Where He Invaded Next

Michael Moore does a lot of documentaries, but I wasn't aware of this one.

Michael is thinking there are some good ideas in countries in Europe that America should adopt, and so heads overseas to check them out. In Italy he sees the idea of the paid vacations, in Finland, the idea of no homework, and other ideas in other places. These are all great ideas and America should take them on board (he "invades" the country to take the idea back). Except then he shows that these were American ideas all along...

Certainly there is a lot less political discussions that in his previous movies. In some ways, this is just a nice tour of European cities (he does point out there are problems in these countries, but he's focusing on the good things). Yes, there are a few moments when you go "this works really well, why the hell isn't everyone doing this?", but mostly it comes down to treating people decently. Which sounds simple, but is painted as something America just doesn't want to do. (I said this wasn't all political, not that it was unbiased.)

A rather basic documentary, which I found out about because of another documentary he's doing.

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Never Go Jack

It's the latest attempt to pretend Tom Cruise is over 6 foot and 200 pounds!

Jack hits it off over the phone with the new female leader of the Military Police (a role he had), so heads to base to check her out. Just, as it happens, she's been caught up in a smear campaign to get MPs out of the way of shady non-military dealings. As part of this, Jack finds out he has a daughter, and she is also caught up.

On the one hand, this is pretty much in line with the book. At least, as far as I can remember it. I feel like I now need to relisten to the audio to find out how Lee laid it all out, because... on the other hand, this feels very choppy. Jack finds out he has a daughter... cut to him watching her. What? How did he trace her so easily? It's a thing in the book, and just jumped over here. Along with many other plot moments, because you need to get to the significant scenes, which involve the two leads yelling at each other or the fighting.

And speaking of that... no, I can't buy Tom as Jack in these fights. I can buy Tom as Tom in these fights, and they are scaled for him, but for a big beefy guy that Jack is supposed to be? Those fights would not go like that. And Cobie Smulders gets decent action pieces too, although there is one moment which definitely demonstrates that you shouldn't have a ponytail. The drama between them... isn't bad, but I believe Cobie more than Tom.

I still feel that Dwayne Johnson would make a better Jack, but as long as you can tolerate Tom in the role, this... is just a barely above average movie.

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Chef: Pressssure Cooooker

At Frankford High, Wilma Stephenson teaches a touch culinary arts class, and this is one year with them.

Wilma is immediately presented as touch as nails, and she lives up to it too. We also meet several of the students and go into their lives. We follow them through school and eventually to them trying to get culinary scholarships (which you can already tell not all of them are going to get, because this isn't that sort of documentary). We see the students cooking and the students trying to get by in the rest of their lives. They all have a story, we get it and the cooking.

I'm not sure if the maker of this documentary was very cynical or very passionate. My cynical sense says "hey, here's a group of black kids with trouble stories, trying to do good, easy documentary!". This film feels over padded, with too much focus on the students. But I'm not sure if that comes from "I care about these kids so much I want to put in as much of them as possible" or "I don't care about this, so just shove all the footage into it." Either way, this should have had a more strict editors.

But this is about the cooking and the kids and Wilma. We get that Wilma is tough because she cares, and in the end the kids do their best to live up to her and to themselves. And although only some of them were "good enough" for scholarships, for damn sure, they'll be better and more dedicated to what they are doing than I'll ever be.

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Red Dwarf 11.3,11.4

Okay, where to now?

Give and Take: Uh, the main joke in this episode relies on them never seeing what is on the back of the bot, despite approaching it from behind! Gah! Soo stupid! And then there's the science ship with crazed doctor (Quarantine) and going back through time in a stasis field (Stasis Leak), are we just ripping off all the episodes now? But the very worst thing is that this involves a time paradox which is carefully set up to be consistent from the start of the episode but breaks down at less than a moments notice. (In white text: Lister has his past kidneys removed to replace his current lack of kidneys... which couldn't have then been taken out by the doctor bot!) And Kryten's lying mode reminded me of Arkwright.

Officer Rimmer: Rimmer gets to be an officer! It feels like this is from elsewhere, but I can't think of where immediately. Aside from being an ass, Rimmer gets to make multiple copies of himself... hang on (sigh), Rimmerworld. And then it goes wrong and you can pick on either DNA or Polymorph as other inspirations, with finally Rimmer needing to stop himself being eaten (white text: despite being a hologram unlike the copies!). This does have some rather naff effects, with the head error being just... ergh.

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Wuiga

The sequel is out, but I never saw the original. Didn't even know there was an original. So here it is!

Two girls play with a ouija board, and we cut to a grownup version... and you can tell she ain't got long for this movie. Indeed, I gave her five minutes and had thirty seconds spare. Her friends gather and one decides that the best idea is to use a ouija to contact her.  Guess how that goes! Can you tell which members of the cast of this movie are on the block to die next? Strange things happen, and then they find out that there were spookier things going on (which, I'm guessing, is the story of the prequel), Fortunately, they manage to deal with it... but unleash something worse. Yay!

There's nothing excitingly new here, and you can tell that the most when you can spot and time how long until people die. This is retreading familiar ground, and the ouija board is just feeding into the delusion of it actually does something. (They have a brief moment of skepticism, talking about the ideomotor effect, but it doesn't last). The effects are decently done, but again nothing special.

I can't say I'm surprised they turned this into a franchise, but it's not like it needed one.

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Eeeeeeeevil Dade

This is the remake I'm talking about here, and it's taken me this long to see it.

A group of kids go off to a cabin in the woods and get killed off one by one... hang on, that's a pretty common horror trope... but hang on further, was Evil Dead the first movie to do that? It can't be, right, but right this minute I can't think of an earlier one. [Ahem, Night of the Living Dead probably could be counted as a cabin where a group of people are killed off, but that's seen more as a zombie film than a cabin-killer film.] Anyway, this is a remake of that classic and...

Where's the humour? Not to say the first movie was side splittingly funny, but it didn't take itself seriously, whereas this movie is trying to most of the time, except for when it is doing deliberate nods to the original (hey, remember this bit? Pretty kooky huh!). Oh and they included the tree rape scene, because of course we needed that again.

Speaking of the cast... is anyone going to speak about this cast ever again? I can't say that I recognise any of them, but I presume at least some of them found work elsewhere? At least the effects team had a little fun, when there was the brief moments of evoking the original with the fountains of blood etc.

We didn't need a remake, and this wasn't a great one.

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Night of the Demon

Halloween night at the Film Society, so let's get a spook on: Night of the Demon.

It's a scientistic investigation into Karswell's Cult. The first one wants to get out after Karswell shows off the power, but is killed by the Demon... or was it just an accident? An American scientist, our male lead, turns up, along with our female lead, the first guy's niece. Karswell predicts his death, and together they do some investigation and she does what she can to get him some protection, but of course he's having none of it. In the last twenty minutes, we get the secret to survival and then it's a matter of how can that be pulled off?

Oh yeah, I like this. It's a good movie, very well done. Well, except the actual demon, but even the director didn't like it, and was forced to use it. Niall MacGinnis is great as Karswell, the very personal bad guy (he's even Bobo the clown, keeping the clown theme running).

It's 60 years old, but this is a classic.

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