clousems film reviews, mk iii

Spider-Man: No Way Home

This movie has been popular among some of the younger lichess viewers, and so, as a fan of the original 1967 Spidey cartoon, I decided to give it a shot.

Unfortunately, younger lichess users seem to have terrible taste in movies (sorry, younger users. At least you have time to fix this by watching the other movies I've reviewed).

The first thing that struck me was that I had no idea what the hell was happening. The last time I was this confused while watching a movie, Ginseng Boy was being eaten to save the world from the Elder of Devil Palace (Magic of Spell, 1988). I understand that this is a sequel, and I should have watched the previous movies to fully appreciate it, but this isn't like the Godfather, where one has to watch the first one and then the second one. This is essentially Avengers: Part 22 (!), and a viewer should not be expected to have watched 21 previous installments, plus 5 other Spider-man movies (3 with Tobey Maguire, 2 with that other guy) in order to understand what is happening in a single movie. Even TV shows have that "previously on ___ ..." sequence to catch us up to date. If any Marvel/Disney executive is reading this, I suggest that they research the James Bond franchise.

My next realization was that superheroes apparently have waaaaaaaaaaay too much free time on their hands. Peter Parker should not have had time to fill out an MIT application while attending high school, fighting crime, dating Mary Jane and that weird fat kid, and escaping the press.

The writing of the movie was atrocious. When you're on a team of writers for some of the most profitable movies of all time, you should be above such plot devices as "the superhero goes next door to his wizard friend's house to alter space-time continuum." That's lazy writing, even by Avengers standards. Heck, that's lazy by 1998 Avengers standards.

The traffic situation in New York was laughable. I doubt the writers had ever been there.

Alfred Molina remains potato-like in countenance.

Willem Dafoe managed to do his standard fantastic acting performance, which is impressive given the role.

1.5/4 stars

"the superhero goes next door to his wizard friend's house to alter space-time continuum." That's lazy writing, even by Avengers standards. Heck, that's lazy by 1998 Avengers standards."
So, basically you are saying H.G.Wells was talking through his hat?
Apart from that, couldn't agree more, even tho I have no intention whatsoever of abusing my eyeballs with any Spiderman crappage. No need to...I know garbage when I hear about it.

I recently received a message telling me that the movies I reviewed were all either big-budget blockbusters that everyone had already seen, or were cheesy horror movies.
Let it never be said that clousems does not respond to deserved criticism. With that in mind, I present my review of.....

Barbie Nutcracker

The premise of the movie was the same as every other goddamn Nutcracker movie-- an evil nutcracker comes to life, murders a bunch of defenseless mice (Algernon, no!), and everyone that the nutcracker likes lives happily ever after. One has to wonder why this particular story gets milked so much around the holidays, since it lacks the moral lessons of A Christmas Carol, the charm of Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer, and the "Yipi-ki-yay motherfucker"-ness of Die Hard.

Regardless, this particular incarnation of "The Nutcracker" is noteworthy for a few reasons:

1. It might be the world's least competent commercial.
2. Tim Curry was in it (seriously, look it up).

While some versions of "The Nutcracker" (Carebear Nutcracker, for example) make the viewer question their sanity on a single level ("Dear god, why did someone think it would be a good idea to make a Carebear adaptation of Tchaikovsky?"), the executives over at Barbie (is Barbie a place?) boldly went where no toy executive/supervillain had gone before by blurring the line between what was supposed to be a toy and what was supposed to be real. In the classic Nutcracker, the Nutcracker starts life as a decoration, then somehow-- probably through the work of Satanic lemurs-- becomes some sort of human/demon/nutcracker hybrid. But the people at Barbie push further into the twin realms of stupidity and insanity by having the Nutcracker begin life as a wooden nutcracker, then end up as a plastic human. Does this mean that the Nutcracker succeeds in his task? Is plastic an upgrade or a downgrade? Did Barbies evolve from nutcrackers? None of these questions are answered.

In all, the director's willingness to dive into the realms of insanity reminds one of the works of directors such as Lynch, Aronofsky, and Cronenberg. Yet the film lacks the technical merit of those directors. From a lighting perspective, pink was blatantly overused-- perhaps it represented sexuality or femininity, but the director's message was not clear.

