186 - The Trouble With Angels

    A troublemaker and her accomplice run through their share of shenanigans while attending St. Francis, a school for girls.
    I'm very familiar with Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows, which is sort-of the sequel to this.  I had it backwards, thinking that this was the sequel.  This is nowhere near as much fun, mostly because it's so much more realistic.
    Hayley Mills plays the poorly-behaving student, who tends to lead her friend into trouble with her pranks.  The problem that the movie runs into is that these pranks aren't especially special.  Most of the trouble she gets in is for run-of-the-mill bad behavior.  Smoking in the bathroom, smoking in a cellar, leading to the fire department being called.  The wackier things that they do are a little off.  One of them involves putting bubble soap into the tea of the nuns, which somehow leads to a whole bunch of bubbles floating around the room.  No mention that drinking that stuff would be kind of sickening.  There's a prank that involves trying to make a cast of another girl's face, then being unable to remove the cast.  But since we never learn what her plan was, it seems like a distraction.
    All of this makes it hard to sympathize with the lead.  It's also difficult to sympathize with the Mother Superior, since she tries to alternate between being mysterious and being angry.  If anything, from a modern perspective, the nuns are trying to be strict, but they remain ignorant of how to actually shape the student behavior, other than just repeating what they want.
    It doesn't sound like it, but I actually did like this movie.  I didn't love it, but it was still pretty good.
    The biggest weakness is that there isn't much of an overarching plot.  I think the friendship between the two girls, as well as their relationship to the Mother Superior, is supposed to be the focus, but it doesn't have much material to go on.
    Plus, it doesn't have an awesome song like Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows.

185 - The Creature From the Black Lagoon

    Investigating an odd fossil, a team of researchers look to the bottom of the Black Lagoon, where they encounter an unusual fish-man creature.
    The last of the core Universal monster movies, I had a feeling that I would like this one more than the others.  I've always liked the design of the Creature more than the other characters, even if the Creature was never very well defined.  What does it do?  It mostly just exists.  I suppose it's unusually strong.  But it's also pretty slow, and not especially invulnerable.
    The monster isn't especially frightening.  They try to ramp things up a little, but the Creature just seems to be a bit shy.  This is a strange problem that the movie has.  The Creature is both shy, then he's unusually violent.  On the boat, the two male leads have opposing views about how to deal with the Creature.  One wants to kill it, the other is only interesting in getting proof, but isn't interested in killing the Creature if they can avoid it.  You would think that the peaceable approach would be the winning one, but it isn't.
    What makes the movie is all of the underwater photography.  For the most part, it looks great.  It's a little vague, since it's in black and white, and it isn't as clear as the above-ground photography.  The sequences shot around the Creature are remarkable.  The logistics that went into the suit, the person in the suit, planning out each shot, and the limitation set by breathing requirements.  They did a fantastic job.  However, by modern standards, the Creature doesn't really make much sense.  I would think he would be well-adapted to living in water, but he doesn't seem to swim very well.  Not much speed, no real agility.  I'd like to see how these shots would be handled in a modern studio.  I wouldn't expect a modern approach to have good taste, but it would still be interesting.
    In the end, it's an interesting piece of film history, and it's a nice feature, but it's not a remarkable movie.

184 - Angel

    Fifteen-year-old Molly goes to school during the day, and keeps her life as a prostitute Angel a secret.  The problem is that a serial killer is going around killing her prostitute friends.
    I had no idea this movie existed until I saw a picture of the poster for it.  The fantastic tagline of "High School Honor Student by Day.  Hollywood Hooker by Night."  The poster projects exactly what kind of movie this is.
    It's a bit of a disappointment, but only a little bit.  The movie runs a little slowly.  There's a lot of time spent developing the supporting cast, which is kind of nice, but it slows things down.  The villain isn't well defined.  We get so little about exactly what he does, and we don't have a sense of the ritual element to his murders.  These things would help make him seem like less of a nebulous evil force.
    Even with this kind of trashy premise, it's got some genuinely nice scenes.  When the school finds out what she does, we actually feel bad for her.  We get plenty of background to establish why she's a prostitute, which I guess was kind of needed.
    There isn't much else that can be said about this movie that the poster doesn't already communicate.  It was followed by three sequels, which seems amazing.

