134 - Sudden Impact

    Harry Callahan investigates a murder, and his boss gets fed up, and transfers him to San Paulo to get him out of the way.  It turns out a lady is killing off a group of people who raped her and her sister ten years prior, and Harry is caught investigating the whole thing.
    I liked this a little more than the last one, which felt pretty scattershot.  This one is much more focused, and Harry doesn't have as many side adventures.  But it does have some real weaknesses.  Mostly, it's a little dated.  It came out at the end of 1983, and it has the action music to show it.  Synth drum rolls all over the place.  The movie ends with the last bad guy falling from a great height, and being impaled on a carousel horse.  When it happens, it looks like the cheesiest action ending possible.
    There's also an effort to insert some humor into the movie.  Harry has a small bulldog that he has to take care of, which he names Meathead.  There are two instances apiece of Meathead 1) urinating on something, and 2) farting when he turns around.
    And personally, I don't like that Harry never puts Meathead on a leash.  It's pointed out to him his first time out that there are leash laws.  He just never cares about it.

    The plot is pretty much standard female revenge stuff.  Not as gory as I Spit on your Grave, but still the same basic story.  Checking the wiki article - yes, the movie was adapted from a different project into being a Dirty Harry movie.  Eastwood directed this one, and he did a good job.  There are a fair number of memorable shots.  It's understandable.  For some reason, some of the shots look like they have a soft focus, but I can't tell if that was intentional.  It usually just blurs light a bit.

    A few other things.  The victims are shot in the head.  In at least two of the instances, the person lets out a slumping moan after they collapse.
    There's a very classy sequence near the end, as the lady is hiding from her attackers on a carousel.  This is really cool - every shot is moving in several directions, the lighting is low, but just enough to see what's happening.

133 - Splitz

    Warring sorority houses go through a competition to see who has to have their house torn down to make way for a sewage treatment plant.  A three-girl band, and their manager, get mixed up in this.
    Well, it's pretty bad, and I had a hard time paying attention near the end.  I'd probably say it's a cross between H.O.T.S. and Carhops.  Sadly, it's closer to Carhops.
       There was at least one instance of breaking the fourth wall, possibly unintentionally.
    The band is interesting.  At least they let the girls sweat while they played.  The drummer looked like she was kind of drumming.  The guitarist did a better job of miming the guitar part than I expected, and it was only obvious during the solos that she couldn't be playing.  The bass/singer was barely trying.  Most of the time, she was singing toward the camera, not toward the microphone.  She kept her hand in one place on the bass, and wasn't even fretting that position nicely.
    The evil school president had a very good gag - one that I would expect to see in The Simpsons.  Instead of pulling down a chart of the campus, as intended, she pulls down a chart of the cuts of beef on a cow.
    About 45 minutes into the movie, during the wrestling competition, we get the first nudity, followed by a brief shower scene.  It's completely unremarkable.
    Then at about 47 minutes, the movie gets weird.  The band, and their manager, go into a diner, where there's sort of a non-party happening.  Some people seem to be sleeping at tables.  The girls take the band stand, which is set up with instruments for some reason.  They launch into a song.  Suddenly, everyone sleeping wakes up, and goes into a choreographed dance.  (I noticed during the opening credits that there was a choreography credit.  It stood out.)
    To make things even weirder, as the song goes on, the male dancers are suddenly topless.  Then there's a topless guy playing a sax solo.  And that's always a hilarious sight.

    Came out in 1984… but it looks like a movie from the mid-to-late 70s.
    During the ending song, the band suddenly has a synthesizer.  And suddenly, the guitarist is much worse at miming.  And the drummer suddenly has a double bass setup.  And I noticed that she doesn't know about the crashes.
    I can't recommend this to anyone.

132 - What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

    An aging pair of actress sisters live together.  One of them in a wheelchair with a spinal injury, and the other one is working on killing off her sister and taking her estate.
    This movie shows up on several horror lists, and the title has something a little exploitative sounding about it.  Despite these elements, I never had much interest in seeing it.  I was under the impression that it was mostly two women arguing in an apartment.
    But it's a lot more than that.  A lot of the action takes place in other locations.  There are more characters.  Most of the movie isn't about them arguing, since one of them is clearly crazy, and the other is well in control of herself, if she's just a little too timid.
    The horror in this is pretty restrained.  There are a handful of violent moments, and they're shot carefully, and they aren't explicit at all.  Considering that Psycho came out a few years prior, it seems like they could have been a little more brutal.  The style of this violence reminds me a lot of The Haunting.
    What also stands out is the writing.  The relationship between the sisters is a little more melodramatic than it should be, but the abuse is horrible.  Stronger than I would expect.  The direction is solidly good.  And the makeup is fantastic.  There's something miserable in Bette Davis's appearance, and it brings the whole movie to life.  That isn't to say that Joan Crawford didn't do well.  While she doesn't get the same meaty part as Davis, she plays her role perfectly.

