Category Archives: Film

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

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I really do not understand how this movie got made. It’s just so so so implausible.

In the third Fast but also let us not forget Furious movie, a young drifter moves to Tokyo, only to discover that the title was actually a pun. See, he’s a drifter because he keeps getting into trouble for doing dumb high school racing things, and got sent to live with his father in Japan as a last ditch effort to keep him out of jail for driving through a house under construction and being assaulted by another high school car guy. None of which is how any of that would work, as far as I can tell?

Anyway, he drifts into Tokyo, I was saying, only to learn that it’s also called drifting if you left the back of your car skid ahead of you as a way to make 0 point turns instead of 3 point turns. Did drifting really not exist outside Japan before this movie popularized it? No clue, though it seems unlikely somehow. But so anyway, this kid gets mixed up in drift racing and the Yakuza, because of course he does, and that’s the rest of the movie. (Also, there’s a girl.)

Except for a brief cameo in which a previous character says he used to hang out with the only character in the whole movie who was worth the time of day, there’s nothing that would make you think this should have been tagged as part of the series. In fact, if I were to make a gamble on today of all days when my gambles in general are not going so well as I’d prefer, I’d bet that the secret cameo actor heard about this movie and thought, hey, if I can tie it into my series, maybe I’ll still have a series and get to make a third, no wait, it would be fourth now, wouldn’t it? movie.

That does not help me understand how such a gamble paid off, to be clear. Tokyo Drift isn’t a bad movie, but it is extremely paint by numbers, and I am once again left scratching my head as to how these three (now) movies could have resulted in a powerhouse franchise.

But, as I intimated already, tons of things I don’t understand today, aren’t there?

Il racconto dei racconti – Tale of Tales

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They are still making fairy tales, you know. There’s The Princess Bride, of course. And Moana. And my personal favorite at the time, Stardust[1]. But thanks to my horror podcast, I have learned about another one: Tale of Tales[2].

Man is this hard to talk about without spoilers, though, so I will stick to brevity. See, there are these three neighboring kingdoms. In the first one, Salma Hayek wants a kid, and goes to rather extreme lengths to get one. But then she is not perfectly happy with either the cost nor (especially) the secondary results. This story features an enormous sort-of axolotl, which is how the podcast settled on this movie as a gothic story with an aquatic monster. Other than by volume, this was a fair assessment of meeting the stated requirements.

In the second kingdom, a horny king and a youth-obsessed woman run afoul of each other, with results that are extremely predictable, right up until they aren’t, and then boy howdy do they keep not being. And in the third kingdom, a princess in want of a husband becomes the prize of a pretty implausible marriage contest, albeit with, again, predictable results. Until they, also again, aren’t.

This movie, if all goes well, will win my personal 2024 awards for worst father, worst mother, and worst sister. Also, it’s at least a middle of the pack contender for both best brother and best husband. But did it need to be three stories, if they barely at all intersect with one another? I guess the answer is this: while two hours and fifteen minutes is a little long for a movie so focused on being slow and dreamlike and cinematic, three movies of forty-five minutes each would have been just ridiculous. So.

[1] No idea if it holds up. I just know I was the only one who thought it might be its generation’s Princess Bride.
[2] Apparently these are pulled from a 17th century Italian fairy tale collection, and thus do not I suppose count as “still making”, in the strictest sense. Goes a long way toward explaining why the “skin of a flea” story seemed familiar, though.

I Spit on Your Grave III: Vengeance Is Mine

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I did not care for the sequel to the remake of I Spit on Your Grave, which to be clear is an outstanding movie, and I will not be taking any questions on the topic. So anyway, there was a 3, and I’ve known there was a 3 this whole time, but after how down I was on 2, I never bothered. Until earlier this week, when I just bit the bullet and went for it. And you know what? It’s an actual sequel to the remake, not just another story about a different woman taking different revenge.[1]

I Spit on Your Grave III finds our heroine some years later, with a new identity and haunted by both what she went through and maybe a little by what she did. She joins a rape survivors support group thing, and makes friends with one of the other members, who is tough and brash and has some ideas about how to get justice. Then, when something goes wrong, the main character finds herself going deeper and deeper down the “justice” rabbit hole.

