Blurbing For The Weekend 9/27/24

In Shadow In The Cloud, it's World War II, and Chloe Grace Moretz is a woman with a mission! A woman that will not be stopped by the enemy, by supernatural horror, or by macho hegemony! I’d love to see the dimension someone like Betty Gilpin would have brought to the role, but Moretz is game enough to play a strong sister with secrets in this crazy-tight (83 minutes!) and just-plain-crazy thrill ride, defiantly refusing to acknowledge how absurd the situation is (no spoilers!). While known scumbag Max Landis is responsible for the concept, director Roseanne Liang made the story her own, earning a screenwriting credit if not erasing his. The length, the lack of subplot, and the lack of any interest in the supporting cast’s interior life makes the movie feel small, but the action sequences are so bananas it also doesn't feel like an overblown episode of Twilight Zone or Amazing Stories (both of which may have been referenced by the plot and setting, respectively). Whether or not Moretz and Liang make Cloud’s gonzo action their brand moving forward, this movie could earn them a thumbs up at horror conventions for decades. FIVE BAGS OF POPCORN.

Apparently I like Alien a lot more than Ridley Scott does. His intelligent 1979 thriller, focused on how the tension between scientific protocol and corporate interest would play out between competent astronauts, became a franchise despite itself, Jim Cameron's sequel adding yahoos with machine guns and David Fincher's adding sewer-dwelling monks. Three more movies I’ve yet to see followed, before Scott returned with the 2012 prequel Prometheus, decades of bossman experience switching his sympathies from the workers to the visionaries, suggesting how disappointing and dumb the human race must seem to him. The overt connection to Alien is mostly kept to a silly-ass mid-credit sequence, a near subtlety execs didn’t allow in Scott’s next go-round. As with Prometheus, 2017's Alien: Covenant involves astronauts considerably more moronic and panicky than the ones we saw on the Nostromo way back when. In fact, the crew of the Covenant is made almost entirely of married couples, guaranteeing common sense will go out the window as soon as anyone’s endangered. The asininity of all involved is so extreme it sticks out as ironic even more than the lack of ‘70s computer screens and blinking bulbs on the spaceship. What a bummer they never style these ships after the original, even when they’re supposed to be older or concurrent models.

Scott doesn’t really care about such fun, or warm-blooded characters anyway, as he mostly wants to have two androids played by Michael Fassbender play the recorder, scroll Quotes Dot Com, and ponder what it means to create and be created. Presumably in exchange for that enlightening meditation, the Fassbenders then have a kung fu fight, the evil one hurling people against walls in slo-mo and creating a xenomorph that kills young lovers listening to fuckmusic in a Covenant shower stall. Did Jason X even go there? Eventually, Katherine Waterston (her Ripleyhood suggested mostly by an unflattering haircut) and Danny McBride (somehow outacted by his cowboy hat) pay tribute to Jim Cameron with a kaboom-heavy climax. Spoiler: Covenant ends with Michael Fassbender swallowing eggs whole while listening to Wagner. That's probably a metaphor for how Scott feels about filmmaking in his eighties. THREE BAGS OF POPCORN.

Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World's End - the trilogy of genre comedies Simon Pegg and Nick Frost made with Edgar Wright - are all POPCORN CLASSICS, End's inspired examination of manchild nostalgia making up for its unconscionably prolonged and wordy conclusion. Feeling very pro-Simon Pegg after binging them recently, I decided to watch Inheritance, in which he plays an extremely unkempt fellow in chains that Lily Collins finds in an underground bunker after her dad’s death. It’s the kind of suspense film that looks smart based on the cast, but you know must be stupid or we’d have been told to see it. Collins plays a no-nonsense, super-qualified 30-year-old Manhattan District Attorney, and might have pulled it off if her ruthless banking magnate father wasn’t played by Patrick “Puddy” Warburton. No. Just no.

Puddy Warbucks leaves his ginormous estate to his wife (Connie Nielsen) and aspiring politician son (Chace Crawford), but leaves his daughter a mere million dollars and a cryptic video about where she can find his secret bunker with Pegg inside. No information about who the imprisoned man is and why he’s there is given, because where’s the fun in that? Pegg, doing Hugh Laurie’s House voice, is as obnoxiously cryptic and smug as Hannibal Lecter, despite reportedly seeing no sun and just Puddy for decades. The twist, as is usually the case in ostensibly classy, barely distributed thrillers, is rock stupid, unless the moral is that Puddy is the worst. Or that Simon Pegg should only do Edgar Wright movies and vice versa. THREE BAGS OF POPCORN.

The Last Voyage Of The Demeter doesn’t transcend being a Dracula prequel - or rather a midquel, expanding on an interlude in Bram Stoker’s original novel mostly left out of cinematic adaptations. Despite being in development for twenty years, with several craftsman horror directors attached before Andre Ovredal (Trollhunter, The Autopsy Of Jane Doe) signed on, the movie is refreshingly modest in scope, with simple but effective scares suffered by a small cast on a small sea vessel. Admittedly, with a budget near 50 million and zero movie stars, the producers may have wished Ovredal brought a little more grandeur to the proceedings. David Dastmalchian fans will be thrilled at his portrayal of a brusque but principled Eastern European seaman, though fans of “sexy Dracula" may be annoyed the vampire only appears in his most grotesque form. It’s probably the best B-vampire movie I’ve seen since 30 Days Of Night, though the final scene pointlessly sets up a sequel that’ll only happen on a tenth of this one’s budget. FIVE BAGS OF POPCORN.

One day there will be a Blurbing For The Weekend post rife with respectable films I caught on Criterion. Not this one, though, as all I did there last week was rewatch King Of New York. Plotwise, Abel Ferrara’s classic about Frank White (Christopher Walken), a mobster too cool to live, goes through the motions of a Jimmy Cagney movie. But stylewise? *Christopher Walken voice* WOW. This is a movie where, apparently, a planned gangland shootout begins with a woman in a midriff popping out of a limo’s sunroof with two machine guns. For the element of surprise, I guess. Laurence Fishburne’s Jimmy Jump is Woody Woodpecker with glocks, with Giancarlo Esposito and Steve Buscemi happy to just stand behind him (can these three please be reunited with meaty roles in an ensemble movie? Last Vegas 2: Requiem?). Wesley Snipes also stands around, respectable but unable to compete with David Caruso’s sneering, psychotic Howdy Doody, as they play a pair of cops destined to disappoint their Lieutenant (Victor Argo), a portrait of impotent rage. Frank White’s enthusiasm for crossing racial lines is the only novelty to this “crime only pays for a little while” story, but if you like watching people shriek, fuck, argue, dance and snort in memorable ways before their heads get blown off… Again, WOW. POPCORN CLASSIC. 

I gave Bad Times At The El Royale another shot, having a hard time believing I didn’t make it to the part of a Drew Goddard movie (Cabin In The Woods!) where Chris Hemsworth plays a cult leader. I made it this time, but I had to fast-forward 15-20 of its 140 minutes to do it. So no popcorn rating. Just a warning. And a question: has any movie with a title warning of poor quality ever been good?

My movie rating scale is explained here. All thoughts, thanks and thattaboys can go to anthonyisright at gmail dot com.