By: Henry J. Fromage –
This week was another grab-bag of genres, languages, and years, and, it turns out, quality.
288. Rosemead
I’d heard good buzz about Lucy Liu’s performance in this film about a single mother who suspects her son may be planning a mass shooting, but it was a bit jarring to start watching and see she’s playing a Chinese-American immigrant for some reason- it’s not that her accent is bad, but it’s just unfitting, like Julia Roberts imitating a Swede or something. More concerningly, the film is dour and melodramatic in all the wrong ways, despite being professionally made and interesting conceptually. Four Beers.
289. The Departed
My wife and I recently visited Boston, so our thoughts naturally turned to this Scorcese classic, the one that finally got him those long overdue Best Director and Best Picture statues. Leo is so goddamn young and tragic, Matt Dayhmon so slimy, Jack Nicholson so transcendentally slimy, Martin Sheen is so fatherlike and tragic, Marky Mark so aggro and freaking inconsistent (thanks for the vengeance, but you could have prevented it instead), Alec Baldwin so just there and aggro… this is a actor’s feast and an ever-tightening vise of a thriller. Absolute classic. A Toast.
290. Dracula
I finally caught up with Radu Jude’s relatively restrained Kontinental ’25 from last year, so it was finally time to watch his other year-old release- this film about a terrible Romanian director adapting Dracula with as few fucks and as much A.I. as possible. Here’s the Jude I remember- meandering across criticisms of Romanian history, modern geopolitics, the modern enshittification of the moving image, sexual mores, and anything else that comes to mind across nearly three hours of mayhem. It’s not a good film by any stretch of the imagination, but that’s kind of the point? Four Beers.
291. Cat Cam
I’ll graze Eventive once in awhile to see if any festival films I’ve missed are being hosted at some small regional film festival (and not geoblocked, dammit), but more often I just find films I’ve never heard of, and some of those will catch the eye, like this one that’s basically Paranormal Activity, but from the perspective of a cat cam. Unfortunately, the filmmakers here don’t exactly know what to do with the premise, spending more time on human drama nobody cares about than either the cat antics or the horror you’d think you’re getting. Five Beers.
292. Go Back
This modestly-sized Korean drama from a few years back focuses on the high profile disappearance and ransom of a child while flashing back to the pasts of the well-publicized female police officer investigating it and the hot-tempered social worker who seems to have something to do with it. It’s not so much a mystery as it is a character study of two women who make very different choices in the face of a world in which violence against women and children is too often swept under the rug, and pretty well acted as such, even if the plot is a bit more convoluted in its execution than it ends up being in summary. Well, except for the “twist” ending that just makes everyone involved look like an idiot, I suppose. Four Beers.
293. Untold: Jail Blazers
This installment of Untold delves into the story of the infamous early 2000s Portland Trail Blazers team as famous for its dysfunctions and the constant run-ins with the law of many of its players as it was for being pretty damn good. Former GM ‘Trader Bob’ Whitsitt sets the stage as he describes how he had to take risks other teams didn’t due to the small predominantly white market no free agent would be itching to go to as well as the poor draft position doing so well consistently put the team in. What was left were trades for and investments in players who’d worn out their welcome elsewhere, which worked brilliantly until it very much didn’t. Many of the key players are interviewed as well, and they’re as unapologetic as they ever where, and just as great an interview. Two Beers.
294. Fact or Fiction: The Life and Times of a Ping Pong Hustler
This just barely feature-length documentary is about eccentric ping pong pro Marty Reisman, the purported inspiration for Marty Supreme, as the 80-year-old takes the film crew through memories and mythologies of his career and Old New York, styling with real panache as he does so. The Safdies seem to be taking inspiration from obscure early 2000s documentaries these days between this and The Smashing Machine, and it’s easy to see why this may have inspired them. Marty Reisman is a star, dammit. Two Beers.
