What Are You Watching in August 2022?
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2featherbear
NETFLIX. Blood Red Sky (2021) 120 min. German & English, primarily. Director, Peter Thorwarth; screenplay Thorwarth & Stefan Holtz; Film Editing, Knut Hake; Cinematography, Yoshi Heimrath. Stumbled across this at 11 PM, ended up watching it to the end ca. 1 AM. Opens at an airport in Scotland (location & studio shots actually filmed in Prague). Passenger plane lands, but no one deplanes nor is movement observed. Apparently the pilot called ahead; the presence of SWAT suggests hijacking. One of emergency doors opens & a little boy scrambles down; movement is detected in the cockpit; a scared passenger is told to raise his hands while snipers have their sights trained on him. While the passenger is pinned down inside the cockpit, the police try to get the boy to explain what happened, but he appears to be in shock. Flashback to the boy checking in his mother’s baggage at a German airport. Then a flash within a flash as the mother prepares for the trip; she’s going to New York with the boy for medical treatment. The mother & child (Peri Baumeister & Carl Koch respectively & both excellent, particularly the boy) board with the other passengers. The plane takes off. Turns out it is in fact a hijacking, which takes place while the plane is over the Atlantic. The hijackers are particularly ruthless, & one of them is so sadistic even his cohorts are concerned. Then the twist begins & the boy’s mother becomes the mother from hell. The rest of the film exploits the various crawl & storage spaces of an airbus interior to great effect, with one edge of your seat scene after another; editing probably helps to heighten the impact. My only criticism is a separate storyline following a family stranded in the snow, perhaps functioning as a premonition of what is to come aboard the plane, but doesn’t really add to the main narrative. Great thriller if you don’t mind some pretty horrifying violence, none of it played for laughs like Diehard or the like. The only recognizable name in the cast is Dominick Purcell, the Australian actor best known for the TV series Prison Break plus maybe Graham Mactavish, the killer cowboy from the cable series Preacher, but the whole cast was fine; the sadistic hijacker is Alexander Scheer as Eightball; maybe a bit over the top but I think he succeeds in making you hate him.
3featherbear
I watched this via DVD Netflix, but it’s rentable on Amazon Prime &, streaming on HULU (I don’t subscribe). Shadow in the Cloud (2020) 1 hr. 23 min. Director, Roseanne Liang. Screenplay, Max Landis & Liang. Cinematography, Kit Fraser. Film editing, Tom Eagles. Music, Mahula Bridgman-Cooper.
Should be watched every Mother’s Day! Double feature with Blood Red Sky? Created in New Zealand (director Liang’s resume is mostly East Asian-Kiwi TV series). Prelude: a vintage cartoon from WWII about not lying on the job in aircraft maintenance & blaming it on gremlins. Film proper opens w/unidentified person stealing documents & stamps. Cut to Maude Garrett (Chloe Grace Moretz) in a flight suit with a boxy suitcase on a strap, & one of her arms in a sling. As well as a black eye we notice later. It’s WWII in New Zealand, & she’s at a military airport night, standing before a B-17 preparing for take-off for a cargo delivery to Samoa. She helps herself into the plane. This being the 1940’s, the all male crew wants to toss her off immediately when they aren’t making lewd comments, but she identifies herself as a flight officer & claims she was ordered to deliver essential classified documents to their destination, with official orders for the pilot to take her on board. The plane is fully crewed, and the only space available is the lower ball turret. She reluctantly leaves the document box with Sgt Walter Quaid for safeguarding, & she is then lowered into the turret.
The first half of the movie is a one woman tour de force for Moretz, where the camera focuses on her in the turret while the crew provide a running commentary of misogynistic observations over the intercoms. Officer Garrett gets on the intercom & says she sees a shadow on the wing & a Japanese reconnaissance plane (meaning fighter planes will be coming). The crew explain that she is a woman & therefore imagining things, even though she insists she is an experienced flight officer with multiple mission experience. Then she realizes something is taking apart one of the engines. She tries to open up the turret to get back to the fuselage but the handles break off (gremlins, right?) & she dislocates one of her fingers. On the plus side, the arm in the sling isn’t broken since it’s been used to smuggle in a revolver. What’s going on here?
