Horror-ween Kick-Off

Ms. Spenser has declared an early start to the Halloween scary movies season. So we watched a bunch of recent (ish) streamers.

Demonic (2015) takes place in two time frames. Frank Grillo is a cop heading to his girlfriend's place when he gets a call. There was a disturbance in an old mansion, and he finds several dead kids, and one live but traumatized one. He calls his girlfriend (Maria Bello), a psychologist, to talk to the kid while he searches the scene. 

Then there's the "how they got there" time frame. A bunch of college kids want to investigate a house where a mass murder occurred. They include Dustin Milligan (the survivor), his girlfriend, her ex-boyfriend, and the usual cameraman, gadget guy, etc. Turns out Milligan's mother was the lone survivor of the murder, and there's a demon involved.

Malevolent (2018) also has a bunch of kids investigating haunted houses, but in this case, they are charlatans. Working in Scotland, they pretend to investigate, make some spooky noises, tell the "ghosts" to go in peace and collect a fee. Florence Pugh wants to quit this scheme, because she's getting too many real ghost vibes. But her brother. Ben Lloyd-Hughes has to keep going because he owes a lot of money. So they take a job investigating a house where several children were killed - ostensibly by the now dead son of the woman who hired them. They died with their mouths sewn shut. Hope this doesn't happen to any of the ghost busters... 

Temple (2017) takes place in Japan. A young woman wants to research and photgraph Japanese country temples. She convinces her boyfriend to come along, along with her longtime platonic male friend. He has been a little depressed lately, and speaks a little Japanese. They find an old book with some info about an old temple, but the shopkeeper won't sell it to them. They buy it from a little boy who just kind of appears.

They go to the temple (against everyone's advice, and of course, bad things happen - including platonic boyfriend stepping through the floorboards and breaking his leg. So they are stuck for the night - until they freak out and leave Platonic on his own. Bad decision.

It's odd that these movies shared so many elements. Of course, there's the young-people-doing-research/making-a-documentary angle. That's a pretty common setup, I guess. But two of these have a real boyfriend/ex- or non-boyfriend dynamic, and Malevolent has a brother/wannabe boyfriend thing that is somewhat similar. And both Malevolent and Temple have someone fall through a floor and break a leg, so the group can't run away. Maybe everyone is working from the same template somewhere. 

Yul Love It

Ms. Spenser is a big fan of Yul Brenner - especially in Westerns. So we didn't mind that only the second Sabata film, Adios Sabata (1971) was available on Netflix. This one has Brenner in the title role, the other two have Lee Van Cleef (who she kind of likes as well, so we'll watch those if they show up). 

This is a spaghetti Western, filmed at Cinecitta and directed by Gianfranco Parolini. It takes place in Mexico under the Austrian Emperor Maximillian, and starts with someone looking for Sabata to do a job (Ignazio Spalla). When Brenner comes out and wins a quick duel, he figures he's come to the right place. Spalla wants Sabata to help steal a wagonload of gold from the Austrians for the revolution. Dean Reed shows up a little later, looking possibly to latch onto this caper. He seems pretty shady.

Spalla has two colorful henchman: One dances a flamenco of death before killing someone. The other has shoes with a little socket on the top. He drops a round stone into the socket, gives a kick, and propels the stone into whatever target he wants. Silent and deadly.

I'll skip over the rest of the movie until the end, when they need to infiltrate a fort to get to the gold. This is a longish set piece which starts out silently. The rock kicker's skills come in handy, knocking off sentries before they know what's happening, 

Other than this, this is a pretty ordinary spaghetti Western, with a faux Morricone soundtrack. It had the cool henchmen, the shady outsider, and Brenner had a cool weapon - a Winchester with a magazine for twelve bullets - but he keeps a cigarillo in the last slot. The flamenco boy and rock kicker were cool, and the attack on the fort was nicely done. But it was mainly Yul Brenner, looking ultimately cool that we were there for. 

Not that we won't watch Lee Van Cleef's Sabata if we get a chance. 

