Patton Oswalt: Annihilation

2017 comedy special

Rating: no rating

Plot: Patton Oswalt grabs at low-hanging Trump fruit and talks about becoming a widower.

I don't remember if I put stand-up comedy on this blog or not. Do I? Should I?

I like Oswalt and think he's a really decent human being and a very intelligent guy though he wouldn't make a list of my all-time favorite stand-up comedians. And I don't think this is one of his best stand-up specials. It's not one that I'd be interested in seeing again, and I didn't think anything here belongs with his best material. Listening to him talk about having to inform his daughter that her mother had passed away was touching.

Superargo and the Faceless Giants

1968 Italian/Spanish action movie

Rating: 7/20 (Dylan: 16/20)

Plot: Somebody's kidnapping world-class athletes and using them to make an army of faceless giants, and it's up to former wrestler Superargo and his sidekick Kamir to stop him.

"I can't put my confidence in an agent who calls himself Superargo and wears a mask and a cape and that red outfit."

Fans of El Santo and Blue Demon movies might enjoy being slightly disappointed in this, the second of the Superargo movies. Superargo, as he explains, wears that red outfit and mask and cape because it's what he wore as a wrestler and had some good luck with it. I'm not sure why he, like El Santo, feels the need to wear it all the time, but I'm not going to question the guy. I'm also not sure why a wrestling outfit needs to be bulletproof, but that did set up one of my favorite moments in this movie where the bad guys are shooting at Superargo and a bunch of people as their elevator opens, and our hero--despite it being revealed earlier that his costume was bulletproof--jumps out of the way, allowing the people behind him to be shot.

Superargo. like Santo, is skilled in hand-to-hand combat. His best move is one where he gets a running start and then hops and launches himself at two or three faceless giants. At one point, he does leap from the ground to a window about five stories up. The leap is accompanied by a slide whistle, much to my delight. There were no superpowers shown before that although he does have the power to read minds apparently, a skill learned from his turban-donning sidekick Kamir. Later, we see Superargo display this neat little trick where he's chasing somebody in the woods, grabs a tree branch, hoists himself into the tree, and then somehow manages to jump down in front of the person he had been chasing. He also has a car that, with the push of a button, can have all these blades and shit poking out of it, setting up a ridiculous poorly-edited action sequence where he drives around and knocks down a bunch of the faceless giants, some who are very nearly within reach of the things protruding from the vehicle.

Those faceless giants aren't really faceless, by the way. They all kind of look like Miles Teller to me. They aren't a very menacing lot even though they're armed with flails. They're definitely not giants. And I was really confused about how these things were controlled. The bad guy would just sit in a car and fiddle with a couple of knobs. Later, he's in his cavernous evil lair fiddling with some knobs, and at one point he turns things all the way up to 70. I was on the edge of my seat at that point, but it turns out that 70 was the exact same as 60 or 50.

Superargo is played by Giovanni Gianfriglia (aka Ken Wood), and sidekick Kamir is played by Aldo Sambrell, a guy who was in several notable spaghetti westerns and who doesn't look happy to be in this movie at all. Gianfriglia (Wood) is as bland as Adam West's Batman though not nearly as charming. He looks good in the suit and has a fine mandible which I suppose is all that really matters.

The good guys win in the end, of course, but the villain's demise is worth sticking around for. That is, if you've ever wanted to see a pile of leaves kill a person.

Ghostbusters (Redux)

1984 comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: I already wrote about this movie right here. If you need a well-written plot synopsis for this movie you've very likely already seen, check there.

This was shown at my local theater, and I couldn't resist seeing a twenty foot tall Rick Moranis. There were five other people in the theater with me who wanted to same thing, and when Louis Tulley first appeared--opening his apartment door to talk to Sigourney Weaver--there was a palpable excitement in the crowd. A buzz. One person started vibrating in his seat. Somebody touched himself inappropriately again and again. Somebody moaned, "My God, my God, my God."

By the third time Rick Moranis appeared on the screen, we all had our pants off.

I don't think Ghostbusters is a movie that gets better with age, and I don't think it's a movie that needs to be seen more than once. I think I've seen it four times though, probably because of Rick Moranis.

That reminds me--I believe I had planned to do a Rick Moranis Fest a while back. Why didn't I do that?

I saw this movie in the theater in 1984. It was the first time I saw Bill Murray, I believe. I like that my movie theater shows old movies so that I can relive childhood memories like this. I think I was even wearing the same pair of pants although, as mentioned, they did not stay on for the duration of the motion picture.

Daddy's Home

2015 comedy

Rating: 6/20

Plot: As Brad finally starts to connect with his two step-children, their biological father Dusty pops into the picture.

This comedy made me very, very sad, and I'm not sure comedies are supposed to do that.

I was sleepy and lying in bed and decided to start this movie because I'd seen previews for the sequel. I was in the mood to see Mark Wahlberg's bare chest, and out of all my streaming options, this seemed to give me the best chance for that. In case you're wondering--yes, his bare chest is in this movie, and he doesn't seem to have any body hair.

It took me about two minutes to shut this off. All it took was for Will Ferrell, providing narration about how much he loves his life to get the audience up to speed, to say the words "I love my Ford Flex," egregiously diving into a car commercial right from the start. I had had enough, and the movie hadn't even introduced a conflict at all.

A couple of days later, after the yearning for Wahlberg's hairless chest became too strong, I resumed Daddy's Home. It was, my friends, a mistake that I'm going to have to live with for the rest of my life.

And not only did they double down on the Ford Flex advertising by bookending another reference at the end, but there was also blatant product placement for the following:

--Starburst, the name of the candy being mentioned by at least three characters during a scene where Wahlberg's spending time with his kids
--Cinnabon, in a recurring gag where Wahlberg either made cinnamon rolls for his family or bought some from Cinnabon and pretended that he had made them
--Red Bull, after Wahlberg has built a treehouse and a skateboard ramp in a single day in the backyard and there's a Red Bull stand in the background for some reason
--Bud Light, the preferred adult beverage for these awful characters
--Red Roof Inn
--Cinnamon Toast Crunch, mentioned in the same breath as Red Roof Inn

I'm not sure how the characters read some of these whorish lines with straight faces.

I nearly cried several times, but it wasn't related to the product placement. Not entirely.

And that's all I have to say about Daddy's Home.

My Little Pony: The Movie

2017 animated pony movie

Rating: 11/20 (Buster: 20/20)

Plot: Ponies are trying to throw a party or put on a concert and are interrupted when a unicorn with a busted horn shows up with some monsters and trashes things. Some guy calling himself Storm King is behind the whole thing. Some of the ponies--the ones whose names some parents might know--escape and go to find help.

I went on a little date with my best friend to see this movie. Afterward, we went to the grocery store to get supplies for S'mores. She had a good time, and that's really all that matters.

I'm not sure I'm the audience for this movie. There was one other family in the theater, and then there really was an adult male sitting by himself. He had a big tub of popcorn. I'm not sure what his deal was.

I don't know what to say about this movie. It was colorful enough, but it had some terrible songs in it and none of the humor worked. Also, I'm fairly positive that everything that happens in this movie is something that's already happened in another animated feature. I don't really like these ponies, but again, I'm probably not the audience for this.

