This was my best friend’s choice for his birthday movie, so I watched this with him and his wife. I hadn’t seen Spaceballs in a long, long time, so it was definitely a fun time. I remembered a few things while watching (specifically, I remembered Michael Winslow’s scene and lots of Rick Moranis’s lines), but a lot of the movie felt new to me it’d been so long since I’d seen it. Of course I loved it.
I don’t think I really need to explain Spaceballs to anyone. I’m sure you know what it is and what it’s about. If you don’t know, it’s a spoof of Star Wars and other sci-fi and fantasy movies, and it stars some of the greats of comedy cinema. It definitely made me want to binge John Candy and Rick Moranis movies.
I’ll admit to not being a huge fan of many spoof movies. Mostly though, it’s the modern ones that I can’t really stand. Things like Scary Movie and Superhero Movie I just have zero interest in. But I grew up on things like Naked Gun and Airplane. I suppose I’m pretty particular about comedy. I know I am. Spaceballs absolutely works for me though. I shouldn’t wait so long to watch it again.
I’ve been a fan of Master of the Flying Guillotine for many years, but it wasn’t until recently that I discovered other movies involving this most ridiculous and awesome martial arts weapon. For those who might be unaware, the flying guillotine is a (fictional) weapon that is basically a collapsible hood with retractable blades on the inside (there are also blades circling around the outside of the hood). The collapsed hood is thrown. When it lands on someone’s head, the hood extends over the person’s head and down to the neck where the internal blades deploy. The attacker yanks the hood back with its attached chain, and the victim’s head comes with it. It’s pretty great.
Anyway, Master of the Flying Guillotine is a silly, over-the-top martial arts movie with nearly non-stop fights and wackiness. I’ve seen it many times, but I stumbled across an article (this one I think:https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-flying-guillotine-series-in-all-its-weird-glory/) that talks about the other flying guillotine movies that I never knew existed. A quick search later, and I find that two of the flying guillotine movies are on Netflix right now! So, of course, I started at the beginning with the original, The Flying Guillotine.
The Flying Guillotine came out before Master of the Flying Guillotine, but it’s not a prequel. At best, Master is a spin-off, but even that’s not really true. It just uses the same weapon. Also, Master is very different in terms of how the movie is constructed. Master is barely more than a wacky assemblage of fight scenes with minimal plot, but The Flying Guillotine is very plot driven with some nice, sympathetic characters.
There’s a lot going on in the movie initially as we see the emperor of China going crazy with power and paranoia. He’s out to kill anyone and everyone who might even show the slightest hint of opposing him. One of the emperor’s subjects has an idea for a new weapon that could solve all of the emperor’s problems. The flying guillotine is created, and a group of young men are chosen to train exclusively with the deadly weapon. Assassinations happen, but doubt starts to tickle the minds of some of the young assassins. A few of them have second thoughts about what they’re doing, and that doesn’t sit well with the emperor. Most of the second half of the movie follows one of the young men who tries to flee and go into hiding.
It’s a really good story that feels pretty expansive. We get to see this young man, Ma Teng, in a number of different phases in his life. The thing that separates this the most from Master of the Flying Guillotine is how the focus is on the characters rather than the weapons and fights. There are, of course, many fun fights in The Flying Guillotine, but they are results of character-driven moments more than simple plot shenanigans.
I really enjoyed The Flying Guillotine and look forward to watching the sequel which is also on Netflix!
I recently learned about The Wind from a playthrough of a short video game created as a teaser before the movie came out. Here’s what I saw:
I thought this was a great idea. I mean, I imagine only a fraction of the people who played this saw the movie, and only a fraction of the people who saw the movie know the game even exists, but for those of us who love small, retro-styled indie games AND small, western-horror indie movies, this was the perfect scenario!
I saw the video above only a few weeks ago even though it was posted almost a year ago. After seeing that though, I stumbled upon the movie in my local video store just a few days ago. It was like it was meant to be.
