instant watch – Page 4 – Late to the Theater

Five Little Bits

It sat in my queueueue forever before I finally hit play, and it was an immediate win from the first five minutes.

Rather than sit down and do a big post on one movie and then never get around to it because there aren’t enough hours in the day, Five Little Bits is a roundup of five films I’ve recently watched, in no particular order, with no particular connection other than I’ve watched them and they are on Instant Watch. Also, in a rare deviation, I have included starred reviews for some quantifiable metric along with the gabbling. Enjoy!

Everything on that poster is true. It was AWESOME.

Housebound – Housebound is one of my new favorites. It’s a smart, low-budget horror comedy from New Zealand that a friend recommended. Housebound is the story of Kylie, a young woman remanded to house arrest with her cheerful but estranged mother in the Middle of Nowhere, New Zealand. I loved this movie for lots of reasons: Morgana O’Reilly’s strong, unapologetic performance as a twenty-something teenage rebel; Amos the security guy who’s into paranormal research and who has clearly been WAITING for a chance to ghost-hunt his whole life; brilliant performances; the lived-in, cluttered and claustrophobic atmosphere of the house itself; the deconstruction of family history and relationships and subsequent re-connection; and the dialogue all create a delightfully solid little film. It sat in my queueueue forever before I finally hit play, and it was an immediate win from the first five minutes. And that moment when Kylie’s past is laid bare – SO GOOD.

Five out of five stars – if you liked Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil, you’ll love this film!

Thale – A beautiful, multilayered Norwegian film shot on an ultra low budget (only 10 grand! insane!) that deals with huldra folk, a mythical race of forest women with tails from Scandinavian folklore – Stay with me. Tall, stoic and studly Leo runs a bio-cleanup company and gives his longtime friend Elvis a job. We meet Elvis when he is puking into a bucket, grossed out by the job and its gruesome requirements– a bucket which Leo, long inured to the grisly nature of his job and also to much of life, needs to finish the job. While on a job in a remote location, they discover a strange, feral and childlike woman hiding in a basement. Although the eponymous Thale spends most of the movie naked, her nudity is rarely exploited or made sexy; instead, it underscores her vulnerability and isolation from both humanity and the huldafolk. I loved this film, which I would compare to The Troll Hunter except way lower budget. Elvis and Leo’s complex friendship and the secrets they keep from each other add a fascinating layer to the film, especially the understated performance Jon Sigve Skard gives as Leo, whose placid, gum-chewing exterior hides a lonely frightened soul. Also worthy of note is the grim language they use to describe aspects of their job: ‘We have to break up the shed because he flowed out the floor’ should give you an idea.

Four out of five stars because of the sometimes glacial pacing, the film nevertheless gets a LOT of mileage out of its leads, including the performance from Silje Reinamo as Thale, and the interesting plot. And that ending – WORTH it!

Oculus – A horror film about the devastating effect a haunted mirror had on suburban, upper-class family, Oculus had a solid premise, some strong performances, and a really great subversion of common horror tropes, but ultimately I didn’t care for it. Karen Gillan puts in a hell of a performance as a woman obsessively determined to help her brother no matter the cost and shows her remarkable range as an actress. Unfortunately I just couldn’t like this film. Watching the family violently disintegrate into madness was excruciating, and the ending I found disappointing – longtime readers can probably guess why.

Three out of Five for incredibly effective scares, performances, and solid writing, but personally I just didn’t like the story – others definitely will, though! A great horror film otherwise, with a sequel in the works.

Last Shift – Another intriguing premise that didn’t pay off, Last Shift’s first act is all tension and beautiful character building before it implodes on itself. A rookie cop with a tragic family history must spend the night in the old police station since the new replacement facility has opened. She starts getting weird calls, there’s blinking lights and creepy sounds and an incontinent homeless man and all of that sets a nailbiting scene of dread and atmosphere, and then things go off the rails with a murder cult. Creepy ghosts and furniture rearranging also happen – this wasn’t a bad movie, I just didn’t care for the overall story. You have a great premise – deconstructing the horrors taking place in the shadow of the Thin Blue Line is So Hot Right Now, but it just didn’t pay off. Lead actress Juliana Harkavy is highly charismatic and very watchable, and hopefully on her way to better things.

Two out of five stars.