The Man Who Wasn't There

Ms. Spenser wasn't too thrilled by the start of Nobody (2021). She figured it just another decent-man-pushed-beyond-his-limits movie like Straw Dogs. Once she realized what it was really about, she started to love it.

It stars Bob Odenkirk, a put-upon everyman. He always misses garbage pick up, his teen son ignores him, his wife barricades herself in bed behind a wall of pillows. Only his little daughter seems to do more than tolerate him. Then one night, he heats a noise downstairs. It's a robbery - two people in ski masks, one with a gun. He tells them to take the money in the bowl in the kitchen - then his son tackles one of the bandits. But he doesn't want any heroics - he makes his son let go, and the bandits run. 

Word gets around, and everyone is pretty scornful - why didn't he put up a fight. A cop tells him he did the right thing, but that isn't what he's thinking. He takes this philosophically. going to work, missing garbage pickup, etc. He even talks about it to a friend over ham radio (a friend who is supposed to be dead), and mentions that he could tell the gun had no bullets. 

Then his little girl can't find her kitty bracelet - it was in the bowl with the money. So Odenkirk goes hunting. The first stop is a tattoo parlor to get some info. They laugh at him, except for one guy, a vet, who prudently slinks out. Odenkirk demolishes a roomful of bikers and seems to enjoy it. When he finds the bandits, they're a family with a baby, so he leaves them scared but whole. 

On the bus home, a gang of Russian hooligans get on and start messing with a rider, a young woman. The bus stops and the driver gets out her phone to call the police. Odenkirk gently takes away her phone, puts her off the bus, and then starts hurting people. He pretty much kills one of them, crushing his larynx and then giving him a trache with a dirty straw.

SPOILER - Odenkirk isn't just everyman. He's a very skilled trained assassin, who decided to settle down and live a boring, non-lethal life. But he misses the mayhem and has been looking for an excuse to lash out. The robbery wasn't enough, but they didn't have to kill his dog. His daughter's bracelet was enough excuse, but if that didn't work out, there's always someone who needs a beating.

For the rest of the movie, you get Odenkirk kicking butt, along with his brother and ham radio pal, RZA, and their geriatric dad, Christopher Lloyd. Which is a lot of fun, including the sort of silly mousetrap gadgets (including actual mousetraps) they use to take down the Russian mob. 

But that's not what this is really about. It's about how men may try to give up their passion and settle down to family life, but they've got to find balance. Some time for family, some time for killing bad guys. So true. 

Battle Royale

 As the COVID quarantine threatens to extend endlessly, one thing I am beginning to miss is big new action movies. So many have been scheduled into the misty future or put on Yet Another Streaming Service that I don't want to pay for. Thank goodness, Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) came around.

It starts in the jungle with a pretty little Asian girl (Kaylee Hottle) meeting with an angry Kong. It seems she can communicate with it by sign language (the character and actor are deaf). I felt like she was going to be a replacement for Millie Bobby Brown, but wait.

Brown has been listening to a lot of podcasts by investigative caster and nutcase Brian Tyree Henry. He has infiltrated the Apex company because he suspects they are up to something with the monsters. And then Godzilla, who has been quiet up to now, attacks their facility, letting Henry get a look at some kind of machine. 

It turns out that they are investigating the Hollow Earth as the home of the monsters. They hire Alexander Skarsgard to investigate, although he is considered a mad scientist. His plan is to let Kong lead them to the Hollow Earth. For this, he needs to work with Kong-Whisperer Rebecca Hall, Hottle mother. Together, they will dope up Kong and put him on a ship for the Antarctic.

Meanwhile, Brown and her buddy Julian Dennison (Hunt for the Wilderpeople) are helping Henry infiltrate the Apex plant, and accidentally get shipped to the Hong Kong office. There, they discover Apex's secret: MechaGodzilla! (Oh, sorry if that's a spoiler.)

