Back again. The news sucks, even now that Joe Biden is President, so now I’m probably just going to use this as a space to write little micro reviews of new (to me) movies I watch. There will be a big dump now, and later probably just two or three per post. Whatever, nobody reading this cares. Onward!
Small Crimes
As implied by the title, a refreshingly small-scale, relatively small budget, small-town rot movie starring that guy who played Jaime Lannister. He’s really made a niche for himself as a reliably watchable actor for playing scumbags, and this is no exception. Not as good as Shot Caller, which also starred the crewcut dude from Mindhunter as the leader of Aryan Brotherhood, but this is still very fun and watchable. Wasn’t surprised to learn it’s a Macon Blair script, dude puts out quality. If you’re in the mood for tight stories about scumbags fucking each other over, this is the flick for you.
Beirut
Missed this one when it came out. Can’t remember why I stayed away, but Jacob tells me it got run through the wringer by various people who claimed it was anti-Arab, which is stupid. I can’t say whether or not its a particularly accurate or even sensitive portrayal of the geopolitical situation in Lebanon, but it certainly is very cynical about all the different state actors mucking about in the region, with no small scorn reserved for Israel and the US, who come off looking very, very bad (with good reason). This is good. Sort of like a more fun, less good, less sprawling Syriana. Makes you wonder why John Hamm doesn’t get more work, but on the other hand, maybe he’s actually discerning about which projects he says “yes” to since he has a bajillion dollars from Mad Men. Rosamund Pike is also quite good as the supporting lead, and she’s never looked more ghost-like. Solid.
Possessor
The hits in 2021 keep on coming! This feature from the Son of Cronenberg is nasty, brutal, lean, and unpolished. Very unique but still hearkening back to the best of the Elder Cronenberg’s sci-fi/body horror ouevre. A clinic in how to build a world with limited resources, and proof positive that a bloated SFX budget almost always makes sci-fi worse. Terrifying metaphor for alienation in the age of hyper-accelerated technology, and a mind-bending thought experiment about the potential consequences of pushing transhumanism to its more sinister conclusions. Of a piece with other recent tech-paranoia flicks like Upgrade and The Invisible Man.
The Line
OK, now we’re getting into the true dreck, which will surely only pile up as the second year of quarantine grinds on. I was, per usual, really high when Jacob and I telepartyed this bad boy, so I don’t remember much, but we both agreed it was pretty lackluster in terms of sheer batshit dumbassery, which is what you’re always looking for when trolling the depths of Amazon and Netflix for a nutty time. Ray Liotta does have a really stupid hat for the first 30 minutes, so that’s a plus.
Silent Trigger
Jesus Christ, the pendulum really swung the other way in terms of quality versus quantity. This is a Dolph Lundgren movie from 1996 that involves a lot of completely unidentifiable chronology jumps, as well as the absolute rapiest night watchman who ever existed. A few cool explosions.
Never Leave Alive
A rip-off of The Most Dangerous Game, but the crazy rich guy has been swapped out for some ex-KGB dudes and the shipwrecked person is a “world-famous hunter” (a thing that definitely exists) played by some WetHair who I was completely correct to assume must be connected to Pro Wrestling in some way. Really, you can’t go wrong with a movie starring a Pro Wrestler. In fact, the more wrestlers in your shitty action movie, the more awesome it will probably be, with the possible exception of that Steve Austin movie where he plays a school janitor who helps a fat kid learn to box so he can kick the shit out of a bully (actual plot).
Corpus Christi
I can already tell I’m going to need to space these out more, for no other reason than to avoid the mental whiplash of writing about really good Polish films right after Ukranian meth smuggler-funded vanity projects. This was Poland’s entry into the Oscar for Best Foreign Film when it was released, and I don’t know what won, but I bet it was some dumb bullshit about a French teacher in Prague who is secretly addicted to eating couch foam and he becomes unlikely friends with a Pakistani immigrant child.
ANYWAYS, Corpus Christi is about a young adult just coming out of juvenile detention, who had wanted to go into the seminary but instead has been assigned a work detail at a saw mill. On the day he’s supposed to report, he hightails it to the nearby town instead where–seemingly on impulse–he lies and identifies himself as a priest, and through a strange turn of events, winds up leading the town’s congregation. The protagonist seems conflicted about his faith, and it’s never made explicitly clear whether he actually believes, if the lie serves his own interests, or some mix of both, but in any event, he ends up bringing the people of the town–who are still reeling from a horrific drunk driving accident that killed several young people–together through an unorthodox and wholly needed method of ministering. The film ultimately ends up being a truly thoughtful Christ parable that is at once a critique of contemporary, organized Christianity but also an insistence that faith and spirituality possess an awesome unifying power.
He Who Dares: Downing Street Siege
Alright, enough of that arthouse shit, back to the movies of REAL MEN.
