Category Archives: Movies

Movie Review: Thunderbolts*

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After never quite finding the time or frankly the motivation to get out to the theaters to see Captain America: Brave New World I returned to my MCU in-theater franchise experience yesterday with Thunderbolts* I can say that skipping the last entry in the series made no discernable difference in the Thunderbolts* experience.

Marvel Studios

While this is team story, featuring Red Guardian (David Harbour) The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), John Walker (Wyatt Russel), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) the story and the film really belong to Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) and her deep nearly debilitating depression.

Our heroes, following a betrayal that was intended to leave them all dead in order to provide a ‘clean record’ for their employer, unite as a fractious collective in order to bring the truth out into the open but along the way encounter an enhanced individual with powers of a magnitude as to make them physically unstoppable. In order to save humanity from an existence of never-ending darkness and depression the team must each face their own deep and persistent psychological traumas.

Directed competently by Jake Schreier from a script by Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo with unflashy cinematography by Andrew Droz Palermo, Thunderbolts* is very much a return to form for Marvel feature films. It moves fast, uses a mix of humor and pathos to make each scene compelling and emotionally weighty and does not bite off more than it can chew in a feature film’s runtime. The film continues the Marvel Studio’s tradition of both a mid-credit and post-credit scene, but I would have flipped the order of their presentation. If you actually read the credit crawl just before the post-credit scene plays a clue revealing its nature slides across the screen, one that for me acted as a spoiler.

All in all, I enjoyed Thunderbolts* though there are bits and bobs that did not quite sit right for me, and I do believe that some of the characters were treated with less respect than their cinematic history required.

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Movie Review: Sinners

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It took me a little while to find the time and the energy to get out to the cinema to see Sinnersa film that had my interest from the first time I watched a trailer. It is worth it.

Warner Brothers Studios

Sinners is a horror film so amid the racism, and the twins’ troubled romantic history, the opening night of the joint is marred by Irish vampires drawn to the establishment by the power of Sammy’s voice and music.

Cinema over the decades has presented all manner of vampires, aristocratic European nobility, tragic lovers trapped by the enormity of endless time, farcical flat mates in contemporary Wellington, and countless forgettable bloodsuckers that inspires no terror. Sinners, while not wholly reinventing the monster, much of what people accept as traditional vampiric lore remains, does present them as monsters to be feared and destroyed not an enjoyable method for dodging the grim fact that all things die. These vampires are seductive but decidedly not sexy. The script also artfully sidesteps the tangle created by crosses and crucifixes.

In addition to its tremendous power to frighten, Sinners is also a celebration of survival over centuries of trauma and oppression a celebration experienced in music. It is a horror film, and it is also a musical leaning on the ancient human tradition of oral history in song. More than once Coogler’s movie reminded me of one of my favorite films, The Wicker Man. Both movies deal with isolated communities that live in opposition to the larger culture surrounding them and for whom music is both reverential and festive.

Sinners is well worth the trip out to the cinema.

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That Scene in Andor

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There are fandom fights fiercer that than those found among the fans of Star Wars and Episode 3, Harvest, of Season 2 Andor provoked a fine one.

Bix (Adria Arjona) and a couple of compatriots, on the lam from Imperial Security, are hiding out on a distant agricultural planet. She comes to the lecherous attention of Imperial Lieutenant Krole (Alex Waldmann). Bix rebuffs his advances and when his attempt to coerce her under the color of authority also fails, Krole attacks Bix with intent to sexually assault her.

The story element ignited furious arguments among fans.

One faction defends the plot point with the clear and undisputed historical truth that this is precisely what takes place in fascist regimes. Petty evil people abuse their positions of power and control for their own selfish satisfactions including sexual assault becoming quite common.

The counter argument raised is that in the universe of noble Jedi Knights, mystical magical forces, and valiant rebellions against tyranny such real-world ugliness has no place. Star Wars is a vehicle for escape from reality’s nasty brutishness and need not reflect it back at the escapees.

As with the best disagreements, truth, in some form, lies on both sides of the discussion. Fascistic systems attract and generate the bullies, the thugs, and the rapists to them for the opportunity to wield unchecked power and authority free from social or legal accountability. Traditionally, Star Wars is a fantasy beyond its reality of transcendent forces with clear moral codes that translate into ‘light’ and ‘dark’ sides but well into the realm of social political forces. The rebellion against the galactic empire is presented as unblemished by ethical compromises. They do not prey upon a population to steal resources, they do not commit acts of terrorism to drain away imperial support, nor do they engage in revenge driven bloodbaths after their victory. The rebellion in how it operates in the field and after overthrowing the government acts in a matter as fantastic as a Jedi’s telekinetic powers. All this makes the attempted sexual assault far too ‘real’ for how traditional Star Wars presented itself.