In the second half, we find out what’s in the box, Japanese Zeros attack, the thing deconstructing the airplane from the inside does mischief, Garrett fires the ball turret guns at one of the attacking Zeros, finally climbs out of the turret – but to the outside of the plane! Crawls around the belly of the plane & the wing but doesn’t get pulled off by wind-shear! And much much more! Also punches out the stowaway at the end & then does mother things. Guys who hate women’s sports on twitter comments (“kitchen,” “not a sport”) may not care for some of this. Funny, crazy, exciting stuff.
Should be watched every Mother’s Day! Double feature with Blood Red Sky? Created in New Zealand (director Liang’s resume is mostly East Asian-Kiwi TV series). Prelude: a vintage cartoon from WWII about not lying on the job in aircraft maintenance & blaming it on gremlins. Film proper opens w/unidentified person stealing documents & stamps. Cut to Maude Garrett (Chloe Grace Moretz) in a flight suit with a boxy suitcase on a strap, & one of her arms in a sling. As well as a black eye we notice later. It’s WWII in New Zealand, & she’s at a military airport night, standing before a B-17 preparing for take-off for a cargo delivery to Samoa. She helps herself into the plane. This being the 1940’s, the all male crew wants to toss her off immediately when they aren’t making lewd comments, but she identifies herself as a flight officer & claims she was ordered to deliver essential classified documents to their destination, with official orders for the pilot to take her on board. The plane is fully crewed, and the only space available is the lower ball turret. She reluctantly leaves the document box with Sgt Walter Quaid for safeguarding, & she is then lowered into the turret.
The first half of the movie is a one woman tour de force for Moretz, where the camera focuses on her in the turret while the crew provide a running commentary of misogynistic observations over the intercoms. Officer Garrett gets on the intercom & says she sees a shadow on the wing & a Japanese reconnaissance plane (meaning fighter planes will be coming). The crew explain that she is a woman & therefore imagining things, even though she insists she is an experienced flight officer with multiple mission experience. Then she realizes something is taking apart one of the engines. She tries to open up the turret to get back to the fuselage but the handles break off (gremlins, right?) & she dislocates one of her fingers. On the plus side, the arm in the sling isn’t broken since it’s been used to smuggle in a revolver. What’s going on here?
In the second half, we find out what’s in the box, Japanese Zeros attack, the thing deconstructing the airplane from the inside does mischief, Garrett fires the ball turret guns at one of the attacking Zeros, finally climbs out of the turret – but to the outside of the plane! Crawls around the belly of the plane & the wing but doesn’t get pulled off by wind-shear! And much much more! Also punches out the stowaway at the end & then does mother things. Guys who hate women’s sports on twitter comments (“kitchen,” “not a sport”) may not care for some of this. Funny, crazy, exciting stuff.
4featherbear
NETFLIX streaming. Interceptor (2022) 1 hr. 22 min. Director: Matthew Reilly. Screenplay, Reilly & Stuart Beattie; story by Reilly. Cinematography: Ross Emery. Film editing, Rowan Maher.
Spotlight is on Elsa Pataky who plays Captain J.J. Collins. A U.S. Army captain with a strong Spanish accent is explained by having a Spanish mother & an American father, a retired military man. Pataky is in fact Spanish, born in Madrid, & married to Chris Hemsworth; the Thor guy is one of the producers & plays a Best Buy type salesperson in LA; unrecognizably I might add. She arrives at a U.S. interceptor platform & battery somewhere in the North Pacific, a sudden transfer, to be second in charge of the battery’s control room. Interceptors are missiles capable of destroying ICBMs (this is science fiction I assume). There are multiple interceptor platforms, with central control in the U.S. Captain Collins’s is one of several tasked to destroy ICBMs launched from the East, e.g. Siberia, China, and/or North Korea. Before she’s even settled in, terrorists take over the platform. Collins is able to seal the steel doors to the control room after her commanding officer is killed, but only after a vigorous hand to hand battle with a terrorist of much larger mass. Locked in the control room are Collins & 2 of the computer operators, one of whom is unconscious from a bullet graze to the head. Although the doors are sealed, the leader of the terrorists, Alexander (“do you know who I am”) Kessel (Luke Bracey, an Aussie playing an American) is able to communicate with Collins via vidcom. We learn, via Kessel & communications from military headquarters & the White House, that the terrorists have stolen 16 Russian missiles ready to launch somewhere in Siberia, that 16 US cities with populations totaling 300 million are targeted, and that other terrorists have disabled the command center for the interceptor platforms, all of which have now been neutralized except for this one, natch. No demands by the way, Kessel just wants to usher in the New World Order by bringing down the American empire. But if Collins will just unseal the doors to the missile control room … Because if she doesn’t Kessel will kill one of the army officers captured by the terrorists. She doesn’t; he follows through. But Kessel has shot himself in the foot, as it were, since he & the terrorists have killed all of the non-terrorists on the platform with nerve gas, so no more hostages to trade (a real Dr Evil this guy). But Kessel has a lot more tricks up his sleeve, including melting through the doors with torches. Meanwhile the US Navy has dispatched 2 helicopters packed with SEAL teams. So Collins & the one conscious crew member have to hold off the terrorists until the SEAL teams arrive – although the good news is the unconscious crew member wakes up, the bad news … Unfortunately the door seals will melt down before the SEALs arrive, so …