131 - Die Hard With a Vengeance

    John McClane is called in to work on a problem with a terrorist who has blown up a store, and is demanding that McClane perform a variety of tasks.  McLane gets teamed up with a civilian, played by Samuel L. Jackson.
    I think I saw this once, a long time ago.  And, like the other Die Hard movies, it's very enjoyable.  This one starts strong, and remains pretty good for most of it.  The last half hour seems like a step down.  The action picks up, but there doesn't seem to be a game to be played any more.  McClane doesn't have to outsmart the villain now, he just needs to defeat him in combat.
    There's one other thing that actually felt a little off.  The villain bombs a subway station.  And we see a henchman get sliced in half by a cable.  These seem a little too dark for the comedic tone of the movie.

130 - High Fidelity

    The romantic coming-of-adulthood for a record shop owner.
    I had never considered how strange this movie is to summarize.  I suppose it could count as a romance, but I think the romantic angle is overcome by his personal examinations.  Maybe I could just say that this is a romantic comedy for guys.
    I got heavily into this movie during college.  The wit of Nick Hornsby's book translates very well to the screen, and Cusack turns in a flawless performance for the part.  When I say that this is a movie for guys, I mean that it resonates very well with males.  Something about the language, and the frustration that Cusack shows is very meaningful.
    The comedic aspects of this haven't aged too well for me.  I still enjoy Dick, the quiet clerk, but Jack Black is just a little further over the top than I'd like.  I still like some of his bits, but his first scene seems to be trying a little too hard.
    I don't know how often I'll revisit this.  It had already been several years since last time, but I still have this soft spot for it.  I think this will continue to be important to lots of romantically conflicted guys in the future.

129 - Bereavement

    A girl goes to live with some relatives in a rural area.  She runs into a serial killer who lives nearby, and has been raising a young boy to follow in his footsteps.
    This started out pretty predictable, but by the last half hour, it gets darker than expected.
    To be honest, it was actually a little too dark for me.  It's a bleak ending, with the young boy picking up the mantle of the killer, and finishing off several victims.
    After doing a little bit of reading, it turns out that this is a prequel to a different movie, Malevolence, which I haven't seen.  This makes a bit more sense, because I suppose an origin would make this dark ending feel satisfying.
    I'm not too picky about gore, but I actually felt like it was a bit gratuitous here.  Most of the time, it wasn't anything that surprised me.  But then once the female lead dies, there seems to be a lot of blood, and the stabbing goes on longer than feels right.
    It's hard to tell how I felt about this.  I suppose it was more memorable than many of the horror movies I see, but I don't think I can say that I was a fan.

    Another small thing - I don't think the title was right.  The only reason I can think that this title makes sense is that the main character has just come out of her parents dying.  This isn't much of a plot point though.
    Also, how was this serial killer staying uncaught?  He's really sloppy!

128 - Total Recall

    Douglas Quaid, a construction worker, played by Arnold, goes in to get a memory implant of a trip to Mars.  Things get complicated, and he's left wondering who he is, but he seems to be some kind of action hero.  He goes to Mars, meets with a resistance force, and… the rest of it feels kind of like a spoiler.
    This movie came out in 1990, and I remember owning it on VHS.  I'm not sure where I bought that VHS from.  But anyway, I never bought the movie on DVD.  I'm not sure why, but I never felt like watching it.  But I picked up a more recent Blu-ray release, which has a better transfer.
    It's still a fun movie.  It's directed by Paul Verhoven, who also did Starship Troopers.  Similarly, both movies are a little too long, but they both have plenty of action.  Verhoven also has some very campy sensibilities, and it helps to make the movie both memorable, and just silly enough to be charming without being dumb.  Arnold spouts a lot of memorable lines, and his readings are broadly hilarious.  "Give these people air!" and "See you at the party, Richter!" are classics.  The rest of the cast isn't too important.  His love interest is pretty two-dimensional.
    What stands out this time through, is how ambitious the movie is.  It goes all over the place, lots of sets, lots of action, lots of extras.  And the movie is long - almost two hours.  It's impressive how much was done with the budget.  I noticed a few spots where the props and the set aren't as good as they should be, mostly when cars crash.
    Which reminds me, when the Johnny-Cab malfunctions, and starts moving forward, and Arnold gets out of the way, it crashes into a wall, and it explodes in flames.  Hilarious!
    There are also a whole lot of miniatures used in this movie.  I like this.  While miniature work has failed out of favor, since CG work can accomplish the same thing with a few greater benefits, I still enjoy the artistry of miniatures.  A carefully handled miniature can look spectacular, and it's a shame we don't see them as often.
    But the movie was still fun.  I'm not sure how often I'll come back to it though.

