Movie Reviews: A House On The Bayou

A House On The Bayou

directed by Alex McAulay

This made for cable TV thriller movie should have been chopped in half and presented as an episode from Tales from The Crypt. This movie used many typical horror/thriller movie tropes. 

There's a teen girl discovering her own sexuality, bickering/clueless parents, a threatening yet polite and mysterious young man, adultery, secrets, and unexplained impossible events. A House On The Bayou was too long. I didn't care about most characters. I wasn't impressed with or apprehensive of the bad guys.

Despite the antics of some couples in Hollywood or other less traditional communities, once they are married many people still initially expect that henceforth they will be the only ones providing that good thang to their spouse and vice versa, forever. It's explicitly stated in most marriage vows: "forsaking all others". Well as my high school gym teacher once ruefully noted to our class, "Forever is a long time, baby!".

Movie Reviews: Red Rocket

Red Rocket

directed by Sean Baker

Sean Baker directed Red Rocket. Baker also directed The Florida Project, reviewed here. I didn't know that before watching Red Rocket but found it familiar because of its realistic depiction of socially marginalized people. 

Baker creates the grown folks movies that existed in the 1970s, patient character studies that neither judge nor excuse people. I could taste the sweet bakery donuts. I could feel the oppressive Texas gulf coast heat, smell the funk, and gag on the ubiquitous cigarette smoke. Red Rocket's cinematography grabbed my interest and never let go. This movie used 16mm film. It's gorgeous looking. I believe everything was shot on location.

The title could refer to evidence of a male dog's excitement. The title also invokes the hair color of a woman whom the protagonist thinks will change his life.

Baker examines an unsympathetic, manipulative, and unreliable protagonist/antihero. The protagonist can be affable but his friendliness is just a tool. Coincidentally or not, Baker set this film during the 2016 Presidential campaign, with plenty of Trump quotes.

#BLM: Dealing In Dirt And Stealing In The Name Of The Lord

In the George Orwell book Animal Farm, the farm animals successfully revolt against the cruel human overlord and his minions. The pigs, being more intelligent and selfish, seize leadership and gradually return the other animals to their previous low status. 

The pigs either rewrite the rules or employ insulting lawyerly sophistries to declare that a violation of both the word and spirit of the commandment is actually no violation at all. The pigs claim any detractor is a traitor working with the humans. 

I recalled this fiction when I ran across a news story about a similar set of pigs evidently working assiduously to enrich themselves from the blood, sweat, and tears of those they apparently regard as less than.

On a sunny day late last spring, three leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement — Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Melina Abdullah — sat around a table on the patio of an expensive house in Southern California. 

“For me, the hardest moments have been the right-wing-media machine just leveraging literally all its weight against me, against our movement, against BLM the organization,” Cullors said. “I’m some weeks out now from a lot of the noise, so I have more perspective, right? While I was in it, I was in survival mode.” She was referring to an April 2021 article in the New York Post that revealed her purchase of four homes for nearly $3 million.

Elderly Man Shoots Teen Home Invader

Actions have consequences. Unfortunately some people must learn that the hard way. I don't think that anyone should look for violence but the sad truth is that there are predators among us. And the only way to stop them is to apply superior violence. If this incident indeed happened as described then the would be robber is lucky to be alive. I hope he will find a better lifestyle than performing home invasions on senior citizens.  

AKRON, Ohio (WBFF) — A homeowner shot a teen who allegedly forced his way into his home in Akron, Ohio, police said. Officers responded to a call about a home invasion shortly before 7:30 a.m. in the 700 block of Johnston Street. A 16-year-old boy was found inside his home with a gunshot wound. The 74-year-old homeowner, James Lowgher, told police that the teen forced his way into the home, and at one point, the homeowner confronted the teen and shot him multiple times. LINK

Will Smith Slaps Chris Rock At Oscars

I don't watch the Oscars. This morning when I heard that Will Smith had slapped Chris Rock at the recent Oscars ceremony I thought that it must have been a skit or some insider joke. 

When I found that it was real I thought that Smith must have taken offense to a Rock joke about Smith's apparent open marriage with his wife Jada Pinkett Smith. Jada Pinkett Smith has done the do with at least one man not named Will Smith while still being married to Will Smith. 

But that wasn't was set Will Smith off last night, although the actress Regina Hall made a joke cracking on the Smith couple for precisely that reason. 

No what evidently made Smith so angry that he assaulted Chris Rock was that Chris Rock made a joke claiming that Jada Pinkett Smith was getting ready for a sequel to GI Jane, a film in which the lead actress, Demi Moore, famously shaved her head. Jada Pinkett Smith suffers from alopecia and has apparently decided to keep a buzzcut.

Movie Reviews: Fear

Fear
directed by Ivalo Hristov

This is Bulgaria's entry for Best International Film at this year's Academy Awards. It is a timely and timeless film that shares surface similarities to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri and Ghost Dog in that Fear features a blunt older woman and two people who communicate despite having no common language.

Fear is timely because the current Ukrainian migrant crisis demonstrates racist hypocrisy by many European nations, both western and eastern. 

Countries that claimed to be full and that were trying to stop further refugees, deport current ones, or become so unwelcoming that present refugees would leave on their own have behaved much differently with white Christian Ukrainian refugees, welcoming them with open arms. 

Even poor "white" nations with no history of slavery or colonialism still have many people with racist contempt for non-whites, especially Blacks. Fear is timeless because it illuminates humanity's good and bad sides while challenging us to do better.

Movie Reviews: Dark Water

Dark Water
directed by Walter Salles

This 2002 horror film was a remake of a Japanese horror movie which I hadn't seen before and still haven't viewed. 

So I had no preconceptions about about its quality or that of the the original Japanese story.

After watching this movie I appreciated that it was ominous and a little eerie without relying overmuch on special effects, gore, or exposed female flesh. 

Dark Water is a throwback to much earlier genre films. Instead of overloading the viewer with a million frames per second as some hyperactive films do,  the director lets the story and action play out at its own natural place. 

Near the ending I thought there were a few too many jump scares but most of the film's "horror" comes from a steadily increasing sense of unease and discomfort that wraps the viewer in a cold cloak of weirdness and holds on tightly.