There is another factor why that scene rubbed so many traditional Star Wars fans the wrong way.

Star Wars, traditionally, is quite chaste.

While romance imbued throughout the originally trilogy including the charged triangle of Luke, Leia, and Han. What those first films did not have was potent real sexuality. Star Wars, though produced in the late 70s, has more in common with a pre-code feature in terms of sexuality than its cinematic compatriots. Nearly a decade earlier broadcast television was more sexually charged that Star Wars. When Captain Kirk, sitting on a bed is slipping his boots back on and Deela is fixing her hair in a mirror everyone understood that the couple had just completed sexual relations. Not only is there no such scene in the first trilogy of Star Wars movies, but it is also clear that any scene even approaching that is wildly out of tone with the ‘fairy tale’ nature of the productions. The Empire Strikes Back would never introduce a scene where Lando walks into a room where Han and Leia were together under the covers of a beautiful bed. Sex, in traditional Star Wars, is an abstract existing only in a conceptual form.

Andor is not traditional Star Wars.

Tony Gilroy’s conception with this series is something much more informed by our actual reality than our sanitized fairy tales of nobles knight and virginal princesses. His creation of emotionally complex and competent agents of the Empire, his depiction of a rebellion riven with factions and not above assassination shows that this is not the pristine and unmuddied forces of good that Lucas showed us in the 70s and 80s.

From Luthen’s willingness to use and abandon his own people as a means towards a victory he expects he will never see to season 2’s quite explicit echo of the Nazi’s Wannsee conference where the eradication of Europe’s Jewish population was decided Gilroy is reflecting our real world back at us through the distorted mirror of a Star Wars story. In that respect Krole’s assault on Bix is very much in keeping with the tone and the intention of the production as much as it conflicts and is at odds with the films released by Lucas.

Both camps are right in their reactions to the scene. As I have often said in my writers’ group, ‘no honest critique can be wrong.’ That said if the more real world inspired tone of Andor is not to your taste, then Andor is not for you and perhaps the more traditionally aligned products are where you need to find your enjoyment.

Personally? I adore Andor.

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Yet Another Reason to Hate A. I.

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Generative A.I. is not without decent and good uses but there has been a lot of terrible things as well, the scraping of artists’ work to feed it, my own novel has been fed into at least one A.I. to ‘train it, the enormous amounts of energy used to power it for so far little practical benefits, the dangerously destabilizing effect it could have if not carefully introduced in the economy. All that said last night I discovered yet another reason to hate the wide-spread and easy access to artificial ‘intelligence.’

After watching the programs of interest to us my sweetie-wife and I relaxed by scanning trailers on YouTube. Some were interesting, some were not but then at the end of the line produced by the search lay a trailer for The Odyssey.

Christopher Nolan began filming his adaptation of that classic story in February 2025 and it should hit theaters in the summer of 2026 so it is possible that some form of teaser trailer had just been released.

Nope.

Some forking dipshirt had prompted generative A.I. to make a trailer and it was among the most idiotic and terrible bit of video I have ever witnessed. It was evident within a few moments what sort of garbage this was, and we stopped watching, disgusted with the thing.

It is bad enough when fans make fake trailers; I still recall how hard it was to find a legitimate trailer for The Return, ironically enough also adapted from The Odyssey when the internet was overflowing with fan-made trailers using clips from various movies starring Ralph Fiennes. A.I. doesn’t even resort to clips, it just lies and throws crap into the world.

There are some very funny and creative fake trailers out there, such as Must Love Jaws which is created to make Jaws look like a buddy comedy when misfit friends Brody and Hooper have to stop the evil Quint from killing their shark friend. You would never mistake this for the real trailer, it’s a work of creativity and love, things A.I. does not possess.

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A Few of My Memorable Moments in Movie Theaters

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Movies have been central to my life for literally as long as I can remember. I have vague hazy memories of a Hammer Horror film that make up some of my earliest recollections. But even with a lifetime of cinematic treasures there are sometimes moments that stand out for the experience that came to me in darkened theaters. Here is a small sampling, be aware these have spoilers.

Towering Inferno:

I saw this at the Sunrise theater in Ft. Pierce Florida with my friend Brian Hardman. Brian, a somewhat rebellious early teen lit up a cigarette and got us both thrown out. It was years before I learned how that finally put out the blaze.

Hereditary:

Ari Aster phenomenal horror movie of cults, witches, demon gods, and family dysfunction was a terrific film to see in the theater. The transition from Act 1 to Act 2, where Charlie is killed was so sudden, so shocking that for several minutes I convinced myself it was a dream sequence. It was not. Once the reality of the plot became undeniable I knew I was in the hands of a writer/director that was fearless and that made the rest of the film so much more terrifying.