183 - Would You Rather

    A wealthy philanthropist brings a group of needy people to a house for a game of Would You Rather, during which contestants are pitted against each other.  The winner gets all they need to solve their problems, while everyone else is most likely dead.
    The AV Club wrote a column about this movie recently, and I hadn't heard of it.  I'm pleased, because it has fairly good production values, and the script is solid enough that I never felt bored.  As much as I love horror movies, most of them don't hold me too well.
    There's a good sense of tension once the story has been set up.  The decisions the contestants have to make are difficult, but they also seem well balanced.  The approach to the game also varies by player, which helps make things more interesting.  The situation is a no-win scenario, where even the winner gets to walk away with feeling terrible for the rest of their life.
    There's one main plot hole, and it's the question of how it is that no one has reported this 'game' to authorities.  This could easily have been addressed, with a scene of a bribe being delivered or something like that.  We get one very slight hint at it, when the son of the host tells someone who attempts to escape that no one will believe her.  Given the delivery and the situation, it's hard to take that as an explanation.
    Other than that, for one of these Saw-themed movies, it's really pretty good.  At least, it's more memorable than the other ones I've seen.

182 - Robot & Frank

    An old man in a state of deterioration receives an assistive robot helper from his son.  He finds that he can incorporate the robot into his life of crime.
    Really pretty good.  Part of it is the odd couple type of story, with Frank disliking having the Robot around.  Once he finds the limits of the Robot's ethical behavior, he starts to like it.
    I found myself liking the Robot, as I'm sure I'm supposed to.  But it wasn't just that.  I also liked Frank.  He's a criminal, but he has a sense of reasoning that is charming and persuasive.
    There's a cheapness to the production, but it fits very well.  The Robot is clearly played by a person in a costume, but it fits very nicely.  The design sells the whole thing.
    There's a reveal, late in the movie, about the librarian.  It's a wonderfully handled twist, and it brought a certain amount of depth to the story.  It also brought much more humanity to Frank.
    I know how choppy this review is reading.  A series of two-sentence paragraphs doesn't read well.  There's something beautiful about this story, and it's wonderful to see a story about our relationship with technology that is hopeful.

181 - Shake, Rattle and Rock!

    A teen girl gets sucked into the rock lifestyle, rebelling against a group of stingy mothers.
    Stars a fairly young Renee Zellweger.  Her hair is remarkably red.
    I'm a bit conflicted.  The movie isn't really much good, but there's a silly enthusiasm that runs through it, and this is a little infectious.  It's easy to find yourself smiling broadly at nothing in particular, even as the jokes aren't worthwhile, the plot is predictable, and the music is unremarkable.
    Part of the appeal might be the fifties look of things.  It isn't colored quite the same, but some of the fashions are there.
    There's one thing that really stands out.  At least two people are too old for their parts.  One of them is less obvious, and that's one of the girls in The Sirens.  On some of the closeup shots,  the lines on her face are obvious, and they betray the fact that she isn't a teenager.  The other is John Doe, playing the biker Lucky.  He was 40 when he made this movie, and it shows.
    There's one unusual step with this movie, and it's the ending.  The last act is a goofy "rock and roll on trial" sequence.  Strangely, rock winds up being defeated, which leads to the lead girl running away from home.  Strangely dark for a made-for-TV movie.

