Werewolves! Retired superheroes! Wacky conspiracy theorists! Parachutists with sabotaged parachutes!
Soon, you will be able to buy all six of my twisted shorts in one book. Check out the cover for BQB’s Twisted Shorts – The Complete First Volume
Keep an eye on your kids at all times, 3.5 readers.
BQB here with the new Netflix film, “The Vanished.”
It all starts out happily enough. Mom and Dad (Anne Heche and Thomas Jane, both a little long in the tooth to have a young kid but I assume they were big gets for Netflix so just go with it) pull into an RV park with their young daughter, ready for a fun vacation of camping and fishing.
Alas, Dad takes his eyes off his kid for one minute to oggle the wife half of the young couple in the RV parked next door and daughter goes missing.
Twists and turns ensue, and as Mom and Dad go nuts, they make the situation so much worse.
Jason Patric stars as the noble yet troubled sheriff, looking chubbier and unrecognizable from his Speed 2 days. Not knocking the guy. Happens to all of us.
Definitely a lot of random plot points stuffed in a blender, but the film rests on fakeouts – i.e. it introduces to a host of weirdoes, makes us think each weirdo did it, lets the weirdo off the hook, then moves on to the next weirdo. Even weirder, people who are seemingly norms will be discovered as weirdos and it just goes to show that you should suspect everyone of being weirdoes, whether they show outward signs of weirdo-ness or not.
BTW I always confuse Thomas Jane with Christopher Lambert of Highlander fame and always expect him to start speaking in that Lambertian French accent. He never does because he is not Chris Lambert, but I think there should be a movie about how they were twin brothers separated at birth.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy.
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Horrendous City is under attack! Will the Righteous Champion save the day? No, for he has retired. He is moving to California to chase his dream of becoming a pop star. Somehow the city will have to figure out how to fight evil on its own.
Oh, oh ah oh…The Living Daylights!
BQB here with a review of this old Bond film.
Timothy Dalton did two Bond flicks in the 1980s and in my opinion, after watching one and a half of them, they are criminally underrated. When it comes to Bond movies, at least in the past few incarnations, I’ve found that there is at least one Bond film per actor that is absolutely stellar (i.e. Goldeneye for Pierce Brosnan or Skyfall for Daniel Craig) and then the others are acceptable or subpar (i.e. Tomorrow Never Dies for Brosnan or Quantum of Solace for Craig – really, the villain is stealing water?)
Dalton only did two Bond flicks and while I haven’t finished the second as of this post, both seem pretty solid, so I think he should have gotten at least a third. Oh well. Can’t have it all. (Coming this Summer – James Bond in “You Can’t Have It All.”
“The Living Daylights” captures the Cold War paranoia of the 80s but doesn’t go all out in silly 80s pageantry. Aha does the cool theme song (I think a rare case where a man sings it instead of a woman but I could be wrong) but there aren’t any real “OMG this movie is so 80s” moments ala “You’ve got the touch! You’ve got the power!”
Moving on. Bond has been dispatched to help Soviet general Koskov defect to the West, bringing all his secrets with him. After a silly, unlikely yet sort of ingenious escape plan is hatched, Bond cozies up with cellist Kara (Maryam D’abo) looking for answers as to why a clueless, non-professional was trying to kill the general.
Twists, turns and double-crosses ensue, all culminating in a showdown at a Soviet era base in Afghanistan (wow various countries have been at war with Afghanistan for a long time now). There’s a very cool scene at the end where Bond and a henchman fight while clinging to a large sack of opium bags dangling out the back of a military plane. (The sack contains a bomb about to explode, upping the ante.) It’s worth watching for that scene alone.
I’ll be back when I’m done watching “License to Kill” but suffice to say, I think Dalton deserves more Bond cred.
He’s a thief…who is honest!
BQB here with a review of Liam Neeson’s latest attempt to reclaim his Taken glory days.
The plot is unlikely. For the past ten years, Tom Carter (Neeson) has been robbing banks and getting away with it. He has amassed a fortune of 9 million dollars, and his meticulous ability to get in and out of bank vaults without being caught has earned him the nickname, the In and Out Bandit.
When Carter falls in love with Annie (Kate Walsh), he decides to go legit. He doesn’t just swear off robbing banks. No, he calls the FBI to turn himself in. He loves Annie so much that he doesn’t want to hide any secrets from her, so he wants to come clean, do his time, and resume his relationship as an honest man.
Would an undetected bank robber actually turn himself in? Probably not, but hey, it’s a movie.