Innocence

2004 drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Girls grow up in a boarding school where they learn to dance.

This is another Lucile Hadzihalilovic flick, and it's a good companion piece to Evolution. The characters at the center of all this are pre-pubescent girls. In Evolution, it's boys. Like Evolution, this bewilders poetically, intentionally leaving loose threads and remaining open to interpretation. I think the symbolism and meaning of this one might be a little more obvious, however. That's not to say I actually understood this completely because I didn't. But with caterpillars, walls, legs, and trains, it felt a little more explicit. The movie's frequently without dialogue, and along with the deliberate pace, it leaves you a lot of space to collect your thoughts. It's frequently beautiful, especially in opening and closing shots of swirly water. You're given plenty of opportunities to recognize recurring images and ideas and try to piece it all together into something that makes sense.

Structurally, there's three parts to the story. The first is with a new arrival to the boarding school. New arrivals show up in a coffin for some reason, and after some colored ribbon exchanging, we follow that little girl around as she gets acclimated to her new surroundings and learns what her new home is all about. At the same time, the viewer gets acclimated to this new environment, one that feels very familiar and at the same time completely strange. Then, there's a shift to an older girl who wants to be selected to leave the boarding school by the woman who comes along and selects one of them for that. Then, there's a new main character, one of the oldest girls, who is just about ready to move on from the boarding school. It's an interesting way to show the audience what this place means at different stages in a girl's life without having them follow or even care that much about one character.

The style is detached, cold and clinical. Along with the way this movie takes its time to get anywhere, I can imagine that would be really frustrating for a lot of people. Fans of enigmatic cinema, however, would probably really enjoy this. I'm not sure I want to guess what Hadzihalilovic's actual intentions were. If they were to paint a picture of the emotions that a girl goes through when becoming a woman, I think it might be fairly successful. I don't know if that was it though.

I've started to hate writing about movies like this and Evolution. I feel like these write-ups are even worse than the normal things I write. I need to stick to disaster movies, I guess.

I'm not going to proofread this. If you make a typo in a forest, and there's nobody around to read it, does it make a sound?

Julie and Jack

2003 romantic drama

Rating: 3/20

Plot: Jack, struggling in love and microchip sales, meets Julie online and falls madly in love with her. Julie seems to love him as well, but she will only meet him in some virtual reality world and refuses to tell him anything about her past. He decides to investigate.

As you can tell from the professionally-made poster up there, this is from James Nguyen, the director of the Birdemic movies. This had been on my radar for a while, but I was waiting around for the Bad Movie Club members to watch it with me. I've given up on a lot of things lately, and my Bad Movie Club friends are just one of those things.

This starts as poorly as any movie I can remember with a shot of clouds and a pan flute. There's a promise of a special appearance by Tippi Hedren, and knowing that this is what Tippi Hedren's career has become is enough to make anybody miserable.

This doesn't have the abysmal special effects or environment propaganda to make this is special as Birdemic, but I think anybody who's seen that would know this was a Nguyen production without being told that. Characters say lines that seem to have been written by somebody who learned English from watching soap operas. Scenes are strangely paced. Long chunks of movie pass by without anything happening at all. There are three or four sales meetings, some containing applause.

If Tarantino has a thing for feet, Nguyen obviously has a thing for sales. The repeated motif making a connection between capitalism and sex is almost alarming. Of course, the character who brings that up, Jack's friend Mark, is a total dick, a wannabe Casanova who has two of the most awkward examples of coitus interruptus you're likely to see in a movie. He's played by Will Springhorn with what might be the worst performance in this although the guy who plays Bill (Lee Boren) gives him a run for his money. Bill, also a dick, is Mark's rival at work, and he steals every single scene that he's in. Well, he steals it and sets it on fire and pees on it. That feels more accurate. Most of the performances aren't actually that bad. The guy who plays Jack--Justin Kunkle--is trying very very hard. His career, by the way, went nowhere. He was in a couple of shorts and no other feature-length film.

This movie might break the record for having the most scenes that don't actually need to be in the movie. Of this movie's 90 minutes, I'd say about 80 of them aren't really necessary. It takes about 35 minutes for the movie to even find a real plot. About 25 minutes is taken up by a dating montage that shows off the sights of San Francisco. If Birdemic was Nguyen's clumsy homage to Hitchcock's Birds, this is quite obviously his Vertigo. Most of the movie has Jack running around like either a detective or a stalker, depending on your perspective.

My favorite moments:

--a really awkward church service
--anything with Bill
--a print-out at a college party that says Alpha Pi but has the word Alpha and the symbol for Pi

If you laugh at how this movie ends, you should feel very bad about yourself as a human being.

Ghosthouse

1988 ghosthouse movie

Rating: 7/20 (Dylan: 6/20)

Plot: A guy with a ham radio hears something creepy, and he and his girlfriend decide to investigate. They befriend some other morons and try to survive. . .dramatic pause. . .the ghosthouse.

This would probably rate a 4/5 on the bad movie scale. It's more entertaining than Geostorm could ever hope to be!

This is from director Umberto Lenzi, but he used the pseudonym Humphrey Humbert for this one. I'm not sure if that name is funny or if I'm just kind of an idiot. Lenzi also directed movies as Humphrey Longan, Humphrey Milestone, and Hank Milestone.

Things start with a murder, and then there's a little girl with a clown doll or sometimes just the clown doll, and then there's a bunch of violence as the kids try to figure out what's going on. Good luck, kids, because I don't think this makes a lick of sense!

If you like gore, Ghosthouse has a little bit. Characters you won't care about are killed with axes, mirrors, fan blades, hammers, a guillotine, and milk. To be honest, the milk doesn't actually kill off the character. He survives the milk. A repetitive musical motif that sounds like carnival music mixed with backwards goat giggling gets more ridiculous the more it pops up. I could never quite be sure if the characters were hearing that or not.

Lenzi successfully creates a creepy vibe in some scenes, but it's impossible to maintain with a story this silly and with performances this poor. It's probably not the kids' fault as they have very few lines that sound like things actual human beings would say. The female characters do scream adequately. I'll give them that. A couple side characters are really great. Willy M. Moon plays a hitchhiker who pops into the movie for no reason and then pops in a little later on, also for no reason. He's a prankster, and his use of a skeleton arm at least made me laugh if nobody else seemed to appreciate it. Hernest Mc. Kimnoro plays a custodian at the cemetery, and he's really terrific. I think Lenzi must have actually found the guy at the cemetery. Sadly, this is his only performance.

This includes a shocking twist ending that made my son and me giggle.

Geostorm

2017 disaster movie

Rating: 8/20

Plot: Somebody starts using our weather-controlling satellites for nefarious purposes, and it's up to two nondescript action heroes to stop them.

I'm trying to increase this blog's popularity by watching more current blockbusters and less 60s films from countries that no longer exist. If well-written reviews of big-budget action movies that have been out less than a week don't get me more views, I don't know what will!

I may have irritated the people sitting behind me because I laughed inappropriately a few times.

