Movie Reviews: San Andreas

San Andreas
directed by Brad Peyton

This is an over the top 2013 disaster movie that used every action movie cliche and threw in an amazing number of fanservice cleavage shots. 

The director and writer(s) ensured no matter what was happening on screen that the cleavage of the two lead actresses (and most secondary ones) was always on display. 

Someone drowning? Show some cleavage. Building on fire? We need some cleavage shots. Deep conversation between estranged spouses? That goes better with cleavage. Someone dangling from a helicopter? Someone climbing rubble? Someone discussing events with co-workers? What better time to show some cleavage. Snicker. 

Michigan Democrat Fights Back!

It seems that some Democratic elected officials are finally waking up to the fact that when someone hits you, you hit them back. Harder. It's the only way to deal with people in real life. Turning the other cheek or assuming that your presumed audience will see through the lies is an excellent way to lose respect and lose elections. As the saying goes "A lie can travel halfway around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots."

The new Republican tactic is to call Democrats pedophiles and child groomers. One Democratic Michigan State Senator, Mallory McMorrow, recently let everyone know she didn't appreciate anyone, in particular the Republican Senator Lana Theis calling her  a "groomer" in a fundraiser email. This sort of forceful rebuttal to lies could and should become part of a Democratic rapid response playbook.

Senator Lana Theis accused me by name of grooming and sexualizing children in an attempt to marginalize me for standing up against her marginalizing the LGBTQ community...in a fundraising email, for herself.

Hate wins when people like me stand by and let it happen. I won't. pic.twitter.com/jL5GU42bTv

— Mallory McMorrow (@MalloryMcMorrow) April 19, 2022

Movie Reviews: Angel Face

Angel Face

directed by Otto Preminger

Angel Face is a 1953 film noir that, like Chinatown two decades later, has some Freudian undertones. These were not usually explicit. It was the 50s. When you think about them you might get the heebie-jeebies. This movie didn't use WW2 as a backdrop but did use wealth and corruption as the story environment.

Depending on whom you spoke to, the director was known as a demanding perfectionist auteur or as a sadistic bully.

There is a famous story that Preminger required too many takes of a scene where Robert Mitchum slaps Jean Simmons. Preminger wanted the scene to be realistic; he refused to let the slap be faked or toned down as Mitchum wanted to do. After Preminger kept insisting that Mitchum slap Simmons harder, Mitchum lost his temper and slapped Preminger in the face with his full strength, sarcastically asking him was that the right force or should he do it again. 

Preminger fled the set. Preminger tried and failed to get Mitchum fired. The studio owner, Howard Hughes, had attempted to seduce Simmons, although she was married. In revenge for being rejected by Simmons, Hughes had insisted that Simmons fulfill her studio contract with Preminger as the director.

Movie Reviews: Snowpiercer

Snowpiercer

directed by Bong Joon-Ho

This 2013 dystopian movie was based on a French graphic novel. The science behind it is hit or miss. Snowpiercer is not concerned with accurate science. When the science needs to make sense for the story to work it does. And when the science must be ridiculous for the story to work, it is. 

The movie is more interested in what we think we know about human society and the various class struggles required. Or perhaps it's just certain kinds of societies that necessitate class struggle?  

Human activity--which some would argue is inseparable from human population--is responsible for the massive destruction of flora and fauna as well as global climate change. 

There is no quick fix because forcing worldwide use of renewable energy, forcing worldwide return to pre-Industrial Revolution living standards, or forcing worldwide population culling to pre-Industrial Revolution population levels are all unlikely or immoral actions. 

Believe Women or Believe Evidence

There are some feminists of both genders who subscribe to a believe women ethos which means that to them the default should be to automatically and uncritically accept allegations of misbehavior that any and all women make, particularly if such charges have to deal with sexual or other violence against women. 

Some such people get frightfully wroth if anyone is impolitic  enough to point out that women, like other human beings, are capable of being mistaken or deceitful. I think that any standard we use, whether in criminal court, civil court, or the court of public opinion, must have some provision for evidence. In other words no one should be uncritically believed without evidence.

Such faith might be something that individuals give to intimates or close relatives but it's not something that society can or should give to anyone who makes a claim. I recently read about another example of this.

Six weeks after Sherri Papini was arrested and charged with faking her own kidnapping in 2016, the so-called Super Mom from Northern California has signed a plea deal and will admit that she orchestrated the hoax, her attorney told The Sacramento Bee on Tuesday.

William Portanova, a prominent Sacramento defense attorney who signed onto the case in late March, said Papini, 39, signed a plea agreement Tuesday morning in which she will plead guilty to counts of lying to a federal officer and mail fraud.

“We are taking this case in an entirely new direction,” said Portanova, a former federal prosecutor. “Everything that has happened before today stops today.”.

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.