So I’ve played the game and I’ve watched the movie. I’m happy to say I like them both. The game really is just a teaser. There’s not much too it, but the atmosphere is great. Retro-styling might be trendy (and it certainly is), but I think that aesthetic works really well for a movie like this. The simple graphics and mostly empty, black screens evoke a lonely and sparse game world. There’s not much to interact with besides things that want to kill you and the things you need to protect yourself from death. The Wind (the movie) is a western set on a lonely frontier with very few people and wide open fields. The only things the characters really have are what they need to survive, and anything else is a luxury. Like in the game, their existence is spartan and harsh.
I could go on about how surprisingly well the game represents the tone of the movie, but I’ll move on. The movie focuses on a woman, Lizzy, who lives with her husband, Isaac, in a small house on the frontier. There is only one house even remotely close to where they live. Other than that, there are wide open plains and rolling hills as far as the eye can see. The movie starts with Lizzy and Isaac’s only neighbors, a husband and wife, suffering a tragedy. In the aftermath, Lizzy is left home alone for a few days. The rest of the movie follows Lizzy as she tries to protect herself from something (or some force) that exists out on the frontier. As Lizzy deals with daily and nightly visits, the background of the story is filled in through flashbacks where we learn what led up to the tragic beginning of the movie.
While the plot focuses on Lizzy growing increasingly scared and paranoid about whatever mysterious force is outside her house, the movie, metaphorically, is really about a woman’s experience on the frontier. There’s a short video on the DVD where the stars, the director, and the writer talk about what they saw they movie as, and they spoke about wanting to show what it was like for women in these western stories while the men are off doing manly things. I’m paraphrasing of course, but basically they wanted to create the side of the story we rarely get to see. More specifically, I saw it as a female-focused narrative about the loneliness and hardships that come with being transplanted from society to the harsh realities of making a life almost literally from the ground up.
Lizzy is strong and more than capable, but the introduction of her young and inexperienced neighbors threatens to unbalance the life she and her husband have created. Small things can be life or death when living on the frontier, and the movie shows that the balance, whether it’s the physical or mental side of it, is often delicate. For Lizzy, her unbalancing is filtered visually through her thoughts on religion and demons, as well as her own personal tragedies.
So what I’m saying is, you can watch this movie as a huge metaphor for life on the frontier, or you can watch it as a supernatural horror movie. Or both. Any way you watch it, I think The Wind is a good movie. I AM kind of partial to westerns and horror movies, but still, I think it’s worth watching even if you just have a passing interest in those genres.
The Sonata came out on DVD recently, so this was one of the rentals I picked up during my weekly trip to the video store. I didn’t know anything about it, but it was new and the cover promised a spooky time, so I was sold.
The Sonata is about a young woman named Rose who was a prodigy violin player. Her career is coming to a turning point when she gets news that he estranged father, one of the greatest and most mysterious modern composers, has died. Rose inherits her father’s house, and when she goes there to stay for a while and decide what to do, she discovers a strange sonata written by father and locked away for Rose to discover for herself. Rose and her manager try to figure out what the strange music notes and symbols mean, but as they unravel the mystery, dark things begin to happen in the house.
I mostly enjoyed The Sonata. I quite enjoyed the mystery part of the movie. As the characters learn more about Rose’s father (played by Rutger Hauer who has some short bit of screen time here and there), we are treated to a mystical riddle that delves into witchcraft and demonology. The movie gets pretty dark at times when we learn what Rose’s father was doing alone in his house, but some of the big reveals at the end weren’t super great. This was a lower-budget movie, and I think they should have tried to figure out ways to get around having and computer generated effects. The CGI wasn’t great, and I do think it detracted from y enjoyment towards the end. Up to that point though, I thought it was pretty good. Plus, I liked the idea of the ending.
So, The Sonata isn’t great, but it’s good. It’s worth a watch for people who are really into haunted house movies with a heavy emphasis on the mystery side of things.
