Tag Archives: Movie Reviews

Movies

The Blue Dahlia (1946) a (incredibly) belated review

If one day you and I should meet and talk and you ask me as an author which writer do I feel is my all time favorite, I might well tell you its Raymond Chandler.

Raymond Chandler was a terrific author and his books, in my opinion, are great works. He’s best known for his Phillip Marlowe novels, many of which were made into movies. Perhaps most famous of those movie adaptations is the Bogart/Bacall The Big Sleep. There was another version made years later featuring Robert Mitchum. There’s the first person point of view The Lady in the Lake. There’s Robert Mitchum again in Farewell My Lovely. There’s the quirky Robert Altman directed, Elliot Gould starring The Long Goodbye. There are a few movies that adapted his novels but didn’t use the Chandler titles, such as the James Gardner starring (and featuring Bruce Lee in a small, but extremely memorable role) Marlowe, an adaptation of The Little Sister. Then there’s what I feel is the very best adaptation of his novels, which also happens to be the first, the terrific Murder, My Sweet (1944), the first adaptation of Farewell My Lovely,

Raymond Chandler was wooed by Hollywood in and around the time his novels were first being adapted in the 1940’s and he wrote the screenplay to the classic film noir Double Indemnity. Flush off the success of that film, he was hired to write the script to another film, the result of which was The Blue Dahlia.

Featuring the powerhouse (at the time) pairing of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, the film is a pretty neat but ultimately flawed work which features just enough of Raymond Chandler’s terrific dialogue to make it worth a look, if you’re a fan of his like I am.

Here’s the movie’s trailer:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=mjnkh9Da0nM

Alan Ladd plays Johnny Morrison, a veteran of the Pacific theater who returns home with two comrades in arms, George Copeland (Hugh Beaumont) and Buzz Wanchek (William Bendix). From the movie’s opening segment we realize Buzz isn’t all there: He sustained a head wound in the Pacific during the war and is capable of erupting at the least provocation.

They return to California and Johnny leaves his friends to go back to his wife wife Helen, only to discover she’s having a noisy party filled with questionable people in her bungalow. Included and most prominent in the party is Eddie Harwood (Howard Da Silva), the owner of the infamous Blue Dahlia club, who may well be a gangster and is most certainly Helen’s current boyfriend. Because of the movie’s age and the censorship of the times, this is revealed in subtle rather than too obvious way, but viewers should get the hint.

The party ends prematurely and Johnny confronts Helen. He wants to try to repair their marriage but Helen is a very broken woman, and this is revealed plainly when the argument turns to their son, who died very young.

Johnny leaves Helen and, later, she’s found dead.

The movie’s plot thus kicks in: Who killed Helen Morrison? The finger of suspicion is on Johnny, but as viewers we know he didn’t do it. So who did?

The Blue Dahlia is a solid enough film noir but, as I noted above, is something of a flawed work.

Why? Because the plot has some whoppers that are simply too difficult to accept, perhaps the biggest being the waaaaaaaaayyyyyy too coincidental meeting between Ladd’s Morrison and Veronica Lake’s Joyce Harwood. That’s right, Lake plays the estranged wife of Eddie Harwood and the fact that they just happen to meet the way they do and she just happens to be married to the #1 suspect -in Johnny Morrison’s mind- in Helen Morrison’s murder strains credulity to the point of snapping it… though to be fair there is a point where Johnny Morrison wonders about their meeting and whether it was coincidental after all.

Unfortunately, despite whatever suspicion his character mentions, nothing is made of it beyond that one statement and I can’t help but wonder if perhaps Raymond Chandler’s script was changed between page and filming as was, famously, the reveal of who the killer was.

Yes, it is well known the original identity of Helen Morrison’s killer was not who was revealed at the movie’s end. Worse, the way the killer is revealed -and the way the original Raymond Chandler killer is exonorated- don’t make a heck of a lot of sense but neither is it anything that totally destroys the movie.

If it sounds like I’m really down on this film… well, its not entirely true. The Blue Dahlia is a perfectly enjoyable, if at times illogical, film noir and its neat to see Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake co-starring in another vehicle together, even if the film isn’t quite up there with their two best features which, IMHO, are The Glass Key and This Gun For Hire.

It’s a pity those changes to the script were made and I suspect had the movie followed Chandler’s script a little closer, it would have been a better work.

Still, if you’re into this type of film, its a no brainer to spend some time with Ladd and Lake and savor the dialogue of Raymond Chandler.

Recommended.

Movies

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), a (…to boldly go…) belated review

Way, waaaaaaaay back in the 1970’s and when I was first getting into the various movies and TV shows which would impress me, one stood out above all the others: The original Star Trek.

While I thrilled to the adventures of James West in The Wild, Wild West or Colonel Steve Austin in The Six Million Dollar Man or laughed hysterically to the misadventures of Agents 86 and 99 in Get Smart, it was Star Trek that blew my very young mind.

The show quite literally could be anything. There were episodes which were filled with suspense and even horror. There were episodes which were grand adventures. There were episodes that were hilarious comedies. And yes, there were episodes that were… something, especially during the less successful third and final season.

Yet the show captured my imagination like few others and even now, despite its age and mostly inferior effects, I love it. Yes, I know they “remastered” the effects but I kinda prefer seeing the original episodes with their original effects, for better or worse.

