Countdown
directed by Justin Dec
This is a predictable PG-13 horror movie where attractive young people do stupid things to keep the story moving. There are jump scares every other frame. But at least the Black guy doesn't die first. So there's that. These movies all have a certain rhythm.
Someone does something questionable, like buying an ancient lamp from an elderly Roma lady, desecrating a grave, or partying at a wicked family's deserted ancestral home. Bad things happen. Someone with more brain cells than your average door knob realizes that something isn't right. This person, usually with some skeptical friends or supportive strangers, tracks down a paranormal expert.
Sometimes the expert is an incompetent clown. Sometimes the expert has lost faith and must be cajoled back into action. Sometimes the expert is retired.Sometimes the expert is eager to assist and kick a$$ for the Lord!. Sometimes malevolent forces eliminate the expert before he can share critical knowledge. Sometimes the expert is secretly working for malevolent forces.
The friends and/or last survivor make their final stand against the forces of evil. Maybe there's a disbelieving cop or other authority figure who once arrested or otherwise hindered the heroes/heroines. At the end that person usually helps. He (or she) validates the group's story, gets busy with the attractive lead character, or sacrifices himself for the attractive lead character. Countdown didn't break any new ground. I thought the 90 minute run time was too long. The movie touches some interesting points about fate and predestination.
Imagine that you bought a couch or similar item from a thrift store. After you bring it home you find some cash inside of it. And not just a few dimes and pennies or some crusty dollar bills, but about $43,000 in crisp 100s and 20s.
Now in movies and books, the sorts of people who casually leave that kind of money lying around their home also tend to be people who will hire other highly motivated single minded individuals to retrieve that money.
Such folks often ask questions in a direct way that may involve blowtorches, meat hooks, cattle prods, and butterfly knives. So I wouldn't want to deal with anyone like that. And what's right is right. If someone really did misplace that money it's probably not right for me to keep it, is it? Or is it?
I like to think that I would try to discover the rightful owner of the cash. Doing the right thing is important. On the other hand finders keepers, losers weepers. Finding an unexpected $43K is like a wolf finding a bird nest on the ground. You don't ask how it got there, you just eat!
But a Michigan man named Howard Kirby who found this money said he had to do the right thing and return it, even though like many people, he had his own pressing needs. People have come together to praise Kirby and help him with some of his issues.
OVID, MI — When Howard Kirby returned more than $43,000 in cash he found in a couch cushion he bought at a thrift store, the mid-Michigan man said he didn’t want attention or expect a reward.
But doing the right thing has touched others who are now helping Kirby with his needs.
Joker
directed by Todd Phillips
The mixed and somewhat negative critical reaction to Joker was in some aspects more interesting to me than the movie itself. Some people dismissed this movie because they, in my opinion wrongly, assumed that the film was making a politically sympathetic depiction of the type of predominantly though hardly exclusively Caucasian men who describe themselves as incels (involuntary celibates), stalk women, shoot up schools, or vote for Trump.
That interpretation was so wrong that words almost fail me in rejecting that notion. I am old enough to remember when some "mainstream" commentators argued with a straight face that depictions of racialized violence in Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing would cause Black people to go crazy and start burning, looting and rioting just because of what they saw on the screen. Some people made similar statements about Joker.
Although it's a mug's game to try to determine what people's purposes are when they make such statements, I think it's fair to say that for some critics, Joker depicts a certain type of person whom they despise not just on ideological grounds but also on existential ones. The joke, if you will, is on them. The title character is not ideological at all. He's mentally disturbed. And that is what drives all of his actions. He's not a mens' rights activist or a political ideologue who's sending pipe bombs to left wing activists. Joker is beyond politics.
The director, though he's definitely not beyond politics, seems to be bemoaning a failure of the social safety net in helping to create a man like the titular character. It's something that is more in line with a left wing approach than a right-wing one.
Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures
by Walter Moers
There are some programming languages in which before you even begin the program you are required to list and define every variable that the program uses. Every last one. No exceptions.
If you don't do this the program won't compile and can't be used. This can be slow and monotonous work but it also is a good way to idiot proof at least some programming work.
