88 Pulse

From back in the day... I went to see this with my dad! It was some treat or another, I think.

David is a kid of divorced parents (and his dad's remarried), and has come out to visit his dad. The neighbour had some weird things happen in his house, but surely that's unrelated. Unrelated, the electricity in his house is now sparking, rewiring tvs, and behaving kinda intelligent. The new wife is taken out, the dad tries to deal with it, then it's down to David and his dad to just survive.

This does have some neat effects, especially when the insides of the tv is rewiring itself. Solder gets heated up, flows, and rejoins circuits. Could that ever happen? Who cares! It looks cool. (My dad was an electrician, so I can only assume he treated this very incredulously.)

This movie is a stance against electrifying and connecting (with electricity) everything in the home. The heater, the gas pipes, the window bars, all controlled by electricity, and all prone to "accidents". I can only assume there's a version of this that is this exact movie with just AI controlling everything.

This has a wee Joey Lawrence as David, and playing the hard put upon father is.. Cliff De Young, who is playing every character Cliff De Young always plays. Roxanne Hart is the wife, and I'm sure I've see her in lots of things. Charles Tyner has a great turn as the Crazy Old Man Who Knows. And Joey's brother Matthew plays the kid that no-one else wants to play with.

This ain't a deep movie, but clearly I have an emotional connection with it. And the end credits ask you to ponder how the streets of the city are like the traces of the circuits board... I mean, they aren't really, but it almost makes you think.

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Kure

Another Japanese horror movie... that I'm sure I've seen before.

Mamiya doesn't remember anything, but as people talk to him, help him, he talks with them... and they go off and kill their spouse, work partner, whomstever. Chasing him down is Detective Takabe, but even capturing Mamiya doesn't stop the latter from doing horror. Indeed, in many ways, just makes it that much easier...

This reminds me of the later Exorcist movies. Mamiya definitely could be otherwise cast as the devil, talking to people and getting them to commit murder, while not doing so himself. Just out there, corrupting people. And eventually drives Takabe to the ultimate end, but corrupting him totally as he does so. From that perspective, this could easily fit into that series. Just humans coming up against something that exposes their "true selves"(*), and goes "you be like that."

(*) Given this is a horror movie, you can guess what is their "true selves" is.

Good movie, but it's not a happy one.

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Imageniry

Let end the year with some anime!

I recall at least one other movie about imaginary friends, but I think there were two, but I don't recall them being good... this one is better. Not great, but better. Rather than focus on the person imagining, this follows the imaginee, and the world they are in where they see other imaginary friends and help kids and such. However, how Rudger gets here is because his imanginer is in an accident due to a person eating imaginaries, so he must find a way back, if he can, and if he can avoid being eaten.

Fun is nearly the word, what with child in danger and such, but this isn't downbeat. It's intended to get at the heartstrings and is effective at that. That said, be prepared to be in the right mood to see this, as I can see people bouncing off this hard if they aren't.

It is on Netflix, but be careful of how much you enjoy subtitles with everything subs including "wind noises" and "exciting music."

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Megapolis

I will grant that this is the movie he wanted to make.

However, it is not a movie I have to like. If you want to make Shakespeare, make Shakespeare. If you want to make a period piece, make a period piece. If you want to make some vainglorous project that appeals to you alone, make this. This doesn't try for subtlety, but it does go for long drawn out pieces between the not-subtlety that make you check your watch to see how many hours have passed to only find out it has been ten minutes.

I'm sure a lot of the actors signed up because of the director, but when he makes a proud statement of hiring "problematic actors," they should have decided to think again.

Frankly, it got the reception it deserved.

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Rouge One

It's a Christmas movie, so I guess I better watch it for Christmas.

Blah blah Santa gets kidnapped, Dwayne Johnson gets him back, and Chris Evans learns to be a father. Lots of other people have talked about this, and the plot could be more basic, but it's pretty basic.

Instead I want to complain about things that we are supposed to ignore because "this is a movie in which Santa is an actual person".

How does commercialism work? Santa provides presents, so... what the heck are parents doing? But more presents? So kids get presents, but some get more because they are Nice? And where does those presents come from? Vampire Assassins 4 is a popular game, so... is Santa creating them ex nihlio? Taking them from the publishers? If the latter, do they still get money? Where does that come from? (Let alone Dwayne just straight up steals from a store later on... unless all toy stores are supposed to be Santa outposts? If you want to say things are better by positing a global network all run via Claus Inc...)

But hey, Chris Evans is a hacker, so can find Santa. And is jacked. Like he lives a terrible lifestyle, drinks and eats badly, but... is still pretty jacked, can fight a whole squad of people sent to grab him, or giant snowmen, and do all that without even raising a sweat. What?

How does the Naughty List work? Everyone who has ever been naughty is on the list including "jaywalkers" and "litterers". So... are we talking breaking extremely minute laws here? Does jusridiction count? Does morality trump the need for legality? And those are adult crimes, so at what age are people in the list? Any time? How many kids are "killers"? Do people themselves decide if they are naughty or nice? What about psychopaths?

Meanwhile Dwayne does all the right things, get the heroic moments, because that's what's in his contract.

What Christmas movie I would like to see is set on Boxing Day. Santa goes out and sees what his presents have done and... I dunno, but something should be done with that.

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Last Venom

We made it, one last dance to go.

Eddie is in Mexico, and decides to go back to America because he's in trouble and... the movie needs to happen. But there is an alien creature (I've already forgotten the name) that's after him for some macguffin that exists in him that can release the Final Fantasy villain, but the alien can only track him when he's in full symbiote mode. So Eddie goes into full symbiote mode and every opportunity, and eventually they end up at Area 51 where there are a lot of other symbiotes, and the second half of this movie is just one big extended CGI fight scene of symbiotes we don't know fighting that one creature until the movie ends.

As you might be able to guess, I wasn't that impressed by it. I'm sure there are some out there that deeply care about these characters, but the movie doesn't, and give very surface level characterisations. One guy is military, one guy is hippie dad, one woman is scientist because her brother died (this is the biggest character beat anyone gets), and one woman is there because... they need other people? Tom Hardy barely seems to interact with anyone, just schlubbing his way through the movie, which could be a deep character point about Eddie, but just comes across as him not caring about how he's on screen.

As I said, the second half is basically a CGI fest of a large number of symbiotes that no-one whos they are without a scorecard, and they don't stick around long enough to matter anyway. The big ending between Eddit and Venom is... what happens, but since they are an annoying pair, I'm not sad to see them go.

Apparently Sony is giving up on SPUMC, so there is a big likelihood we are done with these... until they are rebooted on screen again in the future.

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Pulsy

Japanese horror movie, why not?

So I had to look at a plot synopsys to fully get an idea of what is going on. Ghosts are invading the real world via the internet, it seems. Okay? We see people seeing creepy images of people on the computer, and then they go away (in various meanings of that term). It's all about being alone, and loneliness is death, so if you are alone, are you a ghost?

There was something bugging me as I watched this movie... that I felt like I'd seen it before. Certainly I could have, it is the sort of thing I would watch, and certain moments did feel very familiar. And then again, parts of this was completely unknown to me. Did I just remember the "good bits"? Did another movie do some of this and I'm remembering that? Any and all options are possible!

But this is very low key horror. Seeing where ghosts inhabit is enough to "infect" someone, so don't expect jump scares or anything. I like me some atmospheric horror, and Japanese horror does tend to be atmospheric, but this... this isn't that.

It's like Suicide Club in that this is likely saying something about how Japanese people see themselves as disconnected, but it comes across as very abstract.

There's an Americanised version in 2006 that I suspect is nowhere near as subtle.

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