180 - Life of Pi

    A recounting of the life of a young Indian man, mostly focusing on his time lost at sea with a Bengal tiger.
    Cathy wanted to watch this.  I was pretty indifferent.  In the end, it's a nicely photographed movie, but the story didn't captivate me.
    Everything up to the point that he gets lost at sea was considerably more interesting.  Once he's on the boat, it turns into an interesting survival story, but the problem is that it's still being treated as some kind of mystical journey story.  The result is that there isn't much tension there.  This is compounded by the fact that we know that he survives. since he's narrating the story.  Perhaps if the story were more about how the tiger helped him survive, that might be more interesting.  Nevertheless, for people who enjoy the photography and effects, there's lots to see.  But watching it for the story just didn't feel complete.  This probably works better in book form.
    I did want to say one thing about the effects.  There's a very comic-book look to the movie.  This isn't a problem, except that it's supposed to take place in the real world.  The result is something that doesn't feel balanced.  Colors are vivid, the water is clear blue.  Things glow.  Lots of things glow.  The effects work with the animals is mostly good, but not great.  There are some effects that are very well done.  The zebra's breathing is great.  But then there are other shots of animal movement that don't look right at all.
    I was thinking of a number of shots early on, where the tiger comes directly at the camera.  These are intended to be startling, (I wonder if they considered releasing the movie in 3D) but the perfection of the shot takes some of the believability out of it.  If they had made those shots a little rougher, possibly a little off-center, that would have made a big difference.
    I also consider it to be a failing of the story that I don't care about which version of the story is true.  The fantasy nature of the whole thing just means that I don't buy any aspect of the story.

179 - Chilling Visions: 5 Senses of Fear

    An anthology of short horror films, themed around the five senses.
    In Smell, a man receives a cologne of pheromones that makes him an alpha male, and irresistible to women.
    In See, an eye doctor extracts visual memories from his patients, and tries to set an abusive man straight.
    In Touch, a young blind boy tries to find help for his injured parents after a car crash, running afoul of a serial killer who has laid traps in the woods.
    In Taste, a man goes for an interview, encountering a bizarre boss.
    Lastly, in Listen, a group of people work one piecing together a video of a performance of a song that is supposed to kill the people who listen to it.

    There are a few ties between some of these stories.  The boss in the fourth story is looking for someone to acquire the song that the fifth segment is about.  Characters from the first couple stories appear in the fourth.  They aren't tightly woven together, but it's at least a little interesting.
    Like most anthology movies, there are both good and bad points, and there's always a weird balance between gore and actual horror.  Tension takes time to develop, and these stories are told too quickly for that.  The first story was a solid premise, and it felt like a modern version of Tales From the Darkside.  The acting was kind of silly.  The price for his pheromones seems to be that use of them deteriorates his body, eventually killing him.  Not too clever a twist.  But it's an acceptable story.
    See had the potential to be a much more interesting idea, but the execution seemed to push the story in the least interesting direction.  There's much more that he could have learned from memories, especially multiple people, as he pieces a story together.  Instead, the story just seems to want opportunities to gouge eyes.  Meh.
    Touch was a great idea, but it is far too rushed.  All the pieces are there, but it just seems like there's no time to bond with the lead, and every shot seems less artful, and more focused on pushing the story forward.  Normally, I would think this is great, but in this case, it seems like a missed opportunity.
    Taste was the weirdest story, and it seems to have a poor reputation.  I can see why.  It sets things up, then goes straight for gore.  Not terribly interesting.  It's a bit disappointing, since I think there could be a nice dark twist to things.  Instead of playing on the uncomfortable nature of interviews, the interview itself seems to be entirely fine.
    Listen was a mixed effort.  I was pretty interested for most of it, but once we see the performance of the song, it falls apart.  I found myself thinking of John Carpenter's Masters of Horror episode, Cigarette Burns.  A similar story, but Carpenter's approach to the idea is far more interesting, and much more plausible in the world he constructs.  This approach seemed a little weak.
    Overall, it's a passable anthology.  The stories aren't great, some are memorable, but it does have one thing going for it - pacing.  It moves fast, so it's easier to forgive poor choices.