This is actually a sequel to the first He Who Dares which seems to think of itself as the British answer to the …Has Fallen series. In typical Britsploitation fashion, the stakes are laughably low. For some reason, the antagonists are literally overthrowing the British government and attempting to assassinate the PM for less than $1 million. The best thing that can be said about this turd is its edited in a way that was clearly meant to cover up all the terrible SFX, which it does, but at the cost of reducing the visual grammar of the film to an indecipherable mess. It’s almost impossible to tell what’s happening, where characters are, and what we’re cutting between. By contrast, almost every single instance of somebody being shot involves no cutting whatsoever, so it’s full of hysterically inept ragdoll dives from various extras pretending they’ve been blown away. Gerry Butler was right to get out of Scotland and escape this trash.
Gosford Park
I showed Dana The Player a few weeks ago, and we decided to watch another Altman neither of us had seen. It’s enjoyable enough I suppose, but something about it just made us both go “…who cares?” at the end. The twists and turns and delightful misunderstandings in the English countryside never quite seem to add up to much, and its not helped by the fact that its jaw-droppingly overlong. Good for killing time during a COVID-infested airplane ride and not much else.
Under Siege 2: Dark Territory
I’ve got three words for you: ERIC MOTHERFUCKING BOGOSIAN. Before he was silently stealing the show as Arno in Uncut Gems, Bogosian was a weirdo intellectual playwright getting cast as villains in Steven Seagal movies. The “Dark Territory” in this refers to a section of mountains that a passenger train goes through on a trip from Denver to Los Angeles, which is the perfect time for Hollywood’s favorite Armenian to hijack the train and then use computer whiz magic to make a satellite guided missile system blow shit up, or…something. This is Seagal near the end of his peak, most mobile period, but he’s honestly already starting to pack on the pounds. Bogosian’s second in command also looks like a Leather Daddy Mike Pence, so that’s cool.
Asian Connection
Boy, this Seagal is Seagal at his most bandana-ed. He actually plays a villain in this…sort of. I can’t say I recall much of the plot (insofar as one exists), but he’s sort of playing a Buddhist mindfulness expert/general international criminal who pops up every twenty minutes or so to give long rambling monologues about why he lives in Asia (we all know its because of sex tourism). This is that strange period of Late Seagal in which he’s featured on the poster, in maybe 30% of the movie, but also is still sort of trying to do kicks and stuff. Not a bad choice for a what-the-fuck movie night.
Savages
Much in the way Netflix has brought us pure, unfiltered versions of America’s favorite auteurs (see 6 Underground), Savages is pure, raw, uncut Oliver Stone. It’s more or less about a throuple of weed dealers in LA (pre-legalization) who decide not to sell product to a Mexican cartel. A lot of weird shit happens and in the end they all get shot to death. Is that it? NO! This movie also may be credited with starting Hollywood’s obsession with portraying Mexican drug lords as Satanic monsters who literally drink blood and do what they do not for money (like good, honest, WHITE drug dealers) but because they get off on being evil. Blake Lively is great as a stoned idiot who is always in trouble.
The Tax Collector
Jesus H. Christ. This movie co-stars Shia Labeouf as…well, it’s unclear if he is supposed to be a white guy who grew up in the barrio and so has all the same mannerisms as a cholo, or if he’s just supposed to be a white Latino. Either way, it’s an exceedingly odd casting choice, and Sleepy LaBeef is doing a comically thick “whassup ese” Vato patois the entire movie. He also has terrible tattoos which are apparently real? The trend of literally Satanic Mexicans continues here, with an actual scene of blood sacrifice. I think Sleepy dies at the end, but I can’t remember. Good times.
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
Dunno why it took me so long to see this. Great flick. Russell Crowe, back when he gave a shit, Paul Bettany before he was constantly being cast as an Angel and/or robot, and a bunch of awesome Naval battle footage which is really impressive both in terms of sheer scale of production and how real and consequential it makes everything feel. It’s not as though there are a lot of Napoleonic Naval movies to compare this too, but I feel like Maritime stuff tends to have a certain veneer of…aristocratic remove to it, and this movie really hammers home how insane and dangerous this kind of life was, while at the same time pointing out how nuts the British Naval hierarchy was. A blast.
Homefront
Another movie with a character of unclear origins. This piece of pure celluloid insanity was written by Sly Stallone himself, who was originally going to play the lead, but backed out and cast Jason Statham instead. At first it seems like Statham is supposed to be American, but any pretense of hiding his cockney accent goes out the window by the 20 minute mark. He also wears an awesome mullet wig in the first scene. Throughout the whole movie, nobody ever seems to find it out that a very, very, VERY British man is living in this tiny-ass town in the South where he presumably works double shifts at the Racism Factory. It’s sort of like all those Arnold comedies in the 90s in which nobody ever seemed to find it strange that an absurdly jacked, giant Austrian man who sounded like a monster was working as a mattress salesman.
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Another one I just hadn’t gotten around to for a while. I was semi-shocked to find out Charlie Kauffman wrote this, because it’s just kind of a mess. Not sure why it has the “cult” status it seems to enjoy today, other than Rockwell’s pretty good performance. The dual, competing storylines of Chuck the CIA hitman and Chuck the gameshow producer eventually coalescing into a meditation on mental illness and loneliness is compelling enough, but it’s just all over the fucking place in its execution, and the last 5 minutes feel like they were pasted on because nobody knew how to end the thing.