127 - Teen Wolf Too

    The cousin of Michael J. Fox's character goes off to college.  Despite never having turned into a werewolf, he gets an athletic scholarship for boxing.  He finds himself on the boxing team, where he struggles until he unexpectedly turns into a werewolf, and the rest of the movie follows the exact same formula as the first movie.
    Except, this movie isn't fun.  As a comedy, it isn't funny.  As a slice of the '80s, it's… something.  It's not funny in an ironic way, except that it somehow seems like it's an example of a by-the-numbers movie without anything going for it.
    They brought some of the original cast back.  Fox's father is in here (which reminds me of Eugene Levy appearing in all of the straight to video American Pie movies).  Another character was recast, which is kind of confusing.  And Mark Holton was still on as Chubby (he's the guy who played Buxton in Pee Wee's Big Adventure).
    There are storytelling problems galore.  First of all, the main character, Todd (played by Jason Bateman) isn't much of a protagonist.  He's kind of a jerk throughout the whole movie.  So when he turns into a werewolf and starts to indulge in his fame, it doesn't seem like he's being corrupted.
    There's the general problem of boxing being the sport that the school is focused on.  And the fact that an incompetent basketball player would just happen to become a boxer, on a "boxing team" with another werewolf.  No one boxes realistically in this movie.  It looks like no one makes any efforts to block.
    There's a strange subplot about Todd being interested in pursuing science, specifically to become a vet.  He meets a love interest in the class, who he's a jerk to.  Then somehow, things smooth over, and he studies with her in a montage.  This is one of the high points of the movie - she's a pretty cute love interest.  I've got a thing for nerdy girls with glasses.  While this storyline was supposed to focus on him becoming a responsible student, I never felt like any tension was generated.
    The pinnacle of the movie is this sequence.  There's not much that I can say about it.  It is what it is.

126 - Teen Wolf

    An unremarkable teen finds himself changing into a werewolf.  He uses this ability publicly, and becomes a hero on the school's basketball team.
    I knew this was a comedy.  And I like Michael J. Fox, he's easy to like.  But this is a really strange movie.  It's packed with fairly memorable moments.  And some of the script is really clever.  But there's something strange about the script.  The conflicts in the movie seem trivial.  They're so insignificant that it's hard to understand what the point of the movie is.  We reach the last act of the film without any real sense of conflict.  The issues at hand:
1 - He should embrace being himself, not the wolf.
2 - He should decide to be with the right girl, not the jerk.
3 - There's the basketball championship game.
    But all three of those seem like forgone conclusions.  They've been set up throughout the picture.
    But the good stuff.  The writing is good.  There are a lot of one liners that feel clever, and reasonably fresh.  I especially liked the first conversation with the coach.
    There are a lot of scenes that try to draw parallels between adolescence and becoming a werewolf.  This is a fun angle, if a little predictable.
    The one big issue that makes the movie seem really strange is that no one seems to think it's strange that there's a werewolf.  No one seems to feel threatened by the presence of a creature like this.  The impression that they give is that werewolves are rare, but really pretty cool.

    It's worth seeing, mostly as a time capsule of the '80s.