Collins does her duty doing perilous things like Officer Garrett in Shadow in the Cloud but in this case for reasons of patriotism. The underlying politics seem confusing to me, but these are confusing times. Collins represents female empowerment & she & her fellow crewperson, a Hindu immigrant, show that immigrants can be patriots, while one of the terrorists’ rationales for killing 300 million Americans is because he can no longer recognize America because of all the immigrants, while Kessel lectures Collins on the sins of the Amerikan Empire like a streetcorner progressive (maybe not convincing for Collins, conceived on an outpost of the empire in Spain), though it turns out that for both the racist & the progressive the motivating factor is money, because the terrorists are paid agents (who by the way hired the mercenaries who disrupted the command center in the US) but finally the movie doesn’t explain who was the source of payment, since even the combined wealth of the Koch brothers & George Soros & North Korea would be unable to come up with enough shekels to pay off all the agents involved. Both the economics & ideology seemed baffling to me, more unbelievable than the movie’s heroics. Maybe it was all borrowed money, a leveraged buyout like Discovery+ taking over HBOMax. But an entertaining action thriller made on the cheap.
Spotlight is on Elsa Pataky who plays Captain J.J. Collins. A U.S. Army captain with a strong Spanish accent is explained by having a Spanish mother & an American father, a retired military man. Pataky is in fact Spanish, born in Madrid, & married to Chris Hemsworth; the Thor guy is one of the producers & plays a Best Buy type salesperson in LA; unrecognizably I might add. She arrives at a U.S. interceptor platform & battery somewhere in the North Pacific, a sudden transfer, to be second in charge of the battery’s control room. Interceptors are missiles capable of destroying ICBMs (this is science fiction I assume). There are multiple interceptor platforms, with central control in the U.S. Captain Collins’s is one of several tasked to destroy ICBMs launched from the East, e.g. Siberia, China, and/or North Korea. Before she’s even settled in, terrorists take over the platform. Collins is able to seal the steel doors to the control room after her commanding officer is killed, but only after a vigorous hand to hand battle with a terrorist of much larger mass. Locked in the control room are Collins & 2 of the computer operators, one of whom is unconscious from a bullet graze to the head. Although the doors are sealed, the leader of the terrorists, Alexander (“do you know who I am”) Kessel (Luke Bracey, an Aussie playing an American) is able to communicate with Collins via vidcom. We learn, via Kessel & communications from military headquarters & the White House, that the terrorists have stolen 16 Russian missiles ready to launch somewhere in Siberia, that 16 US cities with populations totaling 300 million are targeted, and that other terrorists have disabled the command center for the interceptor platforms, all of which have now been neutralized except for this one, natch. No demands by the way, Kessel just wants to usher in the New World Order by bringing down the American empire. But if Collins will just unseal the doors to the missile control room … Because if she doesn’t Kessel will kill one of the army officers captured by the terrorists. She doesn’t; he follows through. But Kessel has shot himself in the foot, as it were, since he & the terrorists have killed all of the non-terrorists on the platform with nerve gas, so no more hostages to trade (a real Dr Evil this guy). But Kessel has a lot more tricks up his sleeve, including melting through the doors with torches. Meanwhile the US Navy has dispatched 2 helicopters packed with SEAL teams. So Collins & the one conscious crew member have to hold off the terrorists until the SEAL teams arrive – although the good news is the unconscious crew member wakes up, the bad news … Unfortunately the door seals will melt down before the SEALs arrive, so …
Collins does her duty doing perilous things like Officer Garrett in Shadow in the Cloud but in this case for reasons of patriotism. The underlying politics seem confusing to me, but these are confusing times. Collins represents female empowerment & she & her fellow crewperson, a Hindu immigrant, show that immigrants can be patriots, while one of the terrorists’ rationales for killing 300 million Americans is because he can no longer recognize America because of all the immigrants, while Kessel lectures Collins on the sins of the Amerikan Empire like a streetcorner progressive (maybe not convincing for Collins, conceived on an outpost of the empire in Spain), though it turns out that for both the racist & the progressive the motivating factor is money, because the terrorists are paid agents (who by the way hired the mercenaries who disrupted the command center in the US) but finally the movie doesn’t explain who was the source of payment, since even the combined wealth of the Koch brothers & George Soros & North Korea would be unable to come up with enough shekels to pay off all the agents involved. Both the economics & ideology seemed baffling to me, more unbelievable than the movie’s heroics. Maybe it was all borrowed money, a leveraged buyout like Discovery+ taking over HBOMax. But an entertaining action thriller made on the cheap.
