Category: Movies

Well, after picking these up at an estate sale a couple weeks ago, I thought maybe I would wait until I got a copy of First Blood to watch the series from the beginning, but I did not. I watched them not quite on consecutive nights, but enough to have them very fresh in mind as I moved to the next. I read the novels in 2008 (see First Blood and Rambo: First Blood Part II).

So: In Rambo: First Blood Part II, Colonel Trautman gets Rambo out of prison (for his actions in the first movie) on a covert mission into Vietnam to scout a prison camp that might hold American POWs. He is not to engage the enemy, though–only to confirm the presence of POWs, and a Delta Team will get them out. But while the government official running the op, Murdoch, expected the camp to be empty, the Vietnamese have rotated in prisoners, and Rambo liberates one and brings him to the extraction/exfil point. When Murdoch hears that, he aborts the mission before pickup, leaving Rambo to his fate. Rambo then breaks out with the help of his Vietnamese contact played by Julia Nickson and delivers the POWs of the camp to Murdoch.

The film would have been a scant decade after the end of the war, so it was still pretty fresh in the American zeitgeist (it was the topic of many films and television programs for quite some time). It had a couple of different acts to it and even a bit of depth to it. It’s not just jingoism; parts of the government (maybe all of it) are suspect and have their own agendas contrasting with that of the common man or soldier.

Rambo III, on the other hand–well, it lacks depth. It is a bit more….. jingoistic? It spends too much of its runtime explaining the gallant people of Afghanistan, those plucky guerrillas fighting against the Soviet menace. Trautman finds Rambo living in an ashram after the events of the second movie and stick-fighting for a little extra cash for the monks, and he invites Rambo to join him on an expedition into Afghanistan to find why one sector is particularly good at blocking arms shipments. Rambo demurs, but When Trautman is captured, he reconsiders and basically single-handedly invades a fortress. Well, he does have an Afghan guide and a child warrior for company, and the mujahideen do ride the rescue, but it’s overly simple and more comic-book/action movie than the others.

This film must have come on Showtime fresh right before we moved out of the trailer park, as I’ve seen it several times. But the only things that stuck with me were the opening scene and the cauterizing a wound with gundpowder scene. And my boys have not seen it, they have seen two films which parodied it: Hot Shots! Part Deux and UHF (which includes a parody of it in one of George’s daydreams).

Jeez, though, when you think that in a shorter span of time than the gap between Vietnam and the first (and second) films that the United States would be the target of those “gallant” freedom fighters. Life comes at you pretty fast especially in retrospect.

Rambo (don’t think too hard about the series numbering and naming convention) takes place 20 years later. Rambo is still living in southeast Asia. The Burmese civil war is raging–we get some expository footage to start the film–and a group of Christians is hoping to go up river to deliver medicine and hope to a persecuted Christian village, and they want to hire Rambo and his boat to take them. He demurs, but the woman of the group convinces him to help. So he takes them up river and protects them from pirates on the way. After they disembark, they’re captured by the local warlord who razes the village in the manner of Ghengis Khan. Rambo learns this when another member of their ministry arrives and commissions Rambo to ferry a team of mercenaries up river to find them. And he ends up taking a more active role in the rescue despite the mercenary leader dismissing him as just “the boat guy.”

This film, too, has some depth to it. Rambo is older, a bit more jaded and tired, but he has some attraction to the woman in the group which cannot be returned because she is, apparently, the fiancee of the group leader. And at the end, when they’re safe, she runs to him while Rambo watches from a distance. And Rambo returns to his hometown at the end of the film to reconcile with his father and/or family.

The shots are more dramatic as well–the 80s oranges have been washed out by the darkness of 21st century filmmaking, but Stallone, also the director, put some thought into them. Its effects are more gory than the 80s spot of blood and belly clutching–one online source said it was to maximize the effects budget because fake blood is cheap–but comparing other similar films from across those decades (see also On All The Conan Movies–so far) shows that it’s just how movies are made these days.

One thing to note about the films: They have mostly or all male casts. Rambo: First Blood Part II has the contact in Vietnam; Rambo III has a couple of extras amongst the Afghan tribespeople. Rambo has the woman who is on the missionary team and some extras. Very male dominated films, and I only note it because I know you want to see photos of the pretty actresses in them, and all you get is Julia Nickson. Continue reading “Movie Report: Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985); Rambo III (1988), Rambo (2008)” →

As I mentioned in February, I wanted to pick up a copy of this film when Bob Uecker died because I’d never seen it. Apparently, also, the St. Louis Blues hockey club have picked up a “mascot” named Jobu for their late season push and playoff run which was a voodoo idol from this movie as well. So I had two reasons to watch it, and I was happy to find a videocassette copy of it last weekend.

