DWilson

Eileen Decal Releasing DVD
Thomasin McKenzie, Anne Hathaway. Directed by William Oldroyd. 2023
A woman's friendship with a new co-worker at the prison facility where she works takes a sinister turn.

"Eileen" is a sad little film for the most part, and I don’t know that I was in the mood for it. It's set in the early 1960s and Eileen (played by a very convincing Thomasin McKenzie) is living a frustrated life in a dreary Massachusetts town, trapped in an unrewarding job, sexually frustrated with no prospects, and brow-beaten by her alcoholic father; at one point she awakens after a night of drinking in a pool of her own vomit. Her life takes a turn when she meets the more glamorous Rebecca (Anne Hathaway, giving more of a "performance"). One hour in Rebecca confesses a secret to Eileen, and the film takes a turn, -though not the turn you were expecting.

After an hour of plodding misery, the change of direction feels a little abrupt, and it probably worked better in the book it was adapted from. Still, it breaks up the dreariness with some tension, as well as a riveting monologue from actress Marin Ireland, whose character gets a brief, sudden spotlight. I don't know that I found the film entirely satisfying, and the somewhat upbeat ending feels a bit false (or perhaps it's supposed to).

OldBoy

An Officer and a Gentleman

DWilson

Dogman Hoopla
Marcello Fonte. Directed by Matteo Garrone. 2018
Italian Language with sub-titles.
Marcello, a small and gentle dog groomer, finds himself involved in a dangerous relationship of subjugation with Simone, a former violent boxer who terrorizes the entire neighborhood.

I was reading an online review of Luc Besson's latest "Dogman" (releasing this week) and while the critic didn't care for it, he recommended this earlier film that shared the same title.

"Dogman" is a small, sad story of desperate lives in a grubby little town where everyone is just scraping by, even the petty criminals. It's an engrossing film, mostly because of Marcello Fonte, who creates a character who is sympathetic even though he is his own worst enemy. Maybe it's his love of dogs. You want him to dig himself out of the hole he's gotten himself in, and you can't help but wince at his poor choices. Fonte reminded me a bit of Dustin Hoffman.

The film has a very stylized look with terrific cinematography.

Boondock Saint

DWilson

The Terminal Man Shout Factory Blu-Ray
George Segal. Directed by Mike Hodges. 1974
An epileptic computer programmer undergoes a surgical procedure in which electrodes are planted in his brain and a miniature computer is inserted into his chest. Rather than curing him, though, the malfunctioning electrodes render him dangerous and violent.

I've never read Michael Crichton's "The Terminal Man", but I imagine it had to be better than this film adaptation. Warner Brothers didn't like his script for the film and fired him, going with another writer. Mike Hodges may have directed the Brit Noir classic "Get Carter" and the silly but engaging "Flash Gordon", but this film just plods along. Much of the early part of the film is quiet or scored with mournful Classical music, while the surgery scene that sets the Thriller "Mechanics" in motion is a painfully long sequence about a half-hour into the film. The actors are fine, -it's the pace that's deadly. Michael Crichton became a director himself and turned out several brisk little SF Thrillers ("Westworld" "Runaway"); I wonder how he would have done had he gotten the job.

The picture quality is fine, but Shout Factory just sort of dumped this on the disc.

JeffTheAlpaca

2012

"An ambitious Iowa seed farmer (Dennis Quaid) tries to get his resentful son (Zac Efron) interested in the family business, but the young man would rather pursue a career in auto racing."

I turned off Meg 2 The Trench and watched this

Maika Monroe I forgot was in this but I would still take a 50+ Heather Graham over her.

JeffTheAlpaca

MGM +

The scenes with Wright and Ortiz were the best

JeffTheAlpaca

Sergio Leone The Italian Who Invented America

HBO

2022

I have Once Upon A Time In America in my Blu-ray collection and need to watch it someday.

JeffTheAlpaca

2022

Netflix

Directed by Jesse Eisenberg

A mother (Julianne Moore) and her teenage son (Finn Wolfhard) can't seem to connect, yet they try to find that bond in other people. She latches on to a young boy she meets at her women's shelter, while her son falls in love with an extremely political student at his school.