I said the last movie was a cross between the original and one of those European torture porn movies. This was more like a cross between the original and Death Wish. Which, both being movies from the ’70s, is clearly the better fit. The main thing I cannot figure out is if we’re supposed to root for the murders despite several lines of dialogue being way, way over the top, or if we’re supposed to think she’s gone too far and that’s why the dialogue is quite as silly as it is. Either way: man, that’s some rough dialogue.

But if she wanted to make more rape-revenge features, I’d probably get around to watching them.

[1] Also, it appears there may be a sequel to the original as well?! I’ll need to look into that.

Jurassic World: Dominion

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I am really ambivalent about Jurassic World: Dominion, now that I’ve finally seen it[1]. If you are unaware, it’s the follow on to Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, in which dinosaurs are now a worldwide phenomenon after the events of that movie saw them rescued from Isla Nublar and then let loose. My ambivalence is as follows: on the one hand, it was a perfectly serviceable dinosaur action movie, with thrilling set pieces and characters that we have collectively cared about for decades, all getting a deserved swan song.

But on the other hand, after 24 hours to think about it… it was obligatory without being hardly anything else. Here’s the thrilling velociraptor chase through the streets of Malta, because there was a bad guy with tech from the last movie! But really all it does is make it harder for our heroes to board a plane out of town. Here’s the ice lake dinosaur in the southern Alps keeping our heroes from reaching a door on the far side of the lake. And it’s like, obviously I want thrilling dinosaur chases and dangerous stalking dinosaurs, but… I guess it’s that for most of these set pieces, there were no believable stakes or sense of danger. And Chekov’s knife fight remains, as of this writing, unfought on the mantel, about which I am personally offended.

In the end, I’m not saying it was bad. I had legitimate fun, and it was nice catching up with old friends and seeing a vision of a fundamentally altered world. But I am saying that I’m glad this story is over. It seems like they’re moving on to a new story next year, and I’m good with that, because I like the world they’ve made. But yeah. It’s good to let stories end.

[1] Full disclosure: the only reason this movie bubbled to the top of the list is that we both want to see the new season of Camp Cretaceous on Netflix, which is set near or after the events of this movie, and certainly was released years after. (That said, it was pretty cool seeing technology from the original show referenced in Dominion, as though it really is all one giant continuity. I like those, and am annoyed when it’s not a two-way street between movies and streaming.)

The Dark and the Wicked

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So imagine your mom and dad live on a secluded farm, and also your dad is wasting away of some kind of unspecified illness that has him bedbound, on oxygen, and never particularly awake, while also not apparently being in a coma or whatever. So you and your sibling show up, over your mother’s objections, to help.

The Dark and the Wicked is that movie, and it is split up as follows: 10% day to day logistics, 50% long lingering shots of people in the midst of misery, and 40% absolute mindfuckery where it is never possible to tell what is real or unreal. I do not believe I ever knew why anything was happening, but boy howdy did things keep happening. From vegetable chopping mishaps to livestock mishaps to constant prank phone calls to uncomfortable parental sexuality, and honestly that’s barely scratching the surface.

In conclusion, the movie never made a lick of sense, but boy does it know how to set a mood.

2 Fast 2 Furious

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As you may but plausibly may not be aware, I laid out an intention to watch the Fast and/or Furious series. Said intention was laid out seven years ago, so I cannot really say I’m nailing it here. I started to watch the second one between 3 and 5 years ago, but something interrupted me like a third of the way through, I guess? Anyway, last night I came back for a second attempt, which was victorious!

In a way, this is exactly the same movie: blond guy, cars, crime. Paul Walker has been burned by the events of the prior movie and moved to Miami, where he is still a street racer. But due to his actions in the first movie, he finds himself beholden by Eva Mendez to do runs for a local cartel drug lord guy who likes to heats metals buckets so the rat inside will chew through the person the bucket is shoved up against. Because[1], you know, he’s good at driving now. Thanks, Vin Diesel!

