jp-hunsecker
JP Hunsecker
The Fringe Movie Review Aggregator
569 posts
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
Last Seen Blogs
mensbriefs
Boxers Or Briefs
chlorinetabletsforthepool-blog
מצליל מים לבריכה
cherierain
ヤンデレの男の子
Yandere boys~
groovypiratesweets-blog
WOW！不可思議的紐西蘭
angelspearlheart
Angelina
Text
The Last Valley Movie Review
The Last Valley is set in the German countryside during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), a conflict originally motivated by religious differences that soon became mainly political (if there’s any difference at all). Vogel (Omar Sharif), a former teacher constantly running from the ravages of war, discovers a village hidden in an idyllic valley; unfortunately for him, the Captain (Michael Caine) and his band of mercenaries — which includes Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anabaptists (“pagans”, “blasphemers,” “Satan worshipers”, and “worse;” i.e., Catholics) — arrive at the same time. To save himself, and the village, from looting, pillaging, and rape by the soldiers, Vogel persuades the Captain to camp there and forget about war, famine, and, of course, the plague, for the winter. Using Vogel as a mediator, the Captain brokers a truce with the population, agreeing to protect the people of the valley in exchange for food, shelter, and concubines; in a scene brimming with religious satire, the Captain manipulates the local Catholic priest into giving, or better yet, selling the chosen women a “public blessing … full remission of past and future sins” (I’m reminded me of the bishop in The Baby of Mâcon preemptively pardoning hundreds of rapists). Another great scene belongs to Sharif; the Captain has moved a conspicuous “Our Lady” altar to a less conspicuous location in the valley, incurring the wrath of the aforementioned priest and other Catholics (including, ironically, those under the Captain's orders). In order to preserve the fragile peace, Vogel comes up with a story about a dream he had the night before in which “a regiment of soldiers came riding under a full moon. They were huge and wicked, and they faced the altar. But as they watched, the shrine disappeared. So the soldiers went on their way to Rheinfelden and never came back." Writer/director James Clavell provides the Captain and Vogel with romantic interests, but the only relationship that matters is the love/hate bromance between the cynical military man and the scrupulous ex-teacher. On the other hand, Clavell puts the Tyrolean locations to great use; the titular valley, photographed in all its splendor by John Wilcox, delivers in spades the Arcadia that the script promises.
0 notes
Text
The Perfection Movie Review
The Perfection is a twisted little queer/body horror flick wherein every character is either insane or driven to insanity. Charlotte (Allison Williams) seduces, fucks, drugs, and tricks Lizzie (Logan Browning) into chopping off her own right hand (Charlotte knows that a certain combination of prescription pills and alcohol could result in hallucinations; how she could have predicted, though, that Lizzie would experience that specific side effect as opposed to any other, or that Lizzie would hallucinate something that would lead her to hack off her right hand instead of, say, her left foot, I haven’t the foggiest). Charlotte, mind you, is the heroine, and mutilating Lizzie so that she can no longer play the cello and abandoning her at the side of a bumfuck road somewhere in China is Charlotte’s way of 'saving' Lizzie. This would be a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater were it not that Lizzie, presumably traumatized beyond repair by the ordeal, actually comes to agree that Charlotte indeed had her best interests in mind and proceeded in the best possible manner given the circumstances. If that weren't screwy enough, there's Anton, the depraved director of a prestigious conservatory (played by good ol’ Steven Weber), and his cadre of music teachers/sex fiends. In contrast to the no-nonsense protagonists, the villain is the only one with a suitably dark sense of humor (in the movie’s best line, Anton declares that he is not "some random pervert;" emphasis on the "random" part). All things considered, The Perfection is an instance of 'what goes around comes around;' Charlotte is Anton’s creation the same as Lizzie is Charlotte’s — which of course doesn’t bode well for Charlotte down the line, though the film ends with a shot of the two that is harmonious in more ways than one.