Ever since the first season of The Walking Dead, I’ve been a big fan of Jon Bernthal. Any time I see that he’s in a movie or TV show, I make a point to see it. So, when I came across Sweet Virginia during one of my extended Netflix browsing sessions, I queued it up and watched it pretty quickly (after a bit more browsing, of course).
Sweet Virginia is a crime drama that begins with the murder of three men in a bar. The killings seem premeditated, and as the plot unfolds, we discover more and more connections between the main characters. Jon Bernthal stars as Sam, a retired bull rider who has mostly retreated from the world. He lives a mostly solitary life in the motel he owns and manages, but the few relationships he does have are extremely meaningful. Sam’s life is changed by the murders as coincidences and connections bring Sam, the murderer, and woman he loves together in the aftermath of the small-town tragedy.
There’s a lot more to the plot than what I’m saying, but finding out who knows whom and how people are connected is one of the biggest draws of Sweet Virginia, so I don’t really want to say any more about that. Learning about what is happening, often before the characters themselves, creates some really great tension throughout the movie. Sweet Virginia is a rather quiet movie most of the time, but I think that helped make the big impacts even more impactful.
There are a few times where the coincidences seem like a bit of a stretch, but it’s all still plausible and doesn’t detract from the flow of the movie. Beyond just the plot though, I think the characters are what really make Sweet Virginia excellent.
Jon Bernthal tends to play tough guys. Sometimes they have a heart and sometimes they don’t, but most of Bernthal’s performances seem to come across as strong, no-nonsense guys. There’s some of that persona in the character of Sam, but part of Sam’s history involves a bull-riding injury that has left him with a strong limp and a noticeable shake in his hand. Sam isn’t physically terribly strong anymore. Plus, Sam is quiet around others and mostly just wants to be left alone. He’s not prone to standing up to people even when he needs to, but his outlook is tested throughout the course of the movie. It was really cool seeing Jon Bernthal play this kind of role since the things I predominantly associate him with are The Punisher and Shane from The Walking Dead. Bernthal did a great job as Sam.
The rest of the cast is great as well. Imogen Poots and Rosemarie DeWitt play widows of two of the murdered men, and they each have very different paths after the deaths of their husbands. They’re both strong in their own ways, but they also have secrets that are weighing them down. The man who did the killings is Christopher Abbott, an actor I know best from It Comes at Night. Abbot plays his character of Elwood as mentally unstable with dangerously frightening anger issues. Elwood provides a level of tension in every scene he’s in that grows more and more as the movie goes along. You end up just waiting for him to explode at some point, but by that time you don’t want anything to happen to the people around him. It’s all done very well.
So yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed Sweet Virginia. Like I said, it’s kind of a quiet, character-based movie, but you can eventually see the plot points start to converge and crash into each other towards the end. The strong characterizations help make the convergence that much more meaningful.
I’ve heard lots of not-so-good things about Dolittle over the past few weeks, but as always, I like to judge for myself. I like Robert Downey Jr., and even though I haven’t enjoyed all of his movies, I’ll still go see pretty much anything he’s in. Plus, the cast of voices for the animals is great. The trailers didn’t look fantastic to me, but they didn’t look bad either. So I was mildly looking for to Dolittle. After seeing it, I don’t think it’s fantastic, but it’s certainly not as terrible as some of the dog-piling online reviews would lead you to believe. I enjoyed it.
RDJ plays, of course, Dr. Dolittle. We’re told at the beginning of the movie about how Dolittle can talk to animals and how he used to travel the world with his wife Lily, and they created a family of animal friends as Dolittle helped each and eery one of them. Lily disappeared while on a voyage to find a mysterious island, and since then Dolittle has closed his animal hospital, living like a hermit with only his animal friends as company. But when the Queen Victoria falls deathly ill, Dolittle is pulled out of his self-imposed exile to try to save her (and his own home at the same time).