5featherbear
NETFLIX. Carter 2022 2 hr. 22 min. Director: Byung-gil Jung. Screenplay: Byeong-sik Jung & Byung-gil Jung. Netflix & IMDB do an exceptionally poor job on credits. No information on Carter’s wife (actor or name of the character), no info. on the director of cinematography or the film editor.
It’s probably happened to you. Wake up on a blood-soaked bed, your body covered with tattoos & not much else, a cross shaped scar in the back of your head, surrounded by CIA agents, female voice in your head giving you directions (obey or the device planted in your mouth will blow your head off). On the plus side, you are very very fit & adept at all kinds of ways to injure, maim, or kill all sorts of opponents. On the down side, you can’t remember who you are or anything in your past (though lethal skills seem to be embedded). On instructions from the lady in your head (explains she’s an implant in your ear), you escape the CIA gunslingers by jumping headfirst through a window in your building, through the window of the neighboring building (quite a fall if you miss) into a sauna, a brothel, a torture chamber? Anyway, a little chat with one of the torturers convinces the guy you’re not one of them. Everybody (naked by the way) attacks but you beat off everyone, naked lady with a silencer pistol, guy with a hand ax, etc. Finally get some clothes on & head for the streets, with directions from the voice in your head.
The unusual angles & the use of the moving camera remind me of … the opening of the terrific Korean action film The Villainess (2017) and indeed the director of Carter was the director of the 2017 film! Need to watch the earlier film again, but my impression is Carter is even more kinetic, though the plot has as many holes as the Netflix credits. North Korea is struggling with a virus that turns people into violent proto-zombies (act like zombies but seem to be alive), as vicious as the ones in Train to Busan, but bald. South Korea, on the other hand, is virus free, & this is where a scientist has created a vaccine which has cured his daughter, whose blood is filled with the antibodies that can cure the disease. South Korea is where the guy with the tats & the ear implant finds himself. The scientist was on his way to North Korea with his daughter to bring the cure to the beleaguered country which is on the brink of collapse. But scientist & daughter have disappeared & it’s Carter’s job to find them & get them back to North Korea before the country goes over the brink. But the CIA has other plans, because of American genocidal conspiracies, it appears, which many non-Americans would find quite plausible. This would explain why dozens of CIA agents are trying to kill Carter, but he is able to dispatch them (in one case while shopping for a suit). Carter against all odds finds the daughter in some kind of street festival, where momentarily she sees a double of herself along with her father (movie doesn’t seem to take this anywhere unless it’s foreshadowing). If I remember correctly, Carter learns the scientist is already at the North Korean research center, so the North Korean operatives spirit Carter & the girl into a van & head north at top speed followed by an endless stream of police & military on trucks, Humvees & other armored vehicles & lots of motorcycles with Carter kicking out cops or whoever they are whenever any of them try to get on the van, or he jumps on a vehicle speeding alongside & whales away. Bodies flying about which motorcycles & other vehicles crash into.