So: It’s a comedy that tracks kind of with the plot of Bull Durham, almost. The characters anyway. The wife of the man who owned the Cleveland Indians inherits the team when he dies, and she wants the team to move to Miami, so she sets the GM to build a roster from nobodies and has-beens. The veteran catcher, played by Tom Berenger, is a few years past his prime and has bad knees. Charlie Sheen plays a convict who joins the team as a fireball pitcher with control issues caused by poor eyesight. A Cuban power hitter, played by Dennis Haysbert (whom I knew was in the film but did not recognize), offers sacrifices to Jobu. A veteran pitcher relies on foreign substances to continue playing. Corbin Bernsen plays the shortstop whose thoughts are on his investments more than baseball. Wesley Snipes plays an outfielder who is fast but rough. Etc. Rene Russo is Berenger’s former flame in Cleveland, planning to marry a Yuppie (as they were known in those days). The team muddles along, improving, until the GM relates the scheme to the manager who tells the players, which inspires them to make a run for the pennant.

An amusing more than laugh-out-loud comedy. A bit of a product of its time, but not too dated. Worth watching, but I’m not rushing out for the sequels. And note that this is a Tom Berenger movie: his name comes first above the title. Man, he was something in the 1980s and maybe early 1990s, and although he’s been acting continually since, you mostly think this was a Charlie Sheen vehicle, ainna? Corbin Bernsen, the L.A. Law star, is the third on the poster. Not Wesley Snipes, who was not hitting his peak yet.

And, you know, I could have been in the movie. I was in town in the summer of 1988 when they filmed the stadium scenes at Milwaukee County Stadium (I thought it was true, and the scoreboard shots all show television station WTMJ 4 to confirm it). I know that people I knew then went to the stadium and stood in line to sit in the stands while scenes were filmed, but I did not. But I did keep looking in the crowd for people I might have known.

And just saying Milwaukee County Stadium reminds me that I have never been to a baseball stadium that exists today. I’ve been to ball games at Milwaukee County Stadium, but not Miller Park, and I’ve been to games at Busch Stadium (II) but not Busch Stadium (III). It has been a while, and they do change them every couple of decades these days.

After watching Tropic Thunder, I popped this film in on the next night. I kind of have a bit of a goal now, to watch the films I recently bought at an estate sale, because the unwatched films are now overflowing from the top of the video game cabinet and onto the top of the (full) unwatched video cabinet. AND THIS CANNOT STAND.

Also, if you’re keeping track, this is the third time I’ve watched this film: The first, in the theater, maybe, with my beautiful wife (or on videocassette with my beautiful wife). The second, probably rented from the video store not long after I mentioned the film to my wife and she repressed the memory of it. And now, again, since I’ve bought it at an estate sale and want to clear that particular deck.

In it, Steve Oedekirk (more known as a writer) has digitally inserted himself in a 1970s martial arts flick by imposing his head upon the lead actor, and he’s rewritten/redubbed the dialog and has inserted a number of gags, including a brawl with a computer-animated cow. In the plot, he’s a wanderer whose parents were killed by a gang led by Master Pain, and he grows to learn to fight and to seek revenge from Master Pain and to liberate the countryside from the sinister machinations of The Council who is giving Pain the orders behind the scenes. The plot is not important, though, as it only serves to tie the gags together.

Like Tropic Thunder, it’s a bit self-indulgent and only has a couple of really funny moments. But maybe I’m just old and grumpy. Maybe 13-year-old Brian J. would have liked it better.

At any rate, a couple of days later, a couple of things have stuck with me. The main bad guy, Master Pain, and the love interest are dubbed in silly voices. Master Pain sounds like a cartoon character and the love interest sounds like the high parts of Miss Piggy’s voice (without the brass), and she is prone to saying “Wi-oh-wi-oh-wi.” I’ve found myself making those voices when I’m alone. Jeez, Louise, guys, the things I say, the voices I make, and to be honest, sometimes the animal noises I make when I’m alone. I would be frightened for the sanity of anyone else whom I knew did this. But I’m pretty sure I’m sane, ainna?

And now I own this film on DVD, and if history proves a guide to the future, I will likely watch it more than I watch most things I own. I don’t know why I am drawn to these dumb comedies, but I am.

Not to be confused with the 1987 television movie based on the book by Louis L’Amour (or the book itself). Which, to be honest, I did: I knew enough about the title when this film came out that I thought it would have been a bastardization of the book (or television movie). But it’s not: It’s a complete story of its own that uses the same title, perhaps to draw in the people who don’t know better. I knew better, but since I just picked this film up last weekend, I popped it in right away.

So: Sharon Stone plays a woman referred to as Lady who comes into town with a burnt-out marshal’s office and shows immediately that she is not to be trifled with. It’s right before a big, bracket-style quick draw competition run by the man who runs the town played by Gene Hackman. We get introduced to a series of colorful gunfighters including Kid, played by Leonardo di Caprio, and Cort, played by Russell Crowe, and a couple of red shirts who are just there to lose. Kid turns out is actually Hackman’s kid who is constantly berates. Cort was a henchman of Hackman’s who renounced violence and became a preacher.

So, yeah, that’s the story. A bit of Lady’s past is told in flashback: Hackman was responsible for her father, the former marshal’s, death, and she’s come for revenge but is not sure whether she can actually kill him.

