p e n g u i n d e v i l

Ah, so I’ve seen Rise of Skywalker now.



I haven’t much discussed the latest batch of Star Wars movies here, and I won’t start now. However, for the sake of completionism, you can find those ramblings here: Star Wars at Mr Wford.

But back to the present, with some spoilers. RoS is the final movie in the Luke Skywalker saga, so it was interesting to see how it ended. As for the movie itself, it’s fine, you know? Like Return of the Jedi, it was 50% cool and 50% corny. There were some parts I liked quite a bit: more first 5 or so minutes, some other scenes that were well shot, seeing Rey’s powers grow and manifest themselves, more evidence that Leia was in fact a force user of Jedi caliber, Zorii Bliss and the scenes on Kijimi.

Scenes I didn’t like? Pretty much anything that reminded me of RoTJ (aside from the Death Stars scenes, I liked those), how overdone the Final Order fleet was, the overdone and mushy ending, the ridiculous looking scenes in the air above Exegol…

In both of the Star Wars trilogies, the three movies followed similar plans… Star Wars/Force Awakens, light-hearted, kinda corny, but serious, adventure movie. Empire Strikes Back/Last Jedi, more serious and glum and, in each series, the best of the three. And RotJ and RoS… Half cool evil empire stuff, half just corny.

For the RotJ connections (some spoilers)… Covers: we see Endor again, we see Death Star 2 again, the Emperor returns, dramatic descendant vs descender battle with lightning bolts, corny and unneeded celebratory scenes at the ending, too many scenes of Jedi ghosts, some worm thing that lives in the ground… Nuff said. However, with a new movie I’ll need to update my list of Star Wars films in order of favorites:

1. Star Wars
2. Empire Strikes back
Pre. Rogue One
6. The Last Jedi
-. Solo
4. The Force Awakens
5. Rise of Skywalker
3. Return of the Jedi

I do not have a lot of chances to go “out”. I have limited time during the week, limited baby sitter options, and limited wherewithal to arrange anything. That said, last month I did the arranging and actually went out to see a movie. A movie that I didn’t know much about, but had seen the preview and it looked rather entertaining… The Dead Don’t Die.



Heading into it was a bit of a mixed bag. Of course, Zombie comedies are a mixed bag on their own… Most are bad, but Shaun of the Dead and Return of the Living Dead are timeless classics, so there is certainly potential.

And I don’t really like Jarmusch’s movies. The ones that I’ve seen (Down By Law, Mystery Train, Night On Earth, Coffee and Cigarettes) have basically felt like boring movies that have a few interesting scenes (most notable was the unexpected thrill of seeing Screaming Jay Hawkins show up in Mystery Train). Coffee and Cigarettes would be the only one that I would have an interest in re-watching. So I wasn’t exactly excited about it being a Jarmusch movie, but I figured that might make for an interesting zombie movie.

Anyway, so this movie… It stars Bill Murray (who I love but who has been known to do some questionable things), Adam Driver (who I only know as Kylo Ren and was interested in seeing him do something else), Chloe Sevigny (who I generally like and respect her typical take no crap attitude), and a number of other people of merit who I assume are doing this just for kicks (Danny Glover, Steve Buscemi, Tilda Swinton, Iggy Pop, RZA, etc etc). I enjoyed Adam Driver’s dry frankness, Bill Murray was fine as Bill Murray, and I liked RZA’s Wu-dropping appearance as a delivery driver.

But, beyond that, it was rather annoying. Way way too much breaking the forth wall (in ways that felt dull, trite, and totally unneeded), Chloe’s girlie girl role was too girlie girl for Chloe to play (it just came off as insulting or a weird joke), Tilda Swinton seemed as if she was just here passing time between takes in some other movie (through she was pretty refreshing at times compared to many of the others), Iggy Pop’s parts were silly, Tom Waits part is, sadly, forgettable. A lot of the “angle” was overly contrived and got a bit hard to bear at times. Obviously it is intended as a political and social satire, but that is made way too obvious. Yes, Jim… We get it… Over and over again. People are robots, society is stupid and trite, politics is a ridiculous scam. Yes, thanks. Anyway, just not my cup of tea… I think I would have preferred it as a 20 minute short.

