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Random Reviews: Marlowe

It’s LA CONFIDENTIAL meets TAKEN in this B-picture tribute to B-pictures.

Liam takes some punches — as does the movie’s logic — but he ends up doing most of the beating.

And for all it's period piece-accuracy, it still feels like it was filmed out of the country... “Forget it, Jake. It’s Dublintown.”

***

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Random Reviews: The Mercenary (1968)

My second-favorite movie featuring Jack Palance as “Curly”!

So many Catholic crosses and double-crosses it seems like it’s hard for even the actors themselves to figure out how to play a scene. But it’s a wild romp of a Western with enough exploding Model T’s and exploding biplanes to make you wish more cowboy movies were set at the turn of the 20th Century.

Morricone’s score gives enough variety to keep you invested and even though The Mercenary has about three false endings, it’s such a fast paced, action-packed yarn that it keeps you engaged the whole time.

In a film full of scoundrels, Palance plays a ruthless villain who you almost want to root for.

***1/2

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Random Reviews: A Knock at the Cabin

Roland Emmerich’s 2012 set in an AirBnB.

A KNOCK AT THE CABIN is what happens in the Poconos while every disaster-movie trope wrecks the coasts.

I wish there was an additional element to the ‘twist’ ending that we weren’t expecting, and the third act isn’t as successful as the first two acts. But I really enjoyed the tension, the performances, the shallow focus and the M. Night cameo.

Could've used more QVC!

***1/2

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Random Reviews: Teen Witch

Zelda Rubinstein’s second best film!

Everyone behaves badly (or raps badly) and nobody learns a lesson — which may be the best thing about this movie.

Here’s my sequel pitch for TEEN WITCH TOO: Louise is found guilty for the 1989 disappearance of that nerdy guy who takes her out on that one bad date.

**1/2

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Random Reviews:

Avatar: Longer, Wetter, Uncut

“Same great Avatar taste, NOW with KIDS and FISH!”

***1/2

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Random Reviews: The Million Eyes of Sumuru

A camptastic messterpiece knocking off everything from James Bond to Adam West-Batman. And it makes sense, since star Shirley Eaton hails from Goldfinger while George Nader and Frankie Avalon have a kind of buddy-cop, Adam West/Burt Ward vibe.

It’s a shame Sumuru’s army of skimpy, man-hating women-warriors can’t resist the charms of Nader and Avalon, two scene-chewing schmucks doing their best Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis impressions.

And it’s too bad they don’t make movies like this any more — self-aware and 75 minutes long.

***

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Random Reviews: Texasville

It feels like a collection of deleted scenes from a better sequel to LAST PICTURE SHOW.

And yet, I like it.

It’s great to see these characters again, and amazing to see them all reassembled here (in a time when studios were less likely to pay for this type of nostalgia-fueled production). 

If only I could watch this on a black-and-white TV, with a Dr. Pepper and some spitting tobacco…

***1/2

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Random Reviews: Everything Everywhere All At Once

THE FAMILY MANDY (Everything Everywhere All at Once is basically Nicolas Cage’s The Family Man times a thousand, with the art design of Nicolas Cage’s Mandy and the heart of Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind…)

As someone who’s living out the worst version of themself, I’ve never related more to a Chinese American owner of a failed laundromat married to adult Short Round. Everyone’s great in every scene all at once.

****1/2

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Random Reviews: The Heroic Trio

This feels like one of the random universes we glimpsed in Everything Everywhere All at Once, stretched into 90+ minutes.

We see wires holding up actors, we see actors holding up fake babies, we see the heroic trio holding up this movie — dressed in their finest lingerie/bodysuits ready for a fight. It doesn’t make much sense, but it’s stupid fun anyway.

***

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Random Reviews: Beau Is Afraid

David Lynch’s MOMMIE DEAREST 2.

Pure insanity from start to finish, balancing paranoia with hilarity long enough to keep you wondering whether it’s a general commentary on toxic parenting, over-medication, sensational media discourse or whatever else you personally want it to mean. What matters here is that it all feels personal — and universal at the same time.

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Random Reviews: Fool's Paradise

Harpo Marx in LA Story— it feels like a movie that would’ve been made 30 years ago as a tribute to movies made 50 years before that.

You’re never really sure whether it’s weird on purpose or its rhythm is off on accident. But it’s just odd enough to be worth a watch, just for the heck of it.

Day’s character is never on solid footing and neither is the audience.

**1/2

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Random Reviews: Fast X

“When you’re here, you’re family.”

The Olive Garden of film franchises gets another dish. Which makes sense because, like Olive Garden, this movie made me feel bloated. Good thing “Fast X” sounds like an off-brand Beano.

Throughout the franchise, Vin Diesel’s arranged a menagerie of actors — he does for action movies what Judd Apatow did for 2000’s comedies and what Marvel does for everything else. Even A-listers show up to hold a gun, smirk a catchphrase, crash a sports car, or kick a laser-wielding robo-surgeon toward a sworn enemy in an Antarctic prison. I would say Fast X jumped the shark, but that’s part of the fun… and since this movie started with a trailer for The Meg 2: License to Gill, I think the shark jumped this movie.