0 notes
Text
Supercool Movie Review
The premise of Supercool is that if you make a wish at 11:11 it’ll somehow come true. I, for one, kept whishing this movie had never been made during the entirety of its 1:31:54 run time. It opens with a man in a hockey mask firing a machine gun at a school bus; as it turns out, this is the protagonist’s fantasy, but it’s nevertheless in horrible taste. Then again, this is a movie that still believes projectile vomiting is funny (memo to director Teppo Airaksinen: it’s not, it has never been, and it never will be). Neil’s wish morphs him into a more conventionally attractive male model type, so that the movie can subject us to that old, tired shtick where he has to persuade his best friend that it’s really him by fielding questions the answers to which only he and the friend would know. Yawn. Moreover, Airaksinen does the Quantum Leap mirror thing: actor Jake Short plays Neil at all times except when he looks in the mirror, on which occasions he sees, as do we, the likeness of actor Josh Cranston. Now, imagine for a second, if you will, that Tom Hanks only appears in Big whenever (then) child actor David Moscow gazes at a reflective surface, and you’ll have an idea of just how dumb Supercool actually is. The oddest thing is that Neil does not, in fact, whish for an extreme makeover; what he does wish for is a “Second chance with Summer,” Summer being the girl he likes so much that he apparently can’t help emptying the contents of his stomach all over her. This may well be the most clueless version of the Careful What You Wish For trope I’ve ever seen, but in any case, Neil predictably learns that looks aren’t everything yada yada yada. What he does not learn, however, is that the sexually objectifying drawings he makes of Summer are as offensive as his high school bus shooting fantasy — but then, she doesn’t seem to care either way. Maybe Summer should wish for a second chance too.
0 notes
Text
CODA Movie Review
CODA achieves the dubious feat of making deaf people seem as odious as Eugenio Derbez (and that’s saying a lot, since Derbez is nails-across-blackboard unbearable). Writer/director Sian Heder seems to think that their disability gives her characters a license to be crude and obnoxious, but the fact is that toilet humor remains the lowest form of comedy regardless of whether or not you can hear the flushing; moreover, suggesting that deaf people enjoy the smell of their own emissions (at the dinner table, no less) as some twisted way of compensating for their sensorial shortcomings is nothing short of demeaning. To put it in perspective, let’s consider Sound of Metal, a great film about deafness whose characters didn’t feel the need to describe their sexual organs as if they were different kinds of crustaceans. I guess it’s supposed to be funny that when Frank (Troy Kotsur) describes his and his wife’s (Marlee Matlin. I guess they never found another deaf actress) jock itch to a doctor, his hearing daughter Ruby (Emilia Jones) has to struggle to interpret this in such a way that the physician won’t think Frank is a complete asshole — but then Ruby is evidently grossed out herself, and so she should, and so should we, unless we too are assholes who enjoy laughing at a perfectly innocent person’s discomfort (instances of which abound in CODA). This misguided idea of humor that the movie has brings me back to Derbez, who plays Ruby’s high school choir director Bernardo Villalobos. When he meets Ruby’s family, Bernardo means to sign "nice to meet you" but instead signs "nice to fuck you," because he uses two fingers instead of one. I guess that’s why he teaches music and not math, though I have to wonder how he can do a count off when he obviously can’t even count. All things considered, the film is at least consistent in that even characters with no apparent physical disabilities are nonetheless intellectually challenged. For example Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), Ruby’s romantic interest, who incurs her wrath for mocking her parents (and, sadly, mockery is the only thing resembling humor that these characters inspire); she forgives him but not before Miles does a 40-feet dive into freezing water. Had I been in his place, that’s the moment I’d have asked Ruby "how do you say, 'screw this, I’m outta here,' in sign language?"