2/5.81 stars

Twins of Evil 1971

When I discovered that Peter Cushing (Star Wars, Hound of the Baskervilles) starred in this movie, one of FOUR Hammer Horror movies loosely based on Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla*, I kinda had to watch it. Honestly, who WOULDN'T want to see Grand Moff Tarkin shaming 1600s lesbian vampires while wearing a pilgrim hat? He even officiates an American Football game! WITH A PILGRIM HAT ON!!!!

https://imgur.com/houE6Pi

Anyways, GM Tarkin-- which sounds like it could be a real chess grandmaster, now that I think about it-- plays the uncle of a pair of twins from Italy (only one of whom is actually "evil". The other is just a dunderhead) who move in with him after their parents die. He is employed as a local witch-burner (see above image), with a posse reminiscent of the one led by Eric Idle and John Cleese. Unfortunately, his village is run by an actual devil worshipper, Count Karnstein, and the two fight like a couple of old ladies arguing over whose turn it is to deal in bridge. After a particularly snippy argument, Cushing returns home, yells at the nieces for dressing like common whores (because they wore green?) and takes a nap.

Count Karnstein, meanwhile, decides to be evil. At first, he attempts to engage in Evil by Proxy by having some other people perform a "Satanic ritual", but he decides that his help is just a collection of evil posers. The Goth kids in South Park would have been proud.

After his Satanic help leaves-- presumably weirded out by the fact that a dead ringer for Jimmy Fallon called them all posers-- Karnstein decides to finish the Satanic ritual that they were performing, and straight up murders a lady! He then tries to summon Satan, but only manages to get in contact with Carmilla, who is apparently by this time working for Satan in a secretarial position. As vampires do in these movies, Carmilla boinks the Count, turns him into a vampire, has a long speech about how vampires don't show up in mirrors, and then leaves the movie.

At this point in the synopsis/review, I am remembering something profoundly unsettling: if I recall my le Fanu correctly, Carmilla also had the last name "Karnstein". Grody to the max.

Anyways, Peter Cushing resumes witch-burnings. The local teacher politely asks him to stop, and Cushing responds by asking the teacher to shove it.

Meanwhile, his evil niece manages to get herself turned into a vampire by Count Karnstein. She also may or may not become a lesbian at this point. It's ambiguous. Other than that, there's really no change in her behavior, so I'm not sure why people in the village were so worked up about vampires and/or witches. The stupid one covers for her, and thus Cushing is not wise to his evil niece's new vampire lifestyle.

Eventually, the evil vampire twin makes the mistake of eating one of the witch burners IN FRONT OF A GROUP OF WITCH-BURNERS, and gets thrown in the slammer. The Count promptly breaks her out, swaps her with the dunderheaded twin to mislead their guardian (which is the plot of Parent Trap, I believe), and skedaddles back to Castle Karnstein (which is your stereotypical spooky castle), while Evil Vampire Twin (EVT) goes back home and tries to get jiggy with the school-teacher. Luckily, there is an enormous mirror in the room, which allows the schoolteacher to discover the vampire-ness of Evil Vampire Twin.

The teacher arrives just in time to prevent the Dunderheaded Twin (DHT) from falling prey to the Peter Cushing Touchdown signal. The witch-burners promptly storm the castle (which really failed at it's job, I might add). Cushing kills EVT. Then Karnstein kills Cushing. Then Teacher kills Karnstein.

In all, it was... weird. It really felt like director John Hough (not the 16 Candles guy) wanted to make a super-trashy flick on par with what the Americans, Italians, and Hong Kongians were churning out in the 70s, but didn't want to fall victim to British Censorship laws, so claimed that all the trashiness was from an old Irish book. On the other hand,

https://imgur.com/houE6Pi

I give it 6 points for the touchdown, but it misses the extra point for the field goal due to its grodiness.

*Another one in the series I considered reviewing was "Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter", which was noteworthy due for five reasons:
1: Captain Kronos is an awesome name
2: Cap'n Kronos has like 50 different swords in the movie
3: Cap'n Kronos' love interest was the lady from Starcrash (For my thoughts on Starcrash, see https://lichess.org/forum/off-topic-discussion/best-space-opera#1)
4: The villain was Benedict Cumberbatch's mom.
5: It contains what is arguably the greatest sucker punch of all time.

Batman (The 60s one)

I'd never given this movie much thought, but I recently lost a bet on whether or not Jill St. John* was a Batman villain (as it turns out, she was a gun moll in the first episode. I still insist that gun molls, like any other goons, don't count as real villains, but that's mainly because I don't want to pay the other guy five bucks), I decided to bone up on my Batmanology.

And holy Deus Ex Machina, Batman, this was entertaining. It's got everything you want in a superhero movie: kamikaze porpoises, an aerosol spray that repels TNT-laden sharks, a death trap involving an octopus bomb (in retrospect, there was A LOT of exploding marine wildlife), riddle-clues that make absolutely no sense, all the radio jammers in the world, a scene jam packed with Dr. Strangelove/Mary Poppins references, and a strangely wholesome group of supervillains who rely on teamwork and friendship to dehydrate/vaporize the U.N. Security council to take over the planet.