I mean, I can see what the director and filmographer are trying to do here. It’s a bit of a throwback to some of the great old westerns as far as filming goes–a lot of closeups and eyes moving back and forth and other stylizations which indicate that Sam Raimi liked Sergio Leone. But: A bracket-based gunfight tournament for a bunch of money (too much really) which Hackman’s character runs every so often to eliminate his competition? C’mon, man. That’s so 1990s.

But it does contain Sharon Stone at the end of her Whoa! years.

Continue reading “Movie Report: The Quick and the Dead (1995)” →

After watching The Man With Two Brains, I thought I would pick up this relatively recent (two springs ago) addition to the Nogglestead media library. A while ago, I started, tastefully (I hope) placing films and television shows atop the to-watch and video game cabinets; most of them have their spines/titles facing up, but at the end, I have a box (from that same trip in April 2023)where the boxes face out, and this film was often at the front, actually facing out. So on my current Steve Martin kick (a well-spaced out binge), I thought I would roll with it.

I read the novella almost 20 years ago (2006), and I summarized its plot there, and I thought it was, not meh, but eh. It works a little better as a movie.

In it, the titular shopgirl sells women’s gloves in an upscale department store in Beverly Hills. Well, she stands behind the glove counter–even then, gloves were an archaic affectation. The filmography really sets up her isolation and loneliness. She is a depressed artist from Vermont who hasn’t really made connections in California. She does meet a slacker at a laundromat, played by Jason Schwartzman, whom she dates and sleeps with because there’s nobody else, and she wants to feel a connection. An older, wealthy guy played by Steve Martin visits LA sometimes and starts a relationship with her. However, they have different ideas of what the relationship is. He thinks it’s more casual, but he develops feelings for her. She thinks it’s more serious. However, events test and then break the relationship, and it ends with a coda where she ends up with the slacker, who has gone on to make something of himself because of what she said to him, and Martin’s character regrets how it turned out. Basically, he kept something of himself from her even though she shared everything of herself, or something.

It’s kind of a downer of a film if you take Martin’s character to be the main character and protagonist, and it stuck with me for a couple of days. Probably because I’m a little older these days, and I could probably be a better husband.

Still, it shows that Steve Martin is a pretty insightful writer and is unafraid to take a chance making films, although unfortunately he has had more success with silly comedies and old intellectual properties.

Well, as I mentioned when I bought the DVD, I was familiar with the Phil Collins song “Against All Odds” from this film (spoiler alert: it’s over the end credits), but I’d never seen the film. Well, now I have.

In it, Jeff Bridges (not to be confused with William Hurt, although they were both that everyman, sensitive hunk in the early 1980s) plays an older wide receiver for the Los Angeles Outlaws who has been playing hurt but gets cut. So an old friend who is now a big bookie in the town–and who has goods on Bridges’ character–asks him to go to Mexico to look for a girl whom he says has stolen money from him. The woman is the daughter of the football team owner, also, which complicates things. Bridges goes to Mexico, finds the girl, and they fall in love and spend time together. He decided he’ll run away with her, but a football coach also under the thrall of the bookie finds them, and bloodshed occurs. Something something, real estate deal, bloodshed, and finis!

A bit slower paced than many things–one can see that they’re working hard on a modern noir, probably hoping to have another Chinatown or something (as in a later, more modern, but now fifty-years-old noir). But it just doesn’t make it. The sunny beaches of Mexico do not have the proper look and feel for it, and it just misses.

Also, I must admit that during a particularly steamy scene set at Chichen Itza, where action jump cut between entwined bodies and the carvings on the walls, that I was looking for an image of the fanged deity, but I guess that was too far south for Chichen Itza (although I could have looked at this tour guide from the same year, 1984, and see if I could spot locations in the guide). But no.

At any rate, James Woods plays the bookie and Rachel Ward, an Englishwoman, plays the girl. Continue reading “Movie Report: Against All Odds (1984)” →

Deadpool, as a character, came at the end of my new comic buying period (that is, I went to college and stopped buying them whenever I came up with a buck and they had new titles at the drugstores as they did in those days). I know, I know; I’ve been known to go to the comic book shop in the last decade and pick up a run or two of Dynamite titles, mostly revamped old properties like Conan or Red Sonja or whatever. Also, he came out in the mutant books, the X-Men and all their spinoffs, and those were not my first choice amongst the new titles–I preferred Spider-Man, Captain America, Wonder-Man, Quasar, and the Avengers over the X-everythings which I found to be too soap-opery.

According to whatever Wikipedia is quoting, the character’s creator says this about Deadpool:

Liefeld spoke on how the character was influenced by Spider-Man: “The simplicity of the mask was my absolute jealousy over Spider-Man and the fact that both of my buddies, [fellow Marvel artists] Erik Larsen and Todd McFarlane, would tell me, ‘I love drawing Spider-Man. You just do an oval and two big eyes. You’re in, you’re out.’ … The Spider-Man I grew up with would make fun of you or punch you in the face and make small cracks. That was the entire intent with Deadpool. … I specifically told Marvel, ‘He’s Spider-Man, except with guns and swords.’ The idea was, he’s a jackass.” Other inspirations were Wolverine and Snake Eyes. Liefeld states: “Wolverine and Spider-Man were the two properties I was competing with at all times. I didn’t have those, I didn’t have access to those. I had to make my own Spider-Man and Wolverine. That’s what Cable and Deadpool were meant to be, my own Spider-Man and my own Wolverine.”