0 notes
Text
Prisoners Movie Review
Prisoners is a cleverly constructed, deceptively simple labyrinth. The material was nothing new even when the film was released, but director Denis Villeneuve (pre-Dune) and screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski work a few unexpected twists and turns into their maze to keep us on our toes. The key element, however, is Hugh Jackman’s career-best performance as Keller Dover, a father whose patience for police work quickly runs thin when Detective Loki (the always effective Jake Gyllenhaal) fails to find Dover’s kidnapped little daughter. It will surprise no one that Dover decides to take the law into his own hands, recruiting Franklin Birch (Terrence Howard), his best friend whose daughter has also gone missing, to kidnap the only suspect — whom the police has ruled out for the moment —, take him to an abandoned house, and beat a confession out of him. This is par for the course in the movies, but is it realistic? Can a father, however desperate he may be, really go from zero to psycho in no time flat? The film makes this transition 50% more believable by making the character a survivalist nut, meaning that he was half crazy to begin with. And even if we still found it hard to believe, Jackman would just browbeat us into believing it with a skin-shedding, raw nerve-baring, sadistic, ballistic, animalistic performance wherein he doesn't just go berserk; he goes full on Beserker. In some twisted way, all this makes sense; the antagonist or antagonists are just as vicious as Dover, if not more (making children disappear is their way of “making war with God”). With that in mind, who better than a monster to find a monster? Dover may not in fact be too far from crackin the case either, or is he? In one of those twists I mentioned, the movie toys with the Law of Economy of Characters by casting Paul Dano as the mentally challenged man on whom Dover’s suspicions (and fists, among other objects) fall. Gyllenhaal’s work is as strong Jackman’s, but more subtle and nuanced; he gives his Loki an eye tic which lets us know that, although he has solved all his cases, and belying his usual calm and collected demeanor, he has not gotten to where he is without some traumas of his own.
0 notes
Text
Reminiscence Movie Review
Reminiscence is a movie where people buy the cow even though the milk is free. In an indeterminate future where Miami has become a Venice of the New World, Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman) runs a business that uses technology to access the memories of people who want to relive their past. These people, mind you, do not suffer from amnesia; they're just too lazy and/or stupid to use their own brains — not even to remember something as pedestrian as playing with a dog (here’s an idea: get another fucking dog). We see the memories of Nick's clients as if they were home movies, which is very convenient but makes zero fucking sense, considering that people don't remember things from a third person perspective; for example, if I wanted to remember watching Reminiscence (fat chance), I wouldn't see myself watching the film. Writer/director Lisa Joy tries, and fails miserably, to explain why we don't see her characters' memories from their own point of view with a "demonstration" by Nick that proves absolutely nothing except that you can throw as much shit at the wall as you like, but that doesn’t mean it will stick. This is a less than auspicious debut for Joy, who settles for projecting the usual fixations of her husband and his brother, Jonathan and Christopher Nolan. At least in Memento, as the name implies, the hero relied on reminders rather than memories per se, which are subjective and unreliable; in contrast, the memories in Reminiscence are as pristine as the dreams in Inception. Ever hear of photographic memory? This is more like photogenic memory.
0 notes
Text
Terminal Velocity
Terminal Velocity is not as much mindless fun as Drop Zone (the other skydiving-themed action film released in the fourth quarter of 1994), but it’s still an awful good time. How can you not love a movie wherein Charlie Sheen (good ol’ Charlie, that is; not latter day Bizarro Charlie) plunges down to his potential doom while on the driver’s seat of a Cadillac Allanté? Talk about going down in style. To be sure, this film is chock-full of stunts, both aerial and grounded, that defy gravity, logic, physics and whatnot; at the same time, what we see is pretty much what we get. Consider the following exchange: “I’m gonna crawl out onto the wing. When I get stable, I’m gonna give you a signal. I want you to flip this plane over. Then I’m gonna hang by my legs. So when you flip back over, I’m sittin’ on the other wing. That way, when you maneuver up to the other plane. I’m in a better position to grab on. You got it?” “Are you outta your mind?” “Yes. Yes, I am!” But lo and behold, the character proceeds to do exactly what he just described. Now, it may not be Sheen doing it, but I’ll take a stunt double performing a stunt in the real world over the actual actor pretending unconvincingly in front of a green/blue screen. Unfortunately, the craziest stunt in this movie is so unfeasible it must perforce take place off-screen; that is, when Nastassja Kinski fakes her death by jumping out of a plane and switching bodies with her roommate’s corpse, which in turn has been dropped from another plane “shadowing above” the first plane. When explained this in full detail, Sheen hilariously replies “All right, so you’ve fooled a guy who can’t get his sideburns even when he shaves.” Incidentally, the dialogue is as nimble as the action is lithesome; my favorite line by far is “For somebody I never slept with, you sure fucked me pretty good,” but there’s plenty of wit on display from scriptwriter David Twohy (no stranger to penning cult classics; e.g., Warlock, Pitch Black).
