At las-t

I wasn't planning on talking about this, but there is some stuff I had to say.

J-Lo is Atlas, an AI analyst who has a troubled past. Her mother created an AI robot that turned on humanity then left for Atlas to grow up. When she's an adult she tracks down the robot to a far off planet which is no trouble to get to, but they are all attacked when there. To survive, she has to pair with a mech suit and together they have to somehow find a way to take the robot down.

In her youth Altas had a tragic love experience, and now much learn to love again to overcome her troubled past... I mean "trust AI". Certainly I obviously can't say this is a reductive story where a woman has to love again, but some how I just did.

No, this is all about AI. She had trouble with AI in her youth, and must learn to trust AI again. Yep, that's definitely an original story and not just an unoriginal idea with a post-it note of "AI" slapped on it.

J-Lo is.. in this movie. I have no idea what she's been doing, but she said yes to this. Simu Liu is here as the evil robot, and he doesn't do anything at all (but cash in the cheque, I guess?). Slacking off from MCU is easy! We do have Sterling K. Brown and Abraham Popoola giving fun performances (in that they at least seemed to be having fun here). Mark Strong is here, not as Sinestro, but I guess he can't be Sinestro in everything?

This movie certainly continues the AI theme by everything being computer generated aside from the actors themselves. I'm sure there are other physical things they were in, but everything else is bland, brown, and generic computer asset.

This is on Netflix, one of their "let's throw money at films and hope to make it back". Best of luck, but I don't think this is going to be one of those hits.

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Uncivil Wah

Alex Garland tells a non-politcal story about a war... what? I'm exaggerating about his intent, but... not by much.

There is a war in America when Texas and California join forces and... okay, wait right there. That would never happen under any criteria, so even as much as you just want a casual backdrop to put your movie against, when you start with something so stupid, you so completely undermine your own movie people are never going to take you seriously.

But anyway, a group of journalists want to travel across the country to interview the President, who does not give interviews, because they think a big event will come up that will be a final(?) big push. We follow them as they travel and encounter various eff-up situations and try to be journalists in the face of all this. In particular, we have two harded journalists, one at-the-end journalist, and a youngster who wants to become a war journalist.

So this movie nearly has something to say about being a war journalist. Especially with the newbie coming to grips with what the hardened people have to deal with, and seeing that even the hardened people are barely coping. But it doesn't quite get there, and this idea would be better as a documentary (of which there already are some) or, if you really want to get in and show off action sequences, then a biopic or something.

But we also have the American Civil War aspect of this and... in this regards the movie has entirely shot itself in the foot by just trying to be "war is bad" and not being about any war in particular, and has nothing to say or do with the concept of this being an American civil war. That concept totally has legs, yes, along the more obvious lines, but this is just nothing in comparison with what it could be.

Kirsten Dunce is good, Wagner Moura is annoying, Stephen McKinley Henderson is fantastic, and Cailee Spaeny has a career in front of her. The director wanted to show off them in war situations and also get cool action shots to pump up the action side of it.

So he wants his cake and to eat it too, and has neither.

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Ministers of Gentle Warfare

Ah, the movie where Henry Cavill IS James Bond!

Gus is a hardcase, but when Britain needs someone to carry out an unsanctioned mission against the Nazis, he's the chap they get. He gathers his own small crew of men, and they go off, with an undercover agent and a spy lady, to capture a core boat in the Nazi war effort.

This is "based on" Operation Postmaster. I'm willing to accept there was an Operation Postmaster, and it did involve dealing with the boat, but I doubt they were all as suave and unruffled as portrayed here. Although I do hope that Nazis were dealt to as much as they were here.

As everyone has British Stiff Upper Lip, there isn't much to distinguish Henry Cavill from Alan Ritchson from Babs Olusanmokun from Eiza Gonzalez aside from their physical appearances (because their personalities were pretty much interchangable. Indeed you could swap about Gus for Appleyard and I doubt anyone would notice). The sequences are well shot, the dialogue is fine, and Guy Ritchie is giving us a solid picture without being too exciting.

And Cary Elwes effortlessly dominates every scene he is in. Yay!