The plot follows the adventures of Dolittle, his band of jovial animal friends, and Stubbins, a young man who feels more at home with animals than he does at home. It’s a CGI-heavy adventure with quips, action, and some fun scenarios.
Some of the jokes weren’t for me, but really, I didn’t have any complaints about the movie. It’s light-hearted family fare. Could it have been better? Sure, but you can say that about any movie. I understand that there were a lot of pre-release shenanigans involving rewrites and reshoots, but all that really matters in the end is what makes it to the screen. What I saw was about what I expected: a fun family adventure with silly jokes and little in the way of any real danger or tense situations. It doesn’t always make sense (like, if Dolittle talks to the animals in their own “languages,” how do the animals all talk to each other?), but who cares? For a movie like this, making sense doesn’t matter as much as making a big, fun spectacle. I thought the spectacle was fine.
I have a like/dislike relationship with Eli Roth’s movies. I like Eli Roth as an actor and as a person. He and I seem to have largely similar tastes when it comes to horror movies we like. I tend to thoroughly enjoy the influences Eli Roth uses when making his own films. And, I generally enjoy the ideas he has. My only real problem is that he and I have greatly different sense of humor, and Roth tends to put his own brand of humor into every one of the movies he directs. In Cabin Fever it’s the “pancakes” kid and the gun in the store that made me groan. In the Hostel movies it’s the general silliness of the gore. In The Green Inferno it’s the pot and diarrhea jokes. Those things aren’t necessarily movie killers for me, but they were all prevalent enough to leave me feeling underwhelmed by each of those movies. I think it’s about tone for me. I want those movies to be tough to watch, but they end up feeling like goofy comedies by the time it’s all over. With that in mind, I skipped Knock Knock when it came out in 2015.
But.
After seeing Ana De Armas in Knives Out late last year, I’ve become increasingly interested in seeing more of her work. Plus, I’ve been a big fan of Keanu Reeves for forever. So at this point it was two to one (Ana & Keanu vs Eli), so I decided to give Knock Knock a try. I’m almost entirely glad I did.
Knock Knock is basically a home invasion movie. Keanu Reeves plays Evan, a seemingly happily married man with a wife, two kids, and a great house. He ends up needing to stay home and work as the rest of his family goes on a weekend trip. While Evan is working late into the night, he gets a knock on the door. Standing outside, stranded in the rain, are Genesis (Izzo) and Bel (Armas). They claim that they got lost on their way to a party, and the taxi they rode in on has already left them all alone. Evan, being a nice guy with a proclivity for flirting (at least according to his wife), eventually invites the young women inside so they can dry off and wait for a car to pick them up. The atmosphere starts to get steamy pretty quickly as Genesis and Bel attempt to get closer and closer to Evan. One thing leads to another, and, a few bad decisions later, Evan can’t get rid of his guests.
From there the movie gets darker as Genesis and Bel’s intentions become more clear. Evan is harassed and terrorized, and it slowly dawns on him that he’s in a situation that will not end well for him. The only question is: how bad will it get?
I liked the movie overall, and I thought the performances from the three leads were a lot of fun. Izzo and Armas come across as sufficiently bonkers, but their actions also touch on some of the trauma they’ve experienced that might have led them to do what they’re doing. Reeves goes back and forth from desperate to furious, and he gives a great speech towards the end where all of his anger finally explodes.
I also enjoyed Eli Roth’s directing. The movie does feel sort of campy at times just because of the way it’s sometimes staged and shot, but overall it has a nicely sinister tone. Mostly. For once I thought Roth was going to make a movie without making me roll my eyes at some stupid joke, but alas, he snuck some stuff like that in right at the end. It didn’t spoil the movie for me, but it did leave the movie feeling more light-hearted than I would have liked. That’s just a personal preference though. Other people might like the dumb joke at the end. And really, the joke ending is MUCH better than the alternate ending included on the blu-ray. THAT ending would’ve spoiled everything for me.
