Before all hell breaks loose tomorrow, here's some stuff I watched:
Deadpool & Wolverine: I said on Facebook that fans of the previous Deadpool movies and Fox's Marvel movies would probably enjoy this. Everyone else would probably find it mystifyingly stupid. Even though it's made by Disney now, the movie goes out of its way to cuss, spread gore, rack up a huge body count, and do a ton of sexual innuendo. Being a Disney movie the only thing they can't do is have overt gay content, so Negasonic and her girlfriend have to keep it platonic.
A lot of the story takes cues from the second movie. Years after that, Deadpool is trying to sell cars with a wig stapled to his head. Meanwhile he's on the outs with his former girlfriend Vanessa. Then the TVA from Loki abducts him and some British guy explains that when Logan died in Logan, it began the slow, steady destruction of Deadpool's whole "Branch" on the timeline.
Having never really been a "save the world" type hero like the Avengers, Deadpool decides he needs to save his timeline. He figures to achieve this by finding a Wolverine from another timeline and placing him in Deadpool's universe. This begins a montage where we see a bunch of different Wolverines like one from Age of Apocalypse, one where he's fighting the Hulk, one where he's a bouncer or something named "Patch" because he only has one eye, and even one where he's played by Henry Cavill. Finally he finds one who isn't going to kill him right away, the "worst Wolverine" who's hanging out in a bar after the X-Men were all killed while he wasn't there to help. (And for some reason normal humans think this is bad.) He's become a pariah and doesn't really want to help Deadpool, who of course refuses to take no for an answer.
But the TVA arrests them and sends them to "the Void," a sort of Mad Max-type dump at the end of the timeline where the TVA sends the worst of the worst *see Loki, Season 1--Paraphrasing PT. There they meet Chris Evans, but not the character we all know him for; rather it's the first Marvel character he played. Bad guys capture him, Deadpool, and Wolverine to take them to Cassandra Nova, a twin sister of Charles Xavier who in one timeline at least killed him in the womb. She has really powerful telekinesis and psychic powers, though it's gross that to read someone's mind she has to literally stick her fingers inside of them.
Deadpool and Wolverine escape to find "the resistance" in the Void that turns out to be a bunch of old Fox Marvel movie stars--and one whose movie was oft-rumored but never made. They come up with a rudimentary plan to defeat Cassandra. Of course everything goes wrong--but still goes right. Deadpool and Wolverine get back to Deadpool's universe only to find the TVA deploying a weapon that will destroy the whole universe much faster. They have to take down a whole bunch of Deadpools and the TVA and Cassandra Nova in order to get to it.
And then...well, it is a Disney movie so don't expect anything too grim.
This was better to me than some other multiverse movies like Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness or The Flash in that a lot of it wasn't just "look here, it's [whoever]!" There was some of that but for the most part there was a story--such as it was--and while there was a lot of violence, gore, sexual innuendo, and so forth there was also some heart to it as Deadpool, in his own way, tries to save his universe. And the "worst Wolverine" gets a second chance to be the hero he was supposed to be. So it works if you can tolerate all the normal, annoying Deadpool stuff. Real comic book nerds would of course get a lot more from the various cameos than I would, but I got a lot of it. Anyway, it was a good time and I hope they're not done with the character yet. (3.5/5)
After the Fall: this 2014 movie stars Wes Bentley (American Beauty, Yellowstone) as a father and husband named Bill who tries to be a good man as an example--and because his father wasn't. Ironically, he gets fired from his insurance company for not being dishonest enough. But he hasn't told his family he's been fired and tries to keep up appearances.
One day at the end of his rope, he's stumbling around the desert with his father's old police revolver when he gets thirsty and wanders into the model home of a housing development. The water isn't on but he does find two people fucking. They see his gun and offer up their cash. The light bulb goes on over his head and so Bill starts robbing people in motels, convenience stores, and other penny ante stuff. At least he's finally making some money, though not enough for his mortgage payment.
His wife starts to get suspicious at his weird comings-and-goings and so forth. She finally calls him at work only for someone else to pick up. Meanwhile, Bill makes friends with a cop (Jason Isaac) who has already lost his family but not his job. They hang out and the cop even goes to his home. But after a botched attempt to rob a supermarket where Bill startles an old man into a heart attack, the cop sees some reports that he realizes are about Bill. He doesn't snitch on Bill; he just tells him to knock it off.
