Kaos' way behind movie reviews

[Kaos]

The Calendar Killer

German film. But there's one guy in it you'd recognize if you're a fan of Better Call Saul - the sappy, wife-missing German engineer Werner Zeigler, who was the lead architect/designer of what eventually became Walter and Gus' laundry/meth lab. Too bad he doesn't have much to do here.

The film is a unnecessarily confusing in parts, opening rabbit hole doors to where you question whether the 'final girl' actually sees or experiences the things she claims to see/experience. That's only one of the main issues here. The film tries to juggle at least five or six different story arcs and at the end, it drops the ball on nearly all of them.

The arcs:
1. Jules' (a guy) life as a helpline operator, dealing with his own personal loss
2. Jules' tangled relationship with his father
3. Klara's mental lapses and possible delusions, which at one point had her committed
4. Klara's possibly abusive relationship with her politically powerful husband
5. Klara's interaction with Jules when she becomes the target of the "Calendar Killer."
6. The Calendar Killer's strange "kill somebody else or I'll kill you" modus operandi

All of these are interwoven but each is given what essentially amounts to superficial treatment. Had the film taken only the Calendar Killer aspect and built its foundation there, it might have been pretty decent.  Or if it had focused entirely on Klara's struggles with her husband and the effort to escape his perverted (maybe?) abuse, it might have succeeded. Instead you only get a little taste of each of the flavors.

One thing to be clear on: This is not a Christmas movie despite the insertion of at least one Christmas carol, the presence of Christmas trees, the appearance of a live Santa, and the use of a bejeweled Santa Claus lapel pin. All of those things are merely incidental to the story (muddled mess that it is) and not central to the events.

Maybe I'll start rating films as Pass or Play since this is kind of a sports board?  Or Punt or Play?  Unless you're into confusing German films, this is a Punt.

[Kaos]

Speak No Evil

I've never wanted the protagonists to die in a grisly, horrible way more than I did the frosty, insufferable, self-involved, hypocritical c*** at the heart of this film.  I don't know who she is or what else she's been in, but I despised the lantern-jawed, slack ass McKenzie Davis. I had a nearly equal measure of hate for her mewling wimpy cuck of a husband.

I guess we were supposed to root for their escape from an unraveling McAvoy and his wife. I just wanted all of them - Jug Head B****, Sniveling Hubby, Snarling McAvoy, Kinda Sexy McAvoy wife --  all of them except the girl who played the daughter and maybe the kid playing the son,  to perish in some kind of creative gruesome way.  But the c*** first. Good lord I hated her character. I wish 15 minutes of the film had been her being set on fire and stuffed in a fireplace. Grab me a hot cocoa and watch it like the Christmas Yule Log until it was nothing but ash. Loathed every single second that no-tit fish face was on the screen.

ANYWAY... I hated her.

The movie opens with the c***'s family meeting McAvoy's at a resort in Italy. They vacay-bond and decide to go visit the McAvoy's in rural England for a long weekend away. Well... it turns out McAvoy and his fam isn't exactly what they seemed to be. They're trying to get the family thing right, but sometimes that means they have to hit the reset button in some cruel and violent ways.

McAvoy is pretty good. He handles the slowly unspooling menace with the right touch of barely restrained rage and fury - until he doesn't. I was thinking he'd make a really good werewolf during this, actually.

The setting was good, the crazy insertion of some musical choices was interesting. The tension the film created was solid - except I kept finding myself wanting needle dick and his square-headed b**** wife to fall off a roof, get impaled on a fence, eaten by a goat, something... It's bad when you want the psycho killer to get away with it.

Dickless and the stick-figure c*** were obviously a problem, but the biggest problem this film had was the languid pace at which McAvoy's psychotic turn rolled out. It took a long time.  Like more than 3/4 of the film. The rest of it was just occasional nibbles of "something might not be right around here..."  When he broke bad, though, he broke bad with the appropriate level of creepy menace. He's a good actor and makes almost anything he's in worth at least one watch. (If you haven't seen him in Last King of Scotland, atone and watch that one now. Great performance).