Hodejergerne (Headhunters) – Another Norwegian film, and I will fully disclose that I watched Headhunters because Nicolaj Coster-Waldau (aka Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones) was in it. I could easily drop two thousand words about my feelings on this actor, but I will save that for my secret smut diary. MOVING ON. Headhunters is a sort of American Psycho/Film Noir mashup with an intriguing premise: Roger Brown, a prominent corporate recruiter who suffers from a case of terminal Short-Man Syndrome, has an expensive lifestyle and wife he can’t really afford. He supplements his income as an art-thief who robs his high-powered clients, replaces their artwork with knockoffs, sells the good shit and then buys his Scandinavian fembot wife expensive earrings and supports her art gallery, while screwing some other lady on the side. I found him a somewhat likable protagonist despite his terrible actions AND his occasionally jarring resemblance to both Christopher Walken and Steve Buscemi – AT THE SAME TIME. He meets Clas Greve (Jaime Lannister), the kind of Handsome Man Alpha that other men both loathe and secretly aspire to be. Charming, disgustingly good looking, a retired millionaire, and a former special forces agent, Clas has a lost Ruben in his house and Roger finds out and sets out to rob him, and of course it is The Wrong Thing To Do. What follows is a bloody and sometimes gross deconstruction of Brown’s vanities until his long-buried humanity finally rises to the surface – it’s very much in the vein of Park-Chan Wook’s Vengeance trilogy. It was an interesting watch but stretched credibility in many moments (I don’t know how they do it in Europe but in the U.S., Special Forces people don’t usually have their pictures all over the internet) and there was a thread of jet-black dark humor running through it that… I never quite laughed out loud, but I think it’s because I don’t enjoy Schadenfreude.

Four out of five stars for lavish production value, great performances and an intriguing premise, but the story and any emotional attachment falls apart in the third act.

So that was Five Little Bits! I hope you enjoyed this little roundup and there was something here you found interesting enough to check out.

Have you seen something lately you think I’d enjoy? Please give it a shout out in the comments!

Some Highlights!

I’ve noticed an uptick in the activity on this blog. Welcome, everyone! I hope we can find you something you like!

I’m posting a list of some of my favorite entries, ones that I enjoyed writing and that help people get a sense of what this blog is really about.

It’s not a fanblog (although I’ve been swooning over Richard Armitage a lot lately – that’s really just a way to distract myself from other things going on in my life).

So here are some posts to help orient you!

1. Candyman: Clive Barker’s Urban Horror Masterpiece

2. The Secret Heroes of A Song of Ice And Fire: Fat Guys

3. ‘There’s No Such Thing as An Honorary Black Person’

4. The Stately Homos of Old England Entry: The Naked Civil Servant

5. New Cult Classics: Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil

6. Flying, Fiery, Feets of Fury: Ong-Bak and Ong-Bak 2

7. Flavoring Your Brainmeats: The Mr. Condom TED Talks

8. The Wayback Machine: Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

9. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas Entry: Bad Santa

10. (A very old review) : Ink

Thanks for dropping in!

Hanging in There Entry: Robin Hood (BBC) Seasons 1 & 2

The show is a fun distraction with some distinctive and moving performances. Heavily anachronistic, it doesn’t take itself too seriously, but does insert lots of little pop culture jokes and references. There is some violence though it’s largely bloodless, and a few characters die. That said, I would say it’s a great family show. The costumes and sets are fun and creative, and some of the jokes really have made me laugh out loud. I would definitely recommend it if you’re looking for something new and fun to get into, but if you’re looking for historical accuracy or accurate arrow physics then you might want to give it a miss.

Slowly, things are improving.

Lately I have been dealing with both getting over a breakup and a death in the family. It’s a lot of normal to be trying to reestablish, all at once, so I am just trying to get through the days lately.

One thing that has cheered me up is the BBC’s Robin Hood. It began in 2006 and only ran for 3 seasons, ending when the principles decided to leave the show. It’s a delightful show though, about friendship and loyalty and love and all those noble qualities that Robin Hood is known for.

Hood himself is played by the charismatic Jonas Armstrong, who portrays Robin of Locksley as daring, charming, and even cheeky at times. I’ll say it: I grew up associating Robin Hood with a singing fox, and later with Kevin Costner (I don’t hate Prince of Thieves) and still later with Men in Tights (STILL a classic!). So a brash, cheeky young Robin was a nice addition to the stable of actors who have played the character.

As with all the other canon, Robin and his servant/companion Much (who is an Englishman, I have no idea if he’s canon or not because I’ve never read the Child ballads) are recently returned home from King Richard’s war in the Holy Land. The pair of former soldiers have a strong bond as friends, and soon find that the old Sheriff of Nottingham has been deposed and a new one installed.