178 - Cashback

    An art student goes through a rough breakup, and as he suffers from insomnia, starts working the overnight shift at a grocery store.  Then he discovers that he can freeze time.
    Man, I would never have thought this would be as good as it was, but it was a very, very solid movie.  It's mostly an introspective comedy, but it incorporates an amount of romance, and a certain amount of mysticism.
    The main character is surprisingly well done.  He's reserved, but he clearly has a kind streak.  He's not mean to anyone.  In fact, his good behavior is one of the elements that makes the story less believable.  With the ability to freeze time, he uses the opportunity to make drawings of a variety of subjects (well, mostly just nude women shopping at the supermarket) but he never takes advantage of them.  He doesn't steal anything.  There's one point later in the movie when he uses a vending machine while time is frozen, rather than just taking what he wants.
    There's a lot of time spent going back to his fascination with women, which is surprisingly beautiful.  It's easy to identify with.  Us guys are (usually) obsessed with the female body, and it doesn't have to be a sexual focus either.  There's a smaller amount of time spent on comedic relief characters.  The main character's best friend, a few wacky co-workers.  The treatment of these characters is unusual, but it's refreshing.  They are on the sidelines.  The main character's reaction to them is always muted.
    The one peculiar weakness is that there are little side issues that never get resolved.  When we last see the boss, he's choking, and everyone is distracted by a stunt.  We don't get closure on that.  There are a few scenes of sexual harassment by the boss, and there's no closure.  This is really strange, and I could picture these issues being something that some viewers can't let go of.
    Still, very good, and I have this feeling that I'll like it more the longer I think about it.

177 - God Bless America

    Sick of the direction American society has gone in, a man with nothing to lose goes on a trip with a like-minded 16-year-old girl to kill those they have decided should die.
    When I first saw the trailer for this, back well before the theatrical release, I was a little shocked.  It's a bit of a contradictory idea - wanting to murder, because the victims aren't nice people.  It's easy to feel like you're going to be disturbed by the execution of this idea.  Luckily, as casual as the targets seem to be, the script is very careful to establish how terrible they are.
    The start of the movie is the most brutal part.  Frank lives a kind of terrible existence.  He's divorced, his job is dull, and he's ostracized because he isn't interested in following pop culture.  He gets fired for being politely flirtatious with a homely receptionist.  Then the doctor tells him he has a brain tumor.
    All of this is framed against satires of modern TV.  In particular, reality shows that focus on either cruelty, or praising greed, ignorance, and wealth.  I'm not as familiar with any shows being directly parodied, but there's something that is dead on, and the satire is so accurate, it's hard to say that it qualifies as satire.  It's not as absurd as "Ow My Balls."  But it's roughly the same idea.
    The heart of the movie is the relationship between Frank and Roxy.  Their relationship is platonic, but I felt like it was somehow deeper and a little more affecting than the typical 'lovers on a rampage' kind of story.  They clearly don't agree on everything, and he finds her a bit annoying in certain ways, but… I kept expecting him tell her at some point that he wishes his daughter would grow up to be like her.
    Like most of these movies, the pair go out in a blaze of glory, he gets an opportunity to announce his philosophy on TV, then they're gunned down.  It's hard to feel bad for them, but it's easy to understand where he's coming from.
    The people who are killed are not realized as full individuals, but they represent specific problems with our culture.  From memory:
    - Chloe, a teen reality-TV star who is famous because she's a bratty rich kid, who throws a tantrum when she doesn't get the car she wanted for her birthday.  She's cruel, especially mean to her parents, and clearly doesn't like anyone.
    - a handful of people in a movie theater who won't stop talking on their cell phones, throwing food, and making fun of the main characters.
    - a trucker who strongly suggests that he is interested in raping young girls.
    - a bullying, conservative TV personality.  Even in death, he calls the girl a "feminazi."
    - the equivalent of the Westboro Baptist Church.  They mix things up a little with them.  Their signs are both "God hates Jews" and "God hates fags."
    - and the judges and some of the audience of the equivalent of American Idol.