Throw all logic out the window when you see this. In fact, you might want to watch this in the most illogical way possible. Put your pants over your face, or sit "Indian style" on the theater seat while facing the wrong direction and shovel popcorn down the back of your shirt. Or leave your seat during one of the many action-packed scenes in Geostorm (like the one where there's hail or maybe the one where there's lightning or maybe the one where there's lots of water or maybe the one where there's explosions or maybe the one where there's screaming or maybe the one where there's punching) and walk up to another theater patron and slap him or her across the face as fiercely as you can. That person will likely say, "What the hell? Why did you do that?" Answer: "Well, why did they do THAT?" and point at the screen. And then slap the person a second time. They'll understand.

As I usually do, I went to the theater with a water bottle shoved down the front of my pants. First, I need to stay hydrated for a movie like Geostorm, and I'm not paying movie theater prices for a beverage. Second, it's got to help my chances with the ladies, right? Anyway, the story of me sneaking a water bottle into the movie theater would probably be more entertaining than much of what happened in this movie.

Every time one of the character said the title of this movie, I want to stand up on my theater seat, grab my crotch, and scream, "Fuck yeah!" I refrained. And that's because I've grown as a human being.

I blame the terrorists. Instead of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear bombs, dirty bombs, biological warfare, guns, trucks, or whatever else we've heard about on the news, I think our enemies are finally trying to damage us where it really counts--our intellect. Their weapons? Hollywood action movie cliches and an insane abandoning of logic! And boring characters. I could spoil the entire movie for you right now, but you're going to know exactly who the bad guys are no matter how hard the writers of this try to fool you, exactly who's going to live to see the end of the movie, and exactly who's going to be hugging whom while blandly dramatic music plays.

Laugh #1: The second time a character said "Geostorm!"
Laugh #2: A scene where a guy gets hit by a car.
Laugh #3: When the president answers a question asked by Ed Harris's character.
Laugh #4: I can't tell you because it would give away that Gerald Butler's character survives to see the end of this movie even though there's no way he should have survived.

You know what I thought was surprisingly bad, by the way? The special effects? The space station stuff looked pretty good, but the disaster-movie stuff looked pretty awful. Of course, I'm not sure how they could make buildings falling over like dominoes ever look realistic since I don't think that could actually happen, but I still expected them to at least get the effects right. Disaster movies from ten or even twenty years ago look just as realistic as this one. Come on, Gerald Butler! You can do better than that!

Note: I'm not 100% sure Gerald Butler had anything to do with this movies CGI destruction effects.

You know what the worst thing about this movie is? I think people are going to connect climate change, something that is very real and very scary, to this movie and use it to disprove that there's any such thing. I'll bring climate change up, and somebody is going to say, "Whatever, libtard snowflake! You really think geostorms could actually happen?" And I'll tell you what. If that happens, I'm going straight for the crotch!

You may be asking yourself, "Why did you even go to the theater to see this movie, Shane? You should have known that you wouldn't have liked this one."

My reply: Why the hell do I do anything that I do? I'm happy with the decisions that I'm making in my life, and I'd rather you not question them.

That, friends, was an incredibly well-written review.

The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (maybe The Outrageous Baron Munchausen)

1962 fantasy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Munchausen gains a moon man sidekick who becomes his romantic rival as they save a princess.

This was recommended by my friend Eric, a guy who apparently knows my movie tastes quite well. I think I'm going to have to replace Silent Saturday with Czech Saturday next year, by the way. What do you think of that idea?

I just laughed at how I asked a question to an audience I know doesn't exist. I might as well have just shouted at my bookshelf.

This whimsical tale of the fantastical Munchausen sure is a lot of fun. There's some fun silent-era humor, a mix of live action with different animation styles and puppets, and loads of surreal visuals. This starts by showing evolution--footprints to footprints and a frog morphing into a rocket--before taking us to a ludicrous moon inhabited by Cyrano de Bergerac and some guys in top hats. I had a smile immediately, and it didn't let up with the animation mash-up--some Python-esque and some that reminded me a bit of Melies. I like seeing flesh 'n' blood characters walking around in hand-drawn worlds, and when puppets are added, you know I'm probably going to end up aroused. I think the more quaint the special effects in this, the more I loved what I was seeing. I enjoyed the music, too, always quirky and frequently surprising.

After a cool ship pulled by pegai (the plural of pegasus--I looked it up), a floating spacesuit, dancing grapes, a 3-handed chess opponent, a red strobe-lit bit of swashbuckling, lots and lots of red velvet smoke, a puppet vulture knocking over a horse skeleton, invisible telescopes, a pipe-smoking ship, a "theater of destruction," a shot of moonlight shining on a boat, sea monster puppets, harpoon penetration, a line of bouncing umbrellas, that bird from The Giant Claw, a great underwater sequence including a seahorse ride, the aquatic charms of mermaids, cannonball travel, an animated history of our hero's romantic exploits, the Mona Lisa's posterior, impotent cannons, and a floating doffed hat, it all ends much, much too soon. I don't know the director, Karel Zeman, but I'm going to be seeing a lot of his stuff next year when I start up Czech Saturdays.

Also--I'm pretty sure this movie is actually about something. The princess at one corner of a love triangle that sort of develops has to choose between science and whimsy and fantasy. I think there's some kind of point being made. I don't know if I agree with her decision or not, but perhaps we can discuss that in the comments.

Ha! Now I've not only suggested that somebody might leave me a comment but I've also made the assumption that somebody who reads my blog would actually want to talk about this movie.

Here's another poster since the one above is creased:

Silent Saturday: A Cottage on Dartmoor

1929 silent drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: After a guy escapes from jail and winds up in some woman's house, a flashback shows how their encounter isn't exactly a chance one.

This is also called Escape from Dartmoor apparently.

I don't know a lot about silent movies from England unless they're the couple I've seen from Alfred Hitchcock. This is a late silent movie and probably as good or better than almost every talkie that came out in 1929. At the top of my head, I can't think of any movies I've seen from 1929.

OK, I got sidetracked and looked up movies from 1929. Man with a Movie Camera, Pandora's Box, Un Chien Andalou, and Diary of a Lost Girl are all superior silent movies, and I didn't skim across any movies with sound that I've seen except Cocoanuts, and that's not a very good Marx Brothers movie at all. But I digress.

I'll say this--I love how leafless trees look in black and white movies. There are quite a few really nice shots in this. There are great angles--and one slightly experimental moment--in a scene where there's a razor and a throat. That's probably a spoiler. I also loved the way a dizzying sequence in a theater was edited, a great and wild clash of visuals and sound. That scene, like a few others in this, was way too long though. This movie should have clocked in at just over an hour instead of the 90 minutes it was. I can forgive the length, however, because of the scarcity of intertitles. The first doesn't show up until around the 7-minute mark (just the word "Joe!"), and the story is told adequately without any words.

"Joe" is played by Uno Henning, a guy who would find the playing of the popular card game he shares a name with to be really confusing. Every time somebody would be down to one card, they'd say "Uno" and he'd have to say "What?" I'd rather watch that than Cocoanuts again, I think. Henning's performance in this is really good if "looking rapey in most of his scenes" qualifies as being really good.