You know, I described him to my beautiful wife the same way: He’s got the wisecracks of Spider-Man, but crass. Also, he’s an anti-hero. He’s definitely of the age that was dawning in the 1990s and in this 21st century.

So the film is his origin story: A thug-for-hire falls in love with a beautiful woman as crazy as he is (played by Morena Baccarin), but learns he has advanced cancer. So he goes to a black market mutant factory where they promise to cure him, but the torturous process, which is actual torture, is designed to stress people to trigger mutagenic change, but the ultimate goal is to create mutants and sell them as slaves or soldiers. Deadpool gets away and then goes hunting for the people who did this to him–made him practically immortal but with scarred to the point that people shun him on the street. They find out who he was and kidnap Marena Baccarin, and a great fight ensues, and Deadpool gets help from Colossus and Negasonic who are familiar with Deadpool whom they want to join the X-forces. Bam, zang, crass, and finis!

I mean, it was all right. I’m growing a little more tolerance for the crass these days, and it did have the comic book movie thing going for it. Apparently the comics also had Deadpool breaking the fourth wall, kind of like She-Hulk in her late 1980s series. Which means it wasn’t as groundbreaking as they might have thought–other comics were doing the Deadpool schticks, but I guess something about this particular character caught on enough that they were making movies about him thirty-some years later. So Marvel has that going for them, which is nice.

My youngest, who watched it with me, was eager to watch the next one if we had it. Oh, but no, gentle reader; when my beautiful wife bought the film for me indirectly for Valentine’s Day, she did not get the second. And one suspects that the latest, Deadpool and Wolverine, might not make an appearance on physical media at all.

And although the film does feature Morena Baccarin who is, what, fifteen years older than she was in Firefly when this film came out? You would have to probably draw a variety of charts and tables with lots of science in them to prove it to me–even though it has Morena Baccarin in it, it is also the first film I’ve seen with Gina Carano in it. So Gina Carano it is. Continue reading “Movie Report: Deadpool (2016)” →

It’s funny: I have several Steve Martin movies atop my fresh media cabinet, including The Pink Panther, Bringing Down The House, The Shop Girl, and probably a couple of others (although not The Out-of-Towners which I watched late last year), but I passed over them for this film early in his ouevre which I just bought with my Valentine’s Day gift card.

In it, Steve Martin plays a neurosurgeon, the best in the world, who has recently lost his wife. As he is driving, he hits a cruel golddigger, played by Kathleen Turner, who has just given her current husband a heart attack, but he has written her out of his will. Martin’s neurosurgeon, Dr. Hfuhruhurr, performs emergency surgery on her and saves her life and falls for her–and she gets her hooks into him, denying him his marital due, and is on the verge of leaving him during a European trip until she learns he stands to inherit fifty million dollars. Dr. Hfuhruhurr learns her true nature and becomes sympatico with the brain of a young victim of The Elevator Killer, a serial killer stalking the streets or elevators of Vienna. So it becomes a wacky love triangle, and Dr. Hfuhruhurr tries to figure out how he can be with the brain of the woman he loves.

So, yeah, it’s a bit odd, but it’s full of Steve Martin’s type of humor which is dry and absurd, but not especially slapstick. I think his best work comes in his original films, like this and Dead Men Wear Plaid and Bowfinger rather than the other things where he does remakes or reboots. Of course, I haven’t seen The Pink Panther yet, so maybe it will wow me.

I’m thinking about actually going back to Vintage Stock to look for Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid and The Jerk–they would have come out about the beginning of the home video revolution, so they should be available in DVD or VHS (Vintage Stock is not vintage enough to stock VHS–but maybe I could find them at antique malls for a buck or so). So let that be your endorsement: I’m tempted to pay more than a buck on other works by the same actor based on the viewing of this movie.

Although the other films won’t have Kathleen Turner in them. Continue reading “Movie Report: The Man With Two Brains (1983)” →

I am pretty sure that this film and Raw Deal were both in fairly heavy rotation on Showtime during the period when we were in the trailer and had Showtime, which meant that we would have watched it over and over. I watched it so many times that I thought, surely, I have it in the library, but, no, not until recently when I was spending a gift card and it was facing out. I didn’t think to look for Raw Deal at the time. I mean, it was only last year that I picked up Predator, which is still part of the contemporary culture–not only is it in a fairly common meme, but you still see it mentioned on blogs (and Substacks) as relevant. But Commando? Where is the love?