    Strangely, I don't think that this American Idol-esque show is the right primary target.  While the show does contribute to a decline in American music, it's not quite as evil as other sources probably are.  I don't know if I could name any though.
    This was categorized as a comedy.  It has black comedy elements, but it's not quite that.  There's something more serious in this movie, and it's hard to categorize a warning as a drama.
    Oh, and I found the girl playing Roxy very cute.

176 - The Asphyx

     A man discovers a creature that causes death, and by capturing it, achieves immortality.
    There's a dated sense of pacing to this, which makes sense for a movie from 1972.  There are also a few odd little missteps, but for the most part, it's a good, Twilight Zone-like story.
    There's a bit of silliness, mostly with the core part of the premise.  Somehow, this creature is essential to allowing a person to die.  I don't feel like this was explained to my satisfaction.  Each person seems to be born with one of these creatures, but the role that they play in executing a death seems unclear.  There's some goofy science that involves trapping the creature in a beam of light, the story never seems to execute things in three-dimensional space.  A hard idea to write about, but after triggering one light beam, and catching the creature in it, the beam is shifted over, eventually depositing the creature into a box.  Logically, the would need two beams of light to do this.
    Dealing with immortality is usually a fun story, but this movie is a little hesitant to do anything too interesting with it.  The main twist to the story is a good idea, but the postscript is a little lacking.
    To spoil things:
    After the father causes the death of his daughter, his son-in-law decides to commit suicide by sabotaging his own immortality process.  This leaves the father immortal, without a means of releasing his creature to allow his death.  We get a coda of the father wandering the street, ancient and homeless.  We see him get hit by two cars at once, which is where the movie started out.  Of course, he survives.
    There's no reason why this kind of immortality would render him invulnerable. 

175 - Europa Report

    A manned space mission to Europa runs into troubles, and eventually reaches their destination.
    The description on Netflix made it sound like this was going to be an Alien ripoff of some sort, but it had a pretty good rating.  I was really impressed with how well they handled a project this ambitious on a pretty modest budget.  Not to mention that the movie was structured very well, keeping me firmly interested.
    While the movie is framed as a found-footage affair, this feels right.  The entire project is appropriately documented, and all of the footage is being sent back to Earth.  We get a few other experts involved in the mission offering information periodically, which lends it a little bit of documentary feel.  The best part of this found-footage angle is that the cameras are usually stationary, or they are helmet cameras.  It's very easy to watch.
    The story jumps around in sequence a little.  This wasn't needed, but it helps to keep things interested, and it's an acceptable way of building a mystery where there would only be drama otherwise.
    Most importantly, we only get as many answers as the crew gets.  Once the ending comes, we know that the entire crew is doomed, but we admire that they were willing to make the sacrifice to share what they learned with mankind.  The facts about what they discover are a little vague, but it seems to involve some kind of water-dwelling creature that generates some light, but also has radioactive properties.  It's hard to explain it.
    I found myself thinking about Angry Red Planet, which I watched a month or so ago.  This movie is in the same vein, but it tries to play the space mission more straight.
    A much better movie than I expected.

174 - Eyes Without A Face

    A surgeon attempts to transplant skin onto his disfigured daughter.
    A Criteron movie that I had put off for a long time.  It made a list of the top ten Criterion gross-outs, and I remember reading something about how explicit this movie was in the surgical scenes.  Contrary to that description, it's not actually that powerful.
    It's a French production from 1960.  It's well directed, with some really nicely framed shots.  Not exceptionally well done, but it's pretty evocative.
    What makes the movie work is the mask that the daughter wears.  It's effectively a cast of her own face, but with holes for the eyes, nose, and a little slit for the mouth.  It's creepy, mostly because the movie is shot in black and white, and the mask looks eerily close to her normal face.  We don't get to see her disfigured face for most of the movie, either.  We finally get a reveal of it during the last act.  It's a little anti-climactic.
    The next notable element is the performance of her father, the surgeon.  Most of the movie, he's just a uniformly awkward guy.  The scene that really brings him out is when we see him working at the hospital.  He's awkward around the girl that he wants to abduct as a skin donor, but then we see him interacting with a young male patient, and he seems to be entirely normal.  I kept thinking about how this movie would be made in modern times, and the approach to an unstable villain tends to be more over-the-top now.  His weirdness, mostly restrained, is really pleasing.
    The surgical sequence is also pretty restrained.  There's some blood, not much, but there is a very clinical feel to the scene.
    One shot that stood out is when the camera looks down the body of a girl who has jumped from the window, there's a very Hitchcock look to the shot.  It reminds me of Vertigo.