Well, well, well… Six years and here I am again. Okay, and then some. I actually started this post eight months ago and got one paragraph into it…

Anyway, back then, I went to a movie gathering with some friends and it got me to thinking about movies in a more social sense again…

Originally, I wanted to do a little blurb about Science Fiction movies. I ended up doing something and put it on my current blog, but, hey, may as well start this up again as, for the umpillionth time, thinking about it made me want to reopen this blog and see if I can keep it going. I always had fun with it. So let’s see if I can figure it out…

The movie that I saw socially was Gravity. Now, I’d seen it before, but all I could remember about it was that it was non-stop and rather stressful. The second time around? The same… Non-stop and stressful. It was nicely shot and quite exciting, but there were two things that I found super distracting… First, George Clooney’s attitude. So unbelievably casual and unprofessional. It was a bit hard to take him seriously as an astronaut when he kept carrying on like he was just in the midst of being a jerk in the playground. Secondly, the nearness of everything. Space is huge, orbits are set off from each other, different things are at much different altitudes, and those things that they hopped between (Hubble, ISS, and Chinese station), are no where near each other. Maybe just little things done in the name of making the movie work, but those kind of things gnaw at me and distract me from getting into it. However, it’s still pretty fun to watch, if you can stand the stress.

But, on to other movies. Since I can’t really sum up seven years of missed movies, I’ll mention what is probably the movie I’ve watched the most in those years… Interstellar.



This has turned out to be one of my all-time favorite movies. A dystopian future in which food is running out, things are wearing out, and people are just trying to survive on what’s left. Things like the space program and anything else considered frivolous have been tossed aside. However, a farmer, who happens to be a former test pilot from the old days when people wasted their time with stuff like that, is informed by his daughter that a ghost is talking to her. In this new era of dying crops and everything running out, everything is very dusty, which is unpleasant and unhealthy but very helpful for her ghost. It turns out that is becomes obvious that some kind of communication is coming to her…. And once they try to decipher it, everything changes…

The story of sending a ship through a wormhole to a different galaxy in the hopes of finding some place for humanity to survive. It is a great romp. A fun, yet very serious, realistic-feeling space adventure. With some romance, and betrayal and murder and really unique looking robots. But what really takes off is the science. The planets on the other side of the wormhole orbit a black hole, and the science and gravity and time effects of the black hole are covered in many fascinating ways, as it the black hole itself and the singularity and the meaning of time and space and, hold on, Gravity!

Yes, it is catch-up time again (super twice catch-up, as I wrote this draft in 2012 and didn’t publish it until 2019)…

In brief…



Desperate Man Blues…
A Documentary about Joe Bussard, a record collector since way back with an enormous and unique collection of old americana records. The film is a fascinating tale of the history of record collecting and the appreciation of the music, starting long before it was considered collectible. He discusses how he started collecting records in the South of the 1950’s, a time in which these were considered pretty worthless by most. He would just stop by people’s houses looking for unwanted records and he could get 400-500 in a day. But, even more so than his stories, some of the high points of this movie are the many times when he plays some of the great things from his collection: Charlie Patton, Dave Macon, Jimmie Rodgers, film of Son House (I’ve never been a big fan of Son House, but watching him play guitar is pretty amazing), Clarence Ashley, and even an original Robert Johnson record!



Bussard is quite charismatic in a way as he is an incredibly enthusiastic fellow whose collection is not only fascinating, what with the old blues, bluegrass and jazz records from the 20’s and 30’s, but is also an important archive of American music, one which he wants to share… Even to the extent that, as a teenager, he started a radio station in his house, until the FCC came and visited him and shut him down.

He also quite opinionated, voicing such sentiments as: “rock is a cancer of music, it killed everything.” and “1933 was the last jazz record. 1955 was the last country record”. Sentiments that may be a bit hard to take at face value but, considering the source, one assumes that there must be some merit to the opinion. All in all, I would say a must see movie for anyone who is serious about classic american music or record collecting. Just a great story.

Un Flic.
Another Melville classic! This 1972 crime caper has everyone’s favorite frenchman, Alain Delon, working on the side of the law (for once…) to track down a notorious bank robber, and nightclub owner, played by Richard Crenna.