The end seems to drag on longer than Lord of the Rings, but in the end, everyone is pretty well off--except the guy who robbed a gas station and then got Bill's crimes tacked on. That guy is fucked. So after trying to be a "good man," it ends with Bill pretty much completely compromised morally. Hooray? Other than this being a little slow to the point it could have lost about 30 minutes, it's not a bad movie. (3/5) (Fun Facts: This was shot in Albuquerque the year after Breaking Bad ended and it's a story about a guy breaking bad. Also the wife looks kinda like Skylar. Hmmm. You can understand why this is a slow movie when it thanks Terrence Malick in the credits. lol)
Into the Electric Mist: This is some Southern Gothic noir stuff starring Tommy Lee Jones as a local deputy. He's investigating the murder of a young prostitute named Cherry who might have been involved with a local gangster named Baby Feets (John Goodman) or she might have had a pimp somewhere else. Meanwhile a movie star named Eldon (Peter Sarsgaard) and his also famous girlfriend Kelly Drummond (Kelly MacDonald) are making a movie nearby and Eldon spotted a corpse that turns out to be that of a black man lynched in 1965 with no shoes and a chain wrapped around his chest.
I guess these two things intersect at some point. There's a lot of stuff happening and it would be really hard to explain everything. If they had simplified the plot a little it could have been shorter and a little better. Also, Tommy Lee keeps seeing the ghost of a Confederate general and they have little talks like they're best friends. It's kind of gross. But if you like Southern Gothic noir stuff with some famous names, it's a decent movie. (3/5) (Fun Facts: Tommy Lee Jones and Kelly MacDonald were both in No Country for Old Men a couple of years before this. At one point Baby Feets tells Tommy Lee that he's going to finance a baseball movie and maybe Tommy Lee wants to star in it; Tommy Lee Jones starred as the eponymous Cobb back in the 90s while John Goodman was Babe Ruth in The Babe a few years earlier.)
The Dirty South: Kind of a lighter version of the previous entry as they both take place in Louisiana and have murders and stuff. But instead of Tommy Lee Jones, John Goodman, Peter Sarsgaard, and so forth we get Willa Holland, Dominic West, and Dermot Mulroney, so it's sort of like a CW or Lifetime version of the other.
There's a bartender named Sue (Holland formerly of Arrow) whose father owns the bar but he's a drunk and addict and so she does everything. But he's squandered some money and the bar is going to be taken over by the local rich jerk Jeb (Mulroney), whose son Sue had a thing for a while back but they never hooked up.
Then Sue meets a drifter named Dion (West) who helps her acquire some money to bail out the bar, except, oops, her dad spends it to spring her mom, who almost immediately runs off to parts unknown. D'OH! Meanwhile, Dion gets beaten up by some locals, so Sue takes it upon herself to steal a tractor.
Of course in the end things end pretty happily ever after except for the couple of dead guys who get thrown to the wild hogs. It's OK for a light, light drama though it probably could have been a little shorter. (2.5/5)
Running Scared: Pretty standard mid-80s buddy cop movie. This one is set in Chicago and stars Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal. I mean who's more Chicagoan than Billy Crystal, right? I'm not sure why they didn't just set it in New York but I guess it was cheaper.
Anyway, these two cops see a drug dealer named Julio (Jimmy Smits) they thought was in jail. They capture one of his lieutenants named Snake (Joe Pantoliano) and try to set up a sting but everything goes wrong and Julio gets away. So their angry captain (Dan Hedaya) sends them to Florida, where they decide to buy a bar and retire.
But first they return to Chicago to get Julio. This of course requires some chasing on foot and in a car driving on the "El" railroad tracks. In the end Julio takes Crystal's ex-wife hostage to get the cops to retrieve some cocaine from the evidence room.
Like I said it's pretty standard stuff but entertaining enough with Crystal doing his shtick and Hines backing him up. They didn't bother to give Hines even one dancing scene, tap dancing being his other specialty besides acting. But he does get two sex scenes, so there. If you want something way better than Samurai Cop but not quite as good as Lethal Weapon, this fits the bill. (3/5)
Night Shift: Probably one of Ron Howard/Brian Grazer's first efforts together, this is an early-80s comedy with some light sexual content. Howard gets his buddy Henry Winkler to star as Chuck, who works in the New York City morgue. Unlike TV's the Fonz, Chuck is pretty much a wimpy dork who's content with his little rut in life until he's moved to the night shift and assigned a new employee named Billy Blaze (Michael Keaton). Billy seems to have ADHD or something and is almost always in motion and talking into a tape recorder with terrible ideas like tuna that already comes mixed.
One day Chuck meets his neighbor Belinda (Shelly Long) who's a prostitute whose pimp was recently murdered by Richard Belzer of Homicide and Law & Order and a black guy. Billy actually has a sort of good idea to help Belinda: become her sorta pimp! Chuck and Billy turn the morgue into a staging area to dispatch prostitutes to guys who call in or Billy picks up on the street.
