Monthly Archives: September 2024

Sep 19 2024
Leave a comment
Movies

Movie Review – Rebel Ridge (2024)

Hold onto your cash, 3.5 readers. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

In my humble opinion, Netflix puts out a lot of crap, and I mean a lot. Most of it is unwatchable. One wonders why I even subscribe, but that’s a whole other conversation for another day.

At least once, maybe in a blue moon twice, a year, they put out one really good movie. For me, last year’s was Reptile. This year, they were due, and Rebel Ridge is it. Again, that’s my opinion. Maybe you think this is trash and another one of their offerings that I thought was trash you enjoyed. It’s all subjective.

This movie reminds me of Rambo, not the international warrior from Rambo 2 and 3, but the ex soldier in 1, who was just taking a walk, minding his own business, when a jerk cop hassled him, it escalated and a small town turned into a war zone.

In this case, Aaron Pierre plays Terry Richmond, a man with a simple mission. He’s visiting a small town with a large stash of cash in his backpack to bail out his cousin. Alas, he is quite rudely stopped by the local police, who perform an impromptu civil forfeiture of Terry’s cash on ridiculous, trumped up charges. The cops explain to Terry that he’s free to fight the move in civil court, but to do so will take years, cost him more than he lost, plus if he does, they’ll file one bogus criminal charge on him or another.

For most people, this terrible experience would just be a painful and very expensive learning lesson. Do not walk around with that much cash.

But Terry is in a real bind. His cousin, Mike, ratted on some bad dudes in the past. Bail for his current offense would just mean he is released and likely to just get light sentence, but if he isn’t bailed out, he’ll be transported to county jail, where friends of sad bad dudes ratted upon reside, and well you know how that will play out.

And so, the local cops learn the hard way that Terry was the wrong hombre to mess with. He’s actually a soldier who trains other soldiers how to fight. And boy is he ever in for a big brawl because this corrupt force isn’t lying down easy.

You see, noble reader, the true villain of the movie is (try not to yawn) civil forfeiture law. It’s been in the news the past few years with countless stories about how people’s money, homes and livelihoods are snatched up by the government with reckless abandon, all based on a suspicion, and it takes years and oodles of more money to fight it to get the confiscated property back, if that ever even happens. As the flick explains, the po po only take the allegedly illicit property to court so rare is the case where a judge actually hears the owner’s side of the story.

And a super corrupt police chief played by Don Johnson has gone in deep with civil forfeiture, such that he’s funded his own private little fiefdom. Anna Sophia Robb tags along as a plucky court clerk/law student who explains the whole ins and outs of civil forfeiture to us dumb audience folk and occasionally get into peril and needs to be rescued by Terry.

SIDENOTE: When I saw her I immediately said, “That’s the kid from Bridge to Terabithia!” Yep. But all grown up now. Time is an MFer.

The good? There’s a lot of action and really did remind me of the first Rambo film.

The bad? It all seems to escalate unnecessarily. There are times when it seems like a no brainer that both sides would just give up and walk away. I know this is a film so that can’t happen, but there are a lot of contrived happenings to explain why Terry and the cops keep going at it.

My ultimate complaint, this, Bad Boys and Axel F were the best action movies of the year and they all depicted corrupt cops as the villains. Does it happen? Sure. Does it happen as often as Hollywood would like us to believe? Hardly. It just feels like Hollywood is so afraid of offending any other possible group that when it comes to action flicks, they’re only willing to cast cops as the bad guys.

Tagged , , , , , , ,
Sep 19 2024
Leave a comment
Movies

Movie Review – Speak No Evil (2024)

Speak a good review about this movie, 3.5 readers. It is worth it.

You know, 3.5 readers, I normally don’t do horror movies. That’s because my life is horrifying enough. What’s that? You’ve got a movie about a masked maniac with a chainsaw who cuts up co-eds? That’s nice. Try dating after 40 and all the various dating sites can offer you is a plethora of middle aged blue haired, nose ringed wack-a-doos who are all waiting for Chris Hemsworth to sweep them off their feat.

But you came here to read a movie review, not discuss my pitiful social life.

