It was all going so well. Then that music at the end…
★★★½
When her husband's sex game goes wrong, Jessie (who is handcuffed to a bed in a remote lake house) faces warped visions, dark secrets and a dire choice.
Month: June 2022
A thriller that revolves around the key people at an investment bank over a 24-hour period during the early stages of the financial crisis.
Disgraced, accused sex offender in the lead aside…
Still think this holds up well on a repeat watch. In a similar way to The Big Short, it doesn’t really matter if you don’t understand what has technically gone wrong at this particular firm. The responses and emotions of the characters tell you everything you need to know, which is a testament to the quality of the acting. For a film that mostly involves talking in offices it fairly zips along. There is some neat work going on with the sound too.
The one niggle I have is that Demi Moore’s character isn’t overtly absolved, having been set up very early on as a “cunt”. And since she is one of only three women in the whole thing, it does feel a bit like women are taking the lion’s share of the blame here.
However, it’s mentioned that Cohen, and Tuld himself, have tacitly endorsed the position, and therefore ignored any concerns she raised. She is hardly solely to blame.
The movie ends on notes of self-justification and evaluations of the worth of “banking” to humanity. Closer to the crash this felt like a fairly open mockery of banking attitudes and that we were being invited to laugh at their hubris. Now I’m not so sure.
★★★★
On the Caribbean island of Matul, white doctor David Menard is trying to stem the tide of cannibal zombies that are returning from the dead. Arriving on the island are Anne and reporter Peter West who are looking for Anne's missing father. The pair soon find themselves under attack from the zombies.
Having been traumatised by “this sort of thing” as a kid, I probably went into this with a little too much caution and trepidation. Combine that with the “video nasty” rep, I was expecting a pretty low-brow gore-fest.
But, aside from some top-tier misogyny and flipping horrendous dubbing work, it was actually one of the best zombie movies I have seen.
The misogyny, though… there are several moments were the women in this film have zero agency. It’s actually painful to watch. They constantly defer to the men and the male gaze is not even remotely subtle. They’ve also chucked in some domestic abuse for good measure. I mean, it was the 70s, but still.
There is also some mistreatment of a reef and a shark, which hasn’t aged well, either.
Back to the good stuff: the sound (dubbing aside) and visual effects are all top tier. The music is also right on point for the period, the main theme is surely a genre classic(?)
The story builds nicely to a impressive set piece finale with some great stunt work and a surprisingly strong conclusion.
——
Thanks to the Evolution of Horror podcast, I will forever associate this film with Dr Charlie Allbright. I never met him but his enthusiasm for this movie was enough to make me want to watch it. Rest in peace, Charlie.
www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/london-college-of-communication/stories/in-memory-of-dr-charlie-allbright
★★★★
Shipping
I *love* this new thing where your item has “shipped” but the tracking shows it hasn’t been physically collected from the retailer yet… and that was four days ago.
Andrea Fuentes is today’s hero (heroine?)
Strange deaths tied to the Upside Down cause paranoia among Hawkins' residents.
It’s not had a lot of great moments but I’ve enjoyed it. Story seems to be coming together well ?
★★★
Legendary Space Ranger Buzz Lightyear embarks on an intergalactic adventure alongside a group of ambitious recruits and his robot companion Sox.
This is just not enough fun. It takes itself far too seriously. Admittedly, I’m not the target audience but my children were obviously very bored at times. You see, Buzz has to learn about “teamwork”. Sadly, that takes three quarters of the movie and there is pretty much nothing else going on. There is a single plot line that is endlessly, and needlessly, stymied to the point of teeth gnashing frustration. The story is almost bereft of any good ideas.
It all looks pretty neat, though. I love the design and the sound is great. The soundtrack is not particularly note-worthy but the voice work is very solid.
I just wish they hadn’t confused tension and excitement…
★★½
Decades since their successful television series was canceled, Chip has succumbed to a life of suburban domesticity as an insurance salesman. Dale, meanwhile, has had CGI surgery and works the nostalgia convention circuit, desperate to relive his glory days. When a former cast mate mysteriously disappears, Chip and Dale must repair their broken friendship and take on their Rescue Rangers detective personas once again to save their friend’s life.
I went into this with quiet optimism. It was not rewarded. The set-up, the story and effects all work well enough. It’s just really badly put together. It has loads of what should be great little touches that just don’t land. It’s like a five year old telling a joke, where all the timing and intonation is off.
Very poor.
★★
In a suburban community, moms and dads, one after the other, mysteriously feel the irresistible impulse to attack and kill their own offspring.
The premise and set-up are great but, once the carnage starts… well, that’s the problem. There is no carnage. There is nowhere near enough splatter for this to be a horror and it is way too short on laughs to be a comedy.
Missed opportunity. Passed the time, though.
★★½
The suspension of a Google engineer who claimed a computer chatbot he was working on had become sentient and was thinking and reasoning like a human being has put new scrutiny on the capacity of, and secrecy surrounding, the world of artificial intelligence (AI).