Things are going good for a while, but Chuck is skeptical of how long they can get away with it. Meanwhile he's falling in love with Belinda, which only grows when his fiancee returns home to Indiana after a disastrous Thanksgiving. Billy is spending money on a flashy car and clothes and stuff, making it only more likely they'll be caught.
Of course things come to a head involving cops and Richard Belzer and his partner, who obviously don't want competition. Does Chuck then go back to his life before all this craziness or does he allow himself to change?
It feels a little long and slow to really get going, but mostly it's a fun movie for what it is. Winkler does a decent job acting against type, Keaton shows some of the manic energy that would be on display later in Beetlejuice, and Long gets to be more blue collar than on Cheers. There's some nudity but not tons of it, this being 1982 or so. It's obviously a little dated though still fun for the most part. (3/5) (Fun Facts: I think one of those nostalgia posts I often get on Facebook said originally Winkler and Keaton were to play the opposite roles but then switched--and I think it turned out better. This being directed by Ron Howard, there is of course a Clint Howard cameo; it's pretty gross too as he's half-naked and having sex in one of the corpse drawers of the morgue.)
Crisis: This yearns to be one of those big multi-story issue movies with a bunch of big stars like Traffic or Babel. But it lands short of that. It's a little too obvious in its depiction of the war on Oxycontin and Fentanyl. The movie features three stories, two of which intersect:
First, in Detroit and then Montreal we have a Federal cop (Armie Hammer--ick) who has been setting up a sting to nail a bunch of Oxy pushers and suppliers. When one of the teenage boys used as a mule is caught near the border, it leaves the cop with only two weeks to try to wrap everything up.
Second, in Detroit we have a mom (Evangeline Lilly--slightly less ick) who was hooked on Oxy but has stayed off it for a while now. Her sister is coming over for dinner and she asks her son to stop at Whole Foods on his way home to get some tortillas. But he never shows up and later the cops show up to say he died of an apparent Oxy overdose. Not wanting to take that for an answer, the mom starts looking into it and an expert she hires says he did not OD on the Oxy. Eventually she finds out that her son was tied to some of the mules ferrying Oxy across the border--like the one in the first story--through a hockey camp. She goes to Montreal and meets the cop.
Finally, in Detroit or somewhere close by there's a college professor (Gary Oldman--not a lot of ick) who also has a little lab to study drugs. There's a new "non-addictive" painkiller about to get FDA approval and hit the market, but the professor's staff has run tests that show the painkiller actually is addictive and killed all the mice they tested it on. When he goes to the company with the results, they of course are not happy. They try to bribe him with a big donation and when that doesn't work, enlist the university president (Greg Kinnear) to gin up a bogus sexual harassment claim against him. But will he give in or stick to his guns?
So stuff happens with all three stories but like I said, it's a little too obvious and melodramatic. Which is always the problem with "issue" movies like this. It kinda needed to dial it back a little and make the characters feel more real than archetypes or pawns. (3/5)
Thin Ice: This had the potential to be a decent indie comedy or dramedy. I mean you have two cast members from Little Miss Sunshine (Greg Kinnear and Alan Arkin), Billy Crudup, and David Harbour before Stranger Things. So you have some good actors and the story starts out pretty well: Kinnear is Mickey, a down-on-his-luck insurance agent in Kenosha, Wisconsin. At a convention he meets Bob Egan (Harbour) who's kind of a Ned Flanders type and convinces Egan to join his team.
Egan is really good at getting new clients and gives Mickey a lead about a weird old farmer (Arkin) who is looking for insurance. The farmer insists Mickey fix his TV--which is easy since he just has to plug it in--and then asks him to come back a couple of other times. During one of those times, Mickey finds out the farmer has a valuable violin that could help him solve his money problems.
Then it starts getting more and more complicated as Mickey tries to steal the violin from the farmer, at one point replacing it with a fake. Then the farmer decides to put in a security system and hires a fairly crazy guy (Crudup) to do it. But the security system guy kills someone and blackmails Mickey into helping him dispose of the body.
It snowballs from there until it gets to the big twist that (Spoiler) it's all a con! The farmer isn't a farmer and Crudup isn't crazy and Egan isn't really an insurance salesman and the dead guy isn't dead. They just wanted to get Mickey to submit an insurance claim on the violin so they could make a lot of money. But it seemed to me that if they'd just given him a cut, Mickey wouldn't have batted an eyelash at submitting a fake insurance claim. If you're in the con game you should know your mark better, but I guess this way he basically did it for free.