A decent watch, but not an amazing one.

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Fell Dude

This is a) a love letter to stunt men, b) based on a tv series, and c) has a completely irrelevant love plot. How much that matters is up to you. [I haven't seen the tv series, didn't even know it existed.]

Colt Seavers is a stunt man, which makes him an action hero. He stunts for Tom Ryder, and something happens to Tom while Colt's lasped girlfriend is now directing a new movie. Colt and Jody spend about ten minutes in their plot, but the focus of this movie is action sequences all over the place with lots of stunts that Colt does.

Which, of course, is a lot of stunts the stunt team is doing. I have no idea how much Ryan or Aaron did their own stunts, but you can't have a movie about stunts and not respect the stunt team. Indeed, at the end of the movie, over the credits, is a showing of the various stunt sequences and we see the stunt men doing their thing. In the movie itself, I don't believe that stunts are actually done in that way, so this is not a realistic portrayal of them.

Ryan and Emily are fine. I belive they can play a would be love pair in a movie. Aaron is there as well, but I don't really get much from him. If I've seen Hannah Waddingham in anything, I don't recall. As mentioned, this is "based" on the tv series featuring Lee Majors, and there is more than one reference to him during the movie.

So, go for the stunts, stay for the stunts, and there are some other things in there too.

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Deaded Freded

An older movie, but one I remember fondly. Especially the ending got to me. I meant to come back and rewatch it some time, and now I had cause to.

Lizzy is an adult woman (although barely) when her life falls apart, and she remembers a coping mechanism she had as a kid: an imaginary friend, one who stood by her, helped her enjoy life, and stood up to her mother for her, one Drop Dead Fred. And lo, Fred comes back into her life, and starts to wreck it in a way that he thinks is helping, and it sort of is... but it sort of isn't. Numerous social disasters happen, but Lizzy has Fred by her side, so what could go right?

Rik Mayall was looking for a project to get into the US market, and choose this... although the critics did not agree, and it didn't take off. But dammit, it's a great movie! Phoebe Cates is Lizzy and she portrays her disaster self well. We also get Carrie Fisher and Bridget Fonda, but the other main star is Marsha Mason as the Megabitch.

This is one heck of a heart warming story, because Fred always has her back. He might not be that helpful but he does support her, and that's not nothing.

In my opinion, in this world of the movie, Fred is real as there are several things that are only really explained by him having an independent existence... but the reading of him being nothing but Lizzy's Tyler Durden has a lot of merit. But hey, if Josh Baskin can become an adult, and ET can phone home, why not have real Imaginary Friends?

This has just come out as a School of Movies podcast, so you can hear them talk about this for two and a half hours! Get in!

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Squanch Sunset

This tripped two red flags, but I continued with watching this anyway.

Four sasquatches... sasquatchii?... are in the forest and living their lives... and this continues for just under 90 minutes. To say what happens gives it away because it is just them going on with things, and it's not like they are uncovering a great conspiracy or anything. Although there are revelations, but they mean more to the audience than the sasquatcharinos.

We get four actors, in heavily made up prosthetics, doing their thing, with fake penises for some of them on proud display. They do convey their emotions and thoughts well enough, but I have to admit I did get some of them confused as to who was who, but at least the movie knew. And they have "fun" excretions too... yay, I really needed that.

This is nicely shot in the forest. Plenty of animal shots too... although no rabbits, so points off for that. Everything is well designed, so I'm hoping it was an easy shoot for the actors.

Basically... if you enjoyed this, you can no longer complain about the Woolie segments of the Star Wars Holiday Special.

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Stickmen

This film... I was offered free tickets to see it when it came out, but I didn't take them up on the offer. Shame really.

We aren't talking deep plot here. A group of pool players, known as Stickmen, get involved in a pool tournament (as you do), but quickly get in over their heads. There are bad guys with toughs, and women to frazzle their minds, and at the end of the day, can they hold their sticks and play with their balls?

This is very much in the vein of Lock Stock, or Snatch, with dealing with the seedier side of life... although we are just talking pool here, not guns or heists or anything. But it is well told, and we get some character arcs. And no, I didn't at the time see the "twist" coming about Bastinados, but it's not like that's particularly hidden or anything.