The success of Star Wars in 1977, I strongly suspect, opened the door for the studios to want to make sci-fi films like it and, they hoped, cash in on this. It wasn’t too surprising, then, that the cult favorite Star Trek would get a second look and a movie greenlighted. It would be directed by veteran Robert Wise, whose career began in the early 1940’s (directing, uncredited, additional scenes for the Orson Wells follow up to Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons) and who had in his resume such impressive works as West Side Story (the original, natch), The Day The Earth Stood Still (again, the original), The Haunting, The Sound of Music, and The Andromeda Strain.

Truthfully, he was an inspired choice to direct Star Trek: The Motion Picture -or any picture, for that matter- given his works in so many different genres and styles.

Here’s the movie’s original trailer:

Alas, when it was released in 1979, I recall the reactions to it were mostly negative. More than one critic made fun of the film’s name, re-dubbing the movie Star Trek: The Motionless Picture, and many felt it was too slow going and didn’t really have much of a payoff.

What was learned over time was that Robert Wise and company were on a very tight -too tight- deadline and were rushed into releasing the film to theaters by December of 1979 to try to take advantage of the vacation time. Worse, when the film was shown on TV more scenes were added to it, sometimes with incomplete effects, and it was quite clear the film as it was released to theaters was, at best, a not quite complete work in progress.

Many years later and in 2001 a “Director’s Cut” of the film, supervised by Mr. Wise, would be released and I felt at the time that it was a much “smoother” work which made the movie move much better than the theatrical cut. Unfortunately, that edition was released just before the advent of high definition video and, since then, it hasn’t been available except for the original DVD. That will change as a new, 4K edition of this version of the film is set to be released very soon.

It was that news which got me curious to revisit Star Trek: The Motion Picture and, as I was set to do some flying (its become my life of late), I took my VUDU digital copy of the theatrical cut of the film and loaded it up to my iPad and, once in flight, watched the theatrical cut of the film for the first time in many, many years.

And I must say: The movie worked a lot better than I remembered, though I’m still curious to revisit the Director’s Cut (I do have the original DVD but would rather wait to see the new HD version).

Even more interesting is that it occurred to me that of all the characters shown on screen, TV or movies, William Shatner’s Captain Kirk is probably the only one who has been shown through almost all stages of life.

Sorry for the mild deviation in reviewing the film, but its fascinating to me that in the original TV show you had the young, clever, brash Captain Kirk. He was the adventurer, the risk taker, yet clever enough to find intelligent ways, especially with the help of Spock and Dr. McCoy, out of danger. He could fight, he could love. He was young and full of energy.

The Captain Kirk we see in The Motion Picture is older but still young enough to have many of the elements that made his younger self tick present. He takes over the Enterprise and steps on toes but is smart enough to realize he isn’t infallible and does take others’ advice. This is indeed an older Kirk, but a Kirk who could still kick ass and romance the ladies, I suppose, though in the course of this film he isn’t shown to do either.

For the next film, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, we have a Captain Kirk who realizes he’s getting old and doesn’t like it one bit. He tries to fight age and feels melancholy about losing that youthful energy but, by the end of the film, has accepted that he has moved on into a new stage of his life.

In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the last to feature the original cast together, we have a Captain Kirk who has accepted he’s old and no longer looks back longingly to how he was when he was young.

Again, its a fascinating succession, from youth to older to older still and missing one’s youth to old and accepting it. I suppose one could add Star Trek Generations to this list to show his passing, but the execution (pardon the pun) of this was so terrible, IMHO, that I don’t really view the film as canon.

Anyway, returning to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, this film could well be the one that’s most like the original series. In fact, more than a few people noted the movie’s story bears more than a passing similarity to the original series’ episode The Changeling. Here’s the trailer for that episode:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZwU_6JluxKk

In The Changeling, the crew of the Enterprise encounters a robot named NOMAD which tries to understand these humans, who it feels are an infestation on the ship. In STTMP, we have a machine named V’ger who has a similar confusion regarding the ”carbon based units” aboard the machine, and the danger winds up being similar.

Watching the film and as I said above, I found myself surprisingly involved in it. No, its not perfect. I feel like despite the movie’s long runtime (this theatrical cut clocks in at 2 hours and 12 minutes) it didn’t focus nearly enough on the relationship between the three leads (Kirk, Spock, McCoy), and gave very short shrift to the ancillary characters (Uhura, Scotty, Chekhov, and Sulu).

It would have been nice to see them interact a little -lot!- more.

Worse, the film introduces two new characters in Stephen Collins’ Captain Decker and Persis Khambatta’s Ilea who, while not terrible, are also given much less to do than one would have liked.

And yes, the film doesn’t feature all that much ”action”, mostly the actors looking in wonder/mystified by what was happening before them (ie, in their own imagination as this would later involve effects work!).

And, not to knock someone for something he’s been knocked for too many times, but the film also features what is perhaps the nadir of William Shatner’s Kirk acting, his incredibly wooden reaction to two people dying in a transporter malfunction (go to 1:05 approximately)…

But setting aside the ”bad”, one can then focus on the good. The film features some terrific effects, especially in the Enterprise itself. The music is spectacular. And it’s a freaking blast to see a still fairly youngish cast interact with each other and deal with a mystery -and tension involved in this- which is fairly well handled.

The film may not soar or have the intense action that can take your breath away, but it is a great way to rejoin old friends.

I highly recommend the theatrical cut of the film, warts and all, to any and all Star Trek fans.