I liked the start but it just kept getting too complicated and really not that funny. The twist didn't really help either. I was hoping for better. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact: The movie also features Lea Thompson in a couple of scenes as Mickey's ex-wife, whom he hooks up with once before he loses her for good.)
King of Thieves: Last month I watched a movie on the big Hatton Gardens robbery in London back in the 2010s. Four old guys and an unnamed young guy robbed a vault full of gold, cash, and jewelry over Easter weekend. The old guys were caught but the young guy (never identified) got away.
So this is also about that robbery, only it features a better cast of old guys (Michael Caine, Jim Broadbent, and Ray Winstone) and a young guy who also played a superhero (Charlie Cox of Daredevil). In this version the young guy is code-named B.A.S.I.L for "Best Alarm Specialist In London" though he still has no actual name.
The movie I watched last month focused more on the job while this one focuses more on the old guys after the robbery. While Basil was smart and took off with some of the better loot to parts unknown, the old guys stayed behind, where the net inevitably closed in on them. Which movie is better probably depends on whether you care more about the robbery than what happens to the old guys. If I'm watching a heist movie I do care more about the job really. (3/5) (Fun Fact: I am 95% certain I watched this before.)
The Benzonians: This is one of those where I feel like the thin description lied to me. It said something about Greeks working out of a club in North London. And it has Vinnie Jones, which should mean we have some action, right? Um...not as much.
There's a LOT of talking, mostly voiceover by this guy Plato who runs the eponymous Benzonians club for Greeks in North London. He sells some pot and sometimes people gamble, but otherwise it's pretty tame. The talking then goes on and on and on about all the different people who hang out there like local hero Achilles who hardly says anything but who is a great fighter and womanizer. A mentally challenged guy named Anthony worships him almost literally and is often tagging around with him. And so on. It wasn't very interesting and I literally fell asleep for about an hour, waking up in almost the middle of Layer Cake, which is a better movie, so I finished watching it. Then I came back to see what I missed--not much!
Plato hosts a poker game but a woman named Lola cleans him out--plus $50,000. He doesn't have the money so she sends Vinnie Jones to kick his ass. But the bar patrons fight back to stop him, one dying in the process. Hooray!
Anyway, this was not the movie I was hoping for, which is partially my fault and partially the fault of a misleading description. But also it was just too talky with too much voiceover. And I couldn't feel much sympathy for Plato considering he had made a bet with Lola and was basically trying to welsh on it. I definitely wouldn't recommend it. (1/5) (Fun Fact: Plato's wife is played by Marina Sirtis, aka Counselor Troi of Star Trek TNG.)
Columbus Day: Appropriately I watched this on Columbus Day. It's a neat little movie starring Val Kilmer as a thief named John. He's just stolen some big McGuffin, but then gets stranded in LA's Echo Park. He uses a payphone and cell phone to call friends, family, and associates to try to get out of there. Also he hits on his ex-wife and tries to convince his daughter he's not a terrible person. There's also a black kid named Antoine who keeps pestering him, but also shows him some interesting things--like a trapdoor that leads to a back way out of the park.
As time goes on, John gets increasingly desperate and so makes a deal with a really bad guy to sell the McGuffin. Will he be able to get the money and escape? And what about Antoine?
There's a little gun play and a little blood, but mostly this is pretty tame. It's really about John reconnecting with his ex-wife and daughter and bonding with Antoine. Besides Kilmer and Wilmer Valderrama as a sort of agent for John, there are no recognizable names, but the acting is good enough for a small movie and mostly having one location helped to keep the budget down. As long as you're not expecting a Fast & Furious or James Bond movie it's a fun indie film. (3.5/5) (Fun Fact: the McGuffin really is one since they never show it or say what it is. John refers to it as the "Fountain of Youth" and "El Dorado" but that's about it.)
The Sweeney: The eponymous "Sweeney" is a "Flying Squadron" in the London police. What does that mean? They're basically an elite unit led by Jack Regan (Ray Winstone) who has a protege named Carter and is banging Nancy (Hayley Atwell) who is married to the head of Internal Affairs--but any day now they'll divorce. (Ha.) As you might expect, the Sweeneys play by their own rules, which includes Jack taking a little gold for himself from a heist they break up. For that and other reasons, Nancy's husband is looking to shut them down.
Then an old enemy from Eastern Europe shows up and Jack goes hard after him, but things get messed up and people die and the unit is disbanded. Can Jack still find a way to stop the bad guys in time?