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

2017 comedic drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A father's three children come together to celebrate his sculpting career.

If you knew going in that the Meyerowitz patriarch was a failed artist and that his trio of children didn't think he was a great father, you could almost write this Noah Baumbach movie in your head before you see it. That doesn't make it any less entertaining though. Of course, it's that kind of entertainment you feel a little guilty about, like you're laughing at characters rather than laughing with them. Or even at characters who would never in a million years think they're being laughed at. This is the broken kind of family of creatives that you'd expect from Baumbach, and you couldn't ask for a better ensemble cast to bring them to life. Dustin Hoffman is Dustin Hoffman, a guy who just kind of shows up at this stage of his career because he's really not got much to prove. He still shows here that he can make material that is already pretty good just a little bit better. Ben Stiller's character isn't far removed from his role in The Royal Tenenbaums, in fact very likely a distant cousin, and I almost always enjoy seeing Stiller playing these characters who are in a constant state of smolder. Characters walking around with hunched shoulders and always just on the edge are just the types of characters he plays best. Adam Sandler proves once again that he's not a complete joke. There were times in this where his performance actually touched me a little bit, and one of those might have even been when he was singing a goofy song. Elizabeth Marvel is great as the daughter even though her character is mostly asked to stand out of the way and let the guys do their thing. And Emma Thompson's also really good, especially at tricking me into thinking she's Shelley Long.

This might be the best Netflix movie I've seen. It's also very likely Adam Sandler's best movie since Punch-Drunk Love although it's unfair for me to speculate on that because I haven't seen too many of them. Maybe it's time I do an Adam Sandler Fest and fill in those gaps in my movie education.

Baumbach gives Stroszek a shout-out in this one, by the way.

Oh, one more thing. Adam Driver is in this. At this point, I should probably just tell you when he's not in a movie.

Possession

1981 drama

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A man tries to put his marriage back together but can't because his wife is sleeping with an octopus.

Going in, I knew this movie was going to be strange, but I thought it was just going to be because of the octopus sex scene. The first half of the movie, aside from some very strange overacting by everybody involved and especially Sam Neill, is a fairly normal domestic drama. It's a domestic drama turned up to 11 or 12, but it's still pedestrian enough. Once that octopus comes in and the characters start sawing at themselves with a meat cutter, things get very strange and never let up.

Director Andrzej Zulawski was going through his own divorce as he made this, and you can't help but wonder how much of this is intensely personal. At the same time, I wondered if this was actually a dark comedy. A fight scene filled with snarling and slapping and ending with the wife stepping in front of a truck and the husband randomly deciding to play soccer with some children? The worst private detective in the world? That scene with the meat saw? Ballet moves during a fight scene between Neill and his romantic rival? The weird performances? There's so much silliness even though the tone isn't comedic at all. The camera looms, always lurking around these characters, never quite sitting still. There's a haunting quality to the cinematography that makes it almost impossible for this to be a comedy, but I'm still going to think it was anyway.

Ok, it's not a comedy.

I started off wondering what the hell Sam Neill was doing, but gradually, the other performers caught up with him. leading me to believe that the performers were intentionally acting this way. Every line is strained, every gesture is exaggerated, and every interaction feels like it's going to end in violence. A lot of them do, the characters frequently leaving scenes with blood on them. Neill's consistent here, and I ended up really liking his performance. Even stranger was Heinz Bennent as his rival, always twirling and gesticulating like no actual person ever would. It's incoherent gesticulation. But it's Isabelle Adjani's performances here that absolutely floored me. She plays the wife as well as the couple's son's teacher, and it's as the wife that she just dazzles. The movie's title would lead one to believe this is about demonic possession or something, and although it's not quite that, you wouldn't know that if you watched Adjani's performance with the sound off. She writhes and screams like she's trying to force demons from her body through every orifice she's got, and it's an amazing performance. There's a scene with just her that takes place in a subway, and holy hell, it's the kind of thing that is just going to stay with me. It's just so great!

I have to go do something else right now. (Note: Not sex with an octopus man.)

The Belko Experiment

2016 violent drama

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Employees in a Colombian office building are locked in and forced to kill each other.

Modern makers of cinematic gore have certainly fallen in love with squelchy sound effects. This, more than any movie in recent memory, overuses squelches.

This is a really cynical movie, but that cynicism never rings true. It's poorly written with too-obvious satire and an attempt at some dark humor that just doesn't work at all. The idea isn't even very good, and I'd definitely expect James Gunn to do something a little more creative than just borrowing from Battle Royale or maybe High-Rise. The Belko Experiment has the skin of something dangerous and unpredictable and fresh, but you don't have to dig below that surface to discover that it's not any of those things.

I came very close to shutting this down about halfway through.

Buster's Mal Heart

2016 drama

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A hotel desk clerk meets a conspiracy theorist and then dives head first into one of the earth's two assholes.

This had real potential, starting with a cover of a Tom Waits' song ("God's Away on Business"), a nonlinear structure that keeps you guessing, and some cool transitions (dug that winding of a crank transitioning into a shot of a fishing rod). Unfortunately, it just doesn't add up to much, feels a bit unfinished thematically, and makes you wonder if that nonlinear structure actually adds to anything. This bounces between three distinct time periods, one which might be only in the character's head, and while that's easy enough to get a handle on, there's messiness elsewhere. References to Biblical Jonah, Y2K fears, the aforementioned pair of Earth assholes, and other nonsense muddy things. There's intrigue, but it starts to get a little redundant, and once you figure out the movie's big twist--which you might, especially now that I've told you there's a big twist--the homestretch just seems extraneous.

I also didn't like the title of this movie.

DJ Qualls is in this movie. He used to be a pet peeve of mine, but I think I've started to appreciate him. I'm not sure who Rami Malek is, but I've apparently seen him in some things and he's going to be playing Freddie Mercury in an upcoming movie. I thought he was pretty good here.

Legend

2015 English gangster movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Twin gangsters do gangster things.

This was a frustrating movie as it really had potential to be something special with the pair of performances by the great Tom Hardy at the heart of the thing. The guy just fascinates me with everything he does, so while I was really not all that excited to see another gangster flick, I needed to see how Hardy tackled two roles. And tackle them he does! He scowls, he screams, he drools, he pierces, he eviscerates, he punches, he spouts, he spits, and he charms. I like his rapport with himself in scenes where both brothers are present, and the movie magic used to have them engage in fisticuffs is flawless. It's been a while since I've seen Freaky Friday, but I don't remember Hayley Mills punching herself.

Now that I think about it, I really want to see a movie where Hayley Mills beats herself up.

I imagine it would be extremely difficult for an artist to pull this off and make it look so effortless. I know the twin thing has been done again and again--even by the great Nicolas Cage--but what Hardy does to make these two characters actually two characters rather than just carbon copies of the same guy is amazing. There was never a moment in the movie where I wasn't convinced that I was actually watching two different performers who happened to look nearly identical play these Krays. It's not just the glasses and slightly-different hair either. It's subtle body language, lip curls, eyebrow movements. Hardy pulls a lot of tricks out to make this happen, and it works so incredibly well.

