Chaos Gremlin

Film: Nimona
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

Of all of the Oscar categories that I actively pursue, none seems more willing to go off the beaten path for a nomination than Best Animated Feature. While a NetFlix movie is not “off the beaten path,” Nimona feels a great deal like it is. This is a movie that I haven’t actually heard a great deal about, and I’m kind of surprised. Based on the story that we get and the way that story unfolds, I struggle to believe that this wasn’t the subject of a series of protests from dudes wearing mirrored sunglasses while recording vertical videos in the cab of their oversized trucks.

What do I mean by that? I mean that Nimona is gay, and I mean that in the literal sense, not in the sense that grade school kids used it 20 or 30 years ago. Our main character, Ballister Boldheart (Riz Ahmed) is in an openly same-sex relationship with the ridiculously-named Ambrosious Goldenloin (Eugene Lee Yang). There are also implications that our title character Nimona (Chloë Grace Moretz) is female-presenting but essentially genderless and attracted to women. So, like 60-70% of the main characters are somewhere in the LGBTQIA+ continuum, which is similarly true of the cast.

Player One Has Entered the Game

Film: Boy Kills World
Format: Streaming video from Hulu on Fire!

I remember seeing the trailer for Boy Kills World and thinking that it’s exactly the kind of mindless bullshit that I want to watch on a big screen. If I’m paying for the movie, I’m very much a bread-and-circuses kind of guy. Give me over-the-top stunts and gun-fu, and I’m happy to fork over my $10 or more to watch. But Boy Kills World came and went almost immediately. I don’t know if it even opened within 15 miles of where I live. That’s not always a bad sign for a film, but it frequently is.

This is an action movie from start to finish, and it doesn’t pretend to be anything else. Boy Kills World is the sort of action movie that gets the adrenaline junkie excited. Think The Raid: Redemption as a similar film with the same sort of simple plot and relentless action montages. The plot is high concept—in an oppressive society, a young boy’s family is murdered as an example by the ruling class. The boy (Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti) is left for dead, but is rescued by a man called the Shaman (Yayan Ruhian, who was in The Raid) and trained to hunt down the family that rules the area.

Bed, Bath, and Way Beyond

Film: What Lies Beneath
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.

I’m a sucker for people playing against type. Give me Dennis Hopper playing a good guy, or Henry Fonda playing a complete bastard, and I’m in. It’s catnip for me, as is watching someone known for doing comedy excelling at a serious role. So, give me a movie where Harrison Ford is playing a professor who has had an affair with a student who has since gone missing and you have my attention. That movie is What Lies Beneath, which was somehow co-written by Clark Gregg, best-known as Agent Coulson from the Marvel Universe. It’s a big old world, but it’s folded over a lot.

Norman Spencer (Ford) is an accomplished scientist living in the shadow of his mathematician father. He and his wife Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer) live in Vermont in a large and fairly idyllic house, but the relationship is strained. A large part of this strain comes from Claire’s daughter Caitlin (Katharine Towne) going off to college, leaving Claire and Norman as empty nesters.

Assume the Title is Ironic

Film: Joy Ride (Roadkill)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi on Fire!

For whatever reason, there are actors who don’t have the career they deserve. One such actor is Steve Zahn, who is frequently the best thing in the movie he is in and just as frequently is in a movie that is beneath his talent. I’ll put it out there that of our three primary actors in Joy Ride (also known as Roadkill), Zahn is better than the film. Co-star Paul Walker is exactly as good as the material, and love interest Leelee Sobieski, also known as the very poor man’s Helen Hunt, is punching above her weight.

Anyway, Joy Ride is a film that, depending on how serious you are about horror movies and thrillers, is one that you have absolutely seen at least once before. A substantial part of this movie is Duel for the Millennial generation, the main difference being that rather than happening seemingly at random, our heroes bring at least a little of what follows on themselves. There are also a number of similarities here to the original version of The Hitcher (I don’t know about the remake, since I haven’t seen it). If you want to go more obscure, there’s a lot here that is similar to the early-‘80s Aussie film Road Games.

Each Story a Flower

Film: Torture Garden
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

We’re going to dive head-first into a horror subgenre that I’ve attacked before with Torture Garden. This is not torture porn, despite the name. Its 1967 pedigree would put it before even the torture porn-like films of the early and mid-‘70s. No, this is a (sigh) horror anthology film, a film that will give us a framing story and four tales of various levels of scary. Truthfully, they aren’t going to be that scary for the most part. As frequently happens in an anthology like this one, the stories are essentially little morality tales that cause people to realize their own “sins,” perhaps before it is too late.

There are some pros and cons for this one going in. On the positive side, these are all tales written by Robert Bloch, who also wrote Psycho, so at least we’re going to have some quality when it comes to the writing. We’ve also got some classic actors from the era including Peter Cushing and all-time champion scenery chewers Burgess Meredith and Jack Palance. On the downside, this is still very much in the classic Gothic style in a lot of ways. It wants to be more modern, and it can’t quite pull it off.

The Real Dracula's Daughter

Film: Abigail
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on Kid #1’s TV.