They somehow reach North Korea only to be intercepted by a North Korean army breakaway group that (if I understand correctly) actually created the virus in order to topple the “moderate” snowflake-y North Korean government (if I got this plot twist right?). One of them is the lady in his head now in the flesh who happens to be his wife (Carter was groan a CIA spy who married a North Korean operative & had a daughter; the general leading the group infects Carter’s daughter with the virus & Carter was instructed to go to South Korea & find the scientist & his daughter – but how did he find himself in a bed with all that blood? Carter requested a memory block so anxiety about his wife & child wouldn't affect his spy skills. So did they pop open his skull in South Korea & leave him in the bedroom after the operation? And by the way when did they do the plastic surgery that makes him unidentifiable as CIA operative Carter which is why the CIA keep trying to kill one of their own?)
Well, back to the present in North Korea. Carter is marched off to an anthrax burn pit where the North Korean army is dumping living virus sufferers & setting them on fire, but the burning zombie wannabees choogle out of the pit & kill all of the soldiers, while the soldiers & Carter kill all of the zombies. Then he sets off for the research facility, rescues his wife (taken there by the general to fulfill his lecherous desires) & daughter (saved by an injection of the scientist’s serum derived from his daughter’s antibodies), & also with the scientist & his daughter, Carter takes off for a medical train (carrying the virus vaccine?) heading for South Korea, with the insurgency general in hot pursuit with motorcycles & Humvees & helicopters. As Carter fights them off, the stunts really outdo Jung’s earlier work in The Villainess or the earlier part of the movie for that matter, as well as any recent James Bond extravaganza. Carter fights them all off, the train emerges from a tunnel & crosses a bridge & they’re in sight of the South, but then one of the bridge supports explodes. End of movie. Hope Netflix has enough left in the bank to finance a sequel.
Sorry for the half understood “spoilers” but really it’s the journey not the end, am I right? And anyhoo I’m not sure what’s going on entirely or if any of this makes sense. Just as Blood in the Sky is superior action in a confined space, Carter’s best stuff is expansive & open air spectacle, logical plot be damned, with ideological logic even more confusing than Interceptor.
It’s probably happened to you. Wake up on a blood-soaked bed, your body covered with tattoos & not much else, a cross shaped scar in the back of your head, surrounded by CIA agents, female voice in your head giving you directions (obey or the device planted in your mouth will blow your head off). On the plus side, you are very very fit & adept at all kinds of ways to injure, maim, or kill all sorts of opponents. On the down side, you can’t remember who you are or anything in your past (though lethal skills seem to be embedded). On instructions from the lady in your head (explains she’s an implant in your ear), you escape the CIA gunslingers by jumping headfirst through a window in your building, through the window of the neighboring building (quite a fall if you miss) into a sauna, a brothel, a torture chamber? Anyway, a little chat with one of the torturers convinces the guy you’re not one of them. Everybody (naked by the way) attacks but you beat off everyone, naked lady with a silencer pistol, guy with a hand ax, etc. Finally get some clothes on & head for the streets, with directions from the voice in your head.
The unusual angles & the use of the moving camera remind me of … the opening of the terrific Korean action film The Villainess (2017) and indeed the director of Carter was the director of the 2017 film! Need to watch the earlier film again, but my impression is Carter is even more kinetic, though the plot has as many holes as the Netflix credits. North Korea is struggling with a virus that turns people into violent proto-zombies (act like zombies but seem to be alive), as vicious as the ones in Train to Busan, but bald. South Korea, on the other hand, is virus free, & this is where a scientist has created a vaccine which has cured his daughter, whose blood is filled with the antibodies that can cure the disease. South Korea is where the guy with the tats & the ear implant finds himself. The scientist was on his way to North Korea with his daughter to bring the cure to the beleaguered country which is on the brink of collapse. But scientist & daughter have disappeared & it’s Carter’s job to find them & get them back to North Korea before the country goes over the brink. But the CIA has other plans, because of American genocidal conspiracies, it appears, which many non-Americans would find quite plausible. This would explain why dozens of CIA agents are trying to kill Carter, but he is able to dispatch them (in one case while shopping for a suit). Carter against all odds finds the daughter in some kind of street festival, where momentarily she sees a double of herself along with her father (movie doesn’t seem to take this anywhere unless it’s foreshadowing). If I remember correctly, Carter learns the scientist is already at the North Korean research center, so the North Korean operatives spirit Carter & the girl into a van & head north at top speed followed by an endless stream of police & military on trucks, Humvees & other armored vehicles & lots of motorcycles with Carter kicking out cops or whoever they are whenever any of them try to get on the van, or he jumps on a vehicle speeding alongside & whales away. Bodies flying about which motorcycles & other vehicles crash into.