Dead & Buried:

A non-traditional zombie movie, I saw Dead and Buried at one of the grindhouse theaters that used to exist in downtown San Diego. In the film a hapless photographer is lured by a beautiful woman to a secluded spot with a crowd of quite ordinary looking people who slaughter and burn him alive. His burned body is place in a staged auto accident but when authorities reach and touch the corpse, he screams. That remains in my opinion the most effective jump scare in cinema history.

Alien:

20th century films

Staying for scripts from Dan O’Bannon, I watched Alien on its initial release and it was then and remains an astonishing film. Slow deliberate tension that mounts and mounts. With that said I had an idiosyncratic reaction to the conclusion of the ‘chest buster’ scene. For most of the sequence where Cain dies his terrible and horrible death I sat as shocked as the rest of the audience. However, once the Zeta Reticulian parasite raised itself up from his corpse, looked around the compartment at the characters in my head all I could hear was a tiny high-pitched voice saying, “hello.’ It’s not that scene failed but rather I think my brain had simply overloaded and retreated to humor to deal with it.

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ALIENS: When the Director’s Cut is Inferior

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In 1986, seven years after the release of Alien, the sequel, often lauded as one of the best sequels of all time, Aliens released into theaters to critical and commercial success.

20th Century Films

In 1999 with the release of a boxed DVD set featuring the franchise’s films, a director’s cut of the movie was included, a version that many fans find superior to the theatrical release. I am not one of them.

According to director Cameron, on the audio commentary for one of the releases, the film was coming in long and as non-linear editing had not yet been widely adopted and the production was running out of time, performing numerous small edits here and there throughout the film to shorten it proved to be insufficient to the task. Producer, and then spouse to Cameron, Gale Anne Hurd noted that the entire reel containing all of the colony material prior to Ripley and the Marine’s arrival could get dropped without impacting the plot. A simple, fast fix that allowed the production to meet that rapidly approaching deadline. When given the chance to re-edit the film with digital editing tools for the box set, Cameron restored the reel and several other scenes that had been excised from the theatrical release.

In my opinion, the longer, less focused, run time damages what was a nearly perfect film in two major ways.

The first is in perspective. With the time spent on the colony meeting a few of the colonist, Newt prior to her horrific experiences, and such dilutes the powerful telling of Ripley’s story. This story is about Ellen Ripley, her post-traumatic stress dealing with the terrors she encountered and the guilt of her survivorship. She is the character the audience invests their emotional capital with, and it is her pain and suffering that makes us tense hoping and praying for a happy ending. To take 10 or 15 minutes away from Ripley for characters we scarcely know and are not at all emotionally invested in their stories. This dilutes the film’s power. Aside from Newt, how many colonists can you name from the director’s cut?

The second issue I will admit is more pedantic, but it is one that bothers more and more when I watch the film.

Each alien drone/warrior comes from a single impregnated victim, and it’s stated that the colony on LV-426, — and don’t get me started on the colony name — had a population of 158 person. 158, that’s  a small movie theater’s worth of people. I have never counted but it looks to me, particularly in the Director’s cut that there are a lot more than 158 aliens that attack the characters in the siege. A favorite sequence for many in the extended version is the automatic guns, set up to guard the tunnels leading into the base where our heroes have barricaded themselves. The guns firing automatically cut down waves of alien drones. Even after all that there remain scores that make the final assault and even still more in the nest to threaten Ripley and Newt’s escape.

Especially in the director’s cut there are simply far too many aliens something that chips and erodes away my ability to suspend disbelief for the movie.

Your opinion may be different and that’s part of the beauty of art, but to me the theatrical is the best version of Aliens.

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Movie Review: Night has a Thousand Eyes (1948)

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John Triton (Edward G. Robinson) a stage mentalist working with his fiancé and best friend instead of the manipulated performance begins having spontaneous and accurate psychic visions. After several come to pass precisely as he envisioned, Triton flees, leaving his fiancé and friend without an explanation, hoping his absence will avert her death that he foresaw.

Paramount PIctures

Isolating himself from humanity and surviving by making mail-order tricks, Triton desperately avoids contact with people, unwilling to foresee more tragedy. However, when circumstances bring him into the orbit of his former fiancé’s daughter (Gail Russell) and his visions again spell doom, Triton struggles to prevent the future that now seems predestined.