0 notes
Text
Brightburn Movie Review
Brightburn’s Brandon Breyer (Jackson A. Dunn) is a hybrid of Clark Kent and Damien Thorn — needless to say, originality is not one of his super powers. The possibility of Superman not being ruled by the better angels of his nature had already been explored in Superman III and in the comic Superman: Red Son (assuming, of course, that communism is evil). Oh, and then there’s black kryptonite, which can split a Kryptonian into two separate entities; one good and one evil. Do we really need to go back to this proverbial well again? Brandon’s spaceship crashes on a farm in Kansas. Brandon is a relatively normal boy until, on his 12th birthday, he is, as far as I can discern, possessed by his spaceship. We know that the source of Superman’s powers is Earth’s yellow sun. Where do Brandon’s powers come from, though? Brightburn is too brainless to ask even such a basic question. As brainless as the aliens who sent Brandon to Earth surrounded by the only material that can harm him. Seriously. The metal his spaceship is made of is the only thing that can make him bleed. This is tantamount to Jor-El placing a piece of kryptonite in Kal-El’s spaceship. All things considered, James Gunn produced Brightburn, and it shows. This movie fucking hates bitches, just loathes them. The women in this film are tormented, tortured, brutalized, and physically and psychologically abused. Meanwhile, the sexually perverted, psychopathic, serial killer who victimizes them not only goes unpunished, but is left free to blithely destroy our world without the slightest shred of remorse for his actions, as we see in the closing credits. Brightburn is hackneyed, redundant, sick, nihilistic, immoral, and completely unnecessary.
0 notes
Text
12 Hour Shift Movie Review
The takeaway from 12 Hour Shift is that you can’t make a dark comedy without a sense of humor because otherwise you’re just left completely in the dark. There is absolutely no comedic value to this movie, and its only redeeming quality is Angela Bettis's performance as Mandy, a drug addicted nurse who moonlights as a black market organ trafficker at a hospital in Arkansas in 1999 (Why 1999? As far as I can discern, exclusively so that a reference may be made to the urban legend about Marilyn Manson's ribs). Bettis hits all the right notes; she looks, sounds, and behaves like someone whose body and soul have been crushed by desensitizing grunt work, and who couldn't finish, or even start, her shift if she weren’t sleepwalking through a drug-induced haze. Mandy is no saint, but she’s Mother fucking Teresa compared to her cousin (by marriage) Regina (Chloe Farnworth). On the night during which the film takes place, Regina loses a kidney somewhere between the hospital and the hideout of organ dealer Nicholas (hardcore legend Mick Foley). Nicholas threatens to replace the organ with one of Regina’s, so she returns to the hospital determined to get another kidney at all costs (to the point of murdering a dialysis patient, whose kidneys are, of course, useless), and in the process making Mandy's life hell (well, even more so than it already is). The problem is that Regina doesn't just drive Mandy up the wall but the audience too. Farnworth turns the bitchery up to 11, and every time she appears on screen it's like fingernails on a blackboard. We just want her to go away and never come back. At the same time, as much as Regina is the bane of Mandy's existence, Mandy deserves that and more because she remains a horrible person herself. Something must have happened to make her the way that she is now, but since we never find out exactly what that was, there simply is no way for us to identify with her. I’m aware that the day-to-day in a hospital is nothing like in Scrubs, but this movie’s atmosphere is much too oppressive and at no point does it ever let up. They say that laughter is the best medicine; 12 Hour Shift's must have forgotten to refill that particular prescription.
