Kaos' way behind movie reviews

[Kaos]

Abigail

Ok. THIS was a good movie. The search for the next great horror movie continues perhaps, but this film came close to meeting the standard. 

A nice mix of humor, bloody gore, tension, and carnage. It even stuck the landing about as well as it could have.

Group of bumbling criminals kidnap a 12-year old girl at the behest of a crime lord (the underused Gus Fring) with dreams of a $50 million ransom.

The kidnapped Abigail (as you know from the previews and trailers I hope) isn’t quite what she seems. The kidnappers soon find themselves trapped in a creepy mansion with a little girl who isn’t as helpless as they assumed.

The girl playing Abigail is outstanding.  The rest of the cast - with one exception - is really really good.  Melissa Barrera from the new Scream movies holds up really well. Kathryn Newton (Freaky and Lisa Frankenstein) was good. Musclehead Kevin Durand added a yogi Berra level of comedic denseness.

The one exception is the dedication at the end to cast member Angus Cloud.   He seemed stoned in the film (and thankfully died early before the action really started).  In real life he died of an overdose after ingesting a massive drug cocktail before the film even came out.

I enjoyed this movie far more than I expected to.  It was a little slow in the beginning, but once it got moving it churned through the story well. 

It’s hard to quantify horror.  At no point was I scared during the film. But I did enjoy this film as it chopped and chewed its way through the story. 

It gets my seal of approval and recommendation. 

[Kaos]

Knox Going Away

Michael Keaton as a hit man who finds out he’s losing his mind. Literally. Fast moving mental disease similar to Alzheimer’s that will incapacitate him in a matter of weeks.

His plans to settle all debts in the time he has left are upended when his estranged adult son needs his particular set of skills.

A little slow moving in parts.  Some silly and contrived story arcs. 

Still, not a terrible watch. It could have been done so much better with a stronger supporting cast, a budget, and a real director but… not terrible.

[The Six]

Pale Rider

Revisited Clint's return to Westerns in 1985 and was pleasantly surprised how well this still works. Clint and the writers of 'The Gauntlet' take the stranger rides into town to another level of eeriness with the Preacher character. John Russell is excellent as Marshall Stockburn as is Richard Dysart as evil land baron, LaHood. The slow pacing and gorgeous scenery are matched by a cast full of solid performances that hit all the right beats at the right time.

Worth another look if you haven't recently or if you missed it back in the day.

[chinook]

Pale Rider

Revisited Clint's return to Westerns in 1985 and was pleasantly surprised how well this still works. Clint and the writers of 'The Gauntlet' take the stranger rides into town to another level of eeriness with the Preacher character. John Russell is excellent as Marshall Stockburn as is Richard Dysart as evil land baron, LaHood. The slow pacing and gorgeous scenery are matched by a cast full of solid performances that hit all the right beats at the right time.

Worth another look if you haven't recently or if you missed it back in the day.

i've been celebrating his entire western catalog this year. 

currently watching 2 Mules for Sister Sara

[Kaos]

Wicked Little Letters

In 1920’s England a prim and proper woman begins to receive regular letters that are creatively and humorously profane.

Her stuffy and controlling dad and mum, with whom she lives, are quite properly outraged and call on the police to act.

Suspicion quickly falls on her crude and bawdy neighbor, an Irish immigrant single mom with a filthy mouth, a sassy attitude, and a lifestyle that offends the sensibilities of the crusty old codger next door.

The local keystone cops are sure she’s the letter writer, but a female officer on the force has her doubts.

The film unravels and unwraps the mystery of who wrote the ribald letters and why as it follows the lady officer and a motley band of misfits that help her investigate — something the rest of the male cops refuse to do.

Quality acting across the board elevates this film. Jessie Buckley is outstanding as the “says what she wants” neighbor Rose. Olivia Coleman is just as good as the repressed and dad dominated neighbor, Edith.    Timothy Spall brings the right amount of sneering, unwarranted British snobbery as the dad.

Buckley definitely carries the show, though. There’s something undeniably attractive about her IDGAF character.