125 - Blood on Satan's Claw

    (Also known as Satan's Skin)
    During the 1600s, a farmer finds some odd remains while he plows a field.  From there, it seems that the devil - or something - starts to influence locals, starting an odd cult focused on reviving the devil.
    This was the movie that was mentioned when I watched A History of Horror.  It's just as important as that documentary suggested.  There are a lot of movies I can see that I think were influenced by this.  Children of the Corn, The Wicker Man, in particular.
    It's shot well.  And for a period piece, it's very good.  The script is a little awkward, with lots of dressing up the language.  But the locations, the sets, are all really wonderful.
    The story itself is strange.  We don't get too many answers about exactly what happens, and what causes it to happen, or even what the purpose is.  But it all feels like there was a sensibility informing things.  There are some unusual moments that push this story a bit further beyond what was expected.  First, there's a rape scene that isn't especially explicit, but it plays out in front of an audience, which makes for a really dark feeling.  Second, there's a brief scene that has some surgical work done - a doctor is removing a patch of corrupted skin.  The effects aren't too spectacular, but they aren't lingered on enough for them to look fake.
    There's a pretty big cast.  While most of the characters look pretty unique, it still feels a little you only get to see short vignettes from a bunch of different villagers.
    Ultimately, it's really pretty good.  It's memorable, too.
    Looking around for the cover art, I found several stills from the movie, which suggest that the copy I saw wasn't great quality.

124 - Star Trek: Generations

    After an opening sequence in which Kirk dies, we join the Next Generation crew.  A guy named Soran is trying to manipulate a cosmic event, and his manipulations put an entire planet at risk.  It's up to Picard, and Kirk, to stop Soran.
    This has a weak reputation among Trek fans.  I know I've seen it before, but it's somehow not very memorable.  It's an interesting movie, because it's a good plot, but things don't feel right.
    First, the villain isn't villainous enough.  It's too easy to feel like he's got a decent point, and Picard doesn't seem to acknowledge that he isn't actually going to kill the inhabitants of the planet.  Those people will be entering the Nexus as well.  So they're going to be raptured into a paradise.  They won't die, either.  Somehow, people can exit the Nexus, so they could just leave to go wherever they want to.
    Second, the movie seemed like an excuse to get Picard and Kirk together.  That's not too bad a goal, but it seemed like the primary purpose, rather than a side effect of the story.
    Third, and this is a big problem with some people, is that Kirk's death scenes are not sufficiently heroic.  Since I've never felt strongly about Kirk, I don't mind this, but I think I can understand why it doesn't feel good.  When Spock died, it worked.  When Data died, it worked.  In both of those cases, it felt like a sacrifice.  Here, the sacrifice didn't feel substantial.

    I also realized that the movie has a really big problem.  If Kirk and Picard don't succeed in their efforts… nothing bad happens.  They get to retry.  As long as they don't die before being sucked back into the Nexus, they get to try again, and again, as many times as needed.  Realizing this loophole turned the movie from having a small amount of tension to having none at all.

    Still, there are plenty of positive elements to the movie.  It's very fun.  Data gets a lot of opportunities for show some dynamic range.  (Although I don't think it makes sense for him to cry at the end)  The cast is played with a nice balance, everyone gets a little something to do.  We get to see the Enterprise separate, and then the saucer crash-lands.  So that's pretty fun.

123 - Vanishing on 7th Street

    After power goes out everywhere, nearly everyone disappears, leaving behind their clothes.  A variety of survivors gather, and try to continue to survive.
    This is a fascinating movie, and not for a reason the director wanted.
    I have a lot of respect for Brad Anderson.  He directed Session 9, which is one of my favorite independent horror movies.  I didn't mind The Machinist, but I felt like the story was a little too derivative.  But this movie is directed well, and the spookiness is great.  And then the story has such a massive problem that it all falls apart.
    There's not too much to say about the story, because the premise is the story.  There are small things, like that they find a bar that has a generator running.  They want to find a car to jumpstart.  There's a small about of speculation about the possibility that there are spiritual/religious angles to explore.  They bring back the Roanoke Island settlement "Croatoan"  thing.  I like this story, but the use of the phrase in fiction feels like a desperate way to link the story into the real world.  Same thing happened on American Horror Story.
    What this story is lacking is character arcs.  Every character is introduced, and leaves, without having learned anything.  This would be fine, if the external plot gave us a reason to be interested.  You see, the premise is really interesting, and that's what kept me interested, the hope that more details about the event would be revealed.  Instead, nothing is explained.  No one learns anything.  Is it supposed to be hopeless?  I don't think it was intended to be so.
    The wiki article on the movie mentions one thing of interest.  The movie lost a massive amount of money.  The budget was around 10M.  The gross was $22,197.  Of course, it only was shown in 6 theaters.

