Mirror 4 Reflections

This is as far as the series got... how did it get this far?

A young woman and her beau go to a derelict warehouse and a crazy cleaner lady (their words) uncovers a mirror, is killed, and somehow the beau is kidnapped or something? Later, she and her "friends" are in the warehouse because... that's where the movie is, and then we get a low scale haunted house scenario that accidentally includes a mirror. The young lady lives because... she's the main protagonist?

Yeah, this is nothing to get excited about, with one of the more disconnected mirror appearances in the series, it's just there, no-one is otherwise fascinated by it or anything. The movie then happens, with surprises involving such things as... people being around. Spooky!

Billy Drago is the repeat actor this time, but I can't say I recognise anyone else. There are one or two moments of actually decent effects (even for the time), so that's were the budget went.

If you do feel like watching this series, for some reason, don't feel like you need to watch them in order because there is no connection between any of them... or, more simply, don't watch any of them.

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Mirror 3 Voyeur

More Mirror, More Irrelevant Side Plots.

We start with Anthony having dream sex with Cassandra... get used to that, the ladies in this movie didn't get great contracts (I'm guessing) so there's a lot of sex with breasts on display. At the same time, Cassandra is casting a spell or something with the mirror that leads to something with mobsters and Mexicans and the police and... I have no idea. It wasn't worth paying that much attention, and to be honest that sub plot doesn't really go anywhere. Not that the main plot does much better. Anthony turns up at the ex-mobster's house, and finds a mirror and that inspires him to have more sex with Cassandra, and Carolyn is also involved. Cassandra doesn't like Carolyn, so does a long play in which Carolyn ends up injured/dead?, with means that Anthony ends up in the mirror and Joey is dead. Who are any of these people? It doesn't matter.

The "mirror" as such is a winner here, and has a lot more to do with the movie than the previous one. There is that, I suppose. The whole detective subplot could easily be removed, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was imported from some other script, they are so disconnected.

Actors wise, we have Billy Drago, an actor I haven't heard of in a long hot minute. We also get Mark Ruffalo back, playing someone else, but it isn't the first time this series has done that. We have Monique Parent and Elizabeth Baldwin as the women with the bad contracts, but they are fine.

This movie would be luck to be "straight to dollar bin".

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Mirror 2 Raven

Finally watching more in the Mirror Mirror series... such as it is.

Marley is a young woman in a convent, placed there by her elder sister by another mother, who wants control of Marley's assets, and so it going to extreme lengths to make it happen. Unfortunately, Marley finds a large Mirror that finally does something in the last fifteen minutes of the movie to actually be supernatural.

So there are two stories, one with trying to gaslight Marley, the other with the mirror that in many way reflects (sic) the mirror story of the first movie, in which the mirror is there until it does something. That said, the main storyline is amusing enough to watch, with Roddy McDowall as a creepy doctor, and Veronica Cartwright pretending to be the hook to the mirror side of things. And hey, this movie's big point: the debut of one Mark Ruffalo!

I'm not sure anyone is desperate to watch this, but if they are... I can't imagine why.

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Blacked Bagged

Spy thriller from Steven Soderbergh.. all right.

George is tagged to find out what happened to Severus which is a MacGuffin that can do a thing, doesn't matter. There are a number of suspects, one of which includes his wife. There are plans and machinations all over the place, and all sorts of things will be revealed as the plans come to light.

This was... very pat. Almost immediately people jump to the right conclusions, and already know a lot of information before the audience knows it... which kind of makes it one of them terrible murder mysteries when you find out there was a hidden marriage that the detective reveals in the final scene that would have solved everything... thanks Christie for that! Not that there is a hidden marriage here, but George certainly knows a lot more than he ever reveals except at the moment when it is useful for him, so the audience is definitely lagging behind.

But hey, this has Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett! Great performances, but not really stretching their acting muscles here, given every character is "reserved and cool". And there's a cameo from Pierce Brosnan, which automatically adds ten points to the score.

Not terrible, but rather stilted and more than a little up itself.

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Boiled Point

What's a good movie to watch on a plane? A one take movie about a chef and his restaurant on the brink.

We are following chef Andy Jones dealing with his restaurant, which, while seemingly popular, is running into problems with staff and stock, and trying to keep up with what the house staff are dealing with while also dealing with their own problems. This comes to the head at various moments in the movie (the movie is well named) with various sub plots, with a few key pieces that go off and suggest that the restaurant might not survive too well. And we end on a note of... I'm not entirely sure, but it's not good.

This is an intense character piece of putting a bunch of characters in one location, and then let them go. We follow various plots, and I assume this was one take? So yes, it could have been a play, but it feels like some parts of the story are there just to give the main cast a breather from being on screen. I do also question about how the restaurant itself manages to work with the work flow we see, but that's the buy in of watching a movie.

I'm gonna give a large round of applause to all the cast. There are the people you know, but all of them give good performances, making the whole movie enjoyable.

And watching it on a plane is fine! Although your preferences may differ.

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What Fresh Hell is this?

There's a set of three movies under "Fresh Hell Presents", so let's see what they presents!

Dead Teenagers: Five teenagers at a lake. Murderer around. You've heard it all before right? But what if one of the characters finds a few odd things. Like a light stand... or a script. And what if the movie doesn't go exactly according to the script, so the movie has trouble happening. What do you do then? Take over being the writer? Or do whatever it takes to make it out alive?