As an action-y movie this was pretty good. Not great. There are some gun fights and a couple of car chases if you like those (with Jack in a Ford Focus no less!) and other stuff to keep it interesting. There's some character work, though not a lot on the secondary characters. Jack and Carter are the main focus for most of the movie. I'd recommend it if you like that sort of thing. (3/5)
All is Lost: My sarcastic blurb: "I slept through less of it than I thought I would!" Seriously this movie stars Robert Redford--and only Robert Redford. There's almost no dialogue then so it can get kinda boring.
Redford is sailing near the straits of Sumatra for...reasons when a rogue container of sneakers collides with his boat. (What are the odds of that?) Even worse is the container hits right where Redford has all his electronics like the radio to call for help. Saltwater and electronics don't go real well together. He's able to get the container away and patch the boat to try to get help with no electronics, radio, satellite phone, or anything like that.
But then there's a storm! It fucks up his repairs and so he has to transfer to a rubber life raft--this is where I was dozing off for 15-20 minutes or so. Things don't go much better as he runs out of fresh water and when he catches a fish, a shark eats it! (Again, what are the odds?) He sees a couple of container ships, but they're too big and probably have too few crew on board to see him. So eventually, all seems lost. Is it, though?
For the most part it's a good story of survival. The problems are first we don't know the guy's name or why he's out there or who he dictates a letter to at the beginning of the movie. And second, with no one to talk to, sometimes I really have no idea what he's doing or why. As the song says, "Yo no soy marinero..." (I am not a sailor.) There is (thankfully) no nudity and only one f-bomb that gives it a PG-13 rating. (3.5/5) (Fun Facts: I literally had this on my Tubi queue for years and finally decided to just say fuck it and watch it. Redford starred in the movie Sneakers back in the 90s and he gets hit with a container of sneakers. Coincidence? Probably.)
A Hologram for the King: Another where I didn't sleep through it as much as I thought. I slept through the beginning, but from what I gather a salesman named Alan (Tom Hanks) has to lead a team of tech people from Boston to Saudi Arabia. They're going to pitch hologram technology to the king. Of course there's lots of culture shock then with not being able to get alcohol legally and women all covered up and stuff like that.
Alan employs a a wacky driver with a crappy 80s Caprice or Impala that he checks daily to make sure there's no bomb rigged to go off. When Alan tries to remove a cyst on his back by himself, he also meets a female doctor, which as you'd expect is very rare. Alan starts to fall for the doctor, but that's obviously complicated.
Eventually his team makes the presentation, the wacky driver goes to live in his home village to escape people who want to kill him, and Alan and the female doctor start emailing each other. There is a mostly nice ending that drags a little bit.
For the most part Hanks does his nice guy bit and the other actors--no real recognizable names except Tom Skerritt as Alan's boss, presumably in the part I slept through--do what needs done. You could make some complaints about how this doesn't tackle a lot of issues about Saudi Arabia (like that prince who had a journalist's head cut off a few years ago) but that would be too heavy for a movie like this. (3/5)
The Berlin Job: Mickey and Ray are two well-off drug dealers in London. But Ray wants out of the business to go in on a golf resort with some other people. To get the money, the brothers wind up overextending themselves on a deal with some Russians. But then the drugs are lost in the North Sea, leaving Mickey and Ray owing over 20M pounds to the Russians.
The first two acts go into all this, which gets a little tedious. Finally it gets to the eponymous job in Berlin, where they plan to heist some diamonds during a big football (soccer) match between England and Germany. With so many English in town, the brothers and their companions fit in better. But the problem is one of their number is a snitch--or "grass" as they call it for whatever reason. So they have to find the snitch and pull off the job.
It's a little slow and the mumbling voiceover from Mickey starts to get annoying after a while. But it's not badly done, so there's that. There are obviously better heist movies, so I wouldn't recommend this unless--like me--you're kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact: Charles Dance of Last Action Hero, Game of Thrones, etc plays a family friend and mentor to Mickey and Ray who helps to keep the Russians at bay.)
Brown's Requiem: This late 90s movie stars Michael Rooker (Mary Poppins, y'all!) as Felix Brown, a car repoman who is also a private investigator. You can basically throw out the repo angle after the first fifteen minutes as it has nothing to do with the rest of the story.
Most PI stories start with a dame walking into his office, but this has a fat caddy nicknamed "Fat Dog" instead. His sister Jane (Selma Blair) has taken up with Solly, an old Jewish businessman, and Fat Dog wants Felix to look into what they're doing to make sure she's not being harmed. Since Fat Dog has a fat wad of cash, Felix agrees.