And I really look forward to seeing the remastered Director’s Cut…!

Movies

Death on the Nile (2022) A (mildly) belated review

There are films you see that stick with you a lifetime, for better or worse.  Films that touch your soul or blow you away so completely you can’t help but remember them.  There are films that go the exact opposite way, and maybe are so awful to you that you can’t help but remember them, even if it is for all the wrong reasons. Still others are mediocre and forgettable, neither terribly good nor terribly bad yet don’t have much impact on you.

There are still others that are perfectly enjoyable the moment you see them -good even!- yet do not linger in your mind.  Disposable entertainment, I suppose, which don’t offer much beyond what enjoyment you get from them at that moment.

Which brings us to Death On The Nile, the second -and much delayed- Kenneth Branagh directed and starring murder mystery featuring acclaimed author Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot.

I enjoyed Murder on the Orient Express (2017), Mr. Branagh’s first go at Christie’s books, though I wouldn’t say it totally captivated me.  Branagh was decent in the titular role though, from photographs presented before the film’s release, his mustache seemed awfully overdone and, physically, he just didn’t seem to me to have Poirot’s darker and dumpier “look”.

Yet the film was fine, I felt, and I was looking forward to Death On The Nile.  Because of COVID, the film, like many others made in the past couple of years, had a very long delay before being released. During that time, unfortunately, a few of the actors involved in the production had certain personal… issues… which may have created considerable headaches to the movie’s producers.  Of course, I’m referring to Armie Hammer (the issues around him are truly bizarre), Russel Brand (of late he seems to have become a COVID “truther”), and Letitia Wright (who had made some news regarding vaccines and COVID as well).

Yikes.

Anyway, Agatha Christie’s book was adapted before in 1978 and featured a murderer’s row of great actors (including Peter Ustinov in the Poirot role) but I honestly didn’t recall all that much of the film other than the ending was rather hard to grasp for my younger -perhaps too young- mind. Here’s that version’s trailer:

This time around the story was relatively easy to follow, involving Gal (Wonder Woman) Gadot’s Uber-rich (and sexually loose) Linette Ridgeway becoming involved with and marrying Armie Hammer’s Simon Doyle despite the fact that he was first engaged to Ridgeway’s long time friend, Emma Makey’s Jaqueline de Bellford and essentially stole him from her.

Jaqueline, we find, keeps showing up at events and parties Linette and Simon are at, and this creeps out the newlyweds out. While they try to party in Egypt for their honeymoon, she again shows up and the two decide to try to ditch her by taking a private cruise down the Nile accompanied only by their closest friends.  Hercule Poirot is there as well and, we’ll find, for good reasons, but is also recruited by Linette because she fears something will happen to her.

Well, they didn’t call the story Death On The Nile for nothing, baby.

Here’s the new 2022 version’s trailer:

I don’t want to get into too many spoilers here but what immediately struck me about watching Death On The Nile is that it’s a subtle variation on Christie’s two better known novels: And Then There Were None and Murder On The Orient Express.

In the case of Death On The Nile, instead of a train going through a snowy landscape or being stuck on an island, you have your characters on a boat traveling the Nile.  You have a cast of suspicious characters, all of whom had the potential to be the one who killed our ill-fated victim, and you have Poirot watching and analyzing everything before coming to his conclusion.

Death On The Nile does feature more victims than Murder On The Orient Express, and Branagh both as director and actor appears more comfortable in his dual roles, delivering what I felt was a satisfying tale.  It was a little slow at times and perhaps a little silly (there’s an opening bit which tells us why Poirot has that ridiculous -at least in the movie version- mustache which is, as far as I know, an invention of this film and nothing Agatha Christie ever did in her novels).  There are a couple of sequences that perhaps could have been trimmed here and there and, alas, despite having some very good actors involved, there are a few who don’t have all that much to do but look shocked or surprised or appear to be having fun partying 1937 style.

Which brings me to what I mentioned waaaaay up there about the different types of films, both great, terrible, and… disposable.

Death On The Nile is, unfortunately, a film that falls in the later category.  It is a perfectly enjoyable work, in my opinion, yet one that doesn’t linger very long on the mind.

I literally saw the film only a couple of days ago -the first film I have gone to see in a theater since COVID began!- and today, a few days later and with time on my hands to write a blog entry, it quite literally took me a few moments to remember that was the film I had just seen…!

I don’t believe I’m losing my mind (though considering all the family and I have been through in the recent past it’s a wonder we haven’t) but it just goes to show how little this film impacted me beyond the enjoyment I had watching it.

Still, I do recommend the film, especially to those who enjoyed Murder On The Orient Express.  It is a well done work which features some nice scenery (albeit much is CGI) and a murder mystery that is satisfying in its resolution.

Just don’t expect to be blown away by it.

Movies

The Suicide Squad (2021) a (very mildly) belated review

I’m sure just about everyone knows about this film. Still, for those few who don’t, here’s the trailer:

Written and directed by James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy), The Suicide Squad can be viewed as a sequel to the 2016 David Ayer directed film in that several cast members return for this “new” mission.

Prominent among them is Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) and Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) while Idris Elba plays Bloodsport, a character who in most ways (at least in this movie version) appears to be a substitute for Will Smith’s Deadshot. (Note: Both Deadshot and Bloodsport are indeed DC comic characters but, at least IMHO, there was little attempt to make Bloodsport all that different from the screen version of Deadshot).