They somehow reach North Korea only to be intercepted by a North Korean army breakaway group that (if I understand correctly) actually created the virus in order to topple the “moderate” snowflake-y North Korean government (if I got this plot twist right?). One of them is the lady in his head now in the flesh who happens to be his wife (Carter was groan a CIA spy who married a North Korean operative & had a daughter; the general leading the group infects Carter’s daughter with the virus & Carter was instructed to go to South Korea & find the scientist & his daughter – but how did he find himself in a bed with all that blood? Carter requested a memory block so anxiety about his wife & child wouldn't affect his spy skills. So did they pop open his skull in South Korea & leave him in the bedroom after the operation? And by the way when did they do the plastic surgery that makes him unidentifiable as CIA operative Carter which is why the CIA keep trying to kill one of their own?)
Well, back to the present in North Korea. Carter is marched off to an anthrax burn pit where the North Korean army is dumping living virus sufferers & setting them on fire, but the burning zombie wannabees choogle out of the pit & kill all of the soldiers, while the soldiers & Carter kill all of the zombies. Then he sets off for the research facility, rescues his wife (taken there by the general to fulfill his lecherous desires) & daughter (saved by an injection of the scientist’s serum derived from his daughter’s antibodies), & also with the scientist & his daughter, Carter takes off for a medical train (carrying the virus vaccine?) heading for South Korea, with the insurgency general in hot pursuit with motorcycles & Humvees & helicopters. As Carter fights them off, the stunts really outdo Jung’s earlier work in The Villainess or the earlier part of the movie for that matter, as well as any recent James Bond extravaganza. Carter fights them all off, the train emerges from a tunnel & crosses a bridge & they’re in sight of the South, but then one of the bridge supports explodes. End of movie. Hope Netflix has enough left in the bank to finance a sequel.
Sorry for the half understood “spoilers” but really it’s the journey not the end, am I right? And anyhoo I’m not sure what’s going on entirely or if any of this makes sense. Just as Blood in the Sky is superior action in a confined space, Carter’s best stuff is expansive & open air spectacle, logical plot be damned, with ideological logic even more confusing than Interceptor.
7featherbear
Amazon Prime (also in theaters, I believe). 13 Lives (2022) 2 hr. 27 min. Director: Ron Howard. Screenplay: William Nicholson, Don & William McPherson; and Real Life. Cinematography: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (great underwater photography!). Film editing: James Wilcox. Music: Benjamin Wallfisch.
After binging on too many action-fantasy movies I anticipated a Ron Howard film’s blandness would help bring me down a bit & get me into sleep mode on another hot August night. So I was going to watch a little bit at 10:30 & was entirely in its spell afraid to look away until the end ca. 1 AM with the Sponge Bob birthday cake scene. If you didn’t know, it’s about the 2018 rescue of 12 children & their coach from a flooded cave in Thailand. I like the way Howard had a long opening that set the tone of “it takes a village” with almost all of the dialog in Thai , along with beautiful photography of the fields, the mountain, & village life. The big stars don’t figure until later & keep it toned down: Viggo Mortensen & Colin Farrell, playing British cave divers Rick Stanton & John Volanthan, and later Joel Edgerton as Harris, who comes up with a scheme to get the children out, and though the help comes in from various parties worldwide (no Elon Musk though), the focus is on the villagers – the Myanamar immigrant mother of the smallest child was really affecting – who all help to give the rescuers enough time to effect the miraculous rescue. And the quiet, patient, endurance of the children. Scary, suspenseful, exhilarating. Unusually, surprisingly, un-Hollywood; a humanizing experience. There’s a NatGeo documentary I haven't seen, which some like a lot, but it’s only available on Disney+ (I’m not interested in subscribing), but if you have access, might be worth a comparison.