It wasn't a bad movie, and I won't punt/pass on it.  But I won't ever watch it again because I want the uptight hoor wife to fall off a cliff and be shattered on the rocks below 11.2 seconds into the film.  I don't ever want to see or hear her again.

[Kaos]

Saturday Night
The way this one bounced from theaters to paid streaming to free streaming in about four days had me concerned about its quality. That wasn't really the problem, though. The film focused on a 90-minute fragment of time that people under the age of 60 probably don't remember or to which they have any relation. 

Saturday Night Live debuted on October 11, 1975. John Belushi, who was one of the initial Not Ready for Prime Time Players who made up the cast, died in 1982.  For a frame of reference?  He's been dead 43 years.  Think about that for a second. For somebody who was, say, 10 when SNL first hit the airwaves in 1975 you'd be talking about somebody who had died in 1942.  How relevant is the first episode of SNL to someone my daughter's age (34)?  It might as well be the Kennedy assassination or the Civil War.  There's just no connection there. She's going to know Chevy Chase (Christmas Vacation), have some concept of who Dan Aykroyd (Ghostbusters) is, and she might know Belush (Animal House) but she's not going to have any idea who Gilda Radner, Larraine Newman, Garrett Morris, or Jane Curtin are  - or why they mattered. She won't have any clue who George Carlin or Billy Preston or Milton Berle might be.

This is a movie made for people my age. People who were alive in 1975 and remember when this show was ground-breaking. When it was edgy, subversive, and cool. It's not going to have any resonance for anyone else. It vastly overestimates the nostalgia people have for those scrappy, uneven early days.

It's not a bad film. I kind of enjoyed it on the whole. The cast is pretty good - including a bizarre casting choice for Milton Berle. It's just so completely niche I can't see many people having the interest or patience to sit through the heavily fictionalized "real-time" 90 minutes as the clock ticks toward the first broadcast. 

If you remember those days with fondness or interest?  Give it a try. Otherwise, I don't think I could recommend it.

This one is a Punt for 97.35% of the viewing public.

I did find the woman playing Lorne Michael's wife to be very 70s sexy.  So that was a plus.

[Snaggletiger]

Being one of the olds, SNL was definitely a huge part of my entertainment culture growing up.  It was one of those must-see TV events every week.  I even recall "double dating" one night, and discussing where we all wanted to eat, and what we would do until we went back to David's house to watch Saturday Night Live.

[Snakebite]

Being one of the olds, SNL was definitely a huge part of my entertainment culture growing up.  It was one of those must-see TV events every week.  I even recall "double dating" one night, and discussing where we all wanted to eat, and what we would do until we went back to David's house to watch Saturday Night Live.

You dated a guy named David?

[Snaggletiger]

You dated a guy named David?

What? No!

I mean, we were just friends.  Sure, we went out a few times, but we never really looked at it as dating. We each paid for our own meals and movie tickets.

[Kaos]

Being one of the olds, SNL was definitely a huge part of my entertainment culture growing up.  It was one of those must-see TV events every week.  I even recall "double dating" one night, and discussing where we all wanted to eat, and what we would do until we went back to David's house to watch Saturday Night Live.

I can't really pinpoint the moment it turned. It was always a little bit left leaning, but there came a point where it careened into a ditch and turned into utter communist trash. 

Chevy, as much as anyone, was responsible for the election of Jimmy Carter. When he lampooned Gerald Ford tripping and falling constantly, he reinforced the idea that Ford was a clumsy, bumbling fool. Once Carter was in, though, the show was just as hard on him. Aykroyd's Carter impersonation was terrible, but harsh.


What's funny is really how little things have changed.  Demonizing Nazis as republicans, etc.

They lampooned society fairly equally in the beginning. At some point that shifted. The show was AWFUL from about 1980 until it stabilized in 1986. In fact, had it not been for Eddie Murphy during those dismal wasteland seasons, I'd wager the show would have quietly disappeared. The show fired everybody from the 85 cast except for Nora Dunn, Jon Lovitz, and Dennis Miller. Firings included Robert Downey Jr., Anthony Michael Hall, Joan Cusack, Damon Wayans, and Randy Quaid. Probably saved it.  And then it was reasonably funny again for a while. Once Ferrell showed up in 1995 or so, the show had outlived its usefulness for me.  I haven't watched it consistently or even sporadically, since. 