Anyway, there’s another “suicide” mission for them to engage in, involving a coup in the fictional island of Corto Maltese (for extreme comic book fans, the island nation was first referenced in Frank Miller’s Dark Knight comics and the name was based on a popular -and IMHO quite excellent- European comic book of the same name written and illustrated by Hugo Pratt)…

Corto Maltese GN (1986-1988 NBM) comic books

The original Suicide Squad film was mostly derided. It was heavily tampered with by the studio (director David Ayer claims there is a “Ayer Cut” of the film in existence, but unlike Zack Snyder, he doesn’t appear to have the fanbase necessary to get this movie released, as opposed to the recent release of Snyder’s Justice League). Nonetheless, the film did introduce the world to Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn and I suppose did well enough for Warners to green light James Gunn’s version of the film.

The film is quite violent but for the most part humorous, not taking the multiple -and often quite graphic- deaths all that seriously and… I dunno. I had problems with Mr. Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy because he did something similar there, trying to inject humor when the body count is incredibly high and its something that has rubbed me the wrong way about his works.

That’s just me, though.

The film worked in spurts, introducing a mostly new group of “villains” on their mission.

Perhaps most prominent among the mostly new cast is John Cena’s Peacemaker, who as most out there know went on to appear in a HBO Max series featuring his character. Sadly, the character isn’t anything like the original Charlton Comics incarnation of the character…

The Peacemaker v3 #2 - Kindle edition by Charlton Comics. Reference Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
I bought this comic waaaaaaay back when it was originally released and still have it boxed up somewhere in my collection!

Having said that, the reality is that the original version of Peacemaker lasted only a few issues before being cancelled and since DC comics bought the Charlton characters they’ve had him appear as more of a lunatic, which I suppose is what Gunn sorta/kinda was going for. I’m a few episodes into the HBO Max Peacemaker series and I have to say -SPOILERS!- I like it more overall than The Suicide Squad film. Further, Cena’s Peacemaker is much different in the show versus what he was in the movie, where he was basically a one-note moron who said a few inappropriate things before revealing what he was about in the movie’s climax.

I’ve written a lot and I suppose the bottom line for me is the movie is a decent enough time killer. Funny in spots, excessively bloody at times, but entertaining enough even if it never totally “wowed” me.

However, there is one element of the movie that affected me in a very negative way and… it’s quite personal.

The movie’s climax involves a lot of buildings being destroyed and falling to the ground and, while The Suicide Squad is far from the first film to feature such destruction (see the Godzilla films, for instance), it was the first such film I saw after what happened at Champlain Towers and the loss of my parents.

I don’t want to keep delving into this particular tragedy but in watching those last minutes of The Suicide Squad, I started feeling uncomfortable. Anxious, in fact. And I realized right away watching this destruction was taking me back to that tragedy. In a way, it was like getting a minor case of PTSD and… I didn’t like it.

Again, I know this is unique to me and I doubt many others will feel this.

But it is a scar I bear and one that, clearly, is a long way from healing.

Movies

The Chosen (1977) a (…huh…what?!) Belated Review

First, sorry for the dearth of posts. New Year’s been incredibly busy for me and, well, time to hang around here’s been too short.

I’ll try better!

Now then, The Chosen.

Never heard of this film? You’re probably in pretty good company. Here’s the movie’s trailer:

It’s no exaggeration to say I likely saw this film in/around the time it was first released, ie circa 1977 (the above trailer says 1978, but everywhere else I see the earlier year listed but… whatever!). It was the first, and only, time I saw the film and I recalled two things about it, specifically, which I’ll get into in a moment, and neither of them was the fact that the film starred Kirk Douglas….!

Yes, I was a very young movie watcher back then, and I had no idea about who Kirk Douglas was, though in time I would come to be a fan.

But let’s back up a moment.

If you’re an old fart like me and you remember the 1970’s, it was a wild time. The hippie movement was ending and new interests emerged. There was a fascination, I remember, with “mysteries”, be they things like UFOs or Bigfoot (those who lived through that decade surely remember The Six Million Dollar Man going up against Bigfoot…right?)…

Meanwhile there were a slew of books exploring all these various mysteries, spreading out into the idea that perhaps aliens visited the Earth years before and left behind evidence of doing so (Chariots of the Gods?) and the weird mystery of the Bermuda Triangle.

The UFO interest would eventually lead to a young Steven Spielberg making Close Encounters of the Third Kind while demonic possession -another of those areas of mystery and interest, would lead to The Exorcist (1973).

In a way, the success of The Exorcist would have far reaching impacts, even to today. It is my feeling the film inspired the movie studios to make The Omen, (1976) another demonic possession -in this case, quite literally the anti-Christ- to be made. That movie’s success would lead the father son duo of Alexander and Illya Salkind to seek out that movie’s director, Richard Donner, to direct their Superman movie, and its arguable that this film’s success would lead to the current glut of superhero films we have today (Marvel movie overlord Kevin Feige has stated the first Superman film is the one they emulate with their Marvel films!).

Hot off the heels of the release of The Omen, Italian director Alberto De Martino, known mostly for creating movies which were… ahem… inspired by other films (he would jump on any popular genre), would quickly get a crew and cast together and make The Chosen, aka Holocaust 2000.

While it may seem incredible they got Kirk Douglas to play in the film, the fact of the matter is that by the 1970’s these old guard “golden era” Hollywood actors were getting rather old and I suspect getting starring roles in theatrical films was becoming increasingly difficult.