There's a GvK fight on the high-seas, with Godzilla the champion. There is some Kong v misc. monsters in the Hollow Earth. Then Godzilla and MechaGodzilla mess up Hong Kong for a while, and Kong joins in to defeat MechaG. So, Godzilla wins, but lets Kong rule Hollow Earth, while he (she? I forget if this version lays eggs) rules the world above. And so there is peace in the monsterverse - for now.

But when it was all over, I was kind of nonplussed. Sure the fights and explosions were mostly fun. The fight in Hong Kong looked a little miniaturish - they kept knocking down skyscrapers trimmed in neon. But I assume that was an homage to the original movies. My big problem was that it was overstuffed with stuff - the Apex had at least two major villains with backstories that I only got from reading Wikipedia after the fact. The Skarsgard/Hallsections were kind of interesting, because they were reasonably realistic scientists, not action heroes. Although it was pretty funny to find out that the crackpot Hollow Earth theorists had a major military base and some futuristic Tron cars. 

The Henry/Brown/Dennison parts were the most fun - Henry buys into every imaginable conspiracy theory and gets one right more or less by accident. Brown is smart, warm and fearless, and Dennison does the standard wacky, reluctant friend thing very well. But my favorite part may have been Hottle, a solemn, wise, silent presence. I wanted to see more of her. Maybe she could meet up with the tiny girls who summon Mothra. 

Fugit

Paul Scheer was opining that The Fugitive (1993) is a better movie than, for example, Speed. Well, I couldn't argue one way or the other, so we watched The Fugitive.

It starts with some confusing scenes of violence - a woman being murdered. Ms. Spenser immediately checked out here, although she has seen worse. Maybe it was the stylization. Anyway, Dr. Harrispn Ford comes home to the scene, and fights off the attacker (a one-armed man, we learn later), who runs off. When the police get there, it looks like an open and shut case - Ford did it. He is swiftly tried and convicted. On his way to the Big House, the adventure starts. 

First, another prisoner tires to escape and the guard blows him away. There's a struggle and the driver is killed. So the prison bus is now out of control. It comes to a stop on the railroad tracks, and a train smucks it to high heaven - after Ford gets out. This is a pretty wild set piece to open with.

The US Marshalls show up, lead by Tommy Lee Jones, a hard-ass who immediately sets up a perimeter to catch the escapees, especially Ford. Everyone figures he was killed in the crash, but not Jones. 

Ford sneaks into a hospital to treat his wounds, and takes off in an ambulance. Jones is hot on his trail in a copter. Ford winds up at a dam, and when manages to get hold of Jones' gun. When he pleads that he didn't kill his wife, Jones has the bad-ass line: "I. Don't. Care." So Ford jumps off of the mile-high dam. Once again, everyone assumes he's dead, but not Jones.

Unfortunately after these two big set pieces, things slow down a little. Ford sneaks back to Chicago to look for the one-armed man. He gets some help from old friends, but trusts no one - good plan. There's a good scene where they pass each other on opposite stairwells, and Ford almost slips by. But Jones recognizes him and chases him down a long stairwell - but loses him in Chicago's iconic St. Patrick's Day parade. 

The ending is a bit anticlimactic - It's pretty paranoid, but the stakes seemed to be ridiculously low. I think the TV series had the same problem.

I didn't actually watch The Fugitive on TV, but I think Ford does a pretty good job playing David Janssen's character - the same intensity, paranoia, and intelligence. But Tommy Lee Jones' bad-ass marshall steals the show. He has a quirky group of assistants (Joey Pants as "Cosmo") and snaps out orders with the occasional quirk tossed in ("And don't let them tease you about your ponytail"). It makes sense that the sequel is just about him. 

Sim City

 I'm not sure if this one counts, since it isn't available from Netflix as a DVD or pretty much anywhere streaming. But we recently bought An Inspector Calls (1954) from Kino Lorber, along with some other stuff, so here it is.