Fast X is a crime saga in the vein of The Godfather, if that classic film had a horse-head-in-bed every two minutes and, instead of blowing up, Apollonia did a backflip out of the car, mid-explosion, grabbed the steering wheel as it flew through the air and hurled it through a mob boss’s neck before landing on her feet. So, it’s… better than The Godfather?

**1/2

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Random Reviews: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Good enough. Maybe I’m being nice. Maybe it’s the years AND the mileage. 

Sure, Dial D for Destiny loses steam before the wacky ending (that I really enjoyed because it’s the 2023 version of playing Civilization 2 on the family Macintosh).

That said, I especially liked the opening. Normally, I hate de-aging CGI, but if you watched this on grainy VHS after the first three Jones movies, you’d hardly notice the difference. Hardly. Yes, de-aging is still weird, but it looks about as good here as any time they photoshop Robert Downey Jr.’s head onto a CGI Iron-Man body.

There were rumors that Mangold and company had trouble cracking the ending. It shows. Apparently, they filmed a bunch of alternate climaxes and that’s all evident in the finished product. Going in, I’d heard the last 30 minutes were weird and wild. 

As I watched the movie I kept asking myself, “how wacky can this possibly get?” 

Not wacky enough. 

At one point, I theorized that Mads would get the Dial and activate it. Then, Indy would wake up in an alternate 1969 where the Nazis won WW2, and he’d have to find a way to undo this Man in the High Castle scenario in the final 15 minutes of movie time. 

Then they ended up in ancient times, and I assumed the twist was gonna be: that robed wise man ISN’T really Archimedes. INDY is Archimedes. And the corpse-with-the-watch-that-they-found-in-that-tomb-ten-minutes-ago was Indy himself. Indiana Jones robs his OWN grave. How poetic! It RHYMES!

***1/2

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Random Reviews: Goldfinger

"He loves only gold! ONLY GOOOOOOLD!"

Let that be a lesson to all you blockbuster filmmakers out there. If you want to get the audience's attention, hire Shirley Bassey to belt out spoilers while shots from the movie project onto a nude woman's gold skin.

It’s particularly hard to pick a favorite moment in GOLDFINGER since the entire movie is stacked with exactly what you’d want in an EON-produced flick about Her Majesty’s best secret agent. GOLDFINGER is the definitive Bond picture - it solidified the formula that every sequel has so closely followed. It may not be my own personal favorite, but it's damn near close. You have Oddjob, Pussy Galore, her entourage of flying female aviators, a gold-obsessed villain with a crotch-crocheting laser, a sleepy army, a bomb that goes up to 007, a tricked-out Aston Martin, and John Barry's brassy fanfare.

Is there one scene that sums up this picture? If anything, I’ll have to go with James Bond's discovery of Jill Masterson’s gold painted body. It’s THE image that is still used to sell the movie.

If you’ve never seen a Bond movie, spend your next two hours with this finger.

*****

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Random Reviews: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

SPEED meets GRUMPY OLD MEN!

Populated with pricks full of personality, PELHAM ONE TWO THREE is the ideal portrait of 1970's New York. Here, the subway system's only slightly more chaotic than it is on a normal day. With all the build up, I may have been expecting an even crazier climax than the one we got, but I like a thriller that has the balls to hinge its plot on the seasonal flu.

Extra credit goes to the continuity department for showing that overturned squad car in a shot when Garber's heading back uptown. They took Pelham 123, then they took our hearts.

P.S. I wish one of the internet's professional deepfake artists would insert Walter Matthau into other action movies. Put his face on DIE HARD's John McClane. On LETHAL WEAPON's Riggs AND Murtaugh. On any Liam Neeson movie (especially LOVE ACTUALLY).

****1/2

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Random Reviews: From Russia With Love

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE is more than a great Bond flick, it’s an excellent film. While Broccoli and Salzman were still figuring out what makes Bond BOND, they accidentally created the perfect Cold War spy flick.

Yes, Sean Connery meets up with one his most beautiful flames - Tatiana Romanova - but, more importantly, he faces off against two of his best adversaries in Lotte Lenya’s repressed/repressive Rosa Klebb and Robert Shaw’s menacing Red Grant. Shaw is more than a henchman here, he’s Bond’s inverse - a charmingly cold-blooded operative who’s most Bond-villainy quirk is his lack of mercy.

Lots of classic moments to choose from (including that gypsy dance) but that climactic train fight is one of the best brawls in the series.

Interesting Fact: Ian Fleming’s novel was one of JFK’s favorites and the film was screened at the White House on November 20, 1963 - perhaps the last film Kennedy would see.

****1/2

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Random Reviews: Nobody

Fast, fun and loose in a tight 90-minute runtime. It reminds me of A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, but with Bob Odenkirk.

***1/2