Thus, Gregory Peck would appear in The Omen and Kirk Douglas, no doubt looking for a hit and not adverse to taking on the job, would play the lead in The Chosen.

Both Peck’s character and Douglas’ are similar from both films, as is the general plot: The anti-Christ is out there and our hero, a well-healed industrialist, slowly comes to the realization that the villain is near… even as those around him die in sometimes very creative ways.

In fact, the two things I recalled about The Chosen after all these years were the two most “creative” deaths presented in the film, one involving a helicopter blade and the other a wood panel.

But… what about the rest of the film?

You know… its not too bad, considering its a rip off of The Omen, which is overall a far, far better overall work, yet I’d be lying if I said it was some kind of lost treasure from the 70’s.

Douglas really gives the movie his all, doing some stuntwork on his own (you can see some of it in the trailer above) and that’s pretty impressive given he was around 61 years old when this film was made.

He also, for those who are really faint of heart, has a sequence involving a nightmare where he runs around a desert naked.

Yeah, could be one of the scarier sequences in the film! 😉

Still, I’ve seen far worse. The soundtrack, by the legendary Ennio Morricone, isn’t bad but neither is it among his most memorable. Further, the story is not without its strange hiccups, scenes where Douglas’ character seems convinced without a doubt he’s dealing with demonic matters only to then be convinced by some really lame dialogue from others that he’s being overly worried, where he laughs and slouches it off, only to again be hit in the face with undeniable evidence.

There’s also a sequence in the film that genuinely shocked me, but for other reasons.

MILD SPOILERS FOLLOW!

At one point in the film Douglas’ character and a Catholic Priest he’s been consulting become convinced the baby his girlfriend is carrying is the anti-Christ. So, naturally, they arrange to take her to a doctor, under the pretext of getting her checked up, but in reality they’ve arranged for… an abortion!!!!!

A Catholic Priest arranges an abortion?

What in the world?!?!

Anyway, as I said before, I’ve seen much worse in my time. Having said that, I doubt modern audiences will find much interest in this film. It’s mostly a slow moving feature that, while interesting here and there, simply doesn’t measure up to The Omen.

If you’re in the mood for some anti-Christ hijinks, that’s the film to watch. If you want more, you could do worse than giving The Chosen a spin.

Movies

The Matrix Resurrections (2021) a (Ringing In The New Year) Review

December 31st.

If you’ve read my posts ’round here, you know this has been a very bad year for me and my family. We’ve faced horror and tragedy above and beyond the COVID pandemic and that stuff is still being sorted out.

My wife was determined to stay awake past midnight, to effectively tell 2021 to go fuck off, before going to bed.

Me?

I used to be somewhat nocturnal, but nowadays it’s tough for me to stay awake much past 11 pm… if I get to that hour!

But much before we got to that time, I was alone and had nothing going on. The daughters were busy, the wife was (at the time) visiting the next door neighbor, and I was alone in the family room.

I knew The Matrix Resurrections was available via HBO Max. Now, its been a very long time since I’ve set foot in a movie theater… I’m hoping in the new year I get to finally go back… but for now, with the movie available for streaming, I figured I’d finally give it a look. Here’s the movie’s trailer:

I very much recall going to see the original The Matrix way back in 1999 and upon its initial release and being totally blown away by the film. Terrific action sequences and a truly mind-bending story. And the trio of Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Laurence Fishburne were at the top of their game, delivering the goods scene after scene.

What was there not to love?

Thing is, Lilly and Lana Wachowski, who directed The Matrix, would follow that terrific film with a string of others which… well… didn’t appeal to me that much.

Despite the wonderful spectacle, I wasn’t a big fan of the two follow up Matrix films, The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and The Matrix Revolutions (also 2003). Despite being a fan of the original Anime, I found it hard to watch more than 20 or so minutes of Speed Racer (2008). I have a digital copy of Cloud Atlas (2012) but haven’t had a chance to catch it as of yet, so I have no opinion on that film. What I saw of Jupiter Ascending (2015) seemed like more of the type of thing that had slowly turned me off of the Wachowskis and their films: Beautiful, in your face spectacle but a tough plot to follow and characters who didn’t appeal as much as I would have hoped.

Oh, and also, these films were all very long. I came away feeling like perhaps the Wachowskis could have used someone to edit the material down a little so that the stories had a better, stronger focus.

The bottom line is that as I sat in my living room yesterday on the last day of 2021 and with nothing else to do, I was somewhat hesitant to venture into The Matrix Resurrections.

Yet I did, and I’m rather glad I did so.

My verdict is that The Matrix Resurrections is a too long (not surprising) work that brings our older characters back (though Laurence Fishburne did not return this time around) for another round and while it may not be a great film, there is so much meat on the bone that I’m glad I went down this particular rabbit hole.

Having said that: I don’t feel I can recommend this film to everyone.

Looking around the internet and blog posts here and there, there are clearly many people who really hated the film. Still, over on rottentomatoes.com, the film has a “fresh” rating of 65% positive with critics and 64% positive with audiences.

But the film is bound to be divisive.

To begin with, the action sequences, while at times pretty well done, aren’t up there with the original film or even the sequels. I don’t know if its because so many years have passed but the action sequences never took my breath away.

However, the plot, involving the reconnection of Neo (Keanu Reeves, looking so much older than when he was last in the Matrix) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) was something that by the end had me genuinely near tears.