Jean Paul Sartre once famously said that “Hell is other people” and that’s one running theme of this sleeper hit. Seriously, I can’t rave enough about it and I think it’s going to be one of those movies that does well by word of mouth.

Why are other people so hellacious? Because you can’t control them, you have no idea what’s going on inside their heads, and worse, you have no clue if their various quirks and poor habits are signs of something dark and sinister afoot, or if maybe you’re just an uptight a-hole who judges people for being different. People would be so much less annoying if they’d just obey your commands at all times and defer to your preferences.

SIDENOTE: Judge people, 3.5 readers. Always assume the worst, and you’ll rarely be disappointed.

Scoot McNairy and Mackenzie Davis (she of Halt and Catch Fire fame) play Ben and Louise Dalton, an American couple recently relocated to London for work. While on vacation in Europe, they meet Paddy and Ciara (James McAvoy of Young Professor X fame and Aisling Franciosi).

These couples are very different. The Daltons are very proper and straight laced nerds, while Paddy and Ciara are wild and free, a couple of fun loving jokesters who live to party. Somehow, they hit it off and become fast vacation friends, even their children Agnes and Ant become BFFs.

Time passes and the Daltons fall back into their humdrum life when they receive an invite from their new buds to visit them at their farm in the British countryside. As it just so happens (you know, for the movie to happen) the Daltons are facing some personal struggles such that a second vacay would really hit the spot, so off they go.

All seems well at first, but things quickly turn sour. The couples clash. Quite a bit. They see eye to eye on nothing. And for most of the movie, you wonder if the problem is just that. Have you ever had to spend a few days visiting a friend or relative you disagreed with on nothing? The couples disagree on what to eat, how to act, what is and isn’t appropriate behavior, parenting skills. The list is endless.

The lengths we go to in order to avoid being impolite is the second and by far the biggest theme of the movie. Have you ever been thrust into a situation where you feel like you’re being asked to put your head on the proverbial chopping block, but you shrug and go along with it for fear of being called a party pooper?

Case in point. When Ben and Louise first meet Paddy, he offers to give their daughter a ride on his motorcycle. Close up of the parents, obvious pits of doom and despair in their stomachs. They’ve just met this guy and they are in a foreign country. He could just drive away with their daughter and they’d never see her again. Or maybe he’s a shitty driver and will get into a crash. But little Agnes is saying “please, please let me go” and Paddy comes across as a nice guy with the best of intentions. To say no might offend him. What? You think I’m a creep who would hurt your daughter? Well, screw you, this friendship is over, losers.

So off Agnes goes on the bike and you instantly know what is going to do the Daltons in. They just can’t say no. They’d rather suffer a million indignities than risk offending their new friends. So they say yes, and yes, and yes again. They put up with this. They say nothing about that. Are these new friends just very different? Eccentric? Weirdos? Is it just a case of culture clash with two couples with very different lifestyles?

Or with every yes that should be a no, are the Daltons stringing out more rope to hang themselves with?

And as you might expect, Paddy and Ciara are the ultimate gaslighters…or are they? That weird thing they just did that freaked you out? “Oh. Wow. We’re so sorry. We didn’t think that was a big deal. Guess we just do things different here in the country. Well, so sorry we offended you, feel free to go but we’d be so sad if you did.”

Yeah. We’ve all been in relationships like that, haven’t we? Where they do something horrible, you freak out and they talk you into apologizing for not being on board with the horrible.

SPOILER ALERT: You didn’t think it was just going to be a movie about people from different walks of life learning to get along despite their differences, did you? Of course there are nefarious doings afoot, and this horror film doubles as a mystery flick as the Daltons uncover just exactly what those shady doings are.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. A good kick-off to the Halloween horror movie season. Some very scary and gruesome scenes, though I can’t get into it without spoiling it. My usual complaint? Children are put in peril and I never like to see that in a movie. But the scares are real and it will leave you wanting to question the motives behind everything that BFF couple you hang out with does.

Tagged , , , , , ,
Sep 08 2024
3 Comments
Movies

Movie Review – Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

The ghost with the most is back for more spooky doings!