Also, I found out that Knock Knock is actually a remake of a movie from 1977 called Death Game. I definitely need to track that down now. Colleen Camp and Sondra Locke star in Death Game, so that absolutely has me interested. Plus, Colleen Camp (who I remember best as the maid Yvette in Clue) has a cameo in Knock Knock.
So yeah, Knock Knock is good. I’m glad I finally saw it.
I don’t have any particular affinity for these types of Jane Austen, period comedy/dramas, but I don’t dislike them either. There are a few I quite like. Love and Friendship with Kate Beckinsale immediately springs to mind as a Jane Austen movie I enjoyed a lot. I don’t think Emma has surpassed Love and Friendship for me personally, but I did enjoy it.
Emma was one of my early morning theater viewings. Whenever I have a day off, I try to go see the first showing of whatever newer movie is out that I haven’t seen yet. I don’t like a lot of people in the theater when I go, so the earlier I can get to the theater the better. I also tend to sit pretty close to the front since not many people pick those seat, but today there was a guy sitting two seats over from me. He was quiet though, so everything worked out fine.
Anyway.
I thought Emma was fun. It took a little time for me to really get into it, but once Emmastarted meddling in other people’s business and the misunderstandings started to stack up, I was smiling and laughing a pretty good amount of the time. Plus, Bill Nighy is in the movie, and Bill Nighy makes everything better.
Emma is a light comedy with some relationship drama tossed in to give it some weight. I think there’s also a fair amount of skewering of high society. Everyone is so polite and considerate, and no one says what they really think or feel. Every problem in the movie could have been avoided if people were just clear about their feelings, but that’s what makes it charming. Anya Taylor-Joy also makes it charming, as does Johnny Flynn. So yeah, I enjoyed Emma.
I was in a bit of a time crunch when I was picking a movie to watch on this day, so I started looking for something a bit shorter than the average ninety minute feature. Older genre movies can often be shorter, so I decided to watch The Devil Bat. Released in 1940, The Devil Bat stars the legendary Bela Lugosi and has a run time of a little over an hour. That was perfect.
I wasn’t sure if I’d seen The Devil Bat before, and even though some scenes seemed familiar, I really didn’t recognize large parts of the movie. So, I’m treating it as a new movie as far as my “A Movie A Day” challenge goes.
While it’s not Lugosi’s best movie, I liked The Devil Bat well enough. Lugosi stars as a mad scientist who seeks revenge on people he thinks have cheated him. His plan is to send his genetically altered giant bat to kill his enemies by using a potion that attracts the bat by scent. His plan works for a while, but of course his actions catch up to him as the police become wise to his murdering ways.
It’s a simple movie, and it gets pretty repetitive even for it’s short run time, but I enjoyed it.
I got Alien 51 for $0.99 from the bargain bin at my local used movie store, and I think that’s about as much as I’d be willing to pay for it. It’s a low-budget, straight-to-video sci-fi monster movie that was released in 2004. It’s biggest advertising point (printed on the front and the back of the DVD case) is that Heidi Fleiss is the the star. I think her being the star of the movie is debatable, but Heidi Fleiss is definitely in it. She spends most of her time complaining about pretty much everything.
In my view, the story really focuses on a character named Cleo. A monster has escaped from Area 51 and is on a bloody rampage across the desert. Cleo had some sort of involvement in the creation of the monster, so she reluctantly joins with a local sheriff, Sam Cash, to track down and stop it. Complicating matters are Billy and Evelda (Heidi Fleiss), a married couple who own a traveling freak show. Billy and Evelda want to add the alien-thing to their roster of freaks, so for just under ninety minutes, we are treated to poorly acted and edited carnage as the two couples hunt the monster as it rips random people to shreds.
I didn’t hate Alien 51, but it’s really not very good. I don’t mind the stiff acting or the bland story that much, but I was hoping there would be some good blood as a balance to the blandness. Unfortunately the blood isn’t great either, so I got kind of bored watching this. But hey, I only paid a dollar.