After binging on too many action-fantasy movies I anticipated a Ron Howard film’s blandness would help bring me down a bit & get me into sleep mode on another hot August night. So I was going to watch a little bit at 10:30 & was entirely in its spell afraid to look away until the end ca. 1 AM with the Sponge Bob birthday cake scene. If you didn’t know, it’s about the 2018 rescue of 12 children & their coach from a flooded cave in Thailand. I like the way Howard had a long opening that set the tone of “it takes a village” with almost all of the dialog in Thai , along with beautiful photography of the fields, the mountain, & village life. The big stars don’t figure until later & keep it toned down: Viggo Mortensen & Colin Farrell, playing British cave divers Rick Stanton & John Volanthan, and later Joel Edgerton as Harris, who comes up with a scheme to get the children out, and though the help comes in from various parties worldwide (no Elon Musk though), the focus is on the villagers – the Myanamar immigrant mother of the smallest child was really affecting – who all help to give the rescuers enough time to effect the miraculous rescue. And the quiet, patient, endurance of the children. Scary, suspenseful, exhilarating. Unusually, surprisingly, un-Hollywood; a humanizing experience. There’s a NatGeo documentary I haven't seen, which some like a lot, but it’s only available on Disney+ (I’m not interested in subscribing), but if you have access, might be worth a comparison.
8cindydavid4
>7 featherbear: Just saw Howard on Late Night talking about it. We are planning to watch it tonight
9cindydavid4
oh my, even tho I knew how it ends, this movie had me on the edge of my seat. Amazing acting, not just the big stars but the young boys as well. The diving sequences were amazing. I am curious how those boys are doing now 5 years later. Highly recommend watching this
10featherbear
Peacock network: The Black Phone (2021). Director, screenplay (with Robert Cargill) Scott Derrickson. Based on a short story by Joe Hill. Cinematography, Brett Jutkiewicz. Editor, Frederic Thoraval. Joe Hill is Stephen King’s son, and the film brings together a lot of early Stephen King tropes (The Shining, It) plus the Jonathan Demme film Silence of the Lambs for the cross-cutting “twist.” Early King focused on the violence of men & brutalized children, & the movie captures this well. In some ways the most harrowing scene is early in the film where the hero’s little sister Gwen (Madeline McGraw) is beaten by her drunk father Terrence (bearded Jeremy Davies), which sets the tone. King then layers the supernatural over the hyper young adult “real world” he evokes so well. Ethan Hawke is The Grabber, whose modus operandi is to kidnap little boys & “punish” them (alluded to, not shown); Gwen has a touch of The Shining, like her deceased mother, and has the bike and sailor’s vocabulary of King’s kids, though Hill adds some religion to it. The Grabber’s last victim Finney, Gwen’s brother (Mason Thames) looks like one of the kids from Stranger Things & follows the typical younger adult path of personal growth, unfortunately not the fate of his ghostly helpers. A good B-movie in the sense of you’ve seen it all before but it’s still gripping, unless all you watch is B-movies & are easily jaded. Watch it for Madeline McGraw’s performance, plus you may want to kick remorseful Daddy in the ass in the next to last scene.
11featherbear
Netflix: Day Shift (2022) Director J.J. Perry. Screenplay (with Shay Hatte) & story by Tyler Tice. Cinematography, Tony Oliver. Film editing, Paul Harb. Is it the case that the first resort of female scoundrels is real estate? Southern California San Fernando Valley vampire comedy. Jamie Foxx is Bud Jablonski, pool cleaner (appropriate to the locale) & vampire bounty hunter. All sorts of vampire information herein: we learn that there is a bounty hunter union (at least in union friendly Southern California) – Jablonski has been kicked out of the union for being too individualistic in his hunting technique -- that the hunters are paid for collecting/extracting fangs, that without fangs vampires can’t resurrect themselves, that vampires can’t reproduce but can turn non-vampires into vampires by biting them with their fangs, that vampires are loners but when they get together there is a 4-part hierarchy, that real estate vampire-entrepreneur Audrey (Karla Souza) plans to colonize the Valley through her patented vampire sun screen so the creatures no longer need to come out at night. (So what is the financial basis for the fang market; is it like bitcoin?) Favorite scene, Foxx teams up with the exterminators the Nazarin brothers (Scott Howey & Scott Adkins) to clear a nest of illegal vampire immigrants from Mexico – a little Trump flexing here. Where we learn that the vampire killer arsenal includes wooden tipped bullets & garlic grenades. (It says something about the economic plight of Mexican immigrants that they can’t afford wood bullet repellant vests – but this hasn’t occurred to any of the vampires for some reason) And we haven’t gotten to Snoop Dogg as ultimate vampire killer Big Joe!