0 notes
Text
The Map of Tiny Perfect Things Movie Review
The Map of Tiny Perfect Things is déjà vu squared. It's not just a Groundhog Day ripoff, but ripoff of a Groundhog Day ripoff. Someone literally made the exact same movie the year prior (the excremental Palm Springs). Mark (Kyle Allen) is stuck in a time loop, repeating the same day over and over again. Due to his knowledge of what will happen and the absence of consequences, he spends much of his day engaging in reckless activities. Except for the protagonist’s name, the preceding description may be applied to a vast number of movies, including but not limited to Edge of Tomorrow, Happy Death Day, Koko-di Koko-da, Boss Level and, of course, this one (the only thing that distinguishes The Map of Tiny Perfect Things from the pack is precisely what it has in common with another played-out genre; i.e., the list-based romance). If we add Margaret (Kathryn Newton), a girl who is also caught in the same temporal anomaly, then what we have here is a very early remake of Palm Springs; the only difference is that Mark and Margaret, despite repeating the same day over and over again, continue to age in real time (well, not explicitly according to the movie, but then how else to explain that characters which IMDb and AllMovie respectively refer to as “teens” and “teenagers” are played by a 24-year-old actress and a 26-year-old actor?). As long as there are hacks in Hollywood, there's going to be a endless supply of movies like this one — hard though it is to believe is that there is still a demand for such movies, when the element of surprise is nil. Will Mark and Margaret fall in love? Will they eventually escape the time loop? Is the Earth round?
0 notes
Text
To Olivia Movie Review
To Olivia reveals little or nothing about Roald Dahl’s creative process, his source of inspiration apparently being an imaginary child, who may or may not be an alcohol-induced hallucination. The movie, directed and co-written by John Hay, isn't very illuminating about Dahl (Hugh Bonneville) the person either; the film gives the impression that he was a deadbeat dad, a lousy husband, and an angry, schizophrenic alcoholic, but only the most naive of viewers would believe for even a second that any of this has the slightest connection to reality. Even the events portrayed in To Olivia that do correspond to the writer's real life receive a purely superficial treatment. For example, after the death of his daughter Olivia (Darcey Ewart), and following a meeting with a Church official, Dahl comes to view Christianity as a sham. However, Dahl did not come accross as having been a believer prior to this events, and at no point in the film does he appear to be particularly religious or irreligious. I guess this is what happens when someone makes a film about one person based on the biography of a different person. To Olivia was originally titled An Unquiet Life, and is based on Stephen Michael Shearer's biography of Patricia Neal (an American actress and Dahl's wife from 1953 to 1983, played here by Keeley Hawes) of the same name. And speaking of titles, Hay gets that wrong too. We see Dahl working, very briefly, on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (which spends more time being read than being written), and the implication is that that book is dedicated to Olivia's memory. However, it is James and the Giant Peach (1961) and The BFG (1982) that Dahl dedicated to his daughter. Here's a film that is presumably going to be of interest to Dahl's readers, but which patronizes the viewers by automatically assuming that they will only be familiar with the author's most popular novel. Who wants to see a movie whose director groundlessly underestimates his very target audience? It gets worse, though; specifically the intertitle that precedes the closing credits.
Now, that’s the movie they should have made.
0 notes
Text
Batman vs. Dracula Movie Review
Batman vs. Dracula is a trifecta of lazy writing; a public domain-cribbing direct-to-video crossover. If that weren’t bad enough, the script is rife with puns that would make Adam West himself blush — you know, along the lines of "Miss Vale lacks the bite I require in a mate," or "you're my second Batman tonight, and you're both pains in the neck" (why "second Batman"? Because the movie seems to be under the impression that 'bat' and 'vampire' are interchangeable). The above, however, are the apex of wit compared to Count Dracula’s alias; Dracula (the awesomely named Peter Stormare) introduces himself as "cultural anthropologist Dr. Alucard." Wait a second… Alucard is Dracula spelled backwards! Why didn’t anyone think of that before? Unbelievably, Bruce Wayne (Rino Romano) actually has to write the name down and hold it in front of a mirror before it fully sinks in ('The World's Greatest Detective' my ass). Dracula is not the only one prone to awkward introductions, though. While pursuing Vicki Vale (Tara Strong), the Penguin (Tom Kenny) uses the phrase "Here's Ozzy!" in what I presume is a reference to Ozzy Osbourne by way of The Shining (or viceversa). This might make sense if the Penguin were saying it to Batman, meaning "I’m going to bite your head off" or something like that; as it is, though, it’s a contrived non sequitur. And I haven’t even gotten to the expository dialogue, or should I say monologue? Batman and Alfred (Alastair Duncan) are especially guilty of egocentric speech (i.e., talking to themselves out loud); for example, "So this is how Dracula bypassed the crosses. I once tapped into these long forgotten catacombs. Apparently so did he," or "Master Bruce is triangulating his location, from within the catacombs? … I do hope this is a positive turn" (Master Bruce, as he is wont to do, also spends an inordinate amount of time thinking back to his dead parents; I guess I should be grateful that "Alucard" doesn’t turn out to be their killer this time around).