    The movie felt a lot like Night of the Living Dead or a Twilight Zone episode that just never came to fruition.

122 - The Ward

    A girl is committed to a psych ward, although she can't remember why, and she doesn't get any answers.  She's in an area with a handful of other girls.  There seems to be a malevolent ghost haunting, and attacking, the patients.
    This was a pretty recent movie from John Carpenter, which is noteworthy, since he hasn't done much for the last ten years or so.  To be honest, I've seen a decent amount of his work, and most of it is very fun.  Then some of it is really pretty boring.  For some reason, I've never been able to sit through Prince of Darkness.  But I was impressed with his direction on this one.  It was atmospheric, and he managed the suspense nicely.  His direction didn't betray the ending, which is an important point.
    Even when the story reached the point where the audience understands there's been a reveal, I was still misdirected.  I really thought the ending was going to involve it turning out that the doctor is actually running a massive experiment on all of the inmates.
    The ending is bound to bother some people, and at first, I felt like it was a bit of a cop-out.  Then there's a last scare before the credits, which re-writes our interpretation of the ending.
    It's a good movie, and I think if it were released during the 70s or 80s, it would have just as much of a cult following as any of Carpenter's works.

121 - Haywire

    A secret agent is framed, and tries to figure out why she's been framed, who is responsible, and how to put an end to it.
    Directed by Steven Soderbergh, it's probably on the upper half of his oeuvre.  It's an action movie, but it's not like any other action movie I've seen.  When the characters fight, there isn't any music.  There aren't fast cuts, but there are moderately paced cuts.  This gives the fights more gravity, and they feel as difficult as real fighting is.  With the Bourne movies, the speed of the cutting, combined with the fluidity and cleverness of the actions, made those feel a little more superhuman.  Here, the action feels entirely human.
    There are some problems.  The plot doesn't feel like enough to sustain an entire movie.  The amount of plot covered should have only reached the midpoint of the movie.
    But this is an action movie shot the way I wanted it to be done.
    The response to the movie on IMDB is pretty split.  Some people realized that it handled the action realistically.  The other half think the action was really fake, because they were expected it to play like every other action movie they've seen.
    I admire this movie, because it's a different approach.  But I wonder how well it stands up to repeated viewings.

120 - George Harrison: Living in the Material World

    A documentary about George Harrison, with a focus on his spirituality.

    It's a long movie.  It's a bit over 3.5 hours.  And it's directed by Martin Scorsese, so I thought that should make it interesting.  But it's not too great.  The first half of the movie, roughly an hour and forty minutes, covers Harrison's time with the Beatles.  Very little time, maybe a minute or two, is devoted to his childhood.  The remainder of the first half of this is a mess.  It doesn't play in any particular order, and it feels horribly disjointed.  There's no narration, which would be fine, except that a narrator could probably smooth over the transitions between topics.  When the interviewer asks questions, they are barely audible.  Luckily, there are subtitles on the disc.
    The second half is much better.  It moves along chronologically, and the story isn't as well-worn as the Beatles one.
    I don't think I like Harrison too much.  He seems like a pleasant guy, but he simply isn't as talented as the rest of the Beatles.  Some of his songs were good, but the quality of his solo career indicated that he actually needed the influence of the others to shape the songs into effective songs.
    This documentary also explains why his songs on the White Album aren't mixed right.  Piggies sounds fine.  But I'm always a little disappointed with Savoy Truffle and Long Long Long.  Both of those are really pretty good songs, but the mixes are horrible.  Long Long Long is way too quiet.  Savoy Truffle is a really good, rocking song, but the mix betrays how strong it is.
    To be fair, Harrison is shown to be enthusiastic, and creative, about music.  And he's prolific.  The problem is that the songs just aren't that great.  And all of the Beatles had the same problem.  The influence of a collaborator really helps in bringing a song together the right way.
    This documentary also ends on exactly the wrong note.  It ends with Olivia Harrison describing how George's spirit was visible as it left his body when he died, and how it lit the room.
    This just made me sick.  He spends most of his life developing his spiritual life.  And he's polite about it, not pushy at all.  This kind of remark just makes him look like a charlatan.  Of course, that's not his fault.
    I have no plans on owning this documentary.  I still really enjoy the Beatles Anthology documentary, but this is unbalanced, and despite the amount of new material I'm seeing, it's just not that interesting.