Recent Viewings, Part 2

[M.10rda]

CLOSED CIRCUIT (2013);
A figuratively and literally explosive opening sequence quickly promises a highly relatable conspiracy thriller/courtroom drama for 21st century survivors. This one's got it all - surveillance anxiety, deep state paranoia, authentically well-founded criminal justice outrage, etc. It's a short film (a little over 90 minutes) but the first 40 or so take their sweeeeeet time bringing the ingredients to a simmer. Once the water's bubbling I did get swept up in the excitement, but the film refuses to deliver the kind of movie payoff that one expects from watching a lot of movies. Instead we get a highly plausible ending where innocents suffer, the bad guys get away with everything, and the protagonists just have to suck it up and slink into the shadows in the hopes of survival. That's a sort of admirable (and certainly realistic) ending but after a terrible frustrating week, not the one I needed from a movie!

There are two larger, less subjective problems with CLOSED CIRCUIT, though. The first directly reflects its poor management of its limited screen time. Eric Bana and Rebecca Hall play the two defense attorneys unraveling a long chain of M15 malfeasance and the majority of the film is one or both of them unpacking dense exposition about the case, peppered with persistent sequences of one or both walking nervously through lonely environments, glancing about furtively, etc. Amidst all this walking and glancing and unpacking, the filmmakers decided these two needed a meet-uncute/battling bickersons type romance ala ADAM'S RIB or something, which, in this kind of otherwise well-intentioned and well-informed political flick, was profoundly unnecessary, irritating, and tone def. (Julie Stiles - remember her?  - even shows up for 2 or 3 scenes to suggest that Bana has some options.) Getcher priorities straight, screenwriters.

The other issue, unfortunately, is Bana himself. He broke through in 2001 giving one of the first (and maybe still one of the best) Great Screen Performances of the new millennium as Mark "CHOPPER" Read. To slice it a little differently, his performance as Chopper was better than Tom Hardy's performance in/as the almost identical BRONSON from ten years later and for that matter Bana's performance as Chopper is probably better than any Tom Hardy performance. But there are lots of good or at least interesting Tom Hardy performances and, a quarter-century on, Bana's still just got CHOPPER to his credit and f*ck-all else. It's true Bana's been in a lot of bad movies and played a lot of bad roles, which might or mightn't have been within his control - though Hardy makes a lot more of his stoopid VENOM material than Bana made of Ang Lee's HULK. In CLOSED CIRCUIT, Bana has a role that is often dry and thankless and no fun, but in one or two moments he comes alive just enough to suggest what a really hungry, inspired actor could do in this kind of movie. The rest of the time Bana just looks earnest yet bored. He was probably bored - but his boredom makes the film boring for the viewer, too.

3/5
Dramatic compensation: the incredible Jim Broadbent is incredible as usual and incredibly loathsome as one of the bad guys, and similarly great (or great-ish) British actor Ciaran Hinds (from PERSUASION, GAME OF THRONES, and many other places) is present a lot, following Bana around and saying little but at least looking quite professionally less bored!

[lester1/2jr]

Films of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Movie (2011) - decent enough overview of the history of kung fu cinema, mainly the Hong Kong variety (which makes sense). As Fastfreddy's cat would say, longtime fans won't learn anything new, but it's a nice trip down memory lane-o. Lots of footage of Bruce Lee and Shaw Brothers classics with a slightly non kung fu but entirely logical "Gun Fu" segment with Chow yun Fat and all those guys. A mediocre, not very funny cartoon introduces the various clips and facts. They probably didn't have much money left over after getting permission for all the clips so I can forgive them for it.

4/5 I wish Tubi would get more of these films instead of just junky Wu Tang collection ones

[M.10rda]

A WALK ON THE MOON (1999):
Watching Liev Schreiber be good in yet another mediocre project (THE PERFECT COUPLE) made me want to try to double back and find a really good Liev Schreiber movie that I'd missed previously (his most memorable performances being in uniformly pretty bad movies). What is the best Liev Schreiber movie? It ain't THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, in spite of Schreiber's efforts. DAYTRIPPERS is a lovely little film and Schreiber is very charming in it. Can we do better?

A WALK ON THE MOON has some tonal issues and uneven direction (by the bad guy from GHOST, of all people), but it's a well-meaning effort with a pretty smart screenplay. Schreiber, wife Diane Lane (during her late 90s renaissance), mom Tovah Feldshuh, and newly pubescent daughter Anna Paquin spend the summer of 1969 in a Jewish resort in East/Central NY, where Julie Kavner occasionally makes funny on the PA system. (Srsly.) Schreiber has to commute back to the city during the week to fix TVs, which leaves Lane lonely, frustrated, and easy prey for Viggo Mortensen as free-spirited traveling merchant "the Blouse Man". This sounds like Borscht Belt ribaldry and could easily devolve altogether into female fantasy. To the film's credit, it doesn't let Lane (or anyone else) easily off-the-hook and by the end almost resembles a serious character study.