I just wish that they spent more time showing them together!

The story goes like this: Neo (Keanu Reeves) lives his boring, empty life working on video games. See, he created this great game several years ago called The Matrix and now the company, which is owned by Warner Brothers, wants a sequel.

Yes, the film is quite meta.

Neo, however, is deeply depressed. Perhaps even suicidal. He goes to a cafe to eat day after day and often sees Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) there buying a drink for herself. He pines for her, though he doesn’t know who she is and is too shy to introduce himself to her.

Eventually they do talk, and that opens the whole doorway into the film’s plot… and the machinations therein.

The film doesn’t move all that smoothly and there are moments where I could see people throwing their hands up and giving up. Things are often very weird and dragged out and, as I mentioned, the action sequences aren’t necessarily as good as some of the others we’ve seen from the Wachowskis (for the record, Lilly Wachowski bowed out of involvement in this film and her sister Lana is the sole director).

Still, if you stick around, you start to really get into Keanu Reeves’ Neo. This is a haunted man, one who knows a big part of himself is missing (could the meta storyline have something to do with Lilly Wachowski’s not returning to this film?) and he’s incredibly depressed about that… to the point where he’s considering suicide.

Granted, not the most fun stuff to watch for a potential blockbuster film, but the payoff is all that much stronger when it comes.

I doubt there will be another Matrix film, certainly by the Wachowskis. It feels Lana Wachowski took this opportunity and made a highly symbolic and very meta film about her current state of mind. If so, I hope she’s found her peace, just as Neo and Trinity appear to.

Yeah, it’s a tough film to recommend to everyone, but if you’re in the mood for a feature that doesn’t offer smarmy characters spouting smarmy dialogue, you may just find it worthwhile to take a dive into The Matrix Resurrections.

Movies

Shadow In The Cloud (2020) a (mildly) Belated Review

I saw the trailer to this film when it was originally released and, I must say, I was intrigued…

Not bad, right?

As with far too many films, I missed it upon its initial release (shortly, I believe, before COVID blew up) but the movie was on sale through VUDU and I picked it up and, a couple of days ago, the wife and I gave it a watch.

Afterwards, I asked her what she thought of it.

Not all that much, it turns out.

In fact, she thought it was beyond stupid, a film worthy of being presented on MST3K. A film that was dumb, dumb, dumb.

I could see where she was coming from.

But, I didn’t hate it quite as much.

Don’t get me wrong: The film was far from “great” and, if I were pressed to put it on a 4 star scale I’d likely give it two stars, perhaps 2 and 1/2 if I’m feeling charitable.

Even so, that’s for the entirety of the product. There were moments in this film that I thought were quite great… I just wish the film had been like that at all moments rather than at some.

Chloë Grace Moretz stars in the film as Maude Garrett, a mystery woman who appears with a strange case in arm at a foggy airfield. The eerie mood is already set in those opening minutes with odd 1980’s synth music (which I really enjoyed, being a fan of such music, but which some might find out of place in a film set in World War II).

She enters an aircraft with its all male personnel and presents papers which suggest she’s on a secret mission carrying a top secret cargo (in her case) which needs to reach its destination.

The all male crew isn’t too fond of bringing a woman on board. Reading here and there about the film afterwards, it seems some felt it was “insulting” to feature the all male crew as mostly hormonal savages in the presence of a woman. Given the epoch, I didn’t find it all that problematic, but there sure does seem to be some major sensitivity these days about how men are portrayed in film (see the recent, all female starring remake of Ghostbusters).

They force their unexpected passenger into the “bubble”, the lower machine gun turret under the aircraft and, because its such a tight fit, she is forced to give up her case, which she does to one of the crewmen who promises to watch it and not look inside, which she claims would be a court martial worthy offense.

This, I must say, is where the film really surprised and delighted me and I’m going to SPOIL things a little so, if you’re interested in seeing the film, I suggest you do so and come back afterwards to read the rest of the review.

In case you’re doing that, I’ll offer my bottom line about the film: I can’t necessarily offer an unqualified recommendation for Shadow in the Cloud. Though its a well done film with pretty good effects (some, alas, aren’t quite as good), it features an engaging hero in Moretz’s Garrett and some genuinely eerie and thrilling moments… which are unfortunately upended by a script that I suspect was being reworked considerably as the film was being made.

Still, if you want to see something really far outside the beaten path, you could do much worse.

All right then…

SPOILERS FOLLOW…!

So Garrett is sent into the bubble and, for the whole first half of the film, we as viewers are stuck there with her, isolated and alone, with only the radio communication with the other officers -which at first is incredibly crude on their part- as her only “company”.

Garrett spots a plane pacing them and, worse, a creature -a gremlin- that is on the plane itself, slowly ripping it apart.

These moments are the film’s most effective, where she tries to convince the rest of the crew that a) they may be followed by enemy Japanese aircraft and b) that this creature is ripping their ship apart.

Before Garrett finally leaves the bubble, the crew realizes what she’s carrying, which turns out to be her baby, and it further turns out that she’s running away from an abusive husband who may want to kill her as the baby isn’t his… but is the baby of one of the crewmen on this flight.

Now, I’m going to stop right there and say: That was a HUGE mistake, storywise, in my humble opinion.

Worse, it felt like it was something added to the script after the fact.

The Gremlin attacking the aircraft seemed to keep honing in on the case and baby, trying to take it for itself, which truly didn’t make a lot of sense. Did it know there was a baby within? Never made clear. But even if it did, why would it be so interested in it?