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
A Choice of Weapons Movie Review
In A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks, the difference between a gun and a camera is bigger than the 26 millimeters between 9 and 35. The film deals with the difference entitlement and hard work; or, as Parks himself says in archival footage, “When you are a [black] kid, you have to prepare to be able to do much more than a White boy, so that if the time comes where your talent is pitted against a White man, you will get the nod because they can't afford to lose you.” It's safe to say that Parks, had he been alive, would not have subscribed, as so many did, to the notion that Chadwick Boseman deserved Anthony Hopkins' Oscar merely by virtue of the color of his skin. Now, this isn't to say that Parks didn't have a lot to say about racism and discrimination; quite the contrary, and it’s not just the quantity but the quality of his speech that raises him head and shoulders above the artificial inclusivity that art increasingly suffers from, to the detriment of logic and common sense. To paraphrase Fran Leibowitz, culture should not be a democracy but an intellectual aristocracy — and in that sense Gordon Parks was a prince among men. As for the documentary itself, it's concise and to the point and wastes no time on formative years or domestic melodrama; the director understands that an artist's oeuvre contains his own autobiography, and he wisely devotes a large portion of the 90-minute running time to Parks' work and the influence it had on his contemporaries and continues to have on those who have followed in his wake.
0 notes
Text
North Hollywood Movie Review
North Hollywood doesn’t break any new ground; on the contrary, all it does is perpetuate the stereotype that skaters are narcissistic jerks with low IQs. Michael (Ryder McLaughlin), the protagonist, is so spontaneously unpleasant that when he gets his face punched in less than 10 minutes into the movie, we just assume he must have done something to deserve it. As is customary in teen comedies, the hero has exactly two (2) friends and one (1) romantic interest (all of whom are played by actors in their mid-to-late 20s). Moreover, one of the friends is Asian and the other African-American; I guess we could call this ‘equal opportunity friendship.’ As for the romantic interest, Rachel, she is played by Miranda 'iCarly' Cosgrove. All of these characters are supposed to be high school seniors, but that dog won’t hunt, Monsignor; Miranda is an adorable little fucking bitch and I love her, but at 28 years old, she could have gone to college twice over already. Speaking of college, Michael and his father Oliver (Vince Vaughn) are at odds over the former's future; Oliver reasonably thinks Michael should focus on his studies, while Michael says he's going to be a college student/aspiring professional skater. Now, Michael doesn't have enough common sense to take a shower without flooding the bathroom, and the handful of times we see him skate — let’s just say it’s too bad they don’t make skateboards with training wheels. All things considered, the ideal occupation for Michael would be crash test dummy.
0 notes
Text
Detainee 001 Movie Review
Detainee 001 is a carrot-and-stick sort of documentary. The carrot is the elusive “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh, captured as an enemy combatant during the November 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. The stick comes when the movie ends, and we realize that Lindh remains pretty much the same cipher wrapped in an enigma smothered in secret sauce that he was before the film (the very title is misleading, considering that Lindh was captured simultaneously with 85 other prisoners). I'm always wary of documentaries about a living person wherein that person is nowhere to be found. Director Greg Barker doesn’t interview Lindh (who appears exclusively in archival footage that turns out to be underwhelming regardless of how “never-before-seen” it may be), and how could he?; by his own admission, Barker has no fucking idea where Lindh even is. This is what ultimately sinks the film, which is ironic because it’s also what could have saved it if only Barker had seized the opportunity to make an In Search Of-type doc. Can't speak directly to Lindh? Then talk to his parents, siblings, uncles, cousins, any relative you can get ahold of. Talk to his friends, and if he doesn't have them (which wouldn’t surprise me), talk to his former classmates and teachers. Give us, for lack of a better term, the dude’s 'origin story'. The one interesting little thing we learn about Lidh's past is that Malcolm X (the movie, not the activist) inspired him to convert to Islam, and even this doesn't get the follow-up it deserves — not even a cursory 'we reached Spike Lee for comment but he wouldn’t return our calls.' Barker, however, shows as little interest in Lindh's formative years as curiosity as to what has become of him since his release from prison. I'm not saying you must perforce discover his whereabouts, but there’s a very good chance that, in literally looking for him, the filmmaker might have figuratively found him (sorta like finding Jesus though of course not quite). What’s in the documentary is not entirely without merit, but it lacks a through line connecting the beginning, the middle, and the end.