173 - Unfinished Song

    A grumpy old man works through the death of his wife by joining the chorus she belonged to.
    As a songwriter, I noticed the title Unfinished Song, even though the box design looks like a romantic comedy kind of thing.  After looking into it, and finding that it stars Terence Stamp, it seemed like it was worth a watch.
    Stamp plays Arthur, who is remarkably disagreeable.  He's mean, usually humorless, and perpetually worried about looking like a fool.  The movie is careful to balance this against his fervent devotion to his wife, as he shows a bit of heart around her.  But his concern is overly balanced for her health, rather than her happiness.
    Regardless, that part of the story is actually only the first half of the story, which is considerably less interesting than the second half.  Once his wife dies, he breaks off contact with his son, and eventually his retreat makes him lonely.  He finds himself bonding with the chorus director.  The director encourages him to try singing.
    He warms to singing, but he's still very wary.  He's shy about it, and still is concerned about people laughing at him.
    The big finish, when he sings his solo at a festival, was - it's embarrassing to say it - really touching.
    He sings Billy Joel's Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel).  I've liked this song, but eventually the song became part of the acapella repertoire, and that sucked a lot of the soul out of it.  This was actually a great arrangement.  The song was kept to mostly his vocal, a bit of piano, and the chorus provided some backing vocals, but it wasn't overly powerful.
    What made this work for me was a combination of factors.  My father died about two years ago.  While I didn't feel it as strongly right away, I've come to miss him more over time.  Lullabye was written in response to Joel being asked about death by his daughter.  Originally, the song is addressing a child.  By re-framing the song to being a man addressing his deceased wife, it turns it into a song that gives him much more humanity.

    Now that I've covered that portion, I should address one of the biggest problems with this movie.  There's a trend of "hip grandparents" in movies.  Part of it traces back to The Full Monty, or Calendar Girls.  In a way, I might blame The Wedding Singer for bringing the rapping granny out.  When we are first introduced to the chorus, they're singing Gnarls Barkley's Crazy.  During the course of the movie, they also sing Let's Talk About Sex, Ace of Spades, and Love Shack.  I don't mind these songs specifically, but I mind that they seem forced.  Crazy is not an interesting song.  I would blame the chorus director for picking songs solely for the camp value, rather than selecting songs for being interesting performances.  But I suppose I'm a bit more picky about this kind of thing.
    The friction between Arthur and his son also plays well.  I don't identity with it as strongly, but it's still a very nice arc.
    I was pleased with this one, but it's not for everyone.