It’s British humor. It was never laugh out loud funny, but it was entertaining all the way through. 

I enjoyed it.

[Kaos]

Sympathy for the Devil

Nic Cage as his lunatic best. 

Cage - sporting a red hairdo - kidnaps a guy he believes is the contract killer who murdered his family. It takes a while as Cage absolutely shreds the scenery to tease out that detail as they embark on a road trip and clash along the way. 

Joel Kinnaman plays the kidnapped guy, who was taken by Cage as he pulled up to the hospital where his wife was giving birth. 

The back and forth between the two is really well done. It was a good pairing.

You know I'm no Cage fan, but in films like this where he can really lean into his bizarre affectations as a believable part of the character, it's actually kinda enjoyable to watch. The diner scene in this movie is really well done on Cage's part. He gets the tempo just right.

The story spools out as Kinnaman's character tries to reason with and/or escape the completely deranged Cage as they drive through the night.

It was, all told, an enjoyable ride.

[Kaos]

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

I love the entire series beginning all the way back in the 60s. Some of my favorite toys as a kid were the Planet of the Apes figures - Cornelius, Zira, Zaius, Galen, Ursus - that I sometimes allowed to take Evel's place on the bike when it made some of its jumps. (Anybody see any significance to those names for Kaos?)

Just forget the Walberg Aperham Lincoln one, it doesn't exist.  That aside, there are parallels between the current group of films and the original set. Both are hit or miss.

The 1968 original borders on masterpiece. Love the movie. One of my favorite, and best, Halloween makeups ever was when I created a Cornelius/Caesar silicone mask. It was - quite honestly - amazing.

After that though?  Beneath the Planet of the Apes was meh.  Escape turned it around, and was legitimately fantastic.  Conquest dropped the ball and wasn't good. Then that series closed with Battle which was, again, pretty great. 

The new series kinda follows a similar pattern. The original in the reboot, Rise (misnamed) wasn't really that good and I had my doubts. Then came Dawn which restored my faith and was really quite well done. After that came War, which I didn't care for all that much. 

Now, seven years after War, we get Kingdom. It's back to pretty great again.

First the question: Given that it's seven years since the last installment, do I need to go back and watch War so I'm not lost in the plot?  NO!  Kingdom takes place three centuries after that film and only barely references it.  So you're good.

In the 300 years since War, the apes have kind of messed things up. Rather than uniting as Caesar intended, they've split into various clans that don't work well with each other. Some still proclaim to carry Caesar's message, but they've perverted it.

This movie follows Noa, a member of a clan that trains falcons, and the son of the clan leader. His clan is overrrun by gorillas taking slaves,  and (kinda like Beastmaster) he's the only one left. He goes on a trek to liberate his group and bring them home. 

Along the way he runs into an orangutan, the last keeper of Caesar's true word, and some surprisingly chatty humans as he eventually confronts the leader of the gorilla clan Proximus.

There are some great callbacks along the way. Not really easter eggs, but worthy nods to the original including the Forbidden Zone, the underground subway with human signs, the "mama" doll, Nova, and many more. That was great in and of itself.

The CGI has really come together. It doesn't take long before you forget you're not watching actual apes act their roles on screen.  They're real characters just as if they were humans.

The ending worked for me, too, even though there were aspects of it from the human side that seemed sort of sketchy overall. The only real complaint I had was that how - after 300 years - can you waltz into some abandoned human facility, flip a couple of switches, and all the lights and power come back on?  Come on, that's LAZY storytelling.

I keep wondering how or if they'll eventually tie this thing back to Taylor and his "get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape" storyline.  There are enough unanswered questions from this film to set up a few more in the future. If we have one. 

Note: For those keeping score?  I've been mostly positive about a bundle of movies in a row, including one with Nic Cage. Perhaps I'm mellowing?

[War Damn Six]

Was medicinal weed part of the treatment?

[Kaos]

6:45

The harsh returns. 

If you take Groundhog Day and Happy Death Day, mix them together like a big cake but substitute all the ingredients (vacuum dust for flour, salt for sugar, vinegar for milk, golf balls for eggs) and bake for six minutes and forty-five seconds, you'd get this derivative, half-baked, poorly acted tower of goo.