At any rate, Arnold Schwarzenneggar plays Matrix, a retired special Army unit, well, Commando whose old unit is getting killed off by unknown forces. A general comes to ask Matrix, Schwarzenneggar, for help, but Matrix has promised not to leave his daughter (a very young Alyssa Milano). However, the outside forces get the drop on Matrix and kidnap the girl, and it turns out one of Matrix’s old unit, a sadistic man named Bennett, faked his death and is the, what, leader of a group protecting an exiled South American dictator, and they want Matrix to go to the South American country to kill the leader he (Matrix) helped to install to replace the dictator. They put Matrix on a plane and expect to hear from his escort in 12 hours, but Matrix kills the escort, gets off the plane, and then has 12 hours to find his daughter before they know he is not in South America. 1980s explosive mayhem occurs along with some especially lame one-liners when bad guys are one-offed.

Still, it was an enjoyable re-watch, and I might even watch it again sometime.

Holy smokes. The new remake of Lost in Space is almost thirty years old. Unless there’s a newer one, and I am afraid to look.

So: The world is running out of resources, climate change, et cetera, et cetera, so they’ve built this huge ship for a trip to some distant place, and the Robinson family, helmed by their father the polymath doctor played by William Hurt, is going to be in suspended animation for the trip. So why is the ship so big when they could have just sent them in an interstellar minivan? You’re not here for the sense, you’re here for the special effects which weren’t so bad for something almost 30 years old. But! A terrorist organization wants to thwart them so that the escaping-Earth resources will be spent on Earth or something, so they kill the planned pilot, leaving it for a hotshot military pilot, Joey from friends. And! Gary Oldman plays Dr. Smith who sabotages the ship and then is stranded on the ship by his handler, so they have to hyperdrive through the sun, and into uncharted space with Dr. Smith and a murderous robot, although Elroy Will Robinson, polymath boy genius, reprograms and eventually rebuilds it, and space spiders, crash landing on planet with time anaomly, mutants, uh, well….

To be honest, the film is a series of special effects set pieces without a central conflict or plot, so it doesn’t really pull the viewer along, and the end is, well, odd. I can see why it was not ultimately continued.

You know, the television program was in syndication when I was a boy, and I must have seen an episode of it from start to finish, but I’m hard pressed to remember it. There were so many of the television shows from the 1960s and 1970s which were in syndication when I was eight or ten years old that I didn’t watch. And yet I somehow recall Family Affair and Gidget, probably because they were on the independent and UHF stations in St. Louis instead of in Milwaukee. Maybe I did not get to control what I watched in those days when my sainted mother was a housewife and had somewhat of a lock on the television.

At any rate, an interesting but not compelling film. Probably not worth rewatching frequently and probably not worth much at my estate sale. But it did have Heather Graham in it (see also), and it did trigger me to say, “Danger, Will Robinson!” in a professional meeting this week, so I guess it does have some legs, the original show, as a cultural artifact.

Well, now I am getting into the 21st century films, ainna? To be honest, I guess I was into films into something like 2005, after which my movie-going days ended pretty much when we had children, at which point our movie going went to child films, sometimes, but not too often and an occasional movie night, but I’m pretty sure that ended when we saw Iron Man 2 and MacGruber on our anniverary in 2010. That we had an anniversary in 2011 is a testament to a good woman’s love, I reckon. Oh, where was I? Oh, about to tell you that I bought this film “just” a year and a quarter ago, and I immediately watched it (after Funny Farm, Grumpy Old Men, Meet Me In St. Louis, Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm, and White Men Can’t Jump, but not everything I bought that day).

So.

Well, this was an event film, a thing, back then. Do you remember? I think I do, which will do for now. It was called a commentary on apartheid because it was set in South Africa, and it came at the tale end of the George W. Bush era (Obama having only been in office a couple of months), so no doubt the press seized on it as a comment on the bad thinkers of the era, but…. Well, it’s just a retelling of Alien Nation, but the aliens are more insectoid (better computer effects here in the 21st century).

In an alternate past, an alien ship has appeared over Johannesburg. Humans eventually break into it and find a seemingly starving set of aliens, and humanity, or at least the Seffricans, welcome them. But 28 years into the future (which is about now), they’ve been living in a refuge camp for a generation and tensions have arisen between the neighboring humans and the aliens. So the humans decide to relocate them to a camp outside the city. Which is where the movie begins: A nebbish office drone, Wikus, is by-the-bookishly leads a group of mercenaries to serve notice on the prawns. He finds a contraband substance in a container and accidentally gets sprayed with a bit of its contents. Which starts turning him into an alien/human hybrid. His company, a military-contractor-munitions company, takes him to the lab where he is forced to use the alien technology which is DNA-locked from humans and to kill an alien slave/prisoner/innocent (presumably). He breaks out, turning a bit into an action hero, and is forced to hide in District 9. He then hooks up–well, not that way contrary to what the authorities have presented to the populace–with the person who had the contraband substance. It’s the fuel he, the alien, has been distilling for 20 years to power the command module of the ship to return to the mother ship and to go home for help. He offers to help cure Wikus, and…. Well, gunplay, action, a mech suit, and then an eventual ending that does not resolve everything.