Everyone is pretty good and for 2/3rds the film, Schreiber is dependable as usual as a character that honestly reads as what today we would describe as "neurodivergent". One could easily argue that most adult men in the 60s were out-of-touch with their feelings and unable to communicate, though the film takes care to position Mortensen and at least one other male character as being functional in the ways that Schreiber is lacking. What finally elevates the film, and propels Schreiber's performance, is the final stretch when he figures out what's up and directs a lot of anger outwards and also inwards. These scenes are particularly well-written and allow Schreiber to play an entirely sympathetic version of Tennessee Williams' Stanley Kowalski. He is up to the task. This was the film I was looking for (barring some other discovery) - Schreiber has been more entertaining in other (worse) films, but this is the best serious performance I've seen him give.

3.5/5 I've never seen RAY DONOVAN, btw.

[indianasmith]

THE MAD (2007) - I guess Billy Zane fell on some hard times after TITANIC, because less than a decade later he was starring in this rather bizarre quasi-zombie film with a supporting cast I'd never heard of.  A doctor, his much younger girlfriend, his 19 year old daughter, and her boyfriend are traveling and stay at a bed and breakfast in a small town whose diner is renowned for its gourmet burgers made from locally raised beef.  But then, the chemicals the rancher used to cure his cows of some bizarre disease transforms the town's residents into flesh-munching zombies, and the doctor has to try and figure out how to reverse the symptoms.  With some incredibly dumb dialogue, cheesy effects, and pulsating attack hamburger patties, this is pure bad movie gold.  4/5 on the bad movie scale, 1/5 on a regular movie scale.

[Rev. Powell]

GEMINI (2017): A famous actress' personal assistant finds herself the chief suspect in a murder. Well-made and well-acted, if slow-moving and lacking any meaningful subtext, but the fatal flaw is: the twist makes absolutely zero logical sense. 2/5.

[M.10rda]

BOMBSHELL (2019):
After almost a year of focusing on movies from the previous century, I'm going to try to clean out my backlog of stuff from this century that somehow I've accumulated. Like Brad Pitt to a large degree, Charlize Theron is an expert at transforming roles that could easily be merely "Hot Person" into rather complex character performances. (I maintain she deserved an Oscar for DEVIL'S ADVOCATE, though she later got one for a lesser performance where she looked less attractive.) Here she gives former Faux News anchor Megyn Kelly a quirky nasal accent which may be totally convincing but the hell I'm gonna' pay that close attention to Megyn Kelly. Nicole Kidman plays fellow bulls**t spewer Gretchen Carlson and (commendably though tellingly) looks older and more natural (yes, even as a TV news anchor) than she looked 6 years later in the suspiciously post-processed PERFECT COUPLE. Margot Robbie, who is clearly modeling her own career on Theron's, does a lot of solid acting as a composite of a bunch of innocent young women who got exploited and molested by Faux News' C.O.O. Roger Ailes.

Ailes, an enormous grotesque human pustule, is played by John Lithgow in what I hope is a Baron Harkonnen-prosthetic suit and not a DeNiro/Bale-esue physical transformation. BOMBSHELL is directed by Jay Roach, who previously made Mike Myers wear a similar suit in the AUSTIN POWERS flicks and also exercises his commitment to grand guignol by having Richard Kind in a baldcap play a particularly bloated Rudy Giuliani. Besides those two, most of the other (huge) ensemble are plausibly cast - so convincingly in the case of petit Goebbels such as Geraldo Rivera, Sean Hannity, and the authentically ghastly Kimberly Guilfoyle that I briefly had to control my vomit reflex, thinking that Roach had allowed these real world villains the dignity of playing themselves. (As it takes place during the 2016 presidential campaign, Der Fuhrer is only depicted in archival footage on screens and thus we are spared (I guess) an encore of Myers as "Fat Bastard".)