I like some of the writing, I thought love interest Emily Browning was really cute, and I always always love seeing David Thewlis. I had problems with nearly everything else--storytelling flaws, side characters who muddied things, weird music choices, a general lack of flare, some unnecessary scenes--but none of it was enough to make those Hardy performances not worth watching.

The Foreigner

2017 action movie

Rating: 10/20

Plot: An elderly Jackie Chan hunts down the terrorists who blew up his daughter.

This isn't normally something that I'd see in a theater, but I saw the above poster and thought watching Jackie Chan fight a gigantic Pierce Brosnan might be fun. Not only did the above poster lie about their even being a gigantic Pierce Brosnan in the movie, but it's also not any fun at all. This is the least fun I've ever had watching a Jackie Chan movie. The story and its characters are derivative, there's nothing at all new with any of the action sequences, and the movie's tone is way too somber. Maybe I'm alone here (I definitely was alone in the theater, allowing me to enjoy the movie sans pants), but I don't want my Jackie Chan movies to be ultra-serious.

I'm not sure if Jackie Chan has it any more. If he doesn't, he's not a guy who has to make any excuses or apologize. The man is 63 years old, and considering I'm twenty years younger and can barely get out of bed in the morning, watching him do what he does in the limited action sequences here is remarkable. I assume he still does all or most of his own stunts, mostly bouncing off walls or slamming into the ground, and there's still a little of the old Jackie Chan in that body of his. He's still got that trademark wince, too, the little thing he does at the ends of some of his stunts to sell it to the audience. Sadly, he's just not the salesman that he used to be. Besides, there's only 3 1/2 action sequences in this anyway, and none of them show anything new to an audience of one hungry for fun action scenes or do anything old well enough to make up for it. Mostly, Jackie Chan just mopes around and sets up traps and explosives like he's Rambo.

Pierce Brosnan is probably capable of being a force even if he's not gigantic. His character here has all kinds of meaty potential, but it's never realized. Really, neither his character or Jackie Chan's character feels like he even needs to be in the movie. That's likely a problem.

I've grown weary of thumping and thunking techno music in these kinds of action movies. Is it because I'm old?

Alien: Covenant

2017 sequel prequel

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Following the events shown in Prometheus, more things happen.

I have some questions.

Why wasn't this movie called Covenant or the last movie called Alien: Prometheus? Consistency, Ridley Scott!

I have other questions, but I don't feel like asking them. They'd be spoilers anyway.

Halfway through this movie, I think I decided I was done with Alien movies. As my faithful readers know, I love the first one where Sigourney Weaver is walking around in her underpants. I didn't like the second one as much, but it's very good for the sci-fi action movie that it is. The third and fourth installments confuse me, and but I liked both of them a lot more than I liked Prometheus. This one's also better than Prometheus, although it's nearly toppled by its own ambitions, has too many characters for me to not care about, and has some really perplexing logical lapses. The movies are starting to become exercises in seeing how many different parts of the body aliens can pop out of and how gruesome it can look on the screen.

But I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about something that's starting to alarm me. A while ago, I felt like the song "Beyond the Sea" was stalking me because it seemed to pop up in every third movie I watched one year. This year, there's a new song--"Take Me Home, Country Road"--that seems to be haunting me. This is the third movie from 2017 where "Take Me Home, Country Road" has featured prominently. That's right--I've completed a John Denver trifecta.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle and Logan Lucky were the other two, in case you're keeping score at home. That makes this the best movie of the year that features "Take Me Home, Country Road."

Life

2017 sci-fi horror movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: People aboard the International Space Station get themselves a new pet. Note: This might be a film adaptation of the children's picture book of Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd's Goodnight Moon.

In my search for movies to watch with my Bad Movie Club people, I come across rip-offs of Alien all the time. I'm not sure I've seen one that had the budget of this Alien clone. As with the others, this lacks the subtleties that make Alien a work of poetic horror minimalist genius.

There are a lot of characters, and the makers of this found actors to play them. They should have just gone with special effects though because there's not much done to flesh out any of them. Sure, they reveal that one of them becomes a father. One of them is brave and sarcastic. One of them waxes poetically about how he prefers being in space over being back home. One of them is a Russian woman named Ekaterina. There's an effort to make the audience care about these people, but the special effects and action sequences overwhelm anything remotely human in the story, and the whole thing just leaves you cold.

One of the Hollywood Ryans is in this. For this movie, it's the Ryan who spends movies yucking it up. Here, whichever Ryan it is yucks it up in space. Jake Gyllenhaal is in there acting all astronaut-y. I don't know who any of these other people are. It doesn't matter because once you know this is an Alien knock-off, you know most of them (or none of them) won't be around to see the closing credits anyway.

I'm not sure what movie magic was used to make the actors and actresses float around like they do in this, but my guess is pixie dust. The opening five minutes or so shows off the ISS and the humans inhabiting it with a continuous shot of them floating around while one of them yucks it up. It's an impressive start, really simulating that weightlessness for the viewer. There are a few nice moments--zero-gravity blood spurts, a jacked-up hand--but this unfortunately starts to get redundant, rerunning the same sort of ideas over and over again with a slightly-larger variations of the undulating monster. The ending would have nearly redeemed it, but the twists created by cheap editing tricks annoyed me more than anything else.

The reading of Goodnight Moon with dramatic music was not a high point.

Happy Death Day

2017 horror mystery movie

Rating: 8/20

Plot: A sorority girl is forced to live her birthday over and over again, each day ending with her being murdered by a masked individual.

What the hell am I doing with my life?

In my defense, I really only went to see this because I like the chairs in the theater and needed about 30 minutes of driving time to listen to a podcast. But still, I could have probably seen another movie.

This horror spin on Groundhog Day looked interesting to me, but I knew pretty much right off from the start that these characters were going to be too unlikable for me to want to spend much time with them. Jessica Rothe is cute for a sorority girl, especially if that's your thing. She's also as obnoxious as a Hollywood depiction of a sorority girl can be. As with Bill Murray's character, hers is a dynamic one, but the whole thing is handled superficially, and her character is so unlikable at the start, that you just never really end up rooting for her. The supporting characters, with the exception of the guy whose dorm room she keeps waking up in and the masked killer just because you really support his efforts after a while, are equally obnoxious. This is the type of movie that can make an old fart like me hate college-aged kids.

There are all kinds of opportunities for this movie to be clever, but it never takes advantage of them. I generally like the fun repetitious things in time-travel or time-loop movies like this, but they didn't really serve much of a purpose here except to remind us that she was indeed reliving the same day over and over again. The movie does make an allusion to Groundhog Day at one point, but instead of being something sneaky or clever, it just basically has a character saying, "Hey, this whole movie kind of seems like a rip-off of Groundhog Day, doesn't it?" It wasn't the first time I groaned audibly and rolled my eyes while watching this.

I'll give the movie this--it is unpredictable. You won't figure out who the killer is until it's revealed. Unfortunately, that's because the whole thing is stupid and doesn't make much sense. But wait a few minutes because there'll be yet another twist that makes even less sense followed by another twist that will make you wish you had just decided to stay home and enjoy some gluten-free pretzels instead.