The gist:  Couple heads off to a quaint island town for a romantic getaway. But the town is conspicuously empty. Few people around.  First morning the alarm goes off at 6:45. They get up, walk around the town, things happen and then...
It's 6:45 and the alarm is going off again. 

The same boring, stupid day with the same two charmless, unattractive people then starts over.  And over. And over.

Dude finally figures out what he has to do to stop the cycle and it could have ended here, sucking tremendously.  But WAIT! There's more.

A tacked-on final act is so absolutely preposterous it boggles the mind. It took the "this sucks" needle and absolutely buried it deep in the red.

I should have turned this one off after six minutes and forty-five seconds. I almost did and regret not taking that action. A re-run of Beverly Hillbillies would have been more entertaining. Weeelll doggies.

[Kaos]

The Instigators

New Apple+ film with Matt Damon and Casey Affleck as incompetent burglars doing a heist that’s expected to pay off in a big way. 

Nothing works out the way it should.  I think it’s supposed to be “hilarious” but it only scratches mildly amusing. The source of hilarity is supposed to be, I think, the non stop mumbling prattle that comes from Casey. 

Film also includes Hellboy (despise that guy) and a really creaky looking Ving (Arby’s) Rhames. 

The story is ridiculous.  It has logical gaps and irregularities.  Plenty of Boston “star power” but the half baked beans narrative leaves this film floundering. 

[Kaos]

Southern Comfort (1981)

This is one of those movies I watched multiple times (multiples of multiple) in the early 80s when I had my first apartment and was "borrowing" HBO.  Found it accidentally on Prime the other day and finally went back and watched it tonight. 

It's a little bit Deliverance, a little bit Red Dawn maybe. 

A squad of Louisiana national guardsmen get lost in the bayou swamps. Acting like idiots, they run afoul of some deep woods Cajuns who slowly get their revenge. It all starts when the guardsmen decide to steal some boats from a Cajun trapping site.  As they're crossing the swamp, they notice a group of trappers watching them from the bank. One of the guard morons decides to unload a volley of machine gun blanks at the Cajuns - who have no idea they're blanks and respond with appropriate lethal measures. 

That sets off a kill or be killed trek through the bayou as the guardsmen (with no actual bullets, just blanks) are hunted by the Cajun trappers. 

The movie is loaded with 80s B level icons.  Keith Carradine. Powers Booth. Fred Ward. Peter Coyote. TK Carter (you know him from The Thing most likely).  Alan (Heat of the Night) Autry.  Brion (You've seen him everywhere) James. If you look closely, you'll even get a brief glimpse or two of Sonny from Predator in there as well.

On rewatch, the acting isn't as good as I remember.  Some of it is a little silly under today's light. But it isn't diminished in any way in the pantheon of movies that will always have a special place in my list. I could watch it again right now.

What this movie did for me is introduce me to the sound of zydeco. There's a scene in a deeply rural cajun town where the accordion is wailing and the singer is laying down the cajun/french lyrics. They run through three or four almost complete zydeco songs and layer some deadly action over it in places.  I'd never heard zydeco before I saw this movie and for reasons I'm still unable to explain it stirred something deep in me. Once I heard that sound, I wanted to hear more.

I came to LOVE zydeco. After straight rock and some rap, it's probably my favorite genre of music. I could listen to it all the time even though I rarely know what they're saying. Doesn't matter.  It moves me. No other explanation I can provide.  Boozoo Chavis, Clifton Chenier, Gino Delafose, BeauSoleil, Buckwheat Zydeco, so many artists... My Spotify has a zydeco playlist that's 8 hours long. I've yet to tire of it and I'm always searching for some artist or piece I've missed.  Before Spotify, back in the local radio days (early 90s), there was a show on the Alabama public radio station on Saturday night that played nothing but zydeco for a couple of hours. I tried to catch it every week.

This movie was overlooked in its time, I think.  But I have a great affinity for it, the cajun setting,  and am forever grateful that it opened the door to Zydeco for me. 