It starts with an interesting title sequence: A sumptuous table where the guests are eating the nuts course (as in "from soup to"). But while the table setting is quite genteel, we see the hands grabbing walnuts and fruit voraciously. Then we meet the guests:

• The father: A rich portly industrialist who expects to be recognized on the Honor's List
• His wife: A stuffy conventional old bird
• Their daughter: A pretty thing, although she's said to have a temper
• Her fiancé: A rich young man, eager for her father's approval
• The son: A somewhat inebriated young man who looks a little like Eric Idle. Since his character's name is Eric, we called him Eric the Half-a-Drunk

Then, an inspector calls - Alastair Sim. This is not Inspector Cockrill from Green for Danger or the lodger from Cottage to Let. He is somewhat more mysterious. He isn't announced at the door, he climbs through a window. He explains that a woman has died from drinking cleaning fluid, a horrible death, perhaps suicide. And one by one, he explains how each of them knew her under various aliases, and each of them wronged her.

Each one's story is illustrated by a flashback, and in each case the person feels guilty but insists that they can't be blamed for her death. I'll spoil the end a little, because I liked the twist - the fiancé notes that they all knew this woman by a different name - maybe they aren't even the same person! Maybe there is no dead woman at all! Maybe the inspector isn't really... But I won't spoil any more.

This movie was directed by Guy Hamilton (Goldfinger) from a play by J.B. Priestly (who I thought discovered oxygen, but that was Joseph). The play was a strong indictment of capitalist society, and premiered in Moscow. I was afraid in a few places that some leniency would be shown to the rich and powerful, but it was only a feint. Still solid today.

Fire on the Mountain

I actually kind of liked Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021) - partly because I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be a comedy.

It starts out as two threads: a pair of cold assassins (Aiden Gillen and Nicholas Hoult) wiping out a judge in Miami, then heading for Jacksonville. These guys are so hard, so unemotional, that I suspected them of being some sort of comic relief: "You've got a spot of blood on your shirt there." 

In Jacksonville, dad Jake Weber sees the news on TV and takes off with his son Finn Little. They are headed to Montana.

Meanwhile, in Montana, smoke jumper Angelina Jolie is kidding around with her crew, but inside she's in bad shape. She saw some kids and a fellow firefighter die in a forest fire, and it haunts her. She gets stationed in a firetower, because being alone in the woods is the best way to get your head straight. We also meet her ex-boyfriend, Sheriff Jon Bernthal, and his pregnant wife Medina Senghore. It seems that Weber went to their survival school, and that's where he's headed.

But the bad guys have figured this out too, and manage to kill the dad, but the kid gets away. The assassins (who may not be as good at their jobs as you were lead to believe) have to get the kid to make sure that he doesn't have the McGuffin. So they set a forest fire to keep things stirred up.

They also go after Senghore, who gets away with some improvised weapons and a shotgun. Well, she runs a survival school. 

We're now about an hour in, and finally the kid meets up with Angelina Joli. They start walking to town through a lightning storm, but it still takes forever for them to see the fire. They turn around, but the assassins find them at the firetower - so they run, back into the fire.

From the promos, I had the idea that the whole movie took place in the fire - but it was only a bit at the end. It was very well done, and I guess a lot of it was really burning, not CGI (unlike the firetower, which was). So the best part wasn't actually very long. But all in all, not bad. The story was a little overstuffed, and the set up could have been brisker. Also, the dialog was pretty predictable. We had a game where we tried to predict it, and if we got it wrong, tried to decide if our line was better. 

This was written and directed by Taylor Sheridan (Wind River). It isn't as intense as that was, partly because the Montana setting was much more chill than the Wind River Rez. But there was at least one scene with Jolie getting beat up. Seeing her skinny beauty getting pummeled seems to get some people off.

And about that McGuffin: A few pieces of paper with some handwritten notes that could bring down some powerful men in politics and organized crime. Several commenters on IMDB and elsewhere were upset that we never find out what it is all about. I don't think they understand the concept of a McGuffin. What I was upset about is that it was in Jolie's pocket when she dived underwater. It might have even been in her coat pocket before she threw off her coat into the forest fire. I don't see how it survived. But the kid was getting ready for a press conference as the movie ended, so I guess it must have.