He soon finds out that Solly is up to something shady that involves Cathcart, the Internal Affairs guy who bounced Felix from the LAPD years ago. As these things usually do, it starts to snowball with people ending up dead and Felix facing death a few times and even being wounded. And in the end things don't work out perfect, though it's pretty nice for Felix. If you like neo-noir movies then you'd enjoy this as it's done pretty well. (3.5/5) (Fun Facts: Jennifer Coolidge has a small part as the foster mom to Fat Dog and Jane about 15 years earlier. Whoever transferred this to digital didn't do a great job as the picture is a bit fuzzy. At least on Tubi; I haven't checked anywhere else it might be streaming.)
Color of Fear or Giallo: The listing on Tubi calls this Color of Fear but when you turn the movie on it just says Giallo. The interesting thing about "giallo" is that it's the Italian word for yellow but it's also a whole genre of mostly Italian movies that combine traditional detective stories with the blood and gore and stuff of horror movies. For an American example maybe think of a movie like Seven.
Dario Argento is a big name in giallo movies and directs this one. There's a killer who has a taxi and his skin is yellowy (the other giallo) because of a liver problem causing jaundice. He uses the taxi to abduct women and then tortures and kills them for...reasons.
The latest woman taken is a model whose sister is visiting. The sister goes to the cops and meets an inspector named Enzo (Adrien Brody) who's actually from New York. Enzo has been working the case for a while but isn't that close until the body of a Japanese girl is found. Her dying words help to provide a clue.
It actually seems pretty easy for Enzo and the sister to track down the killer. It felt a little lazy to me how quickly they're able to find him and kill him. I expected a few more twists and turns, but maybe by 2009 Argento was getting too old for this shit. As noted above, there is some blood and gore and gross stuff, so if you have a weak stomach, maybe avoid this. (2.5/5)
Criminal Informant: I really have no idea what was going on in this movie. For one thing my mom called and I had trouble paying much attention to this. Also it just pretty much sucked. From what I could gather, two cops (Dominic Purcell and Nick Stahl) are trying to get some drug dealer while Internal Affairs is on their asses. Purcell's wife is played by Kate Bosworth and a higher-up cop is played by Mel Gibson, so you have at least 4 actors who were in better things slumming in this.
As I like to say, mayhem ensues. One cop is killed for...reasons and Internal Affairs keeps bugging the other guy about it. It all felt really cheap and stupid, maybe because they were trying to use Las Cruces, NM for New York. I mean I've been to Las Cruces and it's definitely not like New York. I guess they couldn't afford to at least shoot it in Albuquerque. Anyway, definitely avoid this. (1/5)
Hard Cash: This early 2000s movie stars Christian Slater as a thief who sacrifices himself for his crew on a bad job and gets put in jail for a year. Once he gets out, he's soon up to his old tricks again. He and a few others rob a horse racing track. But the money they get is marked by two FBI agents (Val Kilmer and Peter Woodward) so Slater has to try to launder it through a Cuban dry cleaner.
Then mayhem ensues as the dry cleaner, FBI guys, and Slater's own crew are all after him about the money. It's a decent movie, though not a great one. Like some of Donald Westlake's Parker or Dortmunder books it's a little disappointing in how it turns out for Slater's character; it's always more fun when the thief really wins. (3/5) (Fun Fact: One member of Slater's crew is the late Vern Troyer, the little person who played Dr. Evil's "mini-me" in the last two Austin Powers movies.)
Played: Another 2000s "movie" and what struck me right away is that the picture quality looks as if it was filmed with a video camera from the 80s. There's some guy who eight years earlier got framed or something and wound up in prison. So he gets out to take revenge on Vinnie Jones and others who wronged him or something. I don't know, I didn't follow it very well. The cast also includes Gabriel Byrne as an assassin and Val Kilmer in a wig as...some guy who is in the opening scene and I'm not sure ever appears again. I guess if I'd paid better attention it might have been better. (2/5)
Strange Brew: You might already be familiar with Bob & Doug McKenzie, two stereotypical Canadian hosers played by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas in the 70s-80s. Mostly my exposure was I have their version of "The 12 Days of Christmas" on MP3.
Anyway, in 1983 they made a movie. As you'd expect, it's pretty silly. While trying to score some free beer, the McKenzies wind up working at the Elsinore beer company. The owner recently died and his daughter has taken over. Meanwhile the new brewmeister (Max "I'll Be In Anything Just Show Me the Check" von Syndow) is experimenting on inmates of a nearby asylum to make a beer that will allow him to control people's minds.