The main things I get out of watching this movie are a simultaneous confusion that it will eventually turn into a juggernaut franchise and complete understanding of why the next movie has only new characters, on the other side of the world. It’s not that 2 Fast 2 Furious[2] is bad, exactly. It’s aggressively mid in most ways, excepting fun stunt driving to watch. There was a line by the secondary main character[3], and I heard it, and immediately knew that not only had it been used in the previews (which I later confirmed) but that it almost certainly was written to be a line in a preview. It’s just… how do I watch the two I’ve seen so far, and then a third one with no existing characters, and then somehow those three movies convince people to launch this successful franchise that I know for a fact now exists? It’s weird.

I wish they had made more movies about Suki and Tej, though. Them, I could have watched all day.

[1] Er, that is, he’s doing runs because he’s a good driver, not the drug lord guy is doing the bucket rat thing for that reason. That would be insane!
[2] I mean, except the title. Wow.
[3] “Guns, murderers, and crooked cops? I was made for this, bruh.”

The Fall Guy (2024)

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Here is 100% of what I remember about the ’80s TV show named The Fall Guy: it starred Lee Majors as a stuntman who I’m pretty sure did something besides movie stunts; best guess is, solved mysteries, for some reason? And also Heather Locklear or Thomas. And I had a lunchbox of that show in elementary school, which implies that I liked it quite a bit when I was like 6 or 7,

So when they made a movie of it earlier this year, I was not what you would call entirely sold on the idea of that movie. And yet here we are a few months later, and I saw it on the ‘Cock, and I thought, hey, why not? I haven’t watched a generic action movie in a while[1], right? But here’s the kicker: I really liked it!

So Ryan Gosling plays Colt Seaver, the kind of name you’d expect a college quarterback to have, and he’s a stunt guy best known for having a pretty enormous fall[2], such that he broke his back and got out of the game. But, in a grand tradition going back to Michael Corleone, or Obi-Wan Kenobi, or arguably even Brutus, someone pulled him back in. So now he’s trying to save the movie, solve the mystery, and get the girl, and if you stop there? Yes, it’s a generic action movie. But what I didn’t count on is that Gosling has a bonkers funny dry delivery, and that he and Emily Blunt have some pretty solid chemistry, and also that the stunts would in fact be pretty cool.

I’m not saying to see it on its own merits; it is not high art nor probably will it be a necessary pop culture touchstone. But I am saying to see it if you find yourself in the situation I was in, wanting to see some generic action movie because why not? It will absolutely exceed those expectations! Which sounds like not much until you remember how many of them don’t.

[1] No regrets, but in retrospect I should have watched 2 Fast 2 Furious, if I wanted a generic action movie. Kinda forgot those are on my list.
[2] Get it?

Alien: Romulus

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Did you know there’s a new Alien movie out? And that it’s not about anyone exploring the lore or mythology of the xenomorphs nor whoever the giant people in the crashed ship that the Nostromo found some 45 years ago in the movie-goer’s timeline were?

Ah, I have your attention now, I think. No, Romulus is a research station in a decaying orbit around one of Weyland-Yutani’s colony planets[1], and a handful of teens intend to get up there and take advantage of the opportunity before anyone else does. Too bad, of course, about what Romulus-the-station is researching…

I’m not going to get into the plot of the movie. If you’ve seen an Alien movie, you know what the plot is and you know what the story beats are going to be, to at least a first approximation. This is one of those, for better or for worse[2]. I do want to call out one thing especially, though. As you know, a key aspect of these movies is body horror. From the moment John Hurt got that funny look on his face in the middle of lunch (or, honestly, from the moment they tried to pull the thing off his face and it… refused), that sense of impending dread, that your fleshbag is not entirely yours to control, is easily a third of what these movies are about. Anyway, the body horror in this movie is amped up pretty high even by my jaded standards.

Bravo.

[1] Yes, I am going to just sit here and assume you know what that means. And if you don’t, then this movie is for you the first episode in a reboot of the franchise rather than the latest episode in the franchise itself, and watching the movie would be a good way to find out. The accumulated lore surrounding that particular company is such that they didn’t have to waste any time hinting at things that have been slowly revealed over five decades and six or eight prior movies. Subtext has become text, and in 40 point font a that.
[2] And mostly for better, I would argue; both the formula and this implementation of it, to be clear.