Roach is decent at maintaining a mild degree of SUCCESSION-style satirical amusement but barring one brief sequence this movie never amounts to much. In that sequence, Robbie meets and bonds with co-worker Kate McKinnon. The former talks admiringly about the hypnotic effect that Fox has had on her family (and herself) and the latter coaches her on how to construct an ideal Faux News story from speculation and prejudice, and then quite surprisingly the new friends end up in bed. In the afterglow, McKinnon (in the film's best performance) crumbles into a twitching, still-current TSD state and discusses what it's like to be a closeted lesbian and Democrat (!) working for the network. For a moment, BOMBSHELL really illuminates the destructive human impact of the entire corporation and its culture. In another later scene, a colleague criticizes Kelly for going easy on Trump in an interview, and that's the next closest thing BOMBSHELL is able to offer in terms of criticism of Fox's larger crimes beyond just its hostile workplace atmosphere. In constructing his film as a simple prelude to the Me-Too movement, Roach missed a real opportunity to communicate even more expansive and harmful wrongdoing that continues today. Rupert Murdoch (Malcolm McDowell!) is even allowed to sweep in and play the hero at the end, scourging Fox of two high-profile offenders (Ailes and Bill O'Reilly) while leaving the entire rest of the insidious organization intact and smelling like daisies... "some are saying".

2.5/5 I've convinced myself I posted this in the wrong Board!

[M.10rda]

THE NOAH (1975):
A fifty-ish US army soldier (Robert Strauss) washes up alone on the beach of what looks like a deserted Communist Chinese island outpost. It doesn't take long for him to start talking aloud (presumably to himself) and relating the story of a nuclear war that seems to have wiped out all other human beings on Earth. After maintaining the soliloquy for a while, the viewer is a bit alarmed when an unseen/offscreen voice starts to respond to the soldier. The soldier calls his new friend "Friday" (natch) and Friday's voice is provided by the wonderful Geoffrey Holder from LIVE AND LET DIE and elsewhere. Things seem to be going well for the new friends, but before you can say "Tom Hanks in CASTAWAY" a third voice appears, this one female, and of course no good can come of that...

THE NOAH opens with a quote from the Book of Genesis and the aforementioned triangle only commands about the first half of the running time. After Adam and Eve are dealt with, the soldier starts over. Briefly he becomes Moses with his Ten Commandments and then finally is tormented by the Tower of Babel. The last third of the film deteriorates into something less like narrative and more like the films of Maya Deren or Kenneth Anger. Not a lot happens but it's still kind of a bummer. The message is clear: no matter how many times God tries to start over, He is still apt to recreate the same errors in design.

Writer/director Daniel Bourla worked a lot in the Greek and Israeli film industries but this was the only feature film he helmed. Strauss was an Oscar-nominated actor in the 40s and 50s (I don't think I've ever seen him in anything else) and this was his final film. THE NOAH captures the "sleepcore" aesthetic perfectly - it's very slow and uneventful and still very odd yet not odd enough to keep you awake if your body insists on powering down. If it was playing in your bedroom late at night as you drifted in and out of consciousness you might well remember it decades later and remain fascinated and mystified by it.

3/5 Watching it wide awake, though, it's just okay.

[Jim H]

THE MAD (2007) - I guess Billy Zane fell on some hard times after TITANIC, because less than a decade later he was starring in this rather bizarre quasi-zombie film with a supporting cast I'd never heard of.  A doctor, his much younger girlfriend, his 19 year old daughter, and her boyfriend are traveling and stay at a bed and breakfast in a small town whose diner is renowned for its gourmet burgers made from locally raised beef.  But then, the chemicals the rancher used to cure his cows of some bizarre disease transforms the town's residents into flesh-munching zombies, and the doctor has to try and figure out how to reverse the symptoms.  With some incredibly dumb dialogue, cheesy effects, and pulsating attack hamburger patties, this is pure bad movie gold.  4/5 on the bad movie scale, 1/5 on a regular movie scale.

It's funny how Zane is 10x better than everyone else in the film.  His performance is pretty good as I recall, and everyone else is bad.  Sticks out like a sore thumb.

I myself just watched Black Bag (2025).  It's very slickly made, very well acted, well written, shot and supremely well paced.  Really good stuff.  Great characterization.  It's like a well oiled machine.  Check it out.

[lester1/2jr]

I remember really liking The Noah but it was a long time ago.

The Monster (1925) - weird silent era comedy mystery featuring Lon Chaney as a mad scientist type working out of an abandoned asylum, which graciously left a few of it's biggest weirdos behind to be his assistants. It would have been much better at an hour rather than 90 minutes, but it was sort of charmingly ridiculous in it's own Scooby Doo meets The Old Dark House with a dash of Mystery of the Leaping Fish way. The female lead was cute and by cute I mean for 1925, not in general.

Someone is constantly emerging from a hidden panel or being shot out of a trap door tunnel, usually as they're being chased by either the guy wearing a black hood or Caliban, the huge white guy painted brown imitation Arab servant. It is definitely lighter and sillier than most Lon Chaney films I've seen.