It starts right off with a memorable scene of four men in a Plymouth in the lead up to a bank robbery on a rainy waterfront street. Everything is tinged blue and quiet. In fact, I find the whole movie to feel quiet and memorable. Through the movie we quietly follow the thieves as they go about trying to avoid being caught by the flic on their tail. And, no matter how it ends up for them, I find it to be very nice to watch it unfold … Who needs gratuitous gore and scary music when you’ve got class and style?



Predator
We’re all gonna die…

Yes, it’s a classic, but you have to make it through the first ten minutes, where we are treated to a slow moving festival of a group of super dudes going comically out of their way to look as macho as possible (while we also get assaulted with a slew of some of the worst one-liner’s that have ever graced the silver screen) as they are flying into the jungle in a helicopter. Once they get on the ground though, the situation improves dramatically… Okay, the stuff with Carl and Arnold is pretty bad so maybe once they get into the jungle the situation, at least for us lucky movie goers, improves dramatically.

Oh, but the story? Well, for anyone who doesn’t know, a bunch of macho dudes (Arnold, The Body Ventura, Sonny Landham, Bill Duke!) are flown into the jungle on a mission to rescue some diplomats downed behind enemy lines. Of course, as with anything involving the government, that story is just a cover up. They get joined by Carl Weathers and run off into the jungle where they start getting pursued by an invisible super-hunter from outerspace. This hunter, or predator shall I say, makes them look pretty silly as he picks them off with his cool alien technology, including some classic ridiculous scenes such as when Mack just starts shooting into the jungle, then he is joined by everybody else shooting and they shoot hundreds of rounds into the same little area mowing down tress. Yes, it’s a dramatic bit, but it is safe to know that all of these guys know that if there was anything there it would have been taken out early in the fireflow and that most of that time they had just been wasting ammunition for dramatic macho sense.

With his usual smarmy attitude, old style MTV t-shirt and a gun that is like a lawnmower cannon against the jungle, The Body was one of the most entertaining aspects of the movie. However, the most memorable scenes involve Bill Duke and Sonny. Anyway, what the hell can you say? It’s a classic.

In Wrecked, we have Adrian Brody as the unfortunate survivor of a car accident. He wakes up after said accident to find the car in the woods at the bottom of a tall cliff, his two companions dead, and his leg stuck under the dashboard.

Alive but alone and with no way to get out of the car, or to signal anyone, we watch the progression of his suffering until after some hallucinatory moments, the memory of the events leading up to the crash slowly and painfully start returning to him.

I don’t know if i liked it or not, but it sure kept my attention. In fact, I think I did like it. It was an interesting, odd and engrossing film… though I have a hard time imagining someone deciding to give it a theatrical run.

Also I finally got around to viewing Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, an engaging story of an Australian who finds himself in his forties, overweight and in overly-medicated ill-health. All of which leads him to decide to go on a 60 day juice fast… In the USA, of course, spending the first half in new york and the second half driving around the country with his juicing supplies in the back of his SUV, offering juice, and his story, to any who will listen. Along the way we get to watch his health improve dramatically and we encounter a couple of people who take his message seriously and begin juice fasts themselves. There is one particularly relevant moment when he talks to a man who speaks unconcernedly about how old he may end up getting (55, 65 if he’s lucky), while sitting at a table with his own father and his young son. It is an entertaining film reminding us, yet again, that diet is the key to health and the fresh foods and whole grains lead to good health, and that animal products and processed foods lead to bad health. There is also good follow up in the movie of the stories of some of the people who are involved in this juice-fast thing.

Then I also watched Forks Over Knives, which is a similar topic and spirit, but a much different movie. In Forks Over Knives, we follow two scientists who, in the 50’s and 60’s started studying nutrition in a highly scientific way. Using the results from many exhaustive tests and case subjects, they also come to the conclusion that most of our most dangerous health ailments: heart disease, cancer, diabetes… Can be prevented by eating whole food, plant-based diets. At this point, I assume that everyone knows this though. Movie after movie, study after study. But, you know… It is hard to get the inclination to eat that way when most aspects of our society are designed to get you to eat, well, the other way.

On my commute home yesterday, I received a text stating that last night would be family movie night. Family movie night means a couple of things around these parts… It means a quick drive down to the Star Theater to pick up a large tub of “movie” popcorn and a pack of Twizzlers, and it also means that we will be (most likely) scrounging Netflix for whichever kid movie my kid wants to watch. The selection this time was unexpected for multiple reasons… Gumby 1 (aka, Gumby: The Movie). Firstly, I had no idea that there was any such thing as a Gumby movie. Secondly, once I learned of it I assumed that it would be just another big Hollywood pilfering and altering of our cultural icons. Boy… Was I wrong.