The plan goes awry when corrupt FBI agents (Jai Courtenay and Anthony Ramos) decide to abscond with the cash for themselves and frame Carter for the murder of their boss (Robert Patrick), Carter goes on the run, hunted as a wanton fugitive while trying to clear himself of false charges, dodging the efforts of a tiny dog loving FBI agent (Jeffrey Donovan) who will stop at nothing to bring Carter in.
Overall, it’s a cookie cutter mystery/thriller, kind of slapped together to keep Liam Neeon’s tough guy image going. You have to suspend disbelief at moments but it’s worth a watch.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy.
It’s the end of the world as he knows it and Gerard Butler isn’t feeling fine.
BQB here with a review of this disaster flick.
This a good movie and definitely worth a rental. Sad it was released in the COVID era as it most likely would have put butts in seats in movie theaters. The effects were made for the big screen and the twists and turns are perfect for munching popcorn to.
Butler stars as John Garrity, a structural engineer estranged from his wife, Allison (Morena Baccarin). Personally, I’d never let myself get estranged from that but Gerard Butler gonna do what Gerard Butler gonna do. The man’s like in his 50s and I can only assume still bagging mad babes.
But I digress.
A comet is on the way and about to crash in an extinction level event, similar to the one that killed the dinosaurs. Due to Garrity’s job as a structural engineer, he and his wife and son have been selected for relocation to an underground shelter, joining a collective of people with skills and training necessary to rebuild the world.
SIDENOTE – I wonder if I’ll get chosen to go to the shelter in the event of an incoming comet collision. Surely, the post apocalyptic world will need blogs that are only read by 3.5 readers, as well as the bloggers who blog them.
But I digress again.
Many disaster movies only tangentially touch upon the sheer panic that would ensue during a catastrophe. Here, the dark side of humanity that comes out in desperate times is put on full display, warts and all. John and Fam will have to navigate rioters, looters, crazies, weirdoes, murderers, double-crossers and so on just to get to safety.
Thus, this film gets an A from me for realism – as real as a movie like this can get, anyway. It’s a dog eat dog world even on a good day, so when the world is only given a precious few days left, all hell breaks loose and no one can be trusted. Seriously, stop trusting people. I found myself shouting this at John and Allison throughout the movie. “STOP TRUSTING PEOPLE!”
STATUS: Shelf-worthy.
Just a quick hello. Are there still 3.5 of you?
News…of the World!
BQB here with a review.
Of all the jobs in the Old West, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks) has the coolest. He is the world’s first social media platform/news aggregating service. In other words, he wanders from town to town, reading articles from newspapers to townsfolk in exchange for their donations. In these pre-Netflix days, assembling to listen to a man read from a newspaper was apparently the height of entertainment.
During his travels, Kidd comes across a busted up wagon. An African American soldier has been attacked and hanged. His charge left to fend for herself? Johanna, a young white girl in Native American garb. She had been raised by the natives who attacked and killed her family. She speaks no English and her native family is the only family she has ever known.
Kidd takes it upon himself to go on a long trek to return the girl to finish the soldier’s mission and return her to her last known relatives, though it is a harrowing journey for sure. Kidd must fight his way through a vast assortment of Old West a-holes, from a pseudo-warlord trying to carve out a slice of Reconstruction era America for himself, where he serves as a type of cruel king, to a band of vile perverts who want to kidnap Johanna and sell her into a life of forced prostitution.
The captain, old, tired, and feeling as though he wasted his life and missed out on time with his wife to fight for the Confederacy during the Civil War, would prefer to live his remaining years in solitude, doing most of his talking during his rousing news readings, only to reflect quietly when he is alone on his failed goals and lost dreams, his wish for a family of his own that never came to fruition.
He’d rather remain stuck in his rut, but he is the only one in this harsh world who cares enough to see the child gets to safety, and the skills needed to do so. His greatest adversary in all of this? Johanna herself, who is trapped between two worlds, unable to trust anyone, often running away, leaving her old caretaker with no choice but to chase after her.
Overall, the movie is Oscar bait. A history piece with some insight into the Reconstruction Era South. The Union Army weren’t fans of the Southerners they were sent to keep watch on. The Southerners felt likewise. In short, everyone was quite angry, yet against this backdrop, Kidd yearns for a sense of personal peace.
The plot is more or less just Kidd has to get the kid to safety, but has to fight a collection of a-holes to do so. Tom Hanks, Hollywood’s Mr. Nice Guy, carries the film, as Kidd is a character guided by morality. He could have pawned the kid off on any number of lawmen, church folk, etc. but knows he will be unable to live with himself until he completes the mission.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy.
Bookshelf Battle 