherapy room where a girl was supposed to have slit her wrists, and it still has stains - maybe rust, maybe blood. Anyway, they have the custodian lock them in overnight. They're stuck until he comes back at 6:00. 

They set up wireless cameras all over the large facility, get out their thermal detectors and microcassette recorders for EVP, and start checking the place out. It's pretty boring for a while, then little things start to happen. A gurney moves an inch on its wheels. They hear odd noises. Finally, an unseen force picks up a lock of someone's hair, and she freaks. Also, they got it on camera.

They all regroup at the foyer by the locked doors, and decide to just sit tight until morning. They've already got better stuff than any other show they've done. Around 5:00, they send the tech to gather up the cameras - and he doesn't come back.

It's well past 6:00 when the black guy in the crew snaps and decides he's going to break the door down and leave. After some argument, Rogerson helps. They break through, and find - more corridors. What used to be outside is just more asylum. There's no way out. Also, the sun should be up by now, but it's still pitch black out. Also, the lights in the asylum go out.

This is a pretty good gimmick, we thought. It goes on like this for a while: some demonic apparitions, someone gets pulled into the death bathtub, now full of blood, and disappears. They fall asleep and wake up with hospital wrist tags. The tech re-appears, but now he's in a medical gown and completely mad. And so forth.

The very end gets a bit nuts. I feel like they just didn't have an ending so they threw in everything they could think of - in about the last 2 minutes of before the credits.

And they never came back to the producer from the start of the movie, explaining how they got the tapes and what else they found. 

The "Vicious Brotherss", who wrote and directed, did a sequel, so maybe we find out then. We'll never know, because we aren't going to bother. This just wasn't that good.

Mama Loves Mambo

Phffft (1954) is a good late example of the Comedy of Remarriage. These movies, where a couple gets divorced and then remarried, were mainly designed to avoid the Hayes Code - if the couple were married, they could fool around. If they were divorced, they could fool around with other people. If they got remarried, audience and censors were happy. But this is also a great Jack Lemmon/Judy Holliday comedy. 

It starts with Lemmon and Holliday at home. He is contentedly reading a sordid detective novel, she is wringing her hands. She finally blurts out that she wants a divorce. Instead of trying to talk her out of it, he agrees. They are both bored, she's restless, and he feels a little trapped. Nothing big, but it's the little things. 

So he goes to live with Jack Carson, his crass, womanizing, single friend. He has a tasteless "primitive" statue in the window, and explains the code to Lemmon. When the eyes in the statue are lit, it means the apartment is being used for a tryst, and the other roommate should keep out. Lemmon isn't interested in that, he just wants to finish his detective story in peace. 

There's a nice little flashback to how they met. Lemmon was a Navy man with his arm in a sling. Holliday is a newspaper writer, looking for a hero to write about. But Lemmon never saw action, spent the war doing accounting, which he's still doing. His arm was strained playing racquetball. He offers to help her with her taxes, and goes to her small apartment. To save space, she had a bed that comes out of the wall with a whoosh. He liked it open, she kept closing it. Finally, he opens it and sits down on it, and ... Soon, he was out of the army, working as a tax lawyer. She was the writer for a popular radio drama. And they got married.

In the present, Holliday tries to learn French and takes Mambo lessons. Carson sets Lemmon up with party girl Kim Novak, which both frightens and somewhat bores him. She's beautiful, but what to talk about? You can guess Carson's answer to that. Lemmon also grows a mustache and gets a sportscar. And learns to Mambo.

So they both have dates one night at the same club, and start mamboing with their dates - and then with each other. It's one of the best dance scenes by non-dancers until the merengue in My Blue Heaven. 

It isn't over yet - Holliday still has to almost be seduced by Carson, and Lemmon has to save the day. But it's a foregone conclusion.

Screenwriter George Axelrod sort of ticks all the boxes for this form of comedy, but does it smoothly. Lemmon plays his role as typical mid-century male salaryman - his occupation fits him for well-to-do but boring. Carson is always good as the crass good-time Charlie. Holliday, however, is fabulous. Although she is a little ditsy, she isn't playing dumb. When she's in the radio studio watching them play her script, you see her silently acting out each line. Another time, when Lemmon makes an innuendo, you see her puzzlement turn to understanding in a flash - That's acting. 

Borderline

Again, I can't remember who recommended Amulet (2020), but it was a good recommend.