Gumby 1 is most certainly the real thing. A low-budget genuine claymation film about Gumby and Pokey made by the guy who actually invented Gumby. And, for that, it is just great!


It seems that not all is well in clayland! Gumby has a band, The Clayboys, and the amount of time that he spends with them is making poor old Pokey feel down in the dumps. But who cares about that because then two exciting things happen! An agent discovers the band and wants them to film a video, and the band decides to have a benefit concert to help some farmers who are facing repossession! All of this goodness is spoiled, ala Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park, by the Blockheads who decide to kidnap the band (including the manager and their mascot dog) and replace them with robots!!!


Well, you’ll have to watch it to find out what happens, but there is lots of driving in and out of books and just great old school claymation. Strangely, there is a lot of music in it which has a surprisingly hard rock feel to it. Hmmm… Who’d of thunk that’s what Gumby was into. And there are also plenty of positive thoughts and reflective statements to give the kids that sort of good moral development that they are craving.



After this movie and the family going off to bed, I followed it up with Spiderhole. A British horror film about four young folks who set of to find a house to take over with Squatters rights (gah, can people really still do that?). They find a good house but, of course, contrary to appearances, the house that they break into isn’t as abandoned as it appears. And, you are expecting, they become the prey of some ruthless and mysterious figure! Bad things happen to these kids, in reasonably grisly ways that are nicely done. Not too corny nor overbearing. And they do a good job of keeping the antagonist somewhat unknown and maintaining a good maze-like feel to the set. Not in the really dumb way made popular by Saw, but it a reasonable way… Sometimes it reminded me a bit of the original Texas Chainsaw house… But with a richer color palette. All in all, I thought it was pretty good, enough to keep me interested and not so underdone that I would be embarrassed and bored by watching it.

Westworld, the vacation of a lifetime! Yes, welcome to Delos where you can choose between Westworld (the wild west), MedievalWorld (13th c. Europe) or Romanworld… What do you really need to clear your head from the mundanity of regular life? A Roman orgy? Wild west shoot out? Jousting and feasting? All as real as real life, but with no dangers! Kill without worrying about being killed, yes for only $1000 per day ($4,851 adjusted), you too can have the vacation of a lifetime… Just hope that nothing goes wrong!

Well, when James Brolin goes on a wild west vacation with his pal (and Delos newbie) Richard Benjamin, they are ready for some good old drinking, robo-whoring, gunfighting and general wild west fun. Soon after they arrive they start to get a taste of the old west, with a tough gunslinger insulting Benjamin in the saloon. After killing this rude interloper, they continue to go about their free-for-all Wild West life! Oddly enough though, that gunfighter returns and they have to take him out again.

It seems like as bad sign, as Delos is supposed to have a strong feeling of reality, when the gunslinger returns yet again, still intent of getting rid of them… But this is the first of many signs that something is going awry at Delos.

Westworld is one of my favorites from my youth. A commentary on the shallow state of human desires and also a warning against the impending pervasive reliance on technology, Westworld covers its entertainment bases by having scenes of decadence in three enticing milieus, in case the market might not have been interested in only one of these historical genres. And their is plenty of TV-style violence to keep any fan awake

Well it was one of those good nights when I appreciate Netflix Streaming. Friday I watched two entertaining films in a row!



First up was Valhalla Rising, a dark grim Viking film. A silent one-eyed man is a captive of a clan, he manages to escape and kill most of them then heads off across the beautiful, yet forbidding, Scottish landscape. He ends up joining up with a young boy who starts following him and encounters a group of heretics (or whatever you call Viking-folk who have converted to Christianity) who are headed to the holy land to help protect the land of their lord and savior. As one-eye doesn’t speak we are left a bit high and dry about his motives but he comes along anyway.


They sail off in their little boat for a trip pretty much bereft of any fun what-so-ever. These Christians have no faith in one-eye and tension, conflict and lengthy moments of stoic standing and staring are the order of the day as they end up sailing to an unknown land and proceed to fall apart. It come with that richly-washed, drab-color palette that one can expect these days… but I actually found in fairly nice to watch. I liked the colors and the landscape and I like just about anything that shows a vikingish side (non-lighthearted, at least), and I appreciated the grim seriousness of it. Even if, at times, it felt too grim and serious to really have much depth of character or storyline.



