Movie Reviews: Slaughter

Slaughter

directed by Jack Starrett

The good about Slaughter was that it featured a two fisted Black masculine male hero who plays by his own rules, doesn't take any stuff off anyone, and is going to get the girl.

It's surprising how rare that combination still is in Hollywood today, let alone fifty years ago. I suppose at the times an over the top film like this could have been cathartic for Black people who were, it must be remembered, just less than a decade out from the official end of legal apartheid. The bad about Slaughter was almost everything else. The writing was indifferent. Jim Brown is not a bad actor but he's not a great one either. The film was low budget even by the times and looked it. 

Even so, I had a soft spot in my heart for this movie, because although Brown gives a one note performance in this movie, his role really doesn't require more than that. His character knows what he wants, knows how to get it, and doesn't spend a lot of time talking things out. One day I'm going to try just to speak in one liners from this film.

Okay, what's it about? What is any blaxploitation revenge movie about? Slaughter (Jim Brown) is a Vietnam veteran Green Beret captain who has come home. His parents are killed in a car bomb. Doing some investigating Slaughter finds most of the men who did it and removes them from the planet. 

Federal Eviction Moratorium Expires

If you have the resources to ensure that you and yours have housing for the foreseeable future then this news will not have any immediate impact upon you but the Federal CDC moratorium on evictions expired on Saturday, July 31. 

This means, at least in the states and localities that have not legislated or mandated their own eviction moratoriums that landlords both corporate and individual, great and small, honest and corrupt, can start to pursue evictions against those individuals who are either unwilling or unable to pay rent in accordance with the lease that they signed. 
(CNN)It's like Democrats in the White House and Congress forgot the date. Now it's the first of the month and rent -- and back rent -- is suddenly due for millions of Americans who have been shielded from eviction during the pandemic.

Millions of households could face eviction over the next month -- when lawmakers on are on their annual August recess -- and some have predicted a full-blown eviction crisis, just as a surge in Covid cases from the highly contagious Delta variant may be prompting renewed calls for people to stay home and keep their distance.

Movie Reviews: The Big Steal

The Big Steal
directed by Don Siegel

This is often listed as a film noir. I didn't see it that way. I thought it was just a run of the mill action movie with a few twists. 

The director would later go on to helm a number of Clint Eastwood films as well as the 1956 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The Big Steal has its fair share of snappy dialogue. "Don't ask questions just take it and like it!" stands out but this is not a noir film. 

It's a crime drama but even more than that it's just a chase drama with the requisite number of double crosses. 

Perhaps at the time of this release car chases were considered more exciting than they would later become but a great deal of this film is consumed by car chases. After the first few I could have done without any more. As usual in these films there's a hypercompetent woman who is (initially) cold. She and the hero have some witty repartee while they are trying to decide if they like each other, trust each other, and if they should, well you know. 

US Army Lieutenant Duke Halliday (Robert Mitchum) loses the $300,000 battalion payroll to a robbery set up by smooth crook Jim Fiske (Patric Knowles).

Unfortunately for Duke his superior officer, Captain Vincent Blake (William Bendix) thinks that the robbery went down too easily and that Halliday had to be involved.

When Women Attack

We are told that there is never any excuse for violence against women. Okay. But what about when women initiate violence against other people? Do the targets of that violence have the right to defend themselves? 

Two recent incidents made me think about women and violence in a way different than the common narrative. In the first incident a large young woman who is apparently well over 200 pounds attacked two elderly beauty shop owners who combined together probably don't weigh as much as the woman. And the attacker's apparent reason for the assault was simply that she didn't have the money to pay for the items she wanted. CLEVELAND — A woman caught on camera brutally attacking a couple on July 23 at their beauty supply store on Lorain Road has been arrested, according to a spokesperson for the Cleveland Division of Police. Ebony Afzal, 25, of Cleveland, was arrested Thursday for felonious assault, a second-degree felony, according to court documents.

Afzal is accused of beating the couple, who owns Chic Beauty Supply on Lorain Road, over what is said to be an $11.85 transaction. Their son David Jo told News 5 Cleveland that it all started when Afzal allegedly tried to pay for the items with pre-paid credit card when it got declined.

Movie Reviews: The Florida Project

The Florida Project
directed by Sean Baker

This is a bittersweet 2017 slice of life drama which oddly enough I just watched. Well. If you haven't seen it you should see it. 

It's probably the best film I've seen this year. 

Impressively many of the film's cast were inexperienced or first time actors. The Florida Project walks the same side of the street as Sunlight Jr. in that the director wants to teach us about poverty, homelessness, and some other critical related issues but this isn't a heavy handed didactic film. 

I think that people opposed to what I presume are the director's political leanings can watch this film and reach totally different conclusions. Baker doesn't beat anyone over the head with a point of view.

Watching this movie I recalled that in her poem Nikki-Rosa, the poet Nikki Giovanni wrote that 

"if you become famous or something
they never talk about how happy you were to have your mother
all to yourself and
how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those
big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in "

Movie Reviews: The Bay

The Bay
directed by Barry Levinson

This older film is an found footage eco-horror movie that is in many ways quite similar to the Nick Cutter, book The Troop, reviewed here. I think the The Troop is a better book than The Bay is a film. 

But The Bay is not a bad film. Because the conceit is that The Bay depicts real events that were all captured on film by less than state of art lighting and cameras, the movie does deliberately look less than high quality most of the time. But this is really smart for the film's premise, which is that multiple video and audio sources have been retrieved and are being leaked to the public as a somber warning. 

Events that may or may not be caused by climate change have been in the news lately-fires and water shortages out west, warming seas, lampreys and mussels in the Great Lakes, flooding in Germany, maybe even the Covid-19 pandemic. Once a system is broken or changed is that it can be difficult or even impossible to change it back. Humans can lack the knowledge to restore a delicate balance that Nature found for a given environment. 

Humans or animals eat foods that were not designed for them. Humans or animals overuse antibiotics or pesticides and end up with lowered or no resistance to some very nasty critters and parasites.  Predators or pests are introduced into environments where they have no natural limit. Problems arise. 

Movie Reviews: Hard Eight

Hard Eight
directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

This 1996 neo-noir film was Anderson's debut. Anderson later went on to direct such films as Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and There Will Be Blood among others. 

Hard Eight also has a good cast of actors that viewers will recognize from their ubiquitous character work. 

The movie also includes other actors who weren't quite megastars at the time but would certainly soon be recognized as such. The viewer can make up his or her own mind as to whether there is a message to this film or not. Hard Eight put me in mind initially of some of the classic films noir of the forties and fifties. 

There are secrets being held by many of the characters in this film. Few of the people depicted are what could be considered morally good but the film doesn't judge. Many of them are in desperate straits. In life, all of us can fall short of perfection. 

Some people try to be good, others don't care and a few of us take steps to move to the opposite side. This movie does perhaps have some things to say about obligations, debt, family, redemption, and forgiveness--or at least I thought so.