It stars Alec Secareanu as an Eastern European immigrant laborer in England (I guess?). He lives in an abandoned building with some other homeless people, but seems to keep to himself, reading philosophy. We also see him in flashbacks, as a soldier guarding an isolated wooded border crossing. There, he also keeps to himself, and reads philosophy (Hannah Arendt). He also finds an amulet in the shape of a pculiar figure. 

One day, his squat burns down, and he barely escapes, collapsing from smoke inhalation. He wakes up in a hospital, with a nun offering to help him out. Since all his money has vanished, she suggests he live with Carla Juri, a young immigrant woman with a dilapidated house. She is caring for her dying mother, who is only a screaming presence in the attic. He will do some chores in exchange for free rent. Neither of them is very happy about this, but the nun (Imelda Staunton) insists, and so it comes to pass.

The house isn't in too bad shape, but the wallpaper is peeling and there's black mold everywhere. Also, the water is bad. When Secareanu tries to fix the toilet, he finds it clogged with a living, hairless, albino bat - which bites him. So, not a great living situation, but Juri can cook. Although he says he never gets hungry, he can't resist her odd-looking meat dishes.

Throughout, we get more of the flashbacks of his time as a border guard. One day a woman runs up to the border and tries to cross. He stops her, and tells her she will just be shot when she leaves the woods. It turns out that she is looking for her daughter on the other side. They live together for a while. He is kind to her, but tries to follow orders. This will not end well.

Neither does his relations with Juri. The dying mother is not what she seems, the nun isn't, and neither is Juri. I won't spoil what is going on, but I will say it is pretty creepy. Then it gets kind of silly, with a giant seashell he crawls into and meets... Never mind.

Ms. Spenser a couple of problems with this movie. One is that there were too many poorly motivated choices. But the main one is that once again, real life is creepier than the supernatural. Secareanu was probably guarding the Serbian/Croatian border - with him on the Serbian side. So you can guess what happened to the woman trying to cross. 

However, the movie ends with him and Juri returning to the old country, and Juri meets the woman, who is now a clerk at a gas station. She lives with her daughter. So, happy ending?

Turbines to Speed!

We watched The LEGO Batman Movie (2017) because it was praised in some movie podcast I was listening to. When I say "we", I mean mostly me. Ms. Spenser kept me company but mostly did emails. She sort of agrees with my conclusion after watching The LEGO Movie: this isn't really for us. But I still enjoyed it.

Will Arnett is back as LEGO Batman, but doing a deep gravelly voice. He starts by showing us his routine with plenty of voice over. When he fights the Joker (Zach Galifinakis), he learns that the Joker thinks he is Batman's arch-enemy. Batman lets him know he's just another enemy, and doesn't really care about him, one way or the other. That hurts Joker's feelings. 

Bruce Wayne attends a Gala, and meets Dick Grayson, a spunky, yet naive orphan (Michael Cera). Dick asks a distracted Wayne if he will adopt him, and he says, sure kid. Turns out that is binding. The next day, Commissioner Gordon retires, and his replacement Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson) takes over. She plans to re-work the police force so that it can function without Batman - which he doesn't like. But when Joker and the whole Rogue's Gallery shows up, neither Batman nor the police are necessary. They have come to surrender. 

Batman knows that it's a trick. Barbara knows it's a trick. But what can they do? Batman decides to steal Superman's Phantom Zone projector ray, and send the Joker where he can't do any harm. And he gets his new ward, Robin, to help.

So that's the setup. The fun comes from the characters and the style. Batman is a self-centered loner, who doesn't need anyone - until he learns the meaning of teamwork. Robin is as wet as possible, like a Sanrio version of Robin. Gordon is smart, reasonable, and employs a best-practices paradigm. The entire Justice League/Superfriends all show up at a party Batman isn't invited to. And the Phantom Zone holds all the bad guys in the LEGO universe, including the Wizard of Oz's flying monkeys, the gremlins from Gremlins, the Eye of Sauron, some velociraptors, Godzilla,...

Most of the jokes are kind of meta, like the use of the "na-na, na-na, na-na, na-na, na-na, na-na, BATMAN" theme from the 60s show, or some of the ridiculous villains, like Condiment Man (a real Batman villain - "It's worth a Google"). But without the jokes, it would make a fairly good Batman animated story. So it works both ways. 

So, Ms. Spenser wasn't impressed, but was glad I liked it. And I did like it. Lord and Miller didn't write or direct this, it was directed by Chris MacKay. They produced, though, and MacKay did a great job in the style of the first one. 

In conclusion, it was Rosario Dawson I watched this for, and her role was so much the foil for the craziness, it felt kind of bland. I think they might have wasted a lot of voice talent on minor roles here.