It's a guy's movie. So if you're a guy (and there is only one other option) do yourself a favor and waste a little time on this one.  It's free on Amazon prime.

[Snakebite]

Southern Comfort (1981)

This is one of those movies I watched multiple times (multiples of multiple) in the early 80s when I had my first apartment and was "borrowing" HBO.  Found it accidentally on Prime the other day and finally went back and watched it tonight. 

It's a little bit Deliverance, a little bit Red Dawn maybe. 

A squad of Louisiana national guardsmen get lost in the bayou swamps. Acting like idiots, they run afoul of some deep woods Cajuns who slowly get their revenge. It all starts when the guardsmen decide to steal some boats from a Cajun trapping site.  As they're crossing the swamp, they notice a group of trappers watching them from the bank. One of the guard morons decides to unload a volley of machine gun blanks at the Cajuns - who have no idea they're blanks and respond with appropriate lethal measures. 

That sets off a kill or be killed trek through the bayou as the guardsmen (with no actual bullets, just blanks) are hunted by the Cajun trappers. 

The movie is loaded with 80s B level icons.  Keith Carradine. Powers Booth. Fred Ward. Peter Coyote. TK Carter (you know him from The Thing most likely).  Alan (Heat of the Night) Autry.  Brion (You've seen him everywhere) James. If you look closely, you'll even get a brief glimpse or two of Sonny from Predator in there as well.

On rewatch, the acting isn't as good as I remember.  Some of it is a little silly under today's light. But it isn't diminished in any way in the pantheon of movies that will always have a special place in my list. I could watch it again right now.

What this movie did for me is introduce me to the sound of zydeco. There's a scene in a deeply rural cajun town where the accordion is wailing and the singer is laying down the cajun/french lyrics. They run through three or four almost complete zydeco songs and layer some deadly action over it in places.  I'd never heard zydeco before I saw this movie and for reasons I'm still unable to explain it stirred something deep in me. Once I heard that sound, I wanted to hear more.

I came to LOVE zydeco. After straight rock and some rap, it's probably my favorite genre of music. I could listen to it all the time even though I rarely know what they're saying. Doesn't matter.  It moves me. No other explanation I can provide.  Boozoo Chavis, Clifton Chenier, Gino Delafose, BeauSoleil, Buckwheat Zydeco, so many artists... My Spotify has a zydeco playlist that's 8 hours long. I've yet to tire of it and I'm always searching for some artist or piece I've missed.  Before Spotify, back in the local radio days (early 90s), there was a show on the Alabama public radio station on Saturday night that played nothing but zydeco for a couple of hours. I tried to catch it every week.

This movie was overlooked in its time, I think.  But I have a great affinity for it, the cajun setting,  and am forever grateful that it opened the door to Zydeco for me. 

It's a guy's movie. So if you're a guy (and there is only one other option) do yourself a favor and waste a little time on this one.  It's free on Amazon prime.

Will be my next watch. Sounds like a decent plot!

[The Six]

Southern Comfort (1981)

That's a good one. A forgotten one that's starting to get a little run in "films revisited" circles I frequent. Good catch.

[CCTAU]

Will be my next watch. Sounds like a decent plot!

You’ve never seen Southern Comfort?
That movie taught me at a young age to never go anywhere without live ammo! And don’t screw with hillbillies/swamp people.

[Kaos]

Jackpot

Amazon Prime feature. 

Awkward-fina as an aspiring actress who moves to LA in 2030.  To raise money, the government is running a lottery. The catch is that anybody who kills the lottery "winner" within 24 hours gets the jackpot. Of course, Awkward-fina wins and immediately has to fight off a herd of wanna-be actresses at an audition and a karate class.

Enter John Cena as a Lottery Protector, who will for a fee help keep her safe until the jackpot is hers. 

The movie was directed by Paul Feig who has a strong resume from The Office, but has also made dumb, un-funny messes like Bridesmaids and The Heat. 