The latter is played with snide, sneering glee by Keith Allen, who I had to look up on Wikipedia but apparently is Theon Greyjoy’s father. He used to do standup comedy at punk shows. How cool is that?

The rest of the gang are here as well: Little John, Alan a Dale, Will Scarlett, and Maid Marian. The latter is a nice departure and far from a damsel in distress: she knows how to fight and is fairly headstrong in the bargain. In fact they could have made her theme music someone shouting ‘DAMMIT MARIAN!’ every time she did something irritating. I didn’t hate the character – far from it! – but just as when you see a smart person you care about make a terrible choice, I was frustrated. Lucy Griffiths was eminently likeable and radiantly beautiful – I saw she was on the pilot for Constantine (which I still haven’t reviewed!) but was replaced by Zed. I think she’s great and she’ll go far, once she finds the right vehicle.

The comedy and lighthearted fare of the show is fun; it’s a family show, I think it ran in the Doctor Who spot, or just after it, and there are far, far worse ways to introduce children to the stories of Robin Hood and his outlaws.

But the show keeps me coming back for this man:

Richard Armitage has inspired a HUUUUGE following who call themselves “Armitage’s Army.” I’m not much of a joiner, so instead I’ll tip my hat to the approximately 8 billion fansites and pages of fanfiction they have produced. Well done, ladies and gentlemen! Allow me to congratulate you on your EXQUISITE taste!

I wrote about him before in my review for North and South, and believe me he’s just getting better.

Gisborne as a character is interesting – he starts out a drawling villain but over the course of the show became such a fan favorite that the writers were struggling to keep him a villain. I haven’t seen the 3rd season yet but I understand that he does sort of team up with the good guys, which he did now and then in the previous seasons. I love tv series for that reason, the character evolution it allows. Somebody can start out a bit player and a few seasons in steal the show, as happened with Donna Meagle and others on Parks and Rec (I haven’t seen the final season yet! Say nothing!)

The other reason Gisborne fascinates me (besides the obvious) is that I have a thing for his character trope: the damaged ones, the broken ones who imagine that the love of another person is all they need to fix themselves. It is a form of delusion, because in order to be a better person you must first admit that you have no power over someone else and that if you truly loved them, you would let them go and that YOU are responsible for your own happiness. But it’s also the sign of a deeply romantic and sensitive soul – someone who believes so fervently in the power of love that it blinds them to the consequences of their own actions. Of course no other examples of this character type are coming to mind at the moment, but trust me, it used to be a thing I had. For many years I thought I had outgrown it – and then along came Gisborne. When he begs Marian to make a home with him, to stay with him so that his life is bearable, I was totally ready to give him the keys to my house and run down to Uhaul for some boxes to help him move in. I cannot be trusted to make life decisions any larger than ‘yes I would like bacon on my cheeseburger’ right now.

But when it comes to archery be prepared to suspend some serious disbelief. — Shooting!

And just so you can see how serious I am (although I couldn’t stop giggling while watching this):

New Cult Classics: Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil

I can totally laugh at jokes that poke gentle fun at Southern people, because if you can’t laugh at yourself you’re probably taking yourself too seriously. Southern people are dramatic, we indulge in family squabbles, we have crazy-ass relatives who are always setting themselves on fire or outrunning The Law or some other thing that you might see on COPS. I fully acknowledge this, and I embrace my heritage. But, as Jesse Custer himself said, “You don’t start raping tourists because you had grits for breakfast.”

I had no idea what I was in for when I hit “play” on Tucker and Dale. I heard good things, but nothing detailed. And as with many films I take a gamble on, I figured I could just shut it off if I didn’t care for it.

I figured it would be yet another tale of clean-cut, All-American youth taking a wrong turn and encountering inbred, cannibalistic, rapacious hillfolk mutants. And the movie certainly sets up that that is what’s going to happen: we are quickly introduced to a car-full of privileged young College Kids on holiday, passing some reefer around, and the girls are appropriately scantily clad.

But before I got much farther, let me explain something.

Growing up a Southern person, you hear jokes. My mother is from a small town in South Georgia, and my father was born in West Virginia and moved to Florida at a young age. Never mind that West Virginia was actually part of the Union, and, you know, the whole state was created because the inhabitants were Pro-Union – most Americans don’t know or care about that, and I’ve heard more than my share of ‘Ha ha, Southern people are inbred and live in trailers and swamps and rape tourists!’ unjokes.