172 - Notting Hill

    A small bookstore owner in England meets a famous American actress, who takes interest in him.  They develop a romance.
    I watched this on VHS once, back probably in 2000.  I've really enjoyed Love Actually, and since this was written by the same person, I figured I should give it another try.
    It's such a disappointment.  It's a charming movie, and there are some very likable scenes, but so much of the movie is devoted to Julia Roberts playing someone who is effectively herself, and she's so incredibly dislikable.
    There are a few interesting things that this has going for it.  First, it's from the male perspective.  Many romantic comedies focus exclusively on the female point of view.  Second, it takes a huge risk by making a female lead character that would be overwhelmingly difficult to identify with.  As we were watching this, my wife pointed out that the character is rich, attractive, and famous.  She's not even lonely - she has a boyfriend throughout the movie!  This is usually something that gets addressed in the first couple scenes, establishing some traits that make the audience like her.  Instead, we get the audience liking Hugh Grant's character.  This is fine for me, but it seems a little risky for the core of the romantic audience.
    The wackiness in this movie doesn't play as well as it does in my favorite romances.  Something about it feels more forced, and less fun.  There is one notable exception - the entire "Horse & Hound" sequence.  But the wacky friends and neighbors just doesn't work.  At least I applaud the effort to include a couple that is not wacky, but is realistic.
    The main failing that the movie has is that Julia Roberts doesn't really redeem herself.  She acts like a jerk through most of the movie.  She gets a few passive scenes of her liking Hugh Grant.  Then she tries to make it all up with a little speech near the end.  It's not a bad speech, but it doesn't address her main faults.  Specifically, that she tends to overreact to the press.  The movie barely addresses her issues of infidelity.
    I'm also bothered by the ending.  Right after we get the scene of them reconciling, we get a montage (set to Elvis Costello's She) that shows them dating in high style, getting married, and it ends on her pregnant on a park bench.  Something about this movie made this scope seem entirely inappropriate.  We spent the whole two hours getting the couple to jump one hurdle, then suddenly, we dash the rest of the race in about three minutes?
    One other thing that I liked - there's a very nice shot done against Ain't No Sunshine, a tracking shot where we see the seasons change as he walks to work.  Very nicely done.

171 - Redemption

    A former military man is homeless, and a fortunate turn of events gives him the opportunity to turn his life around, sort of.
    This is a moderately paced drama, starring Jason Statham.  It's hard to say that it's an action movie, although it has a few sequences of action, they all take a backseat to the dramatic elements.  This is a more comprehensive version of the plot - Statham plays an AWOL soldier that has some PTSD elements.  He finds an unoccupied apartment, and lives out of it for a time.  He becomes an enforcer for gang, collecting money, delivering drugs, and so forth.  He saves much of his money, but also takes the opportunity to do good for people he knows.  He defends other homeless against gang members, he has better food served rather than the free soup that was being dished out.  He investigates the death of a friend of his at the hand of a violent John.
    The slower pacing, especially at the beginning, makes it a little harder for some people, but it's a pretty interesting story.  The biggest mystery - what happened in Afghanistan - seems like the least interesting part of the movie.  The character has a need to put things right, even if he has to be unethical in order to do it.
    By the end, he's a much more complex character, and I admire that Statham was able to take on a role that required a different approach.

    The title of this movie is Redemption, at least only for US release.  In the UK, it's Hummingbird.  In France, it was titled Crazy Joe.  Hummingbird is actually the best title, but it isn't something that would stir up as much interest in this kind of story.  Crazy Joe is a pretty terrible title.

170 - Captured

    A car thief finds himself trapped in a car, due to a custom security system installed by an unstable businessman.
    I had started watching a no-name horror movie, but that was proving difficult to focus on.  I picked this one, not for the description, but because it came out in 1998.  I knew I could expect a certain level of production value, and a certain kind of pacing.
    It worked.  It's not a bad movie.  It moves along pretty well, and for a movie with such a simple premise, I'm really impressed that they were able to keep developing the story.  I didn't have any clear expectation of how the story would end, either.
    What sells the movie is the businessman's behavior and attitude, and how nicely it builds.  We start off with a certain amount of sympathy for him - his project has an injunction against it, and the delay is costing him a lot of money.  The longer we see him, the more unstable he gets.  His relationship with the car thief seems to have hit him at just the right point.  From the audience point of view, the story is a little difficult.  Neither of the two leads are very identifiable characters.  We probably are supposed to identify with the wife, but she is out of the picture for most of the movie.
    I remember another "trapped in a car" movie - Stuck - in which a man is stuck in the windshield, and remains there in her garage for a long period of time.  Of course, that one is based on a true story.

    For a straight-to-video feature, it's pretty good.