I can see what they are doing here, but there are large slabs where everyone can see what is going on so we are all waiting on the movie to get to the next part. It's an otherwise tight script, only 80 minutes, but the last 20 minutes are rushed, after the prevous 40 minutes taking too long to get there. I guess the acting is fine, but no particular standouts.

Wolves Against the World: Two band members were heavily into being Nazis back in the day with a third member, who died. (According to the IMDB summary we were supposed to think he committed suicide, but later find out he was killed by one of the band members... I never got that, I entirely assumed he was killed.) They get back together as the one that tried to get clean is trying to get money from his friend that didn't.. and we get deep into heavily Semetic things, and an "occult battle of wills"... again that is from the IMDB.

No, what we get is two ex friends trying to be friends again, but finding out one friend is full on psycho Nazi and I think the movie is trying to end on the "good" one taking out the "bad" one? Which is not occult, no matter what contacts they put on the bad guy to make us think of actual werewolves. I note that the script writer is the "bad" guy, so yeah, if you write a piece of shit, you play the piece of shit, otherwise don't write that.

The Exorcism of Saint Patrick: A pastor takes a gay young man out to a faraway cabin to deconvert him from being gay. It doesn't go well, and after 60 of the 90 minutes, the gay kid finally kills himself. The pastor is somewhat accused, but keeps away... but then undergoes severe guilt and kills himself (or what it demons or ghosts?).

This could have been something, but spends most of the time showing how terrible gay conversion is. Then punishes the pastor. And... there isn't much else to it really.

There is some connective tissue between the movies, reused locations, and a bit with a buried cable, but mostly this is writer/director Quinn Armstrong doing some movies. And so I guess he did that.

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Cleanup

Why did I watch this? Oh, Daisy Ridley!

Joey is a cleaner, but the movie takes twenty minutes to get to it. First she has to be very late for her job, and deal with her brother, who has autism. [I will not addess the autism representation in this movie, I will leave that for others.] But eventually she gets to window cleaning on the outside of a high rise building... and then the movie finally starts when activists take rich people hostage, and threaten to expose their secrets. Can Joey survive a) being outside, b) the activists, c) her brother's autism, and d) the police who are policing all over the place.

Die Hard anyone? But what if... John McClane was a woman?? She doesn't make fists with her feet, but she does have several problems. Like a script that takes a long time to actually get going, and then spends a huge amount of time not actually having the hero do anything until the final act of the movie.

Barely over 90 minutes, this is a cut rate version of an action movie, and did this get a commercial release? Didn't deserve it.

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The Mooonkeee

Oh... oh no....

So there's a toy monkey drummer thing... wind it up and... someone dies. A lot. Violently. Like a comedy horror amount of death. It starts at the toy of two boys, and then they have to deal with it as adults. Something something dealing with life, accidents, and death, and what does that mean, and also comedy deaths.

This is a "black" comedy, which I have a bad track record with. It's either comedy so esoteric you can only tell it's supposed to be funny in hindsight. Or... it's just really bad comedy "but that's all right, because it's supposed to be 'black' comedy!" No, that's not a good excuse for bad comedy, and this is comedy that thinks it's funny, but it really isn't.

Not bad performances, with Theo James doing double work as twins, but you can easily tell who is who as one of them wears glasses. Colin O'Brien isn't terrible as the young punk kid, and hey, that's an Elijah Wood cameo!

The effects look fine, the film clearly enjoys showing splatter and gore, but... it again wants to be comedy splatter and gore, but no, just no.

This isn't a terrible movie. It's just not a good one.

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Les glaneurs et la glaneuse

"Gleaning" is the act of picking up what has been left behind. Usually relating to harvets, but...

We start with the field gleaners, who get potatoes and other crops, left behind after the harvest. Previously they were the harvesters, but with machines doing that job, they are left with the leftovers. And given that machines can only do so much, there is a fair bit to gather. But what can be gleaned there is restricted by the law, so are they breaking it or not? And not just vegetables, but also grapes, apples, other items... But then, on the streets of Paris, what is left behind can be after shops close, after people leave items to be picked up by the garbage men, that is also "gleaned".

Agnes Varda presents a documentary about gleaners, and even gleans herself. She isn't shy about putting herself into the movie if that's what the moment calls for, but we mainly follow people she interviews as they glean for their living. Nowadays this might be called "Freeganism" but back in 2000 (when this movie was made) and in France, it isn't called anything so sexy, and is mainly about people trying to live their lives. (Although there are those who also refuse to take part in "normal society" and scavange.)

According to the law, people are allowed to glean in the fields after harvest, as long as they respect the owners and meet conditions on when, and in the city they can glean because people have discarded/given up their ownership.

And it makes you wonder what you've thrown away that people could still use.

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THE boogermans

What if, get this, trauma was an actual monster?

A family has a dead mother (what is this, Disney?) and the father isn't really opening up with the two sisters. After a visit from a horror movie infector, the sisters start getting the idea that there is an actual monster, with the younger sister being targetted first. After nearly killing the monster, the older sister gets the idea "hey, what if we kill it?" and they all come together to believe in their dead mother to help with beating the monster's ass. And of course, it is totally dead and not coming back...

Yeah, there is nothing notable here, this movie is as generic as I made it sound. Sohpie Thatcher is a lead sister, and hey, that's a cameo by David Dastmalchian! The monster itself is hidden in darkness, which just makes it hard to tell if it is scary or not. The "eating" effect has hints of being interesting, but doesn't fit with the rest of the esthetic.

This has a polish of current horror movie production-wise, but doesn't strive for anything more.

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