The main character's name is Tree. What is there not to hate about this movie?

Mental note: If a movie's title is as bad as Happy Death Day, don't waste your time seeing the movie. Which does make me wonder: What is the best movie with a terrible title? Maybe I'll make a list at some point.

Hugo the Hippo

1975 cartoon

Rating: 14/20

Plot: The plight of the titular river horse as he and his hippo tribe fight off some sharks and are then forgotten by the people of Zanzibar they saved.

This is either allegorical or the product of a secondhand marijuana haze. Or maybe it's just the product of its time. There's a cheapness to the animation that actually contributed to the psychedelia. Things get as trippy in chunks as the trippiest moments in Yellow Submarine, all sorts of colors and ideas coming together to make something that's not quite for children but not quite for adults either. It's not the kind of thing that's going to dazzle, but it's worth a look for fans of 70's animation or LSD-inspired lunacy.

At times, this seems as square as an animated movie can be. I mean, Burl Ives narrates the thing and sings at least two songs, and fucking Osmonds are involved. Ives had to have been confused with his work although maybe the talking reindeer and snowmen set him up for it. His narration includes nuggets like "Everyone knows the difference between animals and people. People take medicine, fight wars, and read books. Animals don't," that give the whole thing a naive profundity.

I didn't realize this was a musical until the second song. The opening credits--complete with weird shots of animal faces--had a song about what a "strange story" this was going to be. But then there was another song and another and another. I'm not sure what to make of the songs. The lyrics, as well as the dialogue for that matter, make it seem like this was translated poorly from another language and then dubbed, but apparently it wasn't. One song has somebody spelling hippopotamus like that Jiminy Cricket encyclopedia song. A song Ives sings called "You've Said a Mouthful" was especially wacky, including word play gems about eating the ox out of the oxygen. I half-expected to look up the songwriter and find out it was somebody who went on to bigger and better things, but Bob Larimer only did a few off-Broadway things and jingles for fragrance commercials in the 70s. "H-I-P-P-O-T-O-T-A-M-U-S" was apparently too much for the guy to overcome. There are a lot of songs here, so maybe he just shot his proverbial songwriting wad and had no more ideas. The rest of the soundtrack is filled in with cheapo funk 'n' roll music.

Maddening editing in an early storm-of-sharks sequence, one complete with sharks who are smoking and wearing funny hats, made me believe I was in for a treat, and for the most part, I did really enjoy seeing what the animators had to show me. There were green-faced bad guys, psychedelic foliage and vegetables, a variety of animals, lots of hippos, an apple assassin. It's great trippy fun with something to see on nearly every inch of the screen, and I looked forward to seeing more from director Bob Feigenbaum. But alas, Bob Feigenbaum didn't do a single other movie.

That might have been the result of an unfortunate sequence in this where monkeys are used to satirize the Harlem Globetrotters, complete with "Sweet Georgia Brown."

The great Paul Lynde voices the main villain in this. It's a voice that will remind people of a certain age of villainous voices on Hanna-Barbera cartoons. He's perfect!

Apparently, this is based on an actual story about a hippo.

Images

1972 psychological drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A woman spends some time with her imaginary friends.

This is a less coherent version of Polanski's Repulsion, but I still really liked it. It's not necessarily what you'd expect from Robert Altmann. It's moody, taking place almost entirely in one claustrophobic location--the main character's psyche, one of those pseudo-horror movies without any real monsters or ghouls but is nonetheless frightening. The quick disintegration of York's character's mind and her loosening grip on reality is shown in a way that is horrifyingly absurd. You know you're in trouble when you're hallucinating your own doppelganger, right?

Susannah York is great as the protagonist, and she also co-wrote the whole thing. She's seemingly in every shot of the movie and effortlessly carries the story and all of its abstract layers on her shoulders. It's a good performance, mostly because it doesn't seem like a performance. There's subtlety and realism rather than flashiness or bombast, and I think the movie's better because of it.

The real star of the show is the cinematography. Sure, there are too many shots of random knickknacks, especially during the opening credits which juxtapose York with a voiceover talking about unicorns with shots of various baubles around her house. I wasn't sure how the text of a children's book she was writing fit allegorically or metaphorically with what was happening in the movie, but that might just be because I lost interest and stopped paying close attention to any of that. But back to the cinematography. There are great shots where there's a choreography with these "ghosts" and human characters. Altmann uses the space of the house well. There's also a great sex scene, fuzzied by a mirror.

John Williams did the score, and it's good stuff--lots of atonal, unidentifiable noises that sound like instruments being dropped on a studio floor. It's not the type of thing he's usually associated with, but it definitely works with what's going on visually here.

I'm not even sure I knew this movie existed. Some Robert Altmann fan I am.

Blade Runner 2049

2017 sci-fi sequel

Rating: 15/20

Plot: One of Hollywood's Ryans tracks down replicants, including one that is apparently the actual offspring of two others.

Whether you like the story or the nearly six-hour running time or not, this movie looks and sounds fantastic. I'm not sure there's anything visually here that hasn't already been seen in tons of other sci-fi dystopian movies made in the time between Blade Runners, but director Denis Villenueve and his special effects team pull it all off so spectacularly here. It's definitely a spectacle, and with the Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch score, it's a great experience for at least two of the senses.

I watched the original Blade Runner yet again to refresh my poor movie memory before seeing this sequel, and I still just don't love it like I think I'm supposed to. I think the main reason, other than hating it as a kid because I expected it to be something else, is because of how cold it is. It's just a chilly movie. That's probably the way it's supposed to be, and it's likely the appropriate tone a noirish sci-fi movie needs to have. But it just feels a little flat and lifeless. This sequel has a bit more heart, and I think that's why I ended up liking it more than its predecessor. I'm not sure I'm supposed to like it more than the first one or how I feel about that.

I'm not sure what to make of Jared Leto, some extraneous nudity (Villenueve must be a butt guy), and some implausible action sequences. I liked the new femme villainous badass Luv played by Sylvia Hoeks, some genuinely trippy effects, the CGI world-building, and both Harrison Ford (who's not in this as much as you might think) and whichever Ryan that is. There's also a wonderfully erotic scene that is a prelude to off-screen lovemaking that I thought was ingenious. Villenueve's made a sequel that is consistent with the 1982 Ridley Scott movie with its lugubrious tone, it's laborious pacing, and it's lumbersome length. I doubt this movie is going to seem nearly as original in 2017 as the original Blade Runner must have in 1982, but in order to succeed, the movie didn't really need to do anything original. It needed that consistency, and it needed to tell a story that seemed worthy of a sequel. I think it did both of those. It's not the greatest storytelling, but those visuals and sounds make up for that.

Ryan Gosling, Ryan Reynolds, crocodiles, and alligators. If Reynolds and Gosling ever are involved in a project where CGI alligators and crocodiles fight, I'm going to stop watching movies.

The Overnight

2015 comedy

Rating: 12/20

Plot: New-to-the-city parents make some new friends and spend the evening together.