Night Has a Thousand Eyes is usually categorized as a film noir, but the paranormal aspects make this a difficult movie to place definitively into any single genre. Where noir is often propelled by human weaknesses such as lust or greed, Eyes finds its motivation in Triton’s deep desire to not be the herald of disaster. The seemingly doomed nature of his vision, presenting what appears to be a hard, unalterable future, gives this film a touch of horror. Triton is a tragic character and, like all really good tragic characters, he is very sympathetic. He never sought the power that came to define his life. He never understood it and wanted nothing more than to be rid of it. Fate commandeered his life leaving him as helpless as a leaf blown by a wind. Robinson gives a fine nuanced performance, and he is the heart of this film. had he been unable to exude the required pathos none of it would have worked.

When I began watching Night has a Thousand Eyes, even though it is not a terribly long movie, I expected to watch only a portion before going to bed, but instead it sucked me in, and I completed the movie in a single sitting. It is well worth the watch.

Night has a Thousand Eyes is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

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STREAMING MOVIE REVIEW: AUDITION (1999)

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Omega Project

Shigeharu (Ryo Ishibashi) a widower of about ten years and a workaholic with the help of a film producer friend sets up a series of auditions for a non-existent production in hopes of finding the right young woman to become his wife. From the moment Asami’s (Eihi Shiiina) headshot and CV cross his desk Shigeharu is fascinated and soon obsessed with the mysterious young woman, ignoring the communist parade of red flags surrounding Asami. Soon enough Shigeharu discovers the depths of Asami’s unbalanced mind the hatred she harbors for deceitful, manipulating men.

Audition came to my attention due to a YouTube video about frightening moments in film and I have to agree the scene where what appears to be a large laundry bag moves if startling and unsettling. While this film has a generally good score in its reviews and overall, I did enjoy it I think it runs a little long in duration. The second act, the middle of the film, feels a little aimless slows down just a tad too much for my tastes. It many ways the feels much like many Frankensteinadaptations first acts. We know what is coming and the delay in getting that building very little in tension of suspense. At an hour and fifty-five minutes I think Audition might benefits for just being 10 to 15 minutes shorter.

That said, if foreign film works for you and if subtitling doesn’t interfere with your suspension of disbelief than Audition is worth a watch.

Audition is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel and Shudder.

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Spaghetti Western Review: The Price of Power (ll prezzo del potere)

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I was never into the Italian produced westerns until my sweetie-wife came along and now we will seek them out, either on streaming or on disc. Some have been real gems and others rather tedious to screen. However, this one proved the most unique in the thematic structure of its story.

It is 1881 and President James Garfield (Van Johnson, dubbed even in the English Language version) is touring the western United States as he pushes for greater civil rights for the recently liberated enslaved people. In the sleep desert town of Dallas, Texas, a conspiracy of bitter-end Confederates plot to assassinate Garfield. Only a former Union officer, Jack Donovan (Ray Saunders) stands in the way of the powerful interests plotting the president’s murder.

As the film unspooled, I wondered just how much of the story, a presidential assassination plot in Dallas, was deliberately crafted to invoke the Kennedy killing. My answers came at the end of the second act when hidden gunmen shot and killed Garfield as he rode through the street in an open carriage with the lovely dark-haired wife at his side. This was quite directly a retelling of November 22, 1963, but with a different assassinated head of government. (Garfield was shot and killed while in office, but back east and by a disgruntled office seeker.)

I haven’t yet finished the film, but I strongly suspect that the third act will be fairly standard for a spaghetti western as our hero has plenty to avenge beyond the murder of a president. It’s a shame that the only version streaming in Tubi is the dubbed one but still it’s revealing itself to a most interest example of those late 60s Italian productions.

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Movie Review: Diabolique (1955)

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At a run-down private school in France a cruel schoolmaster torments his mistress and assaults his wife prompting the women to conspire in his murder.

I was supposed to see this film on the big screen with the San Diego Film Geeks monthly screening at the Digital Gym but came down with a cold that weekend and was forced to miss it. Luckily the film is playing on the Criterion Channel.

Artwork: Criterion Collection

Diabolique is considered a classic of the thriller genre. Starring Vera Clouzot as Christina, the Spanish spouse of cruel headmaster Michael (Paul Meurisse) and Simone Signoret as Nicole a teacher at the school and Michael’s mistress. Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, Vera’s husband, the film is a tight suspenseful production in the vein of a Hitchcock movie. (The novel which the film was adapted from was one Hitchcock wanted but Henri-Georges Clouzot beat him to it.) Murders never come off as planned and murderers rarely are truthful on their lives leading to a story with twists and reveals right up to the final shot. It is an ironic tragedy that Vera Clouzot, playing a woman with a serious heart condition, died suddenly from a cardiac event just 5 years after Diabolique’s release.

There is a reason why this is considered a classic. Every aspect of the production works, the performances, the cinematography, and the direction all take what is a fairly standard film noir set-up and play it to near perfection. I regret that illness robbed me of the chance to see it for the first time in a proper is small theater.

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