Shot in Wellington, and there are definitely Wellington landmarks there. Aside from the Bucket Fountain, many of us remember Kenny's Cafe (no longer there, sadly). We also get some real NZ actors in there, although I can't recall them doing other big things, but definitely Kiwi on display there.

Now, trying to find a copy to watch is the real game to play now. It's not really anywhere. But if you can, you'll enjoy this!

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Movie Red Flags

There are three (that I can think of at the moment) aspects of movies that often point to the movie being not very good. Of course there are plenty of good movies that have these, and there are more than enough bad movies that don't have these. But if these are present, I am immediately suspect of it and more than likely going to reach for the fast forward button...

Multiple Studio Logos. This is easy to spot. If the first things you see are production company logos, and there are many of them... odds are, the producers had to go to a few places to get money, and none of the studios believed in the film enough to finance it fully.

Multiple Titles. Can be harder to spot without checking IMDB or similar. But when you see a film titled one thing, but the title that comes up on screen when you hit play is something else... I get concerned. Changing the title is either the producers can't decide... or they are changing it to try to appeal to other people (or make people mistake this for something they haven't heard bad things about). Either way, they aren't committing to their ideas.

Runtime between 60 and 90 minutes. And this can be seen before even pressing play! Can there be short movies? Of course! And I don't count documentaries here. But if the movie is just not quite long enough, then either the plot, what there is, is spread thin, or there just wasn't anything there to begin with. A lot of amateur films sit here, ones where you go "was this someone's student project?" Now, they made a movie, and I didn't, so they are already far ahead of me there. But that doesn't mean I have to like it, and if it isn't a full movie, and it isn't a tv episode, most likely they couldn't make it work.

No doubt you are thinking of counter examples, but I don't have infinite time, so I hit these flags, I start thinking of what else I could be doing.

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Rooope

Speaking of Alfred, this is one of those "I should watch" as well.

Can you get away with murder? Start with murdering someone, then host a party! Of course no-one will suspect, although you talk about superior people casually murdering inferior people... but you'd never get away with it... would you?

Alfred knows what he is doing, and this is a great film of a stage play (given the long takes and such, yeah, this was clearly a stage play). The two leads are great as "superior" people, slowly disintegrating, and Jimmy Stewart comes in as the pseudo-detective uncovering it all. There are plenty of others, but those are always the focus of the film.

And what great long takes they are! There are very clear moments where they cut (hello back of the actor), and there is suspicious amounts of non-eating of food to move things along, and the other actors need to rhubarb in the background, but Alfred pulls all of this together.

And undertones... well, overtones really. Two men together, committing murder, what connection connects them...?

Check this out from Matt Baume for a better expression of all this:

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The Birbs!

There was an Alfred Hitchcock I was missing when I saw a bunch a while ago. Time to correct that!

Due to random horniness, a woman decides to head out to a bay out nowhere to chase down a man. While they pretend not to flirt, several birds appear on screen, until finally they are too numerous to ignore. All you can do is hunker down and don't wander off by yourself.

As ever, Alfred Hitchcock knows what he is doing, but... this is rather slow, I'm going to admit. This is two hours, you know why you are watching this, and yet there is a lot of build up of characters... which doesn't actually lead anywhere. Knowing various backstories doesn't matter when the last scene is just them in the house waiting for bird attacks, character development doesn't inform them sitting and staring.

As for the bird attacks... inevitably I am reminded of Birdemic, but this is an actual good movie. While people travel via rear projections, birds attack via front projection... but at least they are real birds! No computer graphic with three images cycling here (and no coat hangers either). Although the birds are still pretty effective killers in both movies. And I have to admit, the movie ends with about the same resolution to the situation in both cases... (psst, this is not a positive note).

Tippi Hedren makes her debut in this movie, and you can tell the camera likes her... because she is in soft focus whenever the camera is in close shot. We get other good performances, but no-one I know from other movies.

Yeah, this is good, but what did you expect? The ending is a bit of a let down, but I do like atmospheric build up, and this has that!

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