It's a long, loud, string of busy noise. All of the "jokes" fall flat. The film just blunders from one noisy, nonsensical chase, fight, explosion scene to another. 

Awkward-fina is awful.  And hard to look at.  Cena keeps making really poor decisions on what roles to take. This was a huge misstep. 

Feig may be good for 30-minute ensembles like The Office, but he clearly has no idea how to craft a movie-length narrative. 

This is a bad movie he hopes all the action will disguise.  It doesn't. 

I don't want to see Awkward-fina any more unless it's in a third Jumanji.  And I think Cena should focus on Peacemaker.

[Kaos]

We Need To Talk About Kevin

Haggard looking Tilda Swinton.  Glimpses of John C. Reilly. Apparently the fruit bat that played Flash is in it.  I dunno.

I’ve tried five times now to make it past the first 20 minutes of this movie. 

I have not succeeded.  It’s a random series of disjointed time-skipping scenes that don’t seem to have a connection.

I had heard good things about this.  Seen some reviews calling it disturbing.  A terrifying psychological journey. 

If one of you wants to watch it and convince me it’s worth my time? I’ll listen.

Otherwise I’m calling it. Time of stoppage on try #6?  26:01 elapsed.   I’m done. 

I can’t grind through another hour and a half of this.  It gets worse every time I try to make it. 

[Kaos]

Air Force One

Insomnia.  So I watched this. 

I miss these kind of films.  The ones where the Americans were the good guys and prevailed through strength and patriotic determination. 

While watching this I realized just how much Obama took from us with his knee-bending, mewling, apologetic approach to foreign policy and his “America sucks” viewpoint of our domestic history.  Biden hasn’t helped.  He’s just as bad.  This kind of film wouldn’t be made today. 

As for the film.  It’s a little hackneyed.  It’s a little unrealistic.  It gives us Harrison Ford in the “one man against an army” trope.  Not to the level of, say, any Statham movie or John Wick, but he’s the singular hero president taking out a team of Khazak/russian hijacker’s of the titular plane.

I laughed out loud at the idea of Biden shuffling around trying to do what Ford’s President Marshall did.  Also chuckled at the idea of Kumhollah Harris cackling the hijackers into submission.  Or even twig Obama fruitily surrendering.

In true american hero fashion, Ford saves the day. It’s what we expect - even though there are about 90 close calls along the way. 

 Other than the ineffectual weakling Glen Close masquerading as VP and Dean Stockwell doing a poorly disguised Al Haig impression the cast is solid.

American president saves the day.  Saves the nation.  Media rejoices. 

Never happen today.  And that’s a crying shame.  Thanks Obama.

[The Six]

Saw that Alien: Romulus this weekend.

Really fun, tense, at times relies too much on fan-service, but is an enjoyable watch until the last 15-20 minutes. Then, it goes off the rails. It's amazing to see a series blow a lead late in the game as often as this one does. It's like the Atlanta Falcons of sci-fi horror.

Worth seeing on the big screen for the effects and some big, sweeping space shots. Otherwise, just another log on the dying fire of a franchise.

[War Damn Six]

Saw that Alien: Romulus this weekend.

Really fun, tense, at times relies too much on fan-service, but is an enjoyable watch until the last 15-20 minutes. Then, it goes off the rails. It's amazing to see a series blow a lead late in the game as often as this one does. It's like the Atlanta Falcons of sci-fi horror.

Worth seeing on the big screen for the effects and some big, sweeping space shots. Otherwise, just another log on the dying fire of a franchise.

Does the end go off the rails with a ridiculous premise or does it preach Mercury warming or what?   

[The Six]

Does the end go off the rails with a ridiculous premise or does it preach Mercury warming or what?

Mostly apolitical, which was refreshing. The small group of characters set the plot in motion because they see no escape for working from the company (Weyland Yutani) and for good reason. Does that prey a little on the current youth generations' sense of never getting ahead? Maybe. The director says he drew inspiration from third world countries and those who work trades with no way up and out. He wasn't interested in making a "statement" or anything; just needed an excuse to set the monster movie plot in motion.

Thanks for coming to my TedxTalk.