0 notes
Text
The Dogs of War Movie Review
Zangaro, the fictional African country in The Dogs of War, is something like Zamunda's poor, small neighbor — especially small. North (Colin Blakely), a British documentarian, informs James Shannon (the invaluable Christopher Walken) that a week after taking office, President Kimba sent his opponents, Colonel Bobi (George Harris) and Dr. Okoye (Winston Ntshona), into exile and jail, respectively. When Shannon, a mercenary on a reconnaissance mission to determine the feasibility of a coup d'état, is arrested, what are the odds that he'll briefly find himself in the same cell as the good doctor? Apparently, as good as the odds of befriending one of Kimba's mistresses. Contrived coincidences aside, director John Irvin wisely favors, like the Frederick Forsyth novel upon which the film is based, an 'ask questions first, shoot later' philosophy; as a result, a large portion of the 100-minute running time is devoted to the preparations and logistics of the coup — which itself is left for the film's climax (an approach reminiscent of The Dirty Dozen), and is over before soon-to-be-ex-president Kimba knows what hit him. Shannon's personal life, or lack thereof, also receives a lot of attention, which helps explain his willingness to pursue this line of work in general, and his decision to return to Zangaro following his traumatic first experience in the country in particular. The reasons behind the coup, in contrast, are not explored as thoroughly; in a nutshell, Roy Endean (Hugh Millais), an English businessman, is interested in a recently discovered platinum deposit on Zangaro. Basically, the only difference between Kimba and Bobi is that, as the latter puts it, “He wants to be God, I want to be rich”; meanwhile, Endean explains that "The people I represent will not do business with a madman." Ergo, out with Kimba and in with Bobi — these plans, though, are subject to change, considering that Shannon may or may not have his own agenda. Ed O'Neill, in just his second film credit, has a pre-Married with Children cameo, and the ever-reliable Tom Berenger is Shannon's lieutenant, but The Dogs of War is, as it should be, Walken’s film through and through.
0 notes
Text
The Wrong Missy Movie Review
I find it only slightly less hard to believe that Lauren Lapkus would be attracted to David Spade in 2020 than that Sophie Marceu would have been attracted to him in 1999. Now, Lauren Lapkus is no Sophie Marceu — but she might as well be compared to Spade, to whom the 21 years elapsed between Lost & Found and The Wrong Missy weren't kind at all. Who knows? Maybe they like him because he can make them laugh; even so, as the unerring Roger Ebert once wrote, “All women who like you because you make them laugh sooner or later stop laughing, and then why do they like you?” — and it's safe to say that, as far as David Spade goes, we collectively stopped laughing the same day Just Shoot Me got cancelled. And speaking of semi-better days, The Wrong Missy is basically a rom-com version of Tommy Boy/Black Sheep with a skinny girl comprising the odd half of the odd couple instead of Chris Farley. Coincidentally, Lapkus's infectious energy is the best thing in the movie; too bad Spade seems to be immune to it. She also has the funniest line of dialogue when she calls WWE Superstar/Jason Momoa lookalike Roman Reigns “Aquaman.” That happens early on in the film; by the time the climax rolls around and Spade has to step up to fucking Vanilla Ice for Lapkus's love, Missy is just about the only thing that hasn't gone wrong for this movie.
0 notes