I did like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler but as the show slid further and further into leftist politics it lost me.

[Snaggletiger]

Honestly, I never paid that much attention to the left/right leaning stuff, probably because I was never into politics at all.  Most likely never noticed, and/or didn't care.  I just thought it was a given that whoever was in office, was going to get skewered.

I stayed with SNL through Ferrell, Fallon, Kattan etc.  My main reason for moving on was the constant turnover. They'd start a new season, and it would go from 8 cast members to 24, and I wouldn't recognize 2 of them.  Didn't want to have to start over and get familiar with all the new characters.

[Kaos]

Honestly, I never paid that much attention to the left/right leaning stuff, probably because I was never into politics at all.  Most likely never noticed, and/or didn't care.  I just thought it was a given that whoever was in office, was going to get skewered.

I stayed with SNL through Ferrell, Fallon, Kattan etc.  My main reason for moving on was the constant turnover. They'd start a new season, and it would go from 8 cast members to 24, and I wouldn't recognize 2 of them.  Didn't want to have to start over and get familiar with all the new characters.

It was really after Clinton because they hammered him pretty hard with Darryl and Phil Hartman but at some point it turned from lampooning the administration (which was always a comedic staple, even for Carson) to not-so-subtly attempting to influence people.  It became more purposeful. The edge was sharper. And the blade didn't cut both ways. Maybe that really didn't start in earnest until they attached collectively mouth-to-butt to suck off Obama. Fey's take on Sarah Palin went beyond comedy and into cruelty designed to shape public opinion of her - and derail any hope traitor McCain had of becoming president. In retrospect, it's probably a good thing. He was a deep-state Democrat hiding in Republican skin.

I loathed Ferrell.  Couldn't stand him. I also hated Adam Sandler on the show. Never funny in any way whatsoever.  That was really enough to push me away.  About the only thing that was interesting to me during that era was Norm Macdonald and sometimes Dennis Miller. I was never even much of a Chris Farley fan - poor man's John Belushi was all he was. 

I think part of that is age, too. I grew out of it. Occasionally somebody sends me a "great" sketch but it's always so stupid and lame I rarely even finish the three or four minutes of whatever it is. 

I am grateful for the talents it found. Some of my favorite movies of all time came from the early years crew. 

Vacation and Christmas Vacation, Fletch, Ghostbusters, Stripes, Animal House, Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, Blues Brothers, Caddyshack, Groundhog Day, 48 Hours, Coming to America.  I have to include Elf here, although everything else that idiot rump ranger did is garbage.
 
Chevy. Dan. Bill. Eddie. John.

Yes, I know some of those younger than me would strenuously object to my rejection of films like Waterboy, Happy Gilmore, Grown Ups, Wayne's World, Click, Austin Powers, Old School, Anchorman, and Tommy Boy from my list, but I wouldn't wake up to poop on any of them. IMO they are all horrible, unfunny, one-note, superficial, superflous trash films. Seen them once, hope to never see them again.

This discussion is actually more entertaining than the film that initiated it.

[Kaos]

Heretic
Not your usual horror movie.

Hugh Grant is kind of great as a guy who’s a little (okay, a lot) off but is also very analytical about his oddness. 

Sophie Thatcher (Yellow Jackets) is going to be a great actress but needed a little more to do here.  Chloe East starts slowly but eventually comes into her own and owns the screen. Really strong performance.

Thatcher and East are naive Mormon missionaries who visit Grant to provide tracts and their usual conversion spiel.

Grant, however, has already done his homework on the LDS. And Christianity.  And Islam.  And Judaism.  And Tao, Dao, Egyptian, Hindi and more.  His game is to challenge their convictions - a game which spirals into the horror of the two being held essentially captive by someone who is confident in the delusion his self study has developed.

His journey through a world of religions and sects was very similar to my own, honestly. I’m grateful I did not arrive at the same conclusions he did. But I can kinda see it - without the lunacy of his efforts to prove it to himself. 