So: I mean, it’s the kind of thing I would have watched over and over on Showtime in the 1980s (as I did Enemy Mine which one could argue also had some influence on the film). But it’s not a massive event or masterpiece of science fiction. They couldn’t even get the sequel made, for cryin’ out loud. And its setup leads to too many unresolved and, frankly, not even presented questions such as why was the ship stopped there in the first place? The command ship dropped off, the mass of aliens were still aboard the ship, but they’re distilling the DNA-mutagenic fuel from bits of native technology brought down to the surface by the aliens? Eh. Just watch it as a bit of popcorn film and not as anything more, and you’re probably okay.

Until they make the sequel 20 years later, with or without overt political messaging but still seized upon as representative and recriminative of What’s Bad Now by the media. And probably not made in South Africa.

I picked this DVD up last year in 2023, and it has sitten upon my game storage cabinet along with many other unwatched videos gathered over recent years until a week ago Saturday, when I felt I needed a break from the longer and, honestly, less compelling books I’m reading for the 2025 Winter Reading Challenge. So I picked this one without giving it too much thought (too much thought in selecting a movie to watch often leads me to selecting nothing, so I have to be careful to pick quickly sometimes).

The film is set in 1979–the book upon which it was based came out in the middle 1970s and has been optioned for a film pretty much since then. Eastwood plays a broken down rodeo rider fired from training horses but who is asked by the ranch owner–whom Eastwood owes for taking care of him when he (Eastwood) hit bottom after his wife and child died in an automobile accident–to go to Mexico to retrieve his son from his Mexican mother. Which is what Eastwood does, finding the mother is a party girl trollop in a large house (probably a kept woman of some sort by probably a gangster, as she has a couple of heavies at her disposal) who tries to bed him but doesn’t know where her son is since he’s running on the streets. Eastwood finds him at a cockfight and discovers that he has been on the streets since he was mistreated and otherwise abused at home. The boy runs off after Eastwood tells him his mission, and the mother shags Eastwood off (not that way–in the gets rid of him way). But the boy has stowed away in the backseat of Eastwood’s vehicle with his rooster (named Macho, although it’s not clear when he cries). And we have a bit of a road trip movie as they travel to the border pursued by the mother’s heavies and sometimes police. They end up breaking down in a village where Eastwood becomes kind of the local veterinarian and he kind of falls for a widowed cafe owner who is raising her grandchildren. Eastwood discovers that the ranch owner’s real motivation is not to raise his son but rather to use the son as leverage over some property owned in the woman’s name.

But, thematically, it’s not too far off Gran Torino, which I just watched four years ago. An older Man (capital M) takes on a youngster (of a different nationality/ethnicity) and tries to show him how to be a Man.

So since I’m getting older myself, I appreciated the theme a bit more than maybe I would have, erm, a couple years ago. But Eastwood, as he has aged, has shifted his themes accordingly which is probably why he has remained relevant when other filmmakers and actors have not.

The film does have one quirk of note: The Mexican characters speak Spanish to one another, and it’s only sometimes subtitled. Which I found odd. Y porque no puedo oir la lengua muy bien, no comprendo mucho del español.

Also, the film featured Fernanda Urrejola as the boy’s mother and Natalia Traven as the cafe owner, and I suppose that the film’s relative disappointment at the box office is the only thing that kept this from becoming an Internet Versus debate.

Continue reading “Movie Report: Cry Macho (2021)” →

The Librarian of Celaeno writes at Substack Collateral and the Remembrance of Death:

Directed by Mann and released in 2004, Collateral was one of a number of neo-noir films set in Los Angeles since the early 1990s, the first of which was The Two Jakes (1990) the sequel to 1974’s Chinatown. Neo-noir as a genre refers to films featuring themes of paranoia, alienation, vice, loneliness, and moral ambiguity, wherein the protagonists often have to make difficult ethical choices with no clear right path forward in a corrupt or indifferent world. It’s never nihilistic as such; morality does exist in the neo-noir universe, but good characters are often forced into situations where they have to do something ostensibly bad to prevent some greater evil. They generally also feature raw and realistic violence and incorporate unconventional camerawork to emphasize the fraying of mental and moral stability.

As always, his work is worth reading.

I watched Collateral last year, and the only intelligent thing I said about it was:

At any rate, the plot: Foxx plays a cab driver who picks up a blond Cruise at a courthouse after dropping off a prosecutor planning for a big case. Cruise has a couple of stops to have people sign papers for a real estate deal, so he engages the cab driver to drive him to all the stops. But, at the first stop, a body flies out the window and lands on the cab, and Max (the cab driver) learns Vincent (Cruise) is an assassin on a mission to… well, it develops, take out witnesses and the prosecutor in a case targeting one of his clients, or related organized crime figures.

Along the way, Max and Vincent develop a bit of a rapport. Vincent shakes Max out of a bit of a habitual, rote existence dreaming of better things (owning a limo company) and gets him to man up and demonstrate some confidence–one scene has Max going into a nightclub, pretending to be Vincent. But, in the end, the rapport is false, and Max has to protect his mother (whom he visited in the hospital with Vincent) and the pretty prosecutor who rode in Vincent’s cab earlier.