In other programming languages the coder doesn't have to do anything as old fashioned as all that tedious listing and defining. He just calls the variable and defines it on the fly. In short he makes it up as he goes along.
The book Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures would definitely fall into the 2nd category were it a programming language. It is a gloriously chaotic novel.
It's only near the middle of the novel that the reader starts to realize (well smarter readers than I likely saw this much earlier) that for all of the insane breakneck pacing, interminable asides, farcical and fanciful creatures that pop up for seemingly no reason, and unrelenting silliness, that the author has pretty methodically followed the steps from the classic Hero's Journey, as popularized by Joseph Campbell. So I don't want to discuss the plot too much.
In a world like and unlike our own or perhaps it is our own world long long ago, there is a continent named Zamonia, which contains a bewildering number of non-human creatures, along with a few humans.
A nameless puppy like creature who is the beloved pet of a kind family of dwarves discovers that he can walk on two legs and talk. Unfortunately, shortly after this discovery he and his entire family are captured by a nomadic group of mentally slow one eyed giants known as Demonocles, whose greatest pleasure involves eating other creatures alive, preferably kicking and screaming.
Dead Reckoning
directed by John Cromwell
"I don't trust anybody, especially women!"
This is yet another Humphrey Bogart film noir. As in most of his films Bogart shows how a man of slight stature and average height can light up the screen through easy confidence and occasionally understated threat. His character here is a WW2 veteran. He's not going to be put off by any gangsters.
As the fictional Michael Corleone remarked to his brother Sonny, did Sollozzo have any artillery or air support? No? No problem then.
This movie is told in partial flashback and has all the normal cliches and tropes you would find in noir films of this time. It was set in the south so something else it has are some very stereotypical Black characters. They don't exactly bug their eyes and tap dance but it's clear that they are seen as secondary or even irrelevant to the larger storyline.
Captain Warren "Rip" Murdock is an Army paratrooper and good friend/big brother substitute to a man in his company, Sergeant Johnny Drake (William Prince). After the war's completion they're both ordered to report to Washington D.C. for the first and second highest medals the military can bestow. Yeah, these are tough guys, heroes.
But Drake is not really happy to hear that he's going to get an award and the resulting publicity. He takes off without telling anyone why. Well you don't get to be Captain without being a little smarter than the average bear.
I ran across this wonderful picture of a snowy owl on a local news website. It was taken by a lady in SE Michigan. I saw a snowy owl in my front yard a little less than a month ago.
I imagine that all the neighborhood squirrels, raccoons, and other birds suddenly found something else to do. Nothing brings more mental clarity than someone showing up in your neighborhood who will kill you with a naturalness and quickness. There have been a lot of snowy owls showing up in Michigan of late.
Photos of snowy owls across Michigan have been showing up and going viral across social media over the past few weeks. The beautiful white bird, normally seen in northern Canada and even in the Arctic tundra, has made its way south. According to Audobon.org , the snowy owl's migration is not well understood, but a map from the website shows that Michigan is the southern-most location for its common migration.
Rambo: Last Blood
directed by Adrian Grunberg
Some VERY IMPORTANT SERIOUS critics get upset when films that they think ought to be watched and enjoyed by everyone are only enjoyed by a particular demographic. They rant and rave about this.
Although I'm not immune to such sentiments on occasion, I don't think it's ultimately that big of a deal. Although we all have more in common than not, regardless of our race, sexuality, gender, age, nationality, etc. it's also true that those listed characteristics all influence our experiences and our fantasies.
And that's ok. I'm not in the target audience for Victorian/Edwardian comedies or dramas about whether some utterly boring woman should marry John Puff-n-Stuff, the short, drab but responsible barrister or instead run away with the tall, dashing and reckless cad Harry Handsome, who allegedly has women and children in every port.
In the same way that some films are aimed at the female audience, other films are directed at the male audience. Rambo: Last Blood is one such film. I am sure there were some women who enjoyed this movie but I would imagine that the majority of people who watched this film had XY chromosomes. The problem is not that a particular film is aimed at men or women.The problem or rather question is whether the film is good or not. And this wasn't really a good movie. The problem isn't that it's gruesomely violent or that it depicts Mexico as a vile depraved place where everyone is out to sell young women into the sex trade.