It felt like, to me anyway, that there was some other story element which was discarded regarding the case and its contents which linked the Gremlin more closely with wanting it and choosing to attack that particular aircraft, and I strongly suspect it had nothing to do with Garrett having a child and fleeing from an abusive husband.

The movie’s story, which takes elements from what is perhaps the most famous Twilight Zone episode Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (the one directed by Richard Donner and starring William Shatner, who sees a Gremlin on the airplane wing and freaks out trying to prove to the others in the aircraft they’re in danger) as well as the very first episode of Amazing Stories (which featured a crewman stuck in the bubble of an aircraft not unlike Garrett is and featured Kevin Costner and Keifer Sutherland in the cast) is credited to Max Landis who, shortly before the film’s release was accused of sexual and emotional abuse by eight women, has his name all but erased from the film’s actual credits (I honestly don’t recall seeing his name posted there, but I might have simply missed it).

What I do recall is that when the film was released the studio and stars made a point of noting that beyond the sale of the initial story, Max Landis wasn’t involved in the project at all, and the screenplay on IMDb is listed as being by Landis and director Roseanne Liang.

I have little doubt once the accusations against Landis were made public those in Hollywood made a great effort to distance themselves from him and I also strongly suspect Ms. Liang reworked the story/script quite a bit.

Unfortunately, and as I said above, we’re left with things that simply don’t connect well. The Gremlin which attacks is just there, without any real explanation or reason. He goes for the case carrying Garrett’s child “just because” and this too is presented without any real clear reason.

These things wind up hurting the film, which otherwise is not all that bad and is quite suspenseful at times.

In the end, I’m once again forced to say that a film that could have been quite good, which had plenty of ingredients, including generally good effects, a great lead/performance, and an intriguing initial premise, was undone by a script that needed a little more work, especially with regard to its reveals.

Which is just too bad.

Movies

Man That’s Brutal…

Back when I was very, very young, I stumbled upon this book…

Written by Harry and Michael Medved (Michael would go on to become yet another –yawn– of those pants-on-fire conservative commentator/extremists), the book was a hilarious look at some of the worst films which, to that date, had been released.

At least according to the Medved brothers.

The book was popular enough to merit a sequel…

…and it too was quite humorous.

I have to admit, though, over the years and as I’ve become a writer, I’ve grown to be… uncomfortable… with books like this, even though I can’t deny the humor of lambasting works which are so bad they deserve the treatment.

Why?

Because I’ve been on the proverbial “other side” and know that creating a work, any work, requires considerable effort and time and I know now that nobody sets out to make something truly awful… even if when all is said and done that’s what is indeed created.

Having said that and while I feel bad for those who worked to make something and failed, perhaps miserably so, it’s still undeniably funny to read a post ripping said project to pieces…

Which brings us to the matter at hand, Steven Lloyd Wilson’s review of the Bruce Willis film Survive The Game, another of Mr. Willis’ seemingly endless VOD releases he’s participated in.

Here’s the movie’s trailer:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=uMDaFlO_CZs

I’ve read here and there that Mr. Willis has gotten to the point in his career where he takes on these types of films because a) they involve no more than one day’s worth of work and he’s quite strict about leaving when his time is up (so the film’s makers often have him in a single room/set saying his lines, often without co-stars present all that much) and b) he’s paid for that one day’s worth of work somewhere in the range of one million dollars.

There are many such films listed on Mr. Willis’ IMDb page (check them out here). Currently he has an astonishing 13 films listed on his resume for 2021 alone and all of them, near as I can tell, are similar low budget VOD features like the one above.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s Mr. Steven Lloyd Wilson’s review of Survive The Game. It’s quite hilarious, in my humble opinion…

Is “Survive The Game” Part of “A Christmas Story” Cinematic Universe?

Give it a click. It’s worth the laughs, if not actually sitting down to watch the film!

Movies

The Case of the Curious Bride (1935) a (Ridiculously Belated, Your Honor!) Review

Despite its formulaic episodes, I happen to love the Raymond Burr Perry Mason TV show. Based on the very popular (and also formulaic!) novels by Erie Stanley Gardner, who could pump out a book a week it seemed, there was something grandly entertaining about seeing Raymond Burr’s Perry interact with a usually fascinating all star cast and solve a murder his client seemed to absolutely do and there was simply no way around it.

However, there were a series of Perry Mason films made well before Raymond Burr took to the television role and The Case of the Curious Bride is one of them.

Here’s the movie’s trailer:

One day while going over the latest movies offered on TCM, I spotted this film. Now, I haven’t seen a single non-Raymond Burr Perry Mason feature but this one really got my curiosity and for one reason and one reason only: It had a very early appearance of one Errol Flynn.

Don’t recognize the name? Welp, he was a very big action star, featured in such films as The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Sea Hawk, and Captain Blood. He was primarily known as a very handsome swashbuckler, and his personal ilfe… ho boy, that must have been something (he would die at the very young age of 50 in 1959, his hard living, hard drinking, and sexual adventures/misadventures having sapped the life out of him by that point).

But I was fascinated by the idea of seeing a very young, pre-fame Errol Flynn in a Perry Mason movie. Yeah, I was damned curious to see this!

Alas…

If you’re interested in seeing this film solely for Errol Flynn, be prepared to see him for a grand total of maybe two minutes (or less) of screen time. In fact, he doesn’t say a single line and shows up in a flashback toward the end of the film where its revealed how exactly he died.