JeffTheAlpaca

Hulu

2022

"Andrews joins a buffalo-hunting expedition. He and the people he meets along the way must confront and survive the brutal realities of nature in their attempts to get buffalo hides to sell."

I would not add this to my Nic Cage collection.

JeffTheAlpaca

Peacock

I wanted to love this but it was just ok

Maybe if you like the teen comedies of the 80's this is in your alley

JeffTheAlpaca

MGM+

It rings all the notes of the typical cliche sports movie which was disappointing with Clooney and Edgerton involved.

JeffTheAlpaca

I own the box set and perfect for a Easter weekend viewing with rain outside.

"You're not a brother, you're not a friend. I don't want to know you or what you do. I don't want to see you at the hotels, I don't want you near my house."


I could just watch these movies over and over again just to hear the Nino Rota score and listened to the Godfather II CD in bed before going to sleep.

Frank Pentangeli one of the more underrated characters in cinema

He replaced Clemenza in the sequel.

DWilson

{REC} 3: Genesis Shout Factory Blu-Ray
Leticia Dolera. Directed by Paco Plaza. 2012
A couple's wedding day turns horrific as some of the guests start showing signs of a strange illness.

"REC 3" occurs in the same timeframe as the original two films, it just happens at a wedding down the street, where one infected guest unleashes a pretty literal Hell on Earth.

"REC 3" goes for a different tone than the first two films, dispensing with much of the “found footage” approach of the series. While the first two films were filmed in dark corridors, or pitch-black rooms, "REC 3" features scenes shot in daylight and during a brightly lit, joyously colorful wedding. The film also that mixes wildly violent Horror with some outlandish Comic moments, and I'm sure “Evil Dead 2” and "Return of the Living Dead" were an influence. I can't say that all of the gags work, but it's an ambitious film, with great violent tableaus and sincere emotions, as well as a brisk running time.

Vipper II

Mr. Baseball

JeffTheAlpaca

Starz

"Brian is a lonely inventor in rural Wales who spends his days building quirky, unconventional contraptions that seldom work. Undeterred by his lack of success, he soon attempts his biggest project yet. Using a washing machine and various spare parts, he invents Charles, an artificial intelligence robot that learns English from a dictionary and has an obsession with cabbages."

At first it got annoying with the main character speaking to the camera exclusively but then more characters were introduced.

DWilson

Righting Wrongs Vinegar Syndrome Blu-Ray
Yuen Biao, Cynthia Rothrock. Directed by Corey Yuen. 1986
A lawyer, angry at the way the law seems to protect the bad guys, decides to take the law into his own hands when a key witness and his entire family are murdered.

I wasn't familiar with Yuen Biao before "Righting Wrongs", but he really impressed me as a Martial Arts Action Star and I started looking for other films he was in. Biao has some incredibly acrobatic, -and dangerous looking, -stunt sequences in this film. Cynthia Rothrock plays a hard-ass cop on Biao's trail, forcefully intimidating all the men, and engaging in intricate fight scenes that she performs while wearing some awful '80s fashions. "Righting Wrongs" is a very entertaining Hong Kong Action Film, but not without caveats, -there's some lame comic relief, and the film is incredibly brutal to all of its characters (so much so that a new ending was shot).

Vinegar Syndrome supplies its usual standout work on this edition. The set includes three cuts of the film, new and archival interviews with the featured cast, several commentaries, and a feature-length documentary on Martial Arts Films.

DWilson

Steve! (Martin) A Documentary in 2 Pieces Apple+
Steve Martin. Directed by Morgan Neville. 2024
The life and career of Steve Martin, from two perspectives.

As "Steve!" is comprised of two feature-length documentaries, I'll count it as a "Movie".

The first documentary looks at Steve Martin's rise as a stand-up comic, until he stepped away in 1980 never to perform as a solo act again. Martin comes across as a thoughtful, intelligent man with a very clever, but very, very silly act. Like many comedians, the nature of his act seems a cover for a very private person. The clips are fun and sometimes enlightening, and it's surprising how long he was just plugging away until his "meteoric" rise.