I've never seen a pair of actors wear fake penises so enthusiastically.

There are likable things about this comedy, but it doesn't feel complete.

Silent Saturday: Wings

1927 romantic war drama

Rating: 16/20

Plot: War and romance! And Clara Bow's boobs.

Clara Bow partial nudity and the screen's first man-on-man lip action! What's not to love about this first Best Picture award winner?

Clara Bow's hair is a lovely mess in early scenes. Here's a confession: The only real reason I watch so many silent movies is because I like the look of the women in them. I fall in love with an actress in almost every silent movie that I watch.

There's nothing special about the story--all love triangles and dogfights and 1920's melodrama--and the overly dramatic intertitles and the fact that I had trouble telling the two male leads (nondescript white dudes) apart bothered me, but I sure like the look of this film. There's some dopey, dated dogfight stuff, but there are also some really cool, creative shots. I loved the look of planes submerged by clouds and plane shadows, an almost dizzying shot of characters swinging, some neat split-screen war action, and a great tracking shot over the tables in a French bar. I'm not sure what I thought about a special effect that added superfluous bubbles, however.

Those bubbles did lead to my favorite intertitle in this: "Come wiz me--we will find ze mos' beautiful bubbles in ze worl'"

This was the first Academy Awards Best Picture winner, and it was also the only silent movie to ever win the award. Sunrise and Metropolis also came out in 1927 and were both better than this.

Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie

2017 animated comedy

Rating: 11/20 (Buster: 20/20)

Plot: Two friends use creativity, pranks, and their writing and artistic talents to escape a mundane first-grade existence. Their tyrannical principal tries to break up their friendship, and they accidentally bring the titular superhero to life and use him to help save the world from a goofy-named villain.

I'm going to let Buster write this entry for me.

I like this movie because it's funny. when they find out the villans real name its funny. I learned that some people don't like laughing. The movie is like the books.But only some parts.

Well, that's as good as anything I'd write, I suppose. The only thing I'd add is that there's a lot of potty humor in this movie. I kind of like what the movie's about--the power of friendship and creativity--but I don't like seeing adults disrespected so explicitly.

Buster reads these books, and apparently, they've hurt her ability to write complete sentences, spell words correctly, and use apostrophes. She can, however, appreciate a good fart joke.

The Big Sick

2017 romantic comedy

Rating: 15/20 (Jennifer: 16/20)

Plot: A struggling comedian from one of the countries ending in -stan meets and falls for a heckler at a club, but his family's cultural background gets in the way of their relationship. Then, she gets sick, and he realizes that she's even hotter when she's in a coma.

I've been more emotional than usual the last month or so as I approach another birthday that I wasn't supposed to even have. I was supposed to die at 42, after all. I'm not sure if it's a third midlife crisis or if it's because my wife buys too many mugs, but I've been in lots of situations lately where I've just felt like crying for no good reason. I was in a grocery store a week and a half ago, and the sight of an overly-excited little girl clutching a box of fruit snacks nearly brought me to tears.

So this movie, borderline artificially sweet, got me a little weepy. I fell in love with the flaws of all of these characters and couldn't help but root for all of them. Though this is apparently only loosely based on the real story of Kumail Nanjiani and his wife Emily, there are enough universal truths within the movie's story to touch on ideas about love, cultural differences, family, relationships, and the importance of humor in dark times.

Ray Romano and Holly Hunter. I can't stop imagining these two getting it on.

This is the second movie I've seen the past year with a bunch of comedians as characters. They're not all central characters in this like they are in Don't Think Twice, but there's a lot of backstage riffing, etc. in this one. I think I've decided that I couldn't spend too much time with comedians.

Gerald's Game

2017 drama

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Kinky sex turns nightmarish as Gerald has a heart attack, leaving what's-her-face handcuffed to a bed with only a hungry dog that doesn't understand the safe word to keep her company.

This movie has a really dopey ending and treats child sex abuse in a juvenile way. I didn't like it. I spent most of the movie wondering about how many times she would have shit or peed the bed.

I also wondered if any of my sexual experiences were as good as this one.

It also has a scene that made me squirm, probably one of the most difficult things I've seen on the screen in a long time.

Colossal

2016 monster movie

Rating: 10/20

Plot: An alcoholic woman, after being kicked out by her boyfriend and moving back to her hometown, discovers that she somehow controls the movements of a monster wreaking havoc in Seoul.

Heavy-handed metaphors and questionable character motives angered me as it seemed like the movie thought I was some sort of dumbass. Nacho Vigalondo, the guy who did one of my favorite time-travel movies, disappoints again with a creative idea that is poorly executed and doesn't really have enough actual story to go along with it anyway. I didn't like Hathaway, and I don't think I ever like Jason Sudeikis who might as well be Bill Paxton because they have the same head shape and tendency to walk around with facial stubble.

It's labeled an action/comedy/drama, but it's too much of a mess to work as any of those. The monster effects are fine when the pair of monsters--the thing on the poster and a giant robot--aren't doing anything. Most of the scenes show them not doing anything in a darkened locale, likely due to budget limitations. There's more action with Sudeikis and Hathaway slapfighting in a park. I find it hard to believe that this is a comedy at all, and the drama is just too obvious to work. I never really felt anything for these sketches of characters anyway.

A more subtle approach could have taken this original spin on the giant monster genre somewhere. This, unfortunately, is just clumsy.

Silent Saturday: Peter Pan

1924 silent adventure

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A dangerously irresponsible man-child flies off with three impressionable children and takes them to Michael Jackson's ranch, a land filled with stereotypical Indians and effeminate pirates. Adventure ensues!

Fun special effects in this one with Tinkerbell, the construction of a house, and all that flight. Some scenes with static camera use were almost unbearably long, but there was a lot to enjoy with the effects. You also have to appreciate John's top hat, the crocodile actually eating Captain Hook (sorry for the spoiler), anti-medicine propaganda, what might be the first lesbian kiss in cinema history, some mermaid action, and the inexplicable appearance of an American flag. There's also a wonderful concluding intertitle that makes a claim about children being "Innocent, gay, and heartless." Heartless? What the hell?

Betty Bronson plays Peter Pan, this little incarnation of irresponsible joy. I suppose a woman has to play the titular fairy boy because it was part of a tradition, but I don't think it's something that Trump would be happy about.

There's a part of this movie that nearly made me drop it 10 full points to a 4/20. It was a breaking-of-the-fourth-wall moment where Bronson tells the audience to start clapping so that Tinkerbell doesn't die. I don't want my movies treating me like I'm a toddler watching an episode of Blue's Clues, and I refused to participate. In fact, I'm surprised that Tinkerbell didn't die. Luckily, it didn't seem like her life actually depended on my participation.

What saves this movie is Nana the Dog, a character played by a guy in an unblinking dog costume. It was fucking awesome! I looked up the name of the actor who played him, and the guy's name is George Ali. George Ali played Nana the Dog in Peter Pan and nothing else. He was also married to Helen Jerome who was an actress appearing in one television movie in 1946 and nothing else. I'm not sure if that's interesting to anybody but me, but here it is on the shane-movies blog.