3.76 /5 appealingly demented, but it dragged and certainly didn't provide any chills. bigger than usual budget for this kind of thing with some interesting camerawork

[indianasmith]

DESERT SHADOWS (2022) This movie hits all the necessary benchmarks of a classic Joe Bob Briggs bad movie.
To run down the list:
Hideous beasts - 3
Decapitations - 1
Blood - Approximately 3 gallons
Unclothed actresses you've never heard of - 5
Sinister mad scientists - 1
Wild-eyed protagonist trying to find his missing brother - 1
Bad dialog - about 90 minutes' worth
The only thing really missing is bad CGI - this one was done entirely with traditional costume effects.

Cheap and cheesy?  Yes.  Entertaining?  Also yes.   5/5 on the bad movie scale; 3.5 on IMDB

[M.10rda]

LOW DOWN (2014):
This unassuming-looking family drama (which indeed turns out to be a true story/adapted by the screenwriter from her own memoirs) opens alarmingly with a quote from NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (!) and eventually that quote stops seeming gratuitous or inappropriate. Teenage protagonist Amy-Jo (Elle Fanning) is in less immediate mortal danger than pursuit by a homicidal Robert Mitchum would entail but her circumstances are existentially imperiled nonetheless.

Dad (John Hawkes) is a gifted jazz pianist in and out of institutions for heroin addiction and constantly threatening to violate parole. Mom  is a dysfunctional alcoholic, so absent from Amy-Jo's life and so rough-looking that I didn't identify her as Lena Headey until her final scene (there are no credits until the end and to compound matters, a similar-looking supporting character dies abruptly midway through the film and it took me a minute to figure out that it wasn't Amy-Jo's mother). Amy-Jo ends up spending a lot of time with her Gran (Glenn Close), who seems mostly okay except she's completely incapable of motivating her adult son to clean up his act for his daughter's sake. This is another film where little seems to happen, and slowly, yet the cumulative effect is heavy, man. I gotta' watch a couple light comedies soon.

LOW DOWN is shot and edited in a almost docu-realist style that is sometimes earthy and gritty and sometimes just disorienting. There were moments that I thought the direction was extremely effective, others where I thought they were just shooting this thing as quickly as possible before they got thrown out of a location. It doesn't help that the film also ends suddenly on a freeze-frame, voice-over (for the first time in the film), and then some redundant "what happened to the characters" titles. I have to give it up to Hawkes, though. An actor who has consistently been outstanding in nearly every role he's played since the early 90s, he delivers another highly committed performance capped by one indelible moment in an NA meeting near the end of the film. Again due to the credits I thought Fanning was Chloe Grace Moretz until the end, but whoever played Amy-Jo did a good job, too. 

3.5/5 Also with Flea as Hawkes' nerdy jazz friend, career Crispin Glover impersonator Caleb Landry Jones as Amy-Jo's epileptic boyfriend, Billy Drago as the pusherman, and Heady's brother on GoT Peter Dinkage, sort of reprising his debut role from LIVING IN OBLIVION, as a nice man who gets typecast in weird movies. (Also he lives in Amy-Jo's walls? ) Flea co-produced this thing with Anthony Kiedis, yet there alas is no "Presented by the Red Hot Chili Peppers" credit.

[Rev. Powell]

BORG VS. MCENROE (2017): It's 1980, and stoic #1 ranked Swede Bjorn Borg is feeling the pressure as he shoots for a record fifth Wimbleton title, with #2 ranked bratty American newcomer John McEnroe intent on blocking his bid for history. Sverrir Gudnason has the right smoldering intensity to play Borg, and the match itself is terrific (a back and forth five set affair with a long tiebreaker, it's considered one of the greatest tennis games ever played); the long run-up made me wonder if a straightforward documentary might have been more rewarding, though. 3/5.

[Rev. Powell]

REVENGE (2017): A criminal brings sexy young mistress Jen on a weekend job/vacation, but when his two henchmen take liberties with her, things go to hell and Jen seeks REVENGE. This absurdly-plotted, gory feminist exploitation movie is pitched about halfway between THE REVENANT (2015) and MANDY (2018) (it's a bit closer to MANDY). The debut film from Coralie Fargeat (THE SUBSTANCE)--if you didn't like that one you still may like this one, as long as you keep in mind that the ridiculous plot twists (people's abilities to survive impossible injuries) are parodies of the action genre. With a peyote trip and lots of blood and (males and female) nudity. 4/5.

[lester1/2jr]

^That was an awesome movie but yeah, I think at one point someone gets impaled on a small tree and walks away from it

[Rev. Powell]

^That was an awesome movie but yeah, I think at one point someone gets impaled on a small tree and walks away from it

They all lost SO MUCH blood, too. But the impalement was the worst. You just have to overlook it.