The second documentary visits at Steve Martin at 75. He's now a happily married man with a twelve-year-old daughter, a successful Hulu series, and travelling act with Martin Short. He's definitely opened up as a person and seems fairly content. Martin reflects on his long movie career and other artistic pursuits (as well as his pursuit of Art). This second doc is more contemplative and moves at a more measured pace (as does Martin). It's insightful, but it might work better taken in pieces (which is what I did)

andicus

He's very odd, but I generally enjoy David Earl. I'll give this a shot, at some point.

JeffTheAlpaca

It is not bad and maybe a little over 90 minutes so not a long movie

JeffTheAlpaca

Starz

2011

"When he was a youth in the Queensborough projects, Jonathan White (Channing Tatum) -- then known as Milk -- killed a couple of junkies. His dead father's former partner, Detective Stanford (Al Pacino), got him off the hook for the crime. Now a rookie police officer himself, Jonathan remains haunted by the incident. When a Queens reporter (Juliette Binoche) receives anonymous tips regarding the long-ago crime, the implications for both White and Stanford are clear."

It got bashed in the reviews and maybe the ending was ludicrious but seeing one scene with Pacino and the late great Ray Liotta was worth it for me.

Was Dito Montiel a big thing early in his career?

JeffTheAlpaca

Starz

2014

What was Brian Cox doing in this movie?

Except for a few nude scenes and one sex scene it was forgettale and had no clue what was going on.

DWilson

{REC} 4 Shout Factory Blu-Ray
Manuela Velasco. Directed by Jaume Balaguero. 2014
The young reporter Ángela is rescued from the building and taken to an oil tanker to be examined. However, it is unbeknown to the soldiers that she carries the seed of the mysterious demonic virus.

This film wraps up the {REC} "saga", and it's a solid, well-made SF/Horror Thriller. However, it loses the distinctive qualities of the previous {REC} films and often comes across as just another competent "Zombie" or "Zombie-Adjacent" film, with lots of characters and situations you've seen many times before. It also seems to side-step the Christian Heaven/Hell issues of the virus that were brought up in the previous films, when reading scripture to the infected would disable them. There are a lot of questions left unanswered.

DWilson

The Formula TCM
George C. Scott, Marlon Brando. Directed by John G. Avildsen. 1980
Where police detective Barney Caine goes, assassination follows: Someone is gunning down his contacts. As Caine connects the dots and finds his investigation is tied to a secret formula for a non-polluting synthetic fuel that wouldn't just revolutionize the oil industry. It would destroy it.

Scheduled for Christmas 1980, "The Formula", -an International Thriller similar to "Marathon Man" set during the height of "The Gas Crisis", -sounded very promising on paper. Steve Shagan produced the film and wrote the adaptation of his bestseller, as he had with "Save The Tiger" and "Hustle". John G. Avildsen was coming off directing the first two "Rocky" films. But even with a stellar cast featuring George C. Scott and Marlon Brando (getting Three Million for three scenes), it was barely a blip on the radar.

Checking in with it, I can see why. It's a dark and brooding Procedural Thriller without many thrills. Its competent scene after competent scene of gathering information from suspects and connections. Characters may get assassinated right and left, but sparks don't fly. The final scene is great, though, featuring a real showdown between Scott and Brando (in some over-indulgent prosthetic make-up), as they lay out the whole story and how they got to this confrontation. Like the discussion of "The Military-Industrial Complex" in "JFK", much of what is said is still relevant even today, sad to say.

DWilson

Wish Disney+ 4K
Chris Pine, Ariana DeBose. Directed by Chris Buck. 2023
In the Kingdom of las Rosas, a 17-year-old girl named Asha senses a darkness that no one else does about the kingdom's ruler, King Magnífico. This eventually leads to her trying to make a passionate plea to the stars and soon, an actual star from the sky named Star answers Asha's wish. Together, Asha and Star must overcome the evils rising in Rosas and fight for a better future for their people.

First let me say that I've enjoyed "Moana" and "Tangled" and some other Disney films and I enjoy Musicals in general. However, "Wish" reminded me of those direct-to-video sequels Disney turned out in the 2000s. It's just second-rate, apprentice level stuff that plays like a rough draft of "Incanto". However, the voice work and the musical performances are quite good, though the songs are overworked and unmemorable. I just found myself annoyed for the most part and threw in the towel about half-way in. That being said, I'm sure children will enjoy it, and they're more the target audience than this cranky old man.