By: Henry J. Fromage –
It’s random grab-bag time again as I catch up with a bevy of screeners and streaming options. Who said there was nothing left to watch out there?
281. Hwayi: A Monster Boy
This Korean thriller is a truly brutal tale of a violent gang that decides to raise the young boy they kidnapped even while prolonging their reign of terror. This tends more towards the Sea Fever or The Chaser school of gore and terror above all else. It’s perhaps no wonder that this comes from the same director as Save the Green Planet, Jang Joon-hwan, as it’s got a similarly fucked up sensibility, and a similarly polished delivery that could see it make for a surprising remake just as that film reported is slated for… produced by Ari Aster no less. Sounds about right. Three Beers.
282. Mayhem
I was perhaps overly excited for this one. Steve Yeun! Samara Weaving! A virus that suppresses inhibitions, yielding an orgy of sex and violence! An office setting that just gooses all of the triggers for that sex and violence! The amateur filmmaking here is far from bad, but has a lot of that Crank II overexuberant and undeveloped energy to take it down a notch or two. Still, worth the 86 minutes of your time. Four Beers.
283. Phantasm
This horror franchise-starter (on sequel # 4 and counting) by Don Coscarelli certainly isn’t his finest work (Bubba Ho-Tep FTW in my book), but is full of enough genuinely strange ideas and imagery to understand why its developed its own cult fanbase and enough low-budget investors to keep the franchise moving until 2016 so far. Don’t get me wrong, it’s far from a good film (and apparently none of the sequels are, either), but in Angus Scrimm as The Tall Man, there’s no denying they’ve got a horror protagonist worthy of his own franchise. Four Beers.
284. Han Gong Ju
This is one Korean film my wife had no interest in rewatching- a tale of high school trauma based on a shocking true story that pulls no punches whatsoever. What happened to poor Han Gong Ju unfolds like a mystery, but one that envelopes you until you realize it’s gathered tight around your throat. First time (and female- still relatively rare for Korea) director Lee Su-jin keeps the focus squarely on Gong Ju and Chun Woo-hee’s remarkable performance while finding the right stylistic touches to tell her story with maximum impact. A remarkable, but undoubtedly difficult to watch film. A Toast.
285. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
This is no doubt a Hollywood adaptation of a YA novel series that aims for that sweet 90s kid nostalgia pie, but foreign horror mavens Guillermo del Toro and Andre Ovredal bring their own freaky, fabulist styles to bear on source material maybe most known for its truly disturbing drawings by Stephen Gammell. The result is a refreshingly nasty horror film for a PG-13 rating and considering the source- the sequel is almost inevitable, but I’m not against that. Three Beers.
286. A Night at the Opera
This the Marx Brothers big comeback after leaving Paramount for MGM, and apparently a bit of a change in direction from their entirely anarchic antics in previous films. There’s plenty of comic anarchy in this film, too, from motormouthed Groucho’s constant wisecracks and puns to Harpo and Chico’s more physical, 3 Stooges-esque approach. While some of their schtick has aged like fine vinegar, there’s enough thrown at the wall during their constant comic barrage to draw a laugh from even the most hardened modern comedy buff. Three Beers.
287. Mr. Destiny
Sometimes I have no idea how a film ends up on my massive movie list, and this is definitely one of those times. A smarmy James Belushi plays a smarmy nobody who wonders what his life would have been like if he’d just hit the baseball instead of striking out in the big championship game in high school (as we learn in smarmy voiceover that is surprisingly prevalent). A slumming Michael Caine plays the magical bartender who grants him his wish, which he immediately blows off to try and recreate his original lite beer and pizza parlor lifestyle. The grass isn’t always greener, yadda, yadda. Mediocrity personified. Five Beers.
288. The Battered Bastards of Baseball
This documentary is about one hell of a sports story, even if it’s a bit simply told and perhaps willfully ignorant of some of its inevitable complexities. Bing Russell, Hollywood actor and father of one Kurt Russell, who you may have heard of, for a few years in the mid-70s ran the only truly independent baseball team in the country in Portland, Oregon. It was a rag-tag group playing in a community organized baseball had given up on, comprised of a mix of washed-up big leaguers and unsigned amateurs hoping to prove themselves (including Kurt himself). While Bing undoubtedly was an underdog going up against the no-doubt-a-monopoly MLB, my only quibble with this otherwise quite entertaining film is how it tries to position the players themselves as underdogs. Actually knowing baseball, it would have been a much bigger story if a ex-major leaguers hadn’t dominated against the fresh out of high school or college 18-22 year olds that play at the Class A level Bing’s team also was allowed to compete at. It’s like a later Rocky sequel in which the battered and bruised champion faces off against the world’s best featherweight fighter and we’re supposed to buy that he’s overmatched. Ridiculous. Sometimes Hollywood be Hollywood, though, I guess. Three Beers.
289. Casting JonBenet
Director Kitty Green had one hell of a hook in mind when she went to Boulder, Colorado to create a film about the JonBenet Ramsey tragedy. She doesn’t create a slickly filmed drama based on it, nor a dry documentary about the true facts of the case- instead she does both… by doing neither, exactly. Instead, she announces a casting call for the former, and cleverly makes the latter from interviews of those that answer it – examining the wide array of opinions in this community even decades later of the shocking and still unsolved crime that made their town the center media attention for much of 1996. It’s an original and unusually revealing idea, one she carries off perfectly. Two Beers.
290. Mortdecai
It’s strange to see what kind of movies get a critical reappraisal these days, and when I saw a review advocating for the stupid pleasures of this overly maligned Johnny Depp oddity, I bit. Well, dear reader, I shouldn’t have. It is indeed as awful as the critics said it was when it first landed, a strangely overcast love letter to weird Deep characters that forgot to craft a real film around said character. The main and perhaps only joke? He has a mustache, which his wife, played by a disinterested Gwyneth Paltrow, doesn’t like. There, I saved you 100-odd minutes. Step Brothers this ain’t. Five Beers.
291. Voyeur
This documentary about a motel owner who admits to being a decades-long peeping tom who took meticulous notes of the human sexual behavior he observed is one of those annoying documentaries about the nature of truth and stories changing in the eye of the beholder. There’s no denying the human interest in the interactions between the very MAGA-feeling Gerald Foos and prim and proper New York Times writer Gay Talese, and the latter’s journalistic principles get put through the wringer in philosophically interesting ways. There’s no escaping the notion that all of these people are assholes, though. Three Beers.
292. Seoul Searching
This Netflix-produced dramedy about a summer camp for second generation Koreans from around the world to come to Korea and learn about their culture and heritage is both set in the 80s and borrows liberally from the style and tropes of 80s teen comedies. While there’s a bit of cheesiness, particularly in some of the comedy, this film’s heart is in the right place and the cast does a uniformly excellent job selling its several dramatic plotlines. The uniqueness of its POV alone is worth your watching. Three Beers.