And silly over-the-top mayhem ensues! It's not as good as The Blues Brothers or probably even Cheech & Chong movies of that era but there are some laughs to be had, especially if you're familiar with stereotypical Canadian culture. (3/5)
2:22: This is another one that looks like it was filmed with a TV camera instead of film. In Canada (Ottawa maybe?) on New Year's Eve night, four guys take over a really small, fancy hotel called the Grange. For some reason this hotel has a bunch of safe deposit boxes like a bank. (Do hotels really have that?) The guys open the boxes to take the loot while trying to keep anyone from getting suspicious. But there's a problem when one guy takes some cocaine and money from one of the guests who is a drug dealer.
They get away with the loot, but the drug dealer starts looking for them and so mayhem ensues. It's not terrible, just a pretty low-budget experience. With more money for better actors and cameras, it would have been decent. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact: Val Kilmer appears again, this time as a jewelry appraiser who also reshapes some of the stolen goods so they can be moved.)
Deadfall: This 1993 movie is directed by Christopher Coppola and so you have a couple of Coppola-related actors in it. Nic Cage is a henchman named Eddie and Talia Shire is...someone. And maybe there were more. But the actual star is Michael Biehn of Aliens & Terminator as a con man whose father is killed during a job. His father's last words were to find his brother (James Coburn) down in Florida.
And wouldn't you know the brother has a job of his own that he wants Biehn to help him with? Meanwhile, the brother has Eddie the henchman show Biehn's character around, though he starts to get jealous of the attention Biehn is getting. And of course there's a girl that he falls in love with, but can he trust her? It's a good movie with some twists and turns and surprises. (3.5/5) (Fun Fact: Val Kilmer is not in this movie.)
The Entitled: In this 2011 movie, a college graduate named Paul is fed up with the system. His mother is sick and he and his father can hardly afford the medicine. Meanwhile, Paul has graduated college but can't find a real job. Seeing some rich douchebags on campus, he gets the idea to kidnap a couple of them.
He teams up with a couple of other disaffected kids on campus (one of whom is Tatiana Maslany, aka She-Hulk) and one night they take three rich boys and a girl hostage. They call the rich parents to get money put into a Swiss account or something like that. The rich dads are played by Ray Liotta, Victor Garber, and Stephen McHattie, who looks like a younger, more in shape Lance Henriksen. There are of course some wrinkles, especially when two of the hostages escape.
Then there's a twist at the end that actually is pretty great and allows Paul to get away scot-free. So it winds up Paul 1, System 0. Take that! The production values and acting are decent enough, basically along the lines of a low-level horror movie. I think it's worth a watch, especially if you're a little disgruntled about the system. (3.5/5)
Spirit Halloween: In the history of cinema there have been plenty of product placement movies like Copper Mountain (Club Med Colorado), The Wizard (Nintendo), Cool as Ice (Vanilla Ice), or Viva Knievel (Evel Knivel). And so someone at Spirit Halloween thought it'd be a good idea to make their own movie. But really it's not as bad as those others I listed; it's more like something you'd see on Nickelodeon without too much overt branding.
There are 3 8th grade boys who every Halloween have done something together but now forces are pulling them apart. One wants to go to a high school party while another wants to keep their traditions alive and the third is just caught in the middle. They reach a compromise after going inside the Spirit Halloween store: they'll sneak in before close and then wait until the employees are gone to pop out and mess around in the store.
The plan seemingly goes off without a hitch, but then an evil spirit voiced by Christopher Lloyd shows up. Long ago a witch or whatever killed him for trying to foreclose on her property. Halloween is the only night he can try to get a new body by occupying someone who is unconscious. He can take over unliving things like a stuffed bear or various other decorations in the store.
Meanwhile, one boy's sister goes looking for him and breaks into the store, so now there are four of them trying to find a way out. But will they? Take a guess. I mean this isn't a real gritty movie. Mostly it's pretty tame with some mild scares for younger viewers. But it's still kind of fun with Christopher Lloyd's kind of bumbling villain against the plucky kids. As for the branding, like I said earlier, it's not too overt. I mean they show the sign over the door and labels on the product boxes but there's no one gushing about how awesome the place is and everyone should go there and whatever. It's obviously not something you'd want to watch for a real scare but maybe it'd be fun for the kids. (3/5)
The Rundown: This is an early movie in the career of The Rock--when he was still called "The Rock" even. My sister liked this for some reason but I'd never watched it. It's an OK action comedy overall.
The Rock is a debt collector for a racist jerk. To get out from under what he owes the guy (and to open the restaurant he dreams of) he undertakes a special mission: fetch the racist jerk's son from South America. Of course he thinks it'll be easy, but it isn't.