169 - Last Action Hero

    A young boy receives a "magic ticket" that somehow bridges the world of movies with the real world.  He participates in a recent action release, then brings his hero back into the real world to deal with the fictional villain that escaped the movie.
    The AV Club had just posted a column about this, and I was vaguely aware that the movie was considered a flop.  Their writeup is remarkably positive, and it piqued my interest.
    Yes, this movie is flawed.  It runs about two hours long, and that running time could have been trimmed a little.  It tries a little too hard to hammer the ideas in place, and there's a strange sense of deja vu - there are a few jokes that were also done in Loaded Weapon 1.
    And even though those flaws are pretty obvious, and drag the movie down, the idea is excellent, and the script could have been spectacularly great.  The director was part of the problem, although it may just be an issue of editing.  On the other hand, the performances might need to be altered to get the pace up a little.
    The strangest problem that the movie has is that Schwarzenegger is starring in it.  He plays the part straight, and I keep wondering how it would be if he was a little more self-aware.  Or maybe just a better comedic actor.
    At the risk of taking this movie too seriously, I think it addressed something important about movies.  Part of what makes us able to enjoy movies is our ability to mentally contain them into their own continuity.  Even stories that we're supposed to understand as taking place in the "real world" create a false sense of reality; everyone says the right thing.  We don't take time up with people waiting for food in a restaurant, or going to the bathroom, or spending all day at work.  Occasionally, movies will make certain efforts to remind the audience that this is "real."  It works in the short term, but it doesn't last.  This movie addresses this rift between reality and the movies by celebrating it.  The kid doesn't want his movie hero to remain in the real world.  And even if he did, that wouldn't be a satisfying ending.

168 - Pumpkinhead

    After a bunch of city folk accidentally kill the son of a small-town grocery, he enlists the help of a local witch to get his vengeance.  This involves summoning a demon.
    This was one of those ubiquitous videos that nearly every rental place had.  It's got a nice looking box, and it looks like a pretty satisfying 80s slasher.  It's a strange movie, since it moves too slowly to be an effective slasher, and something makes this play out a little differently than normal horror movies.
    The demon is tethered to the father that summoned it.  When the demon inflicts pain on victims, the father can feel it.  The demon is mostly invincible, except that injuries to the father affect it.  The more I think about this arrangement, the less sense it makes.  If it were a direct reversal - with each feeling the other's pain, that would work.  But this makes it so the demon is a conduit to feed pain back to the summoner, in exchange for revenge.  I suppose that makes sense, in a way.
    There's a dreamy haze throughout the movie.  It's more obvious during the daytime sequences.  This might be part of why I kept thinking that the movie felt like a Grimm fairy tale.
    I don't think I especially liked it, but I have a degree of respect for it.  It's a different kind of story, and the horror medium needs as many different ones as possible.

167 - Monsters University

    Young green "eyeball with legs" Mike meets with young Sullivan at Monsters University, where they compete against each other, then work with each other to get re-admitted to the Scare program.
    I remember liking Monsters, Inc, but I never really loved it.  It was fun, but I think I remember feeling like the last act kind of dragged on.  Remarkably, I actually liked this much more than I expected to.
    While the first movie was a pretty straightforward Disney adventure, this borrows so much from the college atmosphere that it feels more interesting to me.  This has some oddities as well, since so much of the story is actually predictable, but transplanting it into the monster universe is what makes it work.
    The relationship between Mike and Sully isn't all that interesting.  It's a pretty normal path.  The other fraternity brothers are filler, like they are in other movies.
    Maybe I should point out the things that I liked.  The designs are generally great.  There are a lot of filler monsters, but there are also some awkward designs that pay off very well.  Eye stalks are usually very funny.  The strangeness of the designs means that there is usually some really interesting movement.  This is especially true for one of the frat brothers, who mostly seems to be an arched pair of legs, with eyes and a mouth in the middle.  The most boring design is pretty clearly Sully.
    One of the other things that stuck out was the quality of the music.  There was a lot of very fun music, and it never sounded too derivative.  I was pleased to see that Randy Newman wrote the score, since it sounded stronger than some of his earlier work.