Sometimes, you see a trailer and you know you’re going to watch the movie in question. That was certainly the case with Abigail, a movie that ruins the big surprise in the trailer, and demonstrates that it ultimately doesn’t matter. To be fair, the big reveal in Abigail doesn’t happen at the end of the film, but is the driving force of the second act, so it’s not that much of a loss. So, I’m going to naturally talk about that reveal. Since it’s something that literally shows up in the trailer, this is not going to be anything like a spoiler.

As the film begins, we see a young girl performing ballet. Meanwhile, there is a group of people who are clearly planning something and that something is clearly kidnapping the girl. It all goes off without a hitch. The team of six kidnappers takes the girl to a huge secluded house with the plans to wait for a day for what will be a huge payout of millions for each person. All of this comes from the direction of a man named Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito).

...And Neither Are Their Cubs

Film: Tigers are not Afraid (Vuelven)
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on Kid #1’s TV.

Every year, I spend about a week in St. Louis petsitting my daughter’s dog. While I generally have to work (and this year it happened during a finals week), it’s also a chance for me to catch up on movies. I showed up with more than a dozen discs, knowing that once finals week was over, I’d have two or three days in a strange city without a lot to do. Sure, there’s stuff to do in St. Louis, but the dog does need tending, and he can’t be alone for too long, so a couple of movies per day was on the docket. Of the many I brought with me, Tigers are not Afraid (or Vuelven) is one that I was most interested in.

Tigers are not Afraid takes place in Mexico in the heart of the war between drug cartels. Thousands of people have been killed or gone missing, leaving behind thousands of children forced to fend for themselves or become victims. In terms of the narrative, this is clearly a film that has connections to City of God, but there are also real connections to The Devil’s Backbone, not merely because of it being in Spanish. This is a film that is very much a dark fairy tale, a grittier version of what Guillermo del Toro does best, creating a connection to Pan’s Labyrinth as well.

Their Cross to Burn Bear

Film: Soft & Quiet
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

I try to keep politics out of this blog, but there are times when the movie in question prevents that from happening. At the recent presidential debate, one of the more memorable moments was, “They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the dogs.” This is in reference to an incredibly racist trope about Haitian immigrants in Ohio. And it is purely racism, something that the American right wing seems to like to bank on. There is a frequent undercurrent of racism in American politics from the right, from Willy Horton to birtherism, to Haitians eating pets. And it’s where we’re going to live for 92 minutes with Soft & Quiet, a film that is unbelievably difficult to watch.

It's also worth saying off the top here that if you look up reviews for Soft & Quiet, you’re going to find a lot of negative reviews. A lot of them. The reason is twofold. One is that this is a difficult movie to watch and an unpleasant one, and a lot of people are going to have a negative and visceral reaction to it. Part of it, though, is an attempt to pull people away from the film by the people whom the film is essentially about. It’s the same reason why Bud Light got a bunch of negative reviews all at once—if there are enough bad reviews, people will stay away.

What I've Caught Up With, August 2024

August was a difficult month, involving some travel and dealing with my dad, which is always fun. But, no complaints--I knocked out a few from the big list, including a couple that I put up as full reviews. On the television front, I finally caught up on Doctor Who, having completed the first Ncuti Gatwa season. I've also finished Farscape, and watched all of the short Brit-com series Black Books. White Collar is still my workout show for a couple more weeks. It's also worth saying that everyone who told me that Arrested Development dropped off after season 3 was absolutely correct.

But Are You Worth Saving?

Film: No One Will Save You
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

Genre mashups always have the potential to be interesting. That’s especially the case with subgenre mashups, at least in my opinion. No One Will Save You is just such a case. To say that this is a horror/science fiction film is to name it in a group of hundreds and thousands of other films. More specifically, though, this is an alien invasion movie and a home invasion movie. It’s like the final confrontation from Signs mixed with Mike Flanagan’s Hush, with a bit of Invasion of the Body Snatchers tossed in for good measure. That’s a combination that has a lot of potential.

The reality of No One Will Save You is that it lives up to at least some of that potential, although not all of it. There are some really interesting ideas presented in this, but there are some serious questions that are left unanswered. I don’t always mind a few unanswered questions, but in this case, those are very plot-central. Because of this, the film feels oddly unfinished and unsatisfying.

Are All Summer Camps This Dangerous?

Film: Madman
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

When a particular genre movie makes a lot of money, it immediately spawns imitators trying to cash in on the formula. Asylum is an American film company that produces what are kindly known as “mockbusters,” films that are clearly derived from major pictures and made on the cheap. Pacific Rim becomes Atlantic Rim for Asylum, and why remake I am Legend when you can just call it I am Omega. Madman is like that, although it wasn’t made by Asylum. This is a film that is clearly derived from Friday the 13th, and it’s not shy about its source material.

That being the case, it’s not a shock that this begins like The Fog, with people around a campfire telling scary stories. However, rather than this being about an important anniversary for a town, we’re at a summer camp, listening to the head counselor Max (Carl Fredericks). What Friday the 13th discovered, either by genius or by chance, is that summer camps are the natural habitat of what Siskel and Ebert used to call “dead teenager” movies. The kids in question are isolated, horny, unsupervised (since they are the counselors), and vulnerable.