Review – Undercurrent: The Disappearance of Kim Wall

As the title implies, this is a documentary about journalist Kim Wall’s murder and dismemberment at the hands of psychotic entrepreneur Peter Madsen. The case drew media attention in 2018 thanks in no small part to the unusual crime scene: a private submarine owned by the killer. For a guy who had a reputation as a brilliant engineer, he was an incredibly stupid criminal, changing his story several times and leaving a ton of evidence for the police to find. But the more interesting part of the story turns out to be about Wall, who was a promising young reporter before she met her unexpected fate. Mildly amusing

Review – Halloween Kills

This damn thing is literally nothing but murder and inside jokes. No story at all beyond threads from other Halloween movies. Just a mess of stunt casting and sub-references sandwiched between witless gore. And I do mean witless, even by the loose standards of the slasher sub-genre. Michael Myers is now killing people completely at random. You don’t have to have sex or be a family member to end up on his victim list. You just have to be anywhere in Haddonfield. He even does one couple the courtesy of knocking before he comes in to dish out the stabbings. The end also adds an extra note of pointlessness to the whole mess. See if desperate

Review – The King’s Man

Imagine watching a game of Pong. Half the screen is a reasonably entertaining pastiche of pulp adventure yarns. The other half is a father and son arguing about whether or not the boy can enlist in the army. Even the half that didn’t suck nonetheless had problems. The fight scenes were sometimes poorly paced. In particular, Rasputin took longer to die in this movie than he did in real life, which is saying something. And when the supervillain finally emerges from the shadows at the end … suffice it to say that the folks who made this should have spent some time watching RuPaul’s Drag Race so they could find out what happens to queens who do a reveal that doesn’t amount to much. Mildly amusing

Abandoned – The Twilight Zone (2019)

Normally “abandoned” blog entries are reserved for movies or maybe limited miniseries. But on this rare occasion, I’d like to state my reasons for giving up on Jordan Peele’s reheat of The Twilight Zone even though it’s a continuing series. I absolutely loved Get Out, and I found Us fascinating as well. But this Peele project is intensely terrible. The first episode – a stand-up comedian slowly erases his own life – was a one-joke production that proved far too predictable to sustain its running time. But no big deal. Rod Serling’s original run had its share of clunkers, too. And the second episode was “Nightmare at 30,000 Feet,” which I figured would be much better. Nope. Instead of an awesome, plane-destroying gremlin, we get a writer listening to a mysterious podcast predicting the disappearance of the flight he’s currently on. It felt like watching a movie called Godzilla only to have it turn out to be about a guy fixing a flat tire. Nor did it help that the podcast narration was supplied by the super annoying voice of Hardcore History’s Dan Carlin. If the second episode was enough to start Richard Matheson spinning in his grave, I was prepared to pursue the series no further.

Review – Inventing Anna

Shonda Rhymes starts with a magazine article about a run-of-the-mill con artist and magnifies it into a nine-part miniseries, embellishing along the way. In truth, Anna Sorokin (Julia Garner) – better known to the world as Anna Delvey – barely counts as a con artist. She ran a simple fraud scheme on some high profile New York financiers and spent a lot of time in hotels without paying. So she seems less like a gifted grifter and more like a blend of common thief and delusional child. The trouble with stretching her story from an average-length movie to more than nine hours of screen time is the complete absence of sympathetic characters. Anna herself might have made a good anti-hero, but she provokes too many uncomfortable situations; if you’ve ever had a card declined in a restaurant, she’ll treat you to plenty of chances to relive the experience. Reporter Jessica Pressler’s fictional stand-in, Vivian Kent (Anna Chlumsky), might have seemed heroic if her obsessiveness hadn’t driven her to multiple breaches of journalists’ ethics. Everyone else – from bankers to lawyers to the sycophants who attach themselves to Anna because they think she’s rich – manage to seem loathsome just by being themselves. With no characters worth caring about, this just wasn’t engaging enough to justify its running time. Mildly amusing

Review – Dune (2021)

This is just never going to work. What is this, the fourth attempt to bring this story to the screen? Of course I’ve also tried the original novel and the graphic novelization to similar ill effect, so maybe I should personally stop giving it another chance rather than griping about Hollywood’s business. They stopped the plot midway through, so I’m assuming they’ll release a sequel at some point. And I’m guessing it will be a lot like this one: beautiful but vapid. The art direction, special effects, cinematography, really every visual element of the production are all excellent. The actors all look like supermodels (even the Harkonnens). But the characters and their story remain unapproachable, like a stiff interpretation of the holy scripture from some unfamiliar culture. Mildly amusing

Review – The Last Duel

 Here we have the Rashomon version of one of the last times in French history that a legal dispute was ever decided by trial by combat. When Marguerite de Carrouges (Jodie Comer) accuses Jacques le Gris (Adam Driver) of rape, her husband (Matt Damon) proves politically unpopular enough to prevent him from seeking justice in the courts. So he challenges her attacker to a duel in which God will allow right to prevail. You can tell Ridley Scott directed this because of all the crap floating around in the air. Honestly, I'm a little surprised that he’d try another long, moody, Medieval drama, though it was more bad luck than bad filmmaking when this flopped due to poor promotion support from the studio. Mildly amusing

Review – Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Going into it, the folks who made this movie must have realized that they weren’t going to be able to create anything as eerie as the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark book series, especially not Stephen Gammell’s excellent art work. So they didn’t bother to try. Instead, this is a handful of elements from the books stirred into a gumbo with everything from high school bullies to the Vietnam War. The main thread is about a ghostly manuscript that writes itself, bringing doom to all who find their stories told within its pages. Mildly amusing

Review – Incarnate

I’ve consumed enough of these things that now they just taste like their ingredients. A bunch of Constantine. Some Dreamscape. Maybe a touch of The Exorcist. It’s like biting into a piece of cake and getting only the separate flavors of flour, sugar and milk. Bleh. Aaron Eckhart (who according to the trivia notes on IMDb took this role way too seriously) plays a wheelchair-bound demon hunter looking to settle the score with the evil spirit that killed his wife and son. He gets his chance when Maggie – yes, the demon’s name is Maggie – settles into a child and challenges him to a fight. From there you can write the script yourself by keeping an eye on the clock and figuring how many more twists and turns they have to work in during the remaining running time. See if desperate

Review – No One Gets Out Alive

This gets off to a slow start. Actually the very beginning is a fun sequence of simulated Super 8 chillingly reminiscent of the opening to The Exorcist. But when the main story kicks in, it’s the slow, sad story of a woman who journeys from Mexico to Cleveland only to find herself victimized by people who prey on undocumented workers: a sweatshop owner, a con artist and the landlord of a run-down boarding house. It’s the latter of the three who proves to be her biggest worry, as the house conceals dark secrets. The supernatural entity, when it finally appears, turns out to be genuinely innovative, well worth the wait. Worth seeing

Review – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Alas for Henrietta Lacks. Doctors took her cells without notice or consent and turned her into a cornerstone of medical research without even acknowledging her existence. And then she isn’t even the subject of her own movie. Instead, this is the tale of how author Rebecca Skloot (Rose Byrne in an oddly annoying performance) researched her book. But of course the real star of the show is Henrietta’s daughter Deborah. You can tell she’s the star because Oprah Winfrey plays her. Thus this becomes the story of how challenging it is to write when your collaborators spend their days wavering between eccentric and genuinely mentally ill. I was particularly fascinated by the scene toward the end when the two surviving children get to meet their mother’s cells, which was both strangely touching and just plain strange. Mildly amusing