Mr. Croket

Yes, okay "What if Mr Rogers, But Evil?" but... quite watchable!

Mr. Crocket is a children's entertainer, in that he entertains children. And cares for them. Like, if you are in trouble, he will help you. So if your parents aren't good to you, he will sort them out. And then you can stay with him forever! But, of course, the parents themselves might have a different view of that.

This is about the hardship of being a parent, you try, but sometimes you are pushed too far.. and then the system immediately punishes you. For some parents, that might be better, but there are a lot of people just trying. So while we see Mr. Crocket take out someone who deserves it, of course we are following someone who does actually care about her child.

Of note, these are black actors, so... I'm not sure how much of this is a black story. I'm not qualified to talk about that aspect, but in the general sense of "it can be tough to be a parent" I can understand that.

In many ways this is quite low budget, but it fits the story it is telling. It doesn't feel like it needs to go big with effects for the story, but what we get works well.

It's things like that that makes me sometimes try sub 90-minute movies.

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Mouthy Madness

Spooky month, so classic horrors to catch up, although may or may not blog them. But yes to this one from John Carpenter.

John Trent is a chap who finds people, or otherwise investigates them for insurance purposes. Now he is on the trail of the popular author Sutter Cane, with the aid of Linda Styles. They finally track him down to Hobbs End, and encounter some very strange people and events. And then can't leave. And then question the very nature of reality itself. No biggie.

Hey, Sam Neill! Well, that immediately gets bonus points from me. And the classy presence of David Warner... and the manic appearance of John Glover. And even Charlton Heston cameos.

The effects are pretty good as one would expect from Carpenter, but the unsettinglingness is from the nature of how people are acting rather than weird grotesqueries. Although the breathing wooden panel is a bit on the "too flexible to be real" side.

And the end... well, this is supposed to be Lovecraftian, but it is more "we are just going to give into the weird" rather than go for anything sensible.

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There was a Crooked film

This has gone through a few things, but since we all love Mike Mignola...

Back in 1959, Hellboy and Agent Jo ended up in Appalachia and get randomly caught up with witches an trying to deal with the Crooked Man. It's been years since I read the comic, so no idea how faithfully this follows that story. But there is one basic thing this movie does:

This feels like a fan film make by someone who cared way more about style over substance. Like, for every scene, the prime consideration was "where can I put the camera to make this an interesting (to me) shot"... and anything else, like coherent story telling, continuity, or making sure you can actually see what is going on, is at best fifth, if considered at all.

Jack Kasey is Hellboy and... he's fine? I guess? Definitely the fan film version of him. There are some perfectly fine performances in this all round, and the effects are fine as well. Just everything is fighting against the camera so it might be great but it's hard to tell.

This movie had the lowest budget, but since Mike Mignola didn't like the other movies, he apparently is on board for this? Let's go back to him not being involved.

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The Fle

Watch this movie to see something truely miraculous... Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis having sex.

A random scientist sort of hits on a woman at a conference, and reveals to her the existence of teleportation... but fails to realise she is a journalist. What a genius! A journalist with a really scummy ex-boyfriend at that. Anyway, they have sex, and as a result the scientist knows how to teleport flesh, and does so... and merges himself at a fly (which is the premise of the movie after all). It can only end in love and harmony, really.

Well, it actually ends with some decent creature effects, but that is far too late, and after a not so decent creature suit Jeff Goldblum wears. We're here for a mutant man/fly hybrid, not Jeff Goldblum'ing all over the place! And this movie is rather disjointed in that we speedrun to get to the teleport, speed run the romance, but then spend a long time on Jeff and his disgusting hairs.

Both Jeff and Geena are... in this movie. Neither of them really seems to be that invested. John Getz does get to be scummy in his role, but doesn't do a lot here either. Aside from the momentary creature effects, this movie doesn't bother being that interesting.

Really, this is making me want to watch the original... and hey, there's a sequel to this one as well.

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aifairaidai

The family gets a nanny, but this time we skip straight to the robot!

Curtis is basically in advertising, and two AI people want to promote their not-Alexa substitute Aia. To do so, Aia is installed in his home, and it goes about integrated with him, his wife, and his three kids. Aia doesn't so much "go evil" as just start taking over everything, and when Curtis realises that it's going too far, he tries to stop it. However, technology is everywhere...

Why does noone ever think of Rule 0? This isn't a matter of Aia wanting to preserve itself, that's barely an issue, although the movie does try to pretend that it is. It's about Aia taking control of everything, and how willingly people let Aia do it, regardless of the consequences (which Aia quickly turns into what it wants anyway).

This has some true to like aspects such as "we have no idea what data it was trained on," but we are still so far from how intelligent, artifical or not, this will be. Let alone recognising that when it is trained on the internet, it will watch movies about evil AI and thus that will be what is modeled. You get out what you put in, people!

This is under 90 minutes, which is usually a warning, but Blumhouse isn't known for its long epics. John Cho and Katherine Waterson are good in this, and hey, Riki Lindhome! The effects are... ai'd. This is basically an excuse for the movie to use AI to do things, but when you need to have actual images be generated, I suspect this was more crafted than generated.

This movie is largely what you expect from the premise, but the short run time helps it not outstay its welcome.

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Subservant

An old story, now with AI!

The wife is in hospital, needing a new heart, so the husband gets in a temporary nanny to help with the family. Only problem is, the nanny has designs on the husband, and starts taking steps too far to keep him happy.

Notice that I didn't mention the nanny is a robot? Because it doesn't matter! It's the same story with evil nanny as has been told before. That it has AI now it just because it's 2024 and everything has to have AI now.

Is this the adult version of M3GAN? Like M3GAN grown up? But without the tiktok dance. I'll let others pursue that line of questioning, but this definitely feels like it could be the same universe... and certainly the same set up for sequel potential movies.

Megan Fox is the draw here, and she certainly is in this. As is Michele Morrone. And I kept thinking Madeline Zima was a slightly older Saoirse Ronan. People are fine. The effects are fine. Nothing is overdone in the special effects realm as the robots look just like us, just taking our jobs.

Nothing amazing to see here. Just more of the same, with a robot paint over.

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Moon Flying

It's a comedy! ... I guess?

Kelly is brought in to sell the moon, as NASA tries for landing people on the moon. The government is so set on having America on the moon, they'll fake it if they need to, and they decide they do. But Kelly falls in romance with the Flight Director, and so wuv will lead the way.

Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum are the leads in this, and in terms of romantic chemistry... they certainly are on screen together, sharing screens. Not that they have zero chemistry, but it's more like buddies than the romance partners they are trying to sell.

Speaking of selling, this is trying to sell itself as a comedy, and I aint laughing, so I aint buying. It was a nice light time, nothing heavy going on here, but the great comedy starts with Scarlett pretending to be pregnant and doesn't rise above that. You can tell what the story is going to do, and we wait for it to play out.

It's a fine time, but nothing amazing.

I do wonder if there is a standing set somewhere for the old mission control that Hollywood rents out, considering how often we get productions set in that time/place...

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