Sorority Babes in the Dance-A-Thon of Death

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A very long time ago, in the summer of 1994 I expect, I watched Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama. I rented it from Hastings, and I watched it with my roommates, and my girlfriend, and my girlfriend’s father, the latter of which you’ll realize was awkward if you’ve ever seen the movie yourself.

I believe that I knew about Sorority Babes in the Dance-A-Thon of Death before the internet was functionally searchable (and way before it lost that capability). But how did I know? Word of mouth: from whom? Usenet: I guess maybe, but I have never been a horror community guy, I suppose because I found my people somewhere else first. Hastings again: well that would make sense, except that I never saw the movie, which I definitely would have if it had been available. Because, like, how do I turn down a sequel to that aforementioned august masterpiece of film?

The most likely answer, I suppose, is that I’m wrong about how long I knew this second movie existed. Because, honestly, any of those other reasons would not have found me almost exactly 30 years later and only now learning that the two movies are entirely unrelated, except by naked opportunism[1]. Which is ironic, since this one had no nudity. (Nor did it have actors, or a script, except in the most literal of senses. It didn’t even have the charm of Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell to make up for having been shot on low quality video with a sufficiently washed out color palette that black and white would have looked a lot better.)

So, you know, I freely admit that it’s unreasonable of me to believe I have a better technical eye, to know when a scene has overstayed its welcome by multiple seconds, and a better ear for dialogue, to know that I would need a much better story reason to send my characters to “the abandoned college on the hill” than the payoff I received, in order to ever even consider using that line seriously, and a better eye for talent, when I’m not constraining myself to only actresses who’ll film nude scenes[2], to end up with at least one or two people who could have sold that wretched line in the first place. …although come to think of it, that particular actress may have been the best of the bunch, ie she may have actually sold it. I was saying, though, it’s unfair of me to believe all those things of myself when the last movie I made was a ten minute short adapting Fahrenheit 451, in junior high. But that said, I’m pretty sure it was better than this. (I wonder if the video cassette still exists for me to check against.)

Still, though, they mentioned Joe Bob Briggs in their “Thanks” section of the credits, and that has endeared them to me somewhat.

[1] That is to say, the box mentions a “from the creators of” line, and I flat out do not believe this is true. (Just like I don’t believe anything else it says besides the title.)
[2] That sounds like I’m denigrating the ability of actors who shoot nude scenes, but I’m not. I’m just saying when you have fewer options to choose from, especially if your talent pool is already restricted by “can commute to Kansas City”, you get what you pay for. And I’m especially saying that these people did not constrain themselves thusly, and have no excuse whatsoever.

A Nightmare Wakes

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This was a weird one, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. See, Mary not quite Shelley and Percy Shelley and Mary’s sister (I think) and Lord Byron are all hanging out at Byron’s place, just like we saw in a recentish episode of Doctor Who. And they made a bet to write a scary story, which as we all know was the genesis of a certain Modern Prometheus. Fine so far.

Only Mary also had a miscarriage, and started getting obsessed with this idea she had for a book, and Percy is getting more and more grossed out by her whole vibe, and meanwhile she’s got Victor Frankenstein (who is just Percy except dressed in black and nobody else can see him) stalking and/or courting her, and basically the whole movie is this obsession she has with her book, or maybe the book is haunting her? I was at first really unhappy because it seemed like they were saying she was being externally haunted and the book was being given to her, which is kind of a bullshit take. But I’m pretty sure it’s the obsession or maybe haunted by the book as she goes[1] but at least she’s really the one writing it angle instead, and that’s alright.

I did a shallow dive into the history of a handful of characters afterward, and while they are certainly taking some liberties here, the movie was in the end at least a reasonable fiction of how it might have happened. (But it definitely did not happen this way, all the same. Also, not for nothing, Percy Shelley, good poet though he might be, was kind of crap at being a man.)

[1] A Nightmare Wakes kind of implies the latter haunted version, but only kind of.