That said, I can totally laugh at jokes that poke gentle fun at Southern people, because if you can’t laugh at yourself you’re probably taking yourself too seriously. Southern people are dramatic, we indulge in family squabbles, we have crazy-ass relatives who are always setting themselves on fire or outrunning The Law or some other thing that you might see on COPS. I fully acknowledge this, and I embrace my heritage. But, as Jesse Custer himself said, “You don’t start raping tourists because you had grits for breakfast.”

And as I was delighted to find, the College Kids are not the protagonists; Tucker and Dale are.

The setup starts to unravel when College Kids realize they forgot the beer, and stop by a gas station to stock up. The gas station is appropriately derelict and filled with rusty farm implements and animal parts, and some local weirdos are lurking nearby.

After an unnerving encounter with some of the dingy local color, the story begins following these two-the eponymous Tucker and Dale- and everything becomes a lot more interesting. Tucker and Dale have recently purchased a “vacation cabin,” (played by a Backwoods Murder Shack Style #4) where they are looking forward to some drankin’, fishin’, and relaxin’.

They set to fishin’ and drankin’ that night, but the relaxin’ part gets screwed when they see one of the College Girls take a nasty fall as she attempts to go skinny dipping. They row over to save her and find she’s unconscious. Naturally, when the the other College Kids witness Tucker and Dale dragging her limp, naked body into their skiff, they assume the worst.

The rest of the film is a series of unfortunate events that seem to mercilessly incriminate our hapless heroes. It’s a hilarious takedown of the genre, and I won’t spoil it by going on too much further. But the bees and chainsaw moment is just magical!

Fans of NBC’s 30Rock will recognize Katrina Bowden, who played vapid and ridiculously hot intern Cerie. When I saw her name in the credits I thought ‘oh, they found a hot girl, that’s nice’ and I totally ate my words: she has great comedic talent and plays the highly likeable heroine, Allison. I think she has a great shot a comedy, and I hope she gets a chance to show off that talent more.

The movie has a 7.6 on IMDB, and is highly rated on Netflix. If you’re a fan of deconstructive, intelligent horror comedy like Cabin in the Woods, or Shawn of the Dead, you will definitely like this movie. I can’t say it’s as great as those and has nowhere near the production value, but it definitely belongs in their company for the writing and characters alone.

Check it out!

In a Nutshell Entry: World’s Greatest Dad

This clip is from the end of the film. It encapsulates the film’s message in its entirety: that loneliness is not being alone, that it’s being around people who make you feel alone, and that to survive you must sometimes make difficult choices. It is also the best part of an otherwise heartrending movie.

There is nudity and some language, but it does more in four and a half minutes than some movies do in more than two hours.

The biggest word on this poster should not have been ‘Hilarious’

I was going to do post on this film, since I watched it recently. If I had watched it in a world where Mr. Williams had not ended his life, I think I would have enjoyed it more. However, this is not that world. It’s impossible to discuss this particular film outside of the context of his suicide; maybe in a few years that will be easier.

Obviously this is kind of a downer post, but I’m not going to do a full review, just a synopsis and a clip from the film. I am not warning anyone away from this film because it was definitely very good, but if suicide is a trigger for you then definitely give this one a miss.

*****SPOILER******

SYNOPSIS: Williams plays Lance Clayton, a divorced father with dreams of being a famous writer struggling with a thankless job as a teacher and a thankless son as a father. When his spoiled, unappreciative, immature and deeply unpleasant son accidentally kills himself during an act of auto-erotic asphyxiation, Clayton changes the position of the body and makes it look like an intentional suicide, penning a touching and introspective note. When the boy’s death rocks the school, a cult of personality grows up around the boy, and so his father also creates a journal full of intelligent perspectives on life. The journal is a huge hit and Kyle’s father enjoys almost overnight success, but the hollowness of the success wears on him and he begins to struggle with the loneliness he feels as a result. An especially hard-hitting moment in the film occurs when Robin Williams’ character, on a talk show, looks directly into the camera and reminds the audience that ‘Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.’

This clip is from the end of the film. It encapsulates the film’s message in its entirety: that loneliness is not being alone, that it’s being around people who make you feel alone; the unspoken coda is that to survive you must sometimes make difficult choices.

There is nudity and some language, but it does more in four and a half minutes than some movies do in more than two hours. It makes perfect use of that most magnificent of glam teamups, David Bowie and Queen’s immortal “Under Pressure.”

NSFW for nudity and language.