It’s not a typical horror movie by any stretch.  Not a chop-em-up. Not a paint by numbing numbers Blumble House cookie cutter jump scare bore. Nobody walks into a darkened room, doesn’t bother to turn on a light and then goes “hello?”  I hate that.

It’s a much deeper movie than I expected.

The verdict here was split.  My movie watching partner said it wasn’t for her at all.  Punt.  Punt hard is her advice. 

BUT she also said “I get that you liked it. Your brain works that way.” And so it does.  I say play. 

[Kaos]

Wolfs

Saw this a while back.  Forgot to do a review.  Down and dirty...

Brad Pitt and George Clooney have an easy, affable chemistry. That's basically the entire movie.

The two play competing "cleaners" who clean up messes for rich, connected clients.  They're called to a scene by Holly Flax to remove a body that turns out not to be dead and whom they enlist in their cleanup campaign. The transition from suspicious competitors each vying to prove they're the best in the game to reluctant partners who eventually realize there's more to the situation than they planned isn't the worst ride ever. 

There are a few funny moments.

Even though I'm not much of a Clooney fan these days, he does have a certain charm on screen. The pairing with Pitt is a good one - as it was in Ocean's. 

Good pace, some setups that sorta defy logic and a Butch and Sundance ending that wasn't completely obvious.

I've wasted brain cells on much worse fare. It's not something I'd watch over and over, but I enjoyed it for what it was.

[GH2001]

Nobody walks into a darkened room, doesn’t bother to turn on a light and then goes “hello?”  I hate that.

Every. Damn. Time.

[Kaos]

Overboard

I was watching Valley Girl on Pluto (one of the classics) while working on something and Overboard came on.  Film from 1987 with Kurt Russell, Goldie Hawn, Edward Hermann (Lost Boys and a million other things), and Roddy 'Cornelius' McDowell (whose voice makes me think of Planet of the Apes, I can't hear anything else).

It was one of those movies that came and went, didn't really make a dent, and then disappeared. It barely made back its $22 million budget (earning $26 million).

Yes, it's piffle. It's silly and contrived. The thing is, though, it's SO much better than 90% of what comes out now.  This sort of ticks back to the Cobra Kai nostalgia, but there were a LOT of really good (if inconsequential) movies from this timeframe that are a hundred times better than the tired, crass, vulgar nonsense that comes out of most studios these days.  Stuff like Great Outdoors, Summer Rental, Just One of the Guys, Last American Virgin, and Summer School for instance. Far better fare than what we're served today. It's kind of like a McDonald's meal. Tasty, filling, but not a whole lot of substance to it.

Basic story (if you don't know).  Goldie's rich. Kurt's a hobo-broke laborer with a bunch of kids. Goldie's husband tries to dispose of her (for the $$, of course). She ends up with amnesia, and Kurt - who despises her entitled attitude and wants to teach her a lesson - convinces her she's his hobo-broke wife.  Mild comedy ensues as she learns to be broke, and they learn they actually have a connection. 

Goldie was never much to look at in the face, but I'd forgotten she had a sorta booming body back in 1987. It's on PG-17 display here.   

Movies like this are the best. They go down so easy.

FWIW?  Ana Faris and some Mexican tried to remake this film in 2018. It bombed.  There were rumors of a McBongahey/Kate Hudson remake in 2024 but those turned out to be phony. This is one of those that's best left alone.

[Kaos]

The Gorge

Anna “Big Eyes” Taylor Joy and Miles Teller in perhaps the dumbest movie I’ve ever seen. 

Lone, expendable soldiers - one from the West (Teller) and one from the East (TayJoy) sent to spend a year in towers that face each other over a deep ravine - a ravine hidden from the world. The ravine is full of ….something …. Who or what  occasionally want to get out. 

Their mission, if they choose to accept it, is to ignore each other and keep what’s in there in there. 

Of course they don’t ignore each other. Teller decides he wants to bang her. Figures out a way across.  Bangs.  Now they love each other. But on the way back he falls into the gorge - where the story (which was already bad) leaps headlong into outlandishly stupid. It’s idiotic. 