Also, I watched Monsters, which I enjoyed quite a bit. Featuring really great aliens (they light up and have lots of tentacles!) who came to earth a number of years back and who have since been corralled into a large and heavily defended area comprising the borderlands of the USA and Mexico. Into this area (called the Infected Zone) come two Americans (a photographer and his bosses daughter) who get to the port at the Mexico side, hoping to get her on a ferry back to the USA. Trouble is, they get there the day before the port shuts down for six months. To top that off, the photographer goes off on a big drunk, which ends up meaning that she can’t take the ferry.


With no other options at hand, they set off by land and riverboat through the Infected Zone. Now, for a low budget film, this could turn out pretty crappy. But not in Monsters! It is not crappy at all! Not only are the characters, and actors pretty good (most of the movie involves them, rather than any sci-fi or alien scenes) but the scenery and the alien-occupied backdrop are just really well done. I thought that it came across with a very genuine feeling. It was suspenseful without being overbearing and completely involving, both in terms of the character arcs and the Alien storyline. In the end, it is an engaging adventure that leaves you with some questions about the nature of “human versus visiting alien” relationships.

So to take a break from my recent bout of low-budget sci-fi films that I love, I must say something about Stranded. After a quiet 2001ish start (though blatantly low budget), the first manned ship to visit Mars ends up crashing there! And since their orbiter doesn’t have a second lander, it may as well just turn tail and head back to Earth. Everyone seems really bummed by all of that except for one guy who is just excited to have made it… Which would be my take on the situation if I got to go on the first manned mission to another world!

Trying to piece things together, and realizing that their supplies won’t last even near long enough to make the 2+ years it would take for a rescue attempt to arrive, three of them head out to investigate a strange radar image a few hours walk away. Which is unfortunate, as the scenes of the surface of Mars are probably the low point of this movie, with hardly any attempt made to make it appear that they might be on an different world. But wait! That’s not the only bad part. They talk as they wander about and, while I thought the script was okay at first, just marred by bad readings, as the movie wore on I lost faith in the script also… Though it still wasn’t as bad as the readings. Maria Lidon (also the director?) and Danal Aser deliver every one of their respective lines terribly, without the slightest level of convincingness. That coupled with how cheaply this movie seems to have been made, causes me to wonder about the rest of the cast. What are: Vincent Gallo, Maria de Medeiros and Joaquim de Almeifa doing here? Three actors who, while maybe not great, are certainly of a higher caliber and reputation than the rest. I can’t imagine why they are in this unless it was as a favor for a friend or something.

Lidon also delivers some narration that, while unnecessary as narration usually is, is also painfully delivered. All in all, Stranded is generally boring, badly acted, with terrible effects and “sets” and a story that might have had some potential, but it ends up being not all that. The movie does finally start to try to get interesting and pick up steam about an hour in, but at that point, I didn’t really care.

Sitting down with a bunch of the guys (and some other guys) i watched Contagion. Now normally I would preface that by saying that I don’t normally watch that kind of movie but, lately, with that Insidious and Paranormal Activity 3, that no longer seems to be the case.

Anyway, Contagion actually isn’t bad. Yes, it is stuffed to the gills with Hollywooders (Matt Damon, G Paltrow, Larry Fishburne, Jude Law (ok, I sort of take that back about Jude Law)), and has yet another version of the “watch the plague spread across the world! Will they stop it!?” storyline, I still liked it. It starts off quick, it is a bit dark and graphic for Hollywood and they focus more on accurate descriptions of the technical side of things.

Basically, Matt Damon is the husband of a women who carries back a new virus from a business trip to Hong Kong. The CDC (represented by Fishburne (or Furious Styles as I still think of him)) try to chase down a cure in time.

The first half is pretty good, but the second part bogs down a bit and ends with an anti-climactic ending and an unneeded bit of backstory (at the start of the movie, they clearly state “Day 2”.

Also, the soundtrack is pretty lame. But, if you like these kind of Hollywood movies, this is better than most and lacks the ridiculous and irritating melodrama of, say, Outbreak.