This was long enough ago that instead of Kevin Hart, you have Seann William Scott as the Rock's comic foil. Scott is a discount Indiana Jones looking for a valuable artifact: the Gato del Diablo or whatever that basically means Satan's cat. He's already enlisted the help of a local bartender (Rosario Dawson) to help him get to the artifact.
So after the Rock apprehends him, Scott manages to escape and go to find the artifact. Which of course he does. Getting it out of the jungle is complicated by a bunch of mercenaries working for Christopher Walken, who runs a strip mining operation using the native people basically as slaves.
And so mayhem ensues! There's plenty of action and some humor. Some of it is pretty predictable, but it's not a bad movie. Like I said, it's OK. It's made well enough and the Rock does a decent enough job for someone who hadn't been in a lot of movies then. (3/5) (Fun Fact: Arnold Schwarzenegger has a pointless cameo at the beginning where he greets the Rock when he's going into some club.)
Human Capital: This is one of those things like Crash (2005) where there are people's lives overlapping. In this case in an upscale New York suburb we have two families. One is middle-class but with some problems. The father Drew (Liev Schreiber) has a real estate business that's floundering. His wife Ronnie is a therapist who finds out she's pregnant, though she's had problems before. Schreiber's daughter Shannon (Maya Hawke) is kind of rebellious and going out with Jamie, the son of a rich guy.
The rich guy Quint (Peter Sarsgaard) invites Drew to fill in for tennis and then Drew decides to invest in Quint's hedge fund that seems so great. He doesn't have the money so he borrows some, necessitating lying on SEC forms. Quint is married to Carrie (Marisa Tomei), who is bored and convinces her husband to buy an old theater. Jamie and Shannon left some big high school party drunk and his Jeep Wrangler hit a Latino waiter on a bike.
The structure of the movie gets to feel like a Mobius strip as it kind of follows each character before the night the waiter is killed. Meanwhile it seems like everyone's life is unraveling. Overall it's an OK drama. There are plenty of talented actors and the direction and camera work seem professional enough. The Mobius strip structure gets kind of annoying to follow, but eventually it finally goes forward. (3/5)
Hotel Artemis: I remember hearing about this but didn't really care to watch it. I finally watched it on Tubi. In the not-too-distant future (2028) there are riots in LA. A pair of bank robbers (Sterling K Brown and Bryan Henry Tyree) take shelter in the eponymous hotel, which is a special, secret place where criminals can get medical care from Nurse Thomas (Jodie Foster) so long as they don't bring in weapons or cause problems. The nurse was traumatized after son died and has developed agoraphobia that keeps her inside the hotel all the time. Since they get the "Waikiki Suite" Brown is referred to by Waikiki. The nurse patches up his brother, but they need time for him to heal. Meanwhile there's an annoying prick played by Charlie Day called Acapulco and an assassin (Sofia Boutella) codenamed Nice (as in the city in France).
A problem comes up when the nurse sees a cop outside whom she knew before she started the hotel. She has her orderly and Jack-of-all-trades Everest (Dave Bautista) bring the cop in. Shit's really going to hit the fan though because the top criminal in the city Wolfking (Jeff Goldblum) is injured and on his way to the hotel. If his people see a cop, all hell will break loose.
This is a decent action movie with some touches of drama. Jodie Foster gives it a little gravitas while Brown and Boutella are steely, deadly killers and Day is just kind of annoying and unnecessary. Goldblum dials it back a little from some of his more recent movies to not be a total caricature. Obviously you could want more from this, but it provides at least the minimum of action and blood that genre fans would want. (3/5)
Cash Out: Mason (John Travolta) is the head of a gang of thieves until his girlfriend (Kristin Davis) reveals she is part of the FBI and the whole gang is nearly captured. They escape and Mason retires for a couple of games, until Mason's dumb brother shows with a "foolproof" job. Which of course it isn't. They're supposed to take over a bank and open a security deposit box that has millions in crypto inside. What could go wrong?
Someone has tipped the cops, so Mason and the others have to take everyone hostage. A black guy named Anton and a Latino named Hector babysit the hostages while Mason and his brother go downstairs to the boxes. And there's the stereotypical hacker named Link who does all the stereotypical hacker stuff.
What they find is the box has nothing in it that could have crypto in it. Meanwhile Mason has to deal with his ex as she's the FBI agent in charge. Then the hacker finds something surprising about the crypto and who it belongs to. But finding that out puts them all in even more danger.
Overall it's a decent low-budget heist movie. There are twists and turns as I might have indicated and Travolta is engaged enough that it doesn't seem like he's just cashing a paycheck. (3/5)