Yep, he’s the film’s murder victim.

Having said that, The Case of the Curious Bride nonetheless proved to be a fun, if ultimately frivolous, mystery film. Warren William plays a decidedly theatrical Perry Mason, a man with food on his mind (!) who gets involved in a case involving an old female friend of his (played by Margaret Lindsay) who is now married but who had previously been married and -she thought- widowed. Only it turns out her previous husband is alive and blackmailing her (the role seemed to fit Errol Flynn to a tee, given his reputation outside the studio!).

Anyway, Perry, Della Street (a delightful Claire Dodd, who inhabits the role almost as well as Barbara Hale would in the Raymond Burr TV show), and personal P. I. “Sudsy” Drake (Allen Jenkins, putting on the ham in a big way… I much prefer William Hooper’s more serious Paul Drake from the TV show) get themselves chin deep in the case and figure out, by the end, whodunnit while their client comes very close to the electric chair.

Another element beyond the cameo by Errol Flynn that makes the movie notable is that it was directed by one Michael Curtiz, a workhorse of a director who, a few years later, directed this one little and almost forgotten film called Casablanca. He also directed several of the best known Errol Flynn films, including the aforementioned The Adventures of Robin Hood.

Yes, The Case of the Curious Bride isn’t a film destined to be remembered or admired but it is a fun little mystery with the added bonus of having two fascinating minutes featuring a pre-famous Errol Flynn directed by what would be one of his bigger collaborators in Michael Curtiz.

For those who find that alone fascinating, the movie is an easy recommendation.

Movies

The Thing (1982) A (Very) Belated Review

I’m a big fan of director/writer John Carpenter. One of my all time favorite films is the original Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), and feel Escape From New York (1981) is one of the most fascinating, original story concepts to make it to the screen.

The Thing, released in 1982, is considered by many John Carpenter fans to be his all time best film. Sadly, like too many of Mr. Carpenter’s films, it didn’t do well at the box office. In fact, it flopped, pretty hard, and audiences and critics weren’t all that impressed by it… at the time.

1982 was a wonderful year for movie releases (don’t believe me? Check it out here).

There are a wealth of great features released that year, but the biggest smash hit was Steve Spielberg’s E. T. The Extraterrestrial. There was also the release of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, perhaps the best of all the Star Trek films.

These two sci-fi classics were generally feel good films (even with the sad events at the end of STII). They were audience pleasers, through and through, and they did extremely well with audiences.

Which may explain why two other prominent science fiction films, Blade Runner and The Thing, didn’t do quite so well.

Both Blade Runner and The Thing presented more morose, not so crowd pleasant stories. In the case of Blade Runner, there was little action and plenty of self-introspection along with sticky questions regarding humanity. Sure, it presented a visually spectacular futuristic L.A., but one where people were down and out and audiences had little to actually cheer about.

With The Thing, we had a out-and-out horror story with some very gruesome effects and an ending which (MILD SPOILERS) is far from upbeat.

Yet if you’ve clicked on the list I presented of 1982 films, you’ll find both The Thing and Blade Runner at the top of the list, critically, and some of the bigger box-office successes lower.

Time has been kind to both movies.

Anyway, I have The Thing in multiple formats and recently upped the digital copy quality to UHD and decided to give the movie another look. It had been years since I’d seen it start to end, and I was curious how I’d feel about it.

Because unlike many, I feel the film has some pretty serious flaws.

Don’t get me wrong: I think its overall a pretty damn good film and the special effects, even for today, are jaw dropping. But I felt the film wasn’t as suspenseful as Assault on Precinct 13 or as clever as Escape From New York.

Seeing the film again, I wondered: Would my opinion change?

Alas, it didn’t.

Again: I think the film is quite good and deserves all the lavish praise its gotten.

However, by leaning so heavily into the at times superb grotesque effects and presenting characters who, IMHO, were pretty one note, the film to me failed to create a more suspenseful mood.

For example, the very first time we see the Thing in action, he’s with the other dogs in the kennel. The scene is a wonder of practical effects, but I wonder if it might have been more effective, a la Jaws, to hint at what grotesque things are happening through the dogs barking and moving about and us hearing these strange ripping sounds. We could have had everything there with a more shadowy presentation, leaving the first “big” showcase of the Thing being the “heart attack” scene.

But that’s just me and I know there are those who love all the effects work.

As for the characters, the “hero” of the piece, Kurt Russell’s MacReady, is the hero by virtue of the fact that he’s Kurt freaking Russell and I didn’t feel there was a sense that he was necessarily more competent than the others. True he’s in the middle of all the major set-pieces (as he should be!), but that just further showed how the others were mostly window dressing and/or victims to be. Keith David’s Childs, for example, the secondary protagonist of the piece, in the end does very little in the film but because he’s one of the “survivors” (maybe!) at the end, he’s raised in importance in retrospect.

I know it sounds like I’m sour on the film, but I’m truly trying to present the reasons why I feel that the film is quite good, it doesn’t -for me- rise to the level of some of Carpenter’s greater works (all IMHO!)

In the end, my opinion of The Thing remained roughly the same upon watching it again after several years. If I were to put the film on a star system, it would easily merit 3 stars out of 4.

At least for me, The Thing doesn’t quite hit the suspenseful highs of some other Carpenter films.

And that, of course, is just me.