12featherbear
NETFLIX. Extraordinary Attorney Woo (2022) Korean w/English subtitles. Each episode about 90 min. I’ve seen the first 4 episodes. Woo Young Woo (Eun-bin Park) is a first time attorney at a top legal firm in Seoul. She is a high functioning autistic, blessed with a prodigious memory of the law & the ability to use it & think outside the box. She has myriad obsessions (whales, requiring a string of repeated words before she can communicate, difficulty looking people in the eyes, shows fear but affection seems to be outside her grasp, going through a required set of steps/gestures before entering a room). Brought up by a widowed father, whose character gets filled in as the series progresses. Firm seems surprisingly tolerant of her idiosyncrasies compared to what I would expect in an American firm. Each episode so far features her role in a different case, defending a different client: a woman accused of killing her husband (has dementia, can be abusive), a hotel being sued for an outlandish sum for ruining a wedding, an autistic man with the mental age of a 6 year old accused of murdering his brother in a fit of rage. Sometimes like a high end Hallmark special, helped by the Korean dialog (English dubbing might make it seem too corn syrupy). Fascinating & moving, plus each case gives some insight into South Korean life, culture, & law. Best Korean series I’ve seen on Netflix (or anywhere else) since Possessed. Highly recommended based on the episodes I’ve seen, especially if you like law firm series.
13featherbear
Peacock. Fatman (2020). 1 hr. 40 min. Chris Cringle (Mel Gibson) is in financial trouble, & the government is threatening to cut his subsidy (toy distribution gives the economy a boost at the end of the 4th quarter) because fewer children deserve rewards (other than the traditional lump of coal). Salary reduction means elves out of work & Mrs. C. (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) out of cookie dough. Chris is forced to devote his factory to assembling fighter plane consoles for the military for the first fiscal quarter. One of the children who gets the lump of coal is unfortunately a ruthless billionaire’s son (Chance Hurstfield as bad Billy Wenan) who has a hired killer (Walton Goggins) on his payroll, & Billy sics his killer on Santa. This is like a live action South Park special. Rather fun if you’re in a cynical mood.
Britbox via Prime Video. McDonald and Dodds 2020-. Enjoyed the first 2 episodes of Season 3 (couldn’t get episode 3 – Britbox may be applying managed release dates to the series). Each episode about 90 min. DCI Lauren McDonald (Tala Gouveia) is a London detective who transfers to a nowhere rural suburb for a better chance at promotion. She’s partnered with nerdy DS Dodds (Jason Watkins) who appears to be a clueless small town cop (which he is much of the time) whose great loves are trivia contests & chips (fried potatoes), but who manages to squeeze in a shrewd observation at regular intervals. The two both bring something to the table: the DCI is full of youthful energy, with a veteran’s good instinct for suspect dissembling, & the DS has his stammering, Holmesian insights. I’m particularly fond of Tala Gouveia’s McDonald. S3 E1 A smiling sunbather turns out to be dead – who, how, why. Linguistics professor who specializes in regional accents is a suspect, along with his mother, close to her 100th birthday, who remembers a liaison with Picasso.
Britbox via Prime Video. McDonald and Dodds 2020-. Enjoyed the first 2 episodes of Season 3 (couldn’t get episode 3 – Britbox may be applying managed release dates to the series). Each episode about 90 min. DCI Lauren McDonald (Tala Gouveia) is a London detective who transfers to a nowhere rural suburb for a better chance at promotion. She’s partnered with nerdy DS Dodds (Jason Watkins) who appears to be a clueless small town cop (which he is much of the time) whose great loves are trivia contests & chips (fried potatoes), but who manages to squeeze in a shrewd observation at regular intervals. The two both bring something to the table: the DCI is full of youthful energy, with a veteran’s good instinct for suspect dissembling, & the DS has his stammering, Holmesian insights. I’m particularly fond of Tala Gouveia’s McDonald. S3 E1 A smiling sunbather turns out to be dead – who, how, why. Linguistics professor who specializes in regional accents is a suspect, along with his mother, close to her 100th birthday, who remembers a liaison with Picasso.
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