So the film has some depth in exploring the relationship between the men and how it evolves, mostly in Max drawing strength and confidence from the psychopath’s influence and ultimate his testing.

Which I suppose is okay as this is a blog and not a la-de-dah Substack.

One might posit that this sort of patriotic, heroic movie of the American Revolution could not be made in the 21st century or perhaps not during a Republican administration, but one might have an easier time defending the first thesis given the cinema’s profitable embrace of patriotism during the Reagan presidency. But one would have to go to more serious outlets of movie criticism were one inclined to tease out those arguments. Personally, I just muse on what I’ve seen, and those are two thoughts that came to mind. After 2000, we have the George W. Bush presidency, the attacks of 2001, and In the Valley of Elah and Lions for Lambs. I guess some more patriotic themed films have snuck into the theaters from time to time, but they’re not the standard fare. Not that I would know, I guess: Although I saw this film in the theaters in the pre-child days, I have only seen, what, two films in the theater in the last five years? So don’t mind the musings that follow. Just click More to see the actresses.

So: In this film, Mel Gibson plays a widower Carolina farmer who had served in the French and Indian War speaks out against a war against Britain but, as the revolution erupts, he’s drawn into the conflict when a particularly brutal British officer kills his son and fires his home. When he sees that American generals, trained in the British army, are trying to use British tactics to fight the country which perfected them, he builds a small militia force for guerrila tactics and harrasses the British, but not without a cost. Gibson does some incredibly action hero things, but main characters are definitely at risk, and many die before the war is over.

So a bit slower paced than more modern actioners (or even some actioners for the time) as it pauses every once and again for speeches about liberty and whatnot. A couple splashy gore effects, mostly from cannon fire. Good for rewatching every couple of decades, and perhaps a springboard to re-learning about the American Revolution–the expedition that Gibson’s character would have been part of took place about the same time that Benjamin Franklin, whom I “studied” a bit last year (see The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin), served in the Pennsylvania militia during the French and Indian War. Does that mean I’m going to start a study of that era in 2025? Probably not, as the Nogglestead stacks are (relatively) light in material.

But, now to the More part.

Continue reading “Movie Report: The Patriot (2000)” →

So last year (he said in italics because it was only last week, but he runs a bit behind on blog posts and wanted to emphasize how behind he runs), I picked out this film on one of those “I want to watch something, but not something too weighty or important or, well, most of the things I’ve bought over the last 20 years” moments. Which differ from the “I want to watch this movie which I’m sure I own but cannot seem to find, so I doubt that I own it and think I’ve rented it or recorded it to the DVR back in the days when that was an option” moments which lead me to watching nothing at all. On Any Movie nights, I pick something out. Well, I do about half the time these days; the other half, I still think “Do I want to invest two and a half hours (counting wandering to the bathroom, to fold laundry, or whatnot breaks) in this film?” Well, kismet or something like it led me to this film a week ago. And the answer is (spoiler alert!), “Nah.”

So.

I bought this film in September 2023, so it’s not like it’s “First In, First Out,” although…. Yeah, with as many films as I watched in 2024, it kind of is. I bought it because it’s a Van Damme film, and I’ve watched one or two in my lifetime (Univeral Soldier, and…. okay, maybe one), and I was thinking about Steven Seagal films recently, and probably picked this film out (it’s not Under Siege or Under Siege 2: Dark Territory which I thought about after having watched Die Hard and Die Hard 2 this holiday season). Okay, yeah, so I hoped for an 80s action film or a 90s throwback, but no.

Van Damme plays a boxer from 1925 France (which explains his accent, badly) who is asked by Downton Abbey‘s Mr. Carson (with his French accent from Top Secret! intact)–well, he’s told to take a dive in the second round for a bunch of money. Mr. Carson, or the French gangster equivalent, has a moll who is Van Damme’s character’s former fiancéé (being this movie is set in Francé, thé éxtra apostrophés and accénts should bé éxpéctéd). But! Van Damme (forget the character dodge) does not take the dive! He knocks out the opponent, and he hopes to escape to America (frog, yeah!) with the girl. But! Pursued by the gangsters, he finds himself in the foreign legion’s recruiting office (staffed, of course, late at night). And he signs up to the foreign legion to escape.

So he ships off to North Africa, where he meets and gets on with, eventually, many different diverse types, from an American black man escaping from 1920s racism to bad Germans to Englishmen escaping their pasts and Italians trying to impress their girls families. UNFORTUNATELY! a photo from a newsman is seen in France by Dark Mr. Carson who sends killers to enlist in the Foreign Legion to find and kill Van Damme. AND! They catch up when Van Damme’s group is going to an outpost to defend it or be slaughtered by the Berbers or Barbers, whichever looks the least like Perry Como.

So! They march out there, get ambushed, have to trust each other, and all die except Van Damme whom the Berber leader says has “courage” and finis!