Sigourney Weaver debases herself with bookend appearances.  The remainder of the film rests on TayJoy who’s moderately cute; Teller, who’s bland as a plain biscuit; and some horrific CGI that’s fair in places and cringingly bad in others. 

The story is SO dumb that none of the rest of that matters.  It’s like they were making it up as they went along. 

Play or punt?  Maybe fake punt and throw into the boundary short of a first down. 

EDITED TO ADD:
One thing I will give this film. It has the absolute greatest placement of a Twisted Sister Christmas carol in the history of cinema. The director (or musical director, possibly) and I are perhaps the only people in the universe aware that Twisted Sister has a cache of Christmas songs - and that some of them rock. Having that musical choice appear in this film was almost worth the price of admission (free) by itself.

[The Six]

Play or punt?  Maybe fake punt and throw into the boundary short of a first down.

The Peyton Thorne-Hugh Freeze Experience^TM

[Snakebite]

The Peyton Thorne-Hugh Freeze Experience^TM

I was thinking the same exact thing. Ready to eventually purge the horrific memories of Auburn football the past 5 years from my noggin’. That pairing especially.

[Kaos]

I was thinking the same exact thing. Ready to eventually purge the horrific memories of Auburn football the past 5 years from my noggin’. That pairing especially.

I’ve always thought of Taylor Kitsch as the Thorne of film.  Looks the part. Keep giving him chances. Just can’t get it done. 

[Kaos]

The Menu

Very strange movie.  Marketed as "high concept horror" which I guess was the intent. 

Basic storyline. Unhappy, overworked, superstar chef invites a group of clients for a one-of-a-kind dining experience. Chef has inspired a veritable army of sycophant staff who have crossed the Rubicon from admiration to worship. He has great (if well-hidden) disdain for the diners who've patronized his establishment over the years, and particular personal revulsion for the invited few fortunate enough to be invited to this special event.

Nic Hoult is one of the invitees - and he's a problem in two respects.  One, he's just not a very good actor. He's been in a lot of different things and there's something wrong with his face. It's like he's an alien doing its best to appear human. He just can't carry it off. He was better as a zombie in whatever movie that was. Or as Renfield in that movie. Where being human isn't a pre-requisite. Here? He struggles to evoke any humanity at all. Seriously like somebody stretched human skin over a space gray and tried to pass it off.  Second, he broke the rules and after getting dumped by his girlfriend, tagged a hooker (Anna Taylor Joy who is a weird looking chick, kinda alien herself) along.

The hooker is a problem for the chef (played by Voldemort). She wasn't part of his menu. The crux of the movie was the interaction between them as he decided how to handle her intrusion and the subsequent menu adjustments it would require. Or not.

Because it was horror, I thought it was going to be about cannibalism. Sadly, it wasn't. Chef didn't go Soylent green on them. Instead, he made S'mores. 

It wasn't a bad movie, necessarily, but it was ploddingly slow - made even more so by the Mr. Rogers-style delivery of Voldemort as he explained each course. It was also massively unrealisitc. Nobody is going to sit still for the menu as it became obvious where he was going with it.

There was no real horror. The food did look good and some of it I wouldn't mind trying.

Not giving anything away, but the chef should have stayed at McDonald's. He'd probably be a manager by now.

[Kaos]

Venom: Last Dance

I guess I’m abnormal.  I like the Venom films.  Not Hardy, he’s kinda strange. But the venom character is entertaining.

This is a very uneven film with a lot of wonky science-ish babbling and mountains of CGI. 

It had its moments - almost all supplied by Venom. It’s far superior to Morbius. It’s big and noisy in places which I guess is to be expected. It’s goofy in others - also to be expected.  I’d say this installment is better than the second but not as good as the first.

Don’t really want this to be the end of the character - Hardy can go maybe but Venom should come back. 

FWIW? Waze lets you choose Venom/Eddie as a voice for directions.  It’s simultaneously annoying and really amusing.  It’s what I use. It makes me laugh. 

You can also choose Christiana Aguilera, Roger Federer, Nate Bargatze, Paddington, and others.  You can also make your own. They used to have Dexter which was good.