Quick catch up, including tonight and motel viewing during the trip....
Kong: Skull Island- As the Vietnam war ends an organization ( focused on hunting giant creaturesafter some historical encounters) sets out to a storm shrouded unexplored island with the help of the US military. Bombs get dropped to aide in “mapping” but instead it stirs up trouble. A very familiar pissed off giant ape smashes all the helicopters leaving two groups trying to reach their escape point. One group, containing a mercenary with a heart of gold and an anti-war photo journalist among others, meet up with a fella that’s been stuck on the island since WWII living with mysterious locals. He clues them in that Kong is actually the protector of humans, protecting the world from giant lizard creatures that keep crawling out from beneath the earth. Meanwhile the other group, headed by a military officer with no eagerness for peacetime, are making it their mission to kill Kong. Maybe that’s not such a good idea....
It’s a good old fashioned silly B movie on a blockbuster CGI extravaganza budget, Apocalypse Now with lots of kaiju battles. It’s loads of fun, well if you have any affection for giant monster movies anyway. Or if while watching Platoon you every wanted a giant spider creature to show up. It’s pretty clearly aiming to kick off a franchise with that kaiju hunting organization, but for once I don’t mind the obviousness of the money grubbing. I enjoyed it’s dumb ol’ self too much!
Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows- It’s a solid, straightforward documentary about the creator/creative force behind classic horror films released by RKO (Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie, etc). Since I like the films in question I found it interesting.
Nocturnal Animals- Your standard issue dissatisfied immaculate, cynical artist rich gal gets a manuscript from her ex just as her equally coldly “sophisticated” current hubby is having an affair. The manuscript is the story of a man whose wife and daughter are brutally raped and murdered when the family encounters those psychopathic hicks that upper scale urban folks think are just waitin’ to pounce the second you are out of cell phone range. He sets out to see that the evil crazies responsible pay. This story serves as a hook for the hipper than thou city gal to reflect in her former relationship and get a kind of pay back. Loathesome, unsympathetic people in a hermetically austere privileged world crossed with a nasty and bleak story within a story creating an artfully stylishly filmed and well acted peice of snob crap where I want to smack everyone involved with a really big stick!
An Affair to Remember- Another movie where I want to hit everyone! A couple of charming stars play a couple who fall in love when they meet on a trip, but their romances is complicated by both being engaged to others. Surprise, it turns out their soon to be exes are astoundingly understanding. So how get a problem for the love birds to face?
Well, for starters they decide to to see or speak to each other for six months to test their affections, and if they meet at the selected time and place it means twu wuv. She gets hit by a car crossing the street and looses the use of her legs, but idiot girl thinks it’s better her beloved think he was rejected by her rather than know of her condition.
Apparently being unable to walk is a fate worse than death, or some crap. She was a singer, but apparently being unable to walk means you have to give up singing professionally and instead rely on the charity of a preist to get you a job teaching singing to young children who warble all cutsey at the poor audience. Yes, not being able to walk makes you a thing to be pitied, unable to go spend a night on the town after your still pals ex takes you out to the theater, because apparently you have to walk to eat out or something. Oh, and that nice guy ex is rich and doesn’t just keep encouraging you tell your hurt twu wuv, but also offers to pay for magic cure all surgery. But no, you won’t take the help. You will only get the surgery when you save out of your meager salary, and you will only tell your twu wuv once you can walk.
Well acted, well filmed, and I REALLY got disgusted with this bullshit. It isn’t romantic, but insulting to people who do have ambulatory issues and demonstrates a kind of martyr delusion selfishness on the part of the so called heroine!
Ransom!- The son of a rich business man gets kidnapped. Rather than pay the ransom he declares on tv he will offer up that same amount of money for the kidnappers dead or alive if the child is not returned. Fair enough.
But he also believes forcably sedating his distraught wife, keeping her locked up in her bedroom under constant supervision in a drugged up haze, refusing to tell her anything about what is happening, and not allowing her any say at all in her decisions about her son’s fate is fair too. So to do the people around him, complying with his manly right to do what the hell he likes about the hysterical wife, never mind the fact she might not be so damned hysterical if she were treated with a bit of respect!
We are not supposed to question this, probably no more than in that (also 1950s) remake of The Man Who Knew To Much when the bastard hero husband forcably drugs his wife before telling her about their son’s kidnapping. It’s just background, expected, a demonstration of how women are these naturally hysterical creatures that the paternalistic society needs to “take care of” by taking away their mental faculties through sedation.
I sooooo do not want to time travel to the ‘50s!
Experiment in Terror- Ok, I did enjoy this one. I’d also seen it before.
A woman that works in a bank is ambushed by a man in her own home. She never sees his face as he threatens not only her life but the life of her teenage sister if she doesn’t cooperate with his robbery plan. Despite her valid fear she contacts the authorities. While the the FBI attempt to hunt the baddie down, he continues to haunt her. When he abducts the sister it looks like the heroins will be forced to actually do what he wants, despite being smart enough to realize he will probably kill them both anyway....
It really is an excellent thriller. The heroine’s fear never keeps her from being smart, the FBI agent is determined but knows he might fail to protect her, no romance is shoehorned in, and the villian is truly unnerving. Now they gave the baddie asthma as creepy way to signal his presence, but since my father was asthmatic that wouldn’t be enough to find him disturbing. (Though there was that one time when I was 6 and Pop was coming down the stairs in the dark that for a few moments freaked me out Darth Vader was there...) No, he’s creepy because of the sick pleasure he takes in tormenting his target. This isn’t just about the money for him: he’s having fun. And golly, it’s Ross Martin who played the lovable Artie in one of my fave shows, The Wild Wild West, as the sicko! It’s a one of those movies that if you come across it late night you always remember it, but if you rewatch it years later you aren’t disappointed.