Wait, what?

Yeah, no, it ended abruptly. After the battle of Rorke’s Drift, uh, that cheap set, the credits roll. We don’t get any resolution of the triggering story, the boxer and the girl, but someone said she went to America (in the 1920s, not the 19th century, so not in colonial times, mate). No resolution with Deja Vu Dark Carson. Nothing past the speech that the West were occupiers in northern African (whose leaders kinda look Arabic) lands. Honestly, I thought the film was made a decade (or maybe but a half) later with a message that seemed anti-War on Terror. But I guess the message resonates among the “Western” entertainment industry past 1990 or so which thinks history starts somewhere in the (late?) 20th century and ignores all the part before we became the baddies according to popular culture.

So. Not a good film. Ech.

On the other hand, I have it on DVD, so I can watch it whenever I want. Which is ultimately less than once now that I have seen it.

Ah, gentle reader, I just watched the first two Crocodile Dundee movies, wherein just is somewhere between 2015 when I bought the first at a garage sale and when I started dilligently writing movie reports (2021 or so?) and now. Or maybe I only watched the first; when I picked this from the library, I thought it was the second of the Crocodile Dundee films, so either I didn’t watch the second five or eight years ago, or I kind of blended the plots. Because, c’mon, man, the plots are secondary: They’re movies about an outback Australian in the big city.

In this case, Sue Charlton (Linda Kozlowski) has been living with Mick Dundee and their son Mikey in Walkabout Creek, Australia, but her father has a proposition for her: To run the Los Angeles paper, where the previous editor, an investigative reporter, died pursuing a story. So she brings Mick and Mikey along, and they live in Beverly Hills whilst she tries to discover the secret behind a movie studio that loses money but keeps making sequels to its flops which are partially filmed in Eastern Europe. Mick, in between his fish-out-of-water antics, gets a job on the set of the movie studio and works undercover. Suddenly, Mick is discovered, leading to his being hunted on movie studio back lots, and finis!

So, yeah, a film that really probably only got made because Paul Hogan wanted it and maybe because it came with some Australian government money. Much of the material seems recycled from the earlier films or otherwise tired and maybe a little fish-out-of-date. It did make me think about watching the first movie again, though, which rather captured a bit of lightning in a bottle, but it was the 1980s, man.

The film profferred Kaitlin Hopkins as Mikey’s school teacher.

Continue reading “Movie Report: Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles (2001)” →

You know, a couple of years ago, I reported on a rewatch (mostly) of all the Conan movies, but apparently this one escaped my notice. Although the main character is Robert E. Howard’s Kull the Conqueror, the IMDB entry indicates this was to be the third Arnold Schwarzenneggar Conan film, but he turned it down–so the De Laurentiis family got Kevin Sorbo, who was doing the Hercules television series at the time, and changed it to Kull so he would not have to play a continuation of the character. It blends elements from several Howard properties, but I’m not going to tease them out for you. Instead, you can read up about it on IMDB or Wikipedia.

Kull tries to join the army of Valusia, but he’s showed up a bit and is called a barbarian by the general who notes the army is all noble blood. He (Kull) somehow gets into the palace when the king is slaughtering kinsfolk who he says are conspiring to take his throne. Kull tries to stop him from slaying others, and in the ensuing fight, Kull kills the king, which should make him king, but the king’s kin don’t think that’s right. But the dying king bequeaths his crown to Kull, who starts to throw off the slaves shackles and bring a more modern barbarian sensibility to Valusia until he is corrected by the crown’s eunuch (played by the head of Rekall from Total Recall). Kull is smitten by a fortune telling slave (played by Karina Lombard), but the scheming kin of the previous king raise an ancient goddess (played by Tia Carrere) who seduces Kull but fakes his death so she can assume the crown. Kull, the fortune-telling slave, and a priest of an another god escape to find the quest object which can stop the goddess.

It blends a lot of Conan history and elements from the Hour of the Dragon but with a prettier antagonist. A scene takes place aboard ships, hearkening back to the hero’s days as a pirate and so on. It also has a sense of humor about the film genre’s conventions where the original Conan movies were more earnest–but by the 1990s, that sly humor was worked into entertainment. At one point, Carrere’s character says, “I’ve altered our pact. Pray I do not alter it further.” which is clearly a hollaback to The Empire Strikes Back.

So it did not do well at the box office–it’s more of a direct-to-video or direct-to-cable quality–and it’s a little slow, but 80s action films (which this really is despite its release date) were slower, too, so I guess that’s not much of a wash. Also, I found the fight scenes a little underwhelming–Kull prefers an axe to a sword–but in close quarters against lightly armored opponents, it’s likely to be a little more pokey than slashy. But I’ve never actually fought a real sword fight and the only time I’ve worked with weighted weapons, I’ve gotten my hands whacked a bunch. So who knows.

I enjoyed it, but it might not be for everyone.

The film also featured Karina Lombard as the card-reading slave.

Continue reading “Movie Report: Kull the Conqueror (1997)” →