Battle of the Sexes

2017 sports movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Former tennis great Bobby Riggs, desperate for attention, challenges #1 female player in the world and a woman who was not one of Michael Jackson's lovers to a tennis match. It's as classy as anybody would think it would be.

I was excited about this one even though I never understood what this whole tennis match proved. So Billie Jean King was able to beat a guy who was well past his prime? Rather than having any actual significance in a feminist sort of way, it just seems like it was nothing more than a goofy publicity stunt. The movie struggles with what to make of the whole ordeal, too. There's a clumsy mix of comedy and drama, and neither character's off-court issues--Riggs' addictions and marital troubles and King's experiments in lesbianism--aren't developed in a way that makes them real. In fact, King's lesbian relationship seems almost exploitative, like directors Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton--but probably especially Jonathan Dayton--just couldn't wait to have Emma Stone and Andrea Riseborough suck each other's faces.

Steve Carell is an actor whose name I'm never quite sure I'm spelling correctly. Two R's? Two L's? What's going on there? I questioned the career this guy would have after The Office, but he's got a little more versatility than I expected. This is a role he was born to play as he looks exactly like Bobby Riggs in end-credit photos. He's good enough here, but there's nothing in this character or script that really stretches him. Unless that's really him playing tennis in all these scenes because he does pull that off. Emma Stone looks just like Billie Jean King, too, and her performance is fine. I'm just not sure these characters have the combined charisma to carry this movie.

This tries to tack on the lesbian story and roaring females, but it just doesn't have the heft and just ends up an uneven though inoffensive look at this silly minor moment from the 1970s.

American Made

2017 true-life action movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A bored pilot gets himself a new hobby.

Didn't care for all the stylistic choices in this, including a great effort to give this the feel of something from the late-70's or early-80's, but this effervescent stranger-than-fiction true life tale of Barry Seal and the Iran-Contra Affair is entertaining throughout. Doug Liman directs Tom Cruise again, and though it's not as original as Edge of Tomorrow, it's got a perfect mix of humor, action, and intrigue that makes it worth checking out. Tom Cruise is effortlessly charming and boyish as an anti-hero. Or maybe his charm isn't effortless. Maybe he really has to work on that. I just know my charm, similar to Cruise's in a lot of ways, comes effortlessly. But anyway, I really enjoy seeing Tom Cruise almost all of the time, and I don't think it's just because I find him sexually attractive.

What kind of name is Domhnall anyway? Although I'm sure Domhnall Gleeson was picked on as a child, I like him, too. And that's a good thing because it seems like he's in nearly every movie these days. I'm not sure why I typed that because he's not. He's in a reasonable amount of movies.

This is one of the entries that I've written for this blog.

Rio Bravo

1959 Western

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Ranch thug Burdette is pissed when his brother is arrested for murder and decides to bust him loose. John Wayne, a guy named Stumpy, an alcoholic, and a cocky kid have to fend them off. And some floozy named Feathers is also involved.

I saw this one at my local theater. Before the movie, there was a brief introduction in which a guy said that there wasn't a bigger star in Hollywood than John Wayne. At that, an elderly guy behind me answered, "That's damn right!" There was loads of appreciation with almost all of Wayne's lines from that guy. He also repeated a lot of Walter Brennan's lines, something that I really appreciate in a trip to the theater.

Why the hell isn't Walter Brennan on that poster, by the way? This movie got itself a bonus point because of him! He takes pedestrian lines and turns them into gold with his deliveries.

I enjoy the writing with this one, succinct lines delivered by tough characters. There's not many words wasted here, and although I might have thought about cutting out the romantic subplot entirely, there's not much in the 2 hour and 20 minute running time that feels superfluous.

I really enjoyed the Dimitri Tiomkin score. It's boisterous where it needs to be, and it's completely silent at a couple of key moments, too, just about perfectly. And since they had Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson, they just had to include a pair of back-to-back musical numbers where they sing "My Rifle, My Pony, and Me" and "Cindy," the latter with Brennan joining in. You could argue that that whole scene is a complete waste of everybody's time. John Wayne, standing around watching it all with nothing to do, appears to think it was. But I kind of liked it.

I liked John Wayne in this, too. He was a larger-than-life movie star anyway, and on the big screen, he seems even larger. There's a humor to his characters that I think I appreciate more and more as I get older. His delivery never changes, and as an actor, he had almost no versatility whatsoever. But the delivery for the lines he's given in this Howard Hawks movie is really perfect, and Sheriff Chance was just a character I could believe in. Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson were also good, though Brennan really did steal the movie.

The guy who introduced the movie said this movie was Hawks and Wayne's response to High Noon, a movie I really love, because they didn't think a sheriff should be begging the locals for help with a threat to the town. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I think it would be the kind of attitude that would really appeal to Trump voters. I did read once that High Noon was one of Bill Clinton's favorite movies.

I would have bumped this up another point if there would have been more attention placed on Angie Dickinson's legs.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention the little Hispanic guy played by Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez. I loved him. Really, I wanted to pick him up and hold him.

Anyway, I enjoyed this movie, especially on the big screen and with commentary by the old guy behind me. I really did think that he was going to start Paul Reubens-ing some of those shots where John Wayne. It's why I moved over a few seats actually.

The Bad Batch

2016 dystopian love story

Rating: 10/20

Plot: A girl with missing limbs tries to find friends in a dystopian wasteland.

Ana Lily Amipour's follow-up to A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is disappointing.

Amipour's visual sense is still on display as she takes advantage of desert landscapes and litters each shot with trash, giant boomboxes, and ravens. Like with the cat in he debut, she shows off an ability to direct animals. This time, it's giant black birds. They might be crows actually. Like alligators and crocodiles, which I famously can't tell apart, I have trouble with my black birds.

A lot of this movie works without dialogue, and it's likely more effective when it's free of spoken words. Visually, this movie is almost a success.

Everything else, however, is a failure. The characters are flat. Keanu Reeves plays a sort of post-apocalyptic prophet called The Dream, but the character is lackadaisically realized, and you never really understand or even care to understand what he's going on about. There's more star power with Jim Carrey. He plays a filthy hermit, and he actually doesn't say a word during any of his scenes. The character didn't need to be played by Jim Carrey. It's not that he was distracting. It's more to do that his presence in the credits made me expect a little more from the character. Jason Momoa gives me no hope for the Justice League movie in which he plays Fish Man because he's almost unintelligible and oddly shaped and has almost no charisma at all. And speaking of no charisma, how about Suki Waterhouse, the actress who plays the character who I guess is supposed to be the main character? Early in the movie, cannibals eat one of her legs and one of her arms, and I think they must have eaten most of her personality as well.

Really, a lack of personality might be the biggest issue with this movie. It's not just the characters; it's really the entire movie that just doesn't have a personality. It definitely doesn't have much of a plot, more a series of things that happen that are sort of related. I can handle a lack of plot, but added to that lack of personality, it becomes a little more of a problem.

I had high hopes for this one because of the director's feature debut and my love of movies involving cannibalism and giant boom boxes, but it's definitely what you'd call a sophomore slump. Hopefully, Amipour can continue to take chances and bounce back.