BQB here with a review.

Beetlejuice, the titular demon and bio-exorcist who ghosts hire to torment the living, last graced our TVs a whopping 36 years ago. Reagan was president. The Soviets were in power. SNL was still funny. People only talked on stationary phones that never left their homes or offices. That’s how long it’s been since Michael Keeton’s popular funny dead guy has been out of our lives.

Although, he’s been gone, he was never forgotten, and has been long cemented in pop culture. Heck, even this blogger saw the Broadway play based on the original movie and it was a hoot. I actually think that production revived interest in the IP such that Hollywood said it’s Beet’s chance to ride again.

Alas, Hollywood’s obsession with sequels and reboots often leaves us feeling like our long lost movie friends would have been better off dead, rather than resurrected as pale, zombie imitations of their former selves, projects that were hot for their time have no relevance in a different world except for the shameless cash grab.

Overall, I give the movie a solid B Plus. It’s worth a trip to the theater to get you in the spooky mood this Halloween season. It meant all the sentimental needs, thus the B, but I’ll be honest. I didn’t laugh. For me, there were a few mild chuckles here and there, but I couldn’t help but notice that when you compare the two films, there was a lot of naughty humor in the first that couldn’t really be repeated in today’s woke times, if repeating jokes even works. Sometimes there’s a movie like the original that’s just a perfect one and done that it is hard to top.

But this is a good homage. The plot? Charles Deetz, like Marley, is dead to begin with. His character is included in humorous ways, yet great, outlandish and often silly lengths are taken to hide his face, presumably because the actor who played him, Jeffrey Jones, was convicted on child porn possession charges in 2003 and is now a registered sex offender. Since the character is now dead and fans might recall what dead people look like in the original, one can only imagine.

The Deetz family’s matriarch brings the Deetz family back to their home in CT for the funeral. Lydia (Winona Ryder) now uses her gift/curse of being able to see ghosts like her old friends, the Maitlands, to cash in on a TV show where she communicates with ghosts who haunt houses. Delia (Catherine O’Hara) still produces wacky art that is more about her eccentric moods that anything artistic.

Newcomer and daughter/granddaughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) is brought home from boarding school. She is estranged from Lydia because she believes her mother’s ghost communication ability is a crock.

Even more newbies to the cast arrive. Justin Theroux plays Lydia’s weaselly fiance. Arthur Conti plays Astrid’s love interest.

The first half hour moves slowly. We don’t get as much Beetlejuice as we would like. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot but briefly, we discover that in his living days, the B-Man was married and that union didn’t go so well. His now deceased wife, Delores (Monica Belucci) is looking for revenge, stalking the underworld and leaving behind a trail of dead corpses. Someone will have to explain the logic of how dead people can be killed again, but try not to think too hard.

Wolf Jackson (Willem DeFoe) a former Hollywood actor/on screen cop who died performing one deadly stunt too many, is on the case. Somehow, amidst this crazy backdrop, Beetlejuice must avoid his ex, while seizing his second chance to chase Lydia now that the Deetzes are back in the house that serves as a portal to him and blah blah blah, some hijinx ensue where Lydia begrudgingly needs the services of her tormentor and they have to work together.

The Maitlands? Stricken from the film. Director Tim Burton said he did this to focus on the story of three generations of Deetz women working together, but I wonder if it had more to do with Alec Baldwin’s legal troubles vis a vis accidentally shooting a crew member on a movie a couple years ago. That shouldn’t have prevented Geena Davis from gracing us with at least a cameo, right? I mean, can’t ghost couples get divorced? And before you point out the discrepancy of ghosts aging, Keaton’s age is hidden because, well, his character looked like a dead guy 36 years ago so all he had to do was just put the makeup on again.

Speaking of, I applaud the film for relying more on makeup and low tech effects and less on CGI. There are plenty of ornery dead folk walking around, people in this world seem destined to live out their afterlives suffering from whatever killed them, ergo they’re walking around with knives in the head, piranhas to the face and so on. Rather than do that with CGI, Burton relies on good old fashioned makeup, which looks a lot better.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

Tagged , , , , , ,