@clousems said in #15:

Batman (The 60s one)

---

I'd never given this movie much thought, but I recently lost a bet on whether or not Jill St. John* was a Batman villain (as it turns out, she was a gun moll in the first episode. I still insist that gun molls, like any other goons, don't count as real villains, but that's mainly because I don't want to pay the other guy five bucks), I decided to bone up on my Batmanology.

And holy Deus Ex Machina, Batman, this was entertaining. It's got everything you want in a superhero movie: kamikaze porpoises, an aerosol spray that repels TNT-laden sharks, a death trap involving an octopus bomb (in retrospect, there was A LOT of exploding marine wildlife), riddle-clues that make absolutely no sense, all the radio jammers in the world, a scene jam packed with Dr. Strangelove/Mary Poppins references, and a strangely wholesome group of supervillains who rely on teamwork and friendship to dehydrate/vaporize the U.N. Security council to take over the planet.

The '60's. Back then, the World was a great big melting pot, and love was in the air. Our Villains were a somewhat more genteel lot who tended to rely on brains rather than brute force. No Tarantino-esque bludfests for them. We needed no Inspector Callahans ; The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Maxwell Smart coped quite ok. (Agent 99 loomed large in my foetid fantasies )
And absolutely nobody would have even vaguely hinted at any impropriety in the Bat Cave after Bat Lights out.

No archivey archivey!

The Notebook.

Yes. THAT f***ing Notebook.
I lost another bet, okay?

It was either this or "50 Shades".

Do you really think that I spend my time watching Nicholas Sparks movies? Of course not!
I loathe romance in movies if it's not accompanied by kung fu or serial killers or zombies or something like that. I consider the movie "Metropolis" to be a sappy chick flick. "Natural Born Killers" might as well be a Hallmark original movie. If the movie devotes more than 10 percent of its screen-time to love, my brain automatically files it away as a rom-com or a porno, and I spend the rest of the time thinking about how awesome Deadliest Warrior's first season was.
Yes, you read that right. My primary issue with pornography is that it has too much romance. Moral sentiments take a distant second to my hatred of boring romantic themes. Stupid pornos! They should get rid of all the sex in them and replace it with tests and simulations to determine once and for all: WHO. IS. DEADLIEST!? And they should start by pairing a knight against someone who DOESN'T have a gaddam blunderbuss. Maybe an Incan warrior. That would have been awesome. I think they rode llamas.

"The Notebook", unfortunately, does NOT have badass warriors mounted atop llamas swinging bolas. It should, but it doesn't.
Instead, it starts with a bunch of whiney white people (I grew up in southern Kentucky. When I find the whiteness of a cast to be conspicuous, that's not a good sign) whining about the 1940's. Specifically, a carnival in the 1940's. As history books taught us, the worst part about the 40's were carnivals. I'm under the impression that this particular carnival was run by a bunch of anachronistic racists-- there was no old-timey talk, and, again, no black people-- but it could have just been 1940s Aspen.

Anyways, Ryan Gosling's character goes complete ***ing rattlecap and jumps on a moving Ferris Wheel to stalk some poor lady who he just met. Nobody really reacts to his abliquery, and he threatens to commit suicide if she doesn't go out with him. She then pantses him, which is probably not what someone should do to a volatile psychopath with apparent violent tendencies. Apparently, 1940s racist carnival attendees weren't too bright.

The woman proceeds to show that she is no stranger to abliquery herself-- she actually agrees to go to a second-- AND A THIRD-- location with Psycho Gosling. They then talk about how she's rich. Again, I think they were in Aspen, so that didn't surprise me. Regardless, this movie was not going well.

But then, "it" happened.

At 15 minutes and 14 seconds into the movie, Ryan Gosling's character, sick of all the boring BS and abliquery, decides to go off and stare at a traffic light for three minutes straight. I'm not sure whose decision it was-- an acutely self-aware novelist, a snarky screenwriter, or a disgruntled actor-- but this was the most believable scene ever filmed.

I stood up and applauded this magnificent plot twist. No longer were there no interesting characters. No longer was I forced to try and figure out how this film was popular. I, too, found the traffic light to have more personality, more charm, and more wit than anyone else in the film. It was the bola-wielding, llama-mounted Incan knight to save me from the porno-- or something like that. Analogies aren't my strong suit.

After that scene, though, the film became unbearable. Rare was the 30 seconds that passed without Rachel McAdams making out with Psychoman. At some point, she developed a weird Southern accent, which was an interesting, albeit unintentional, plot development. Some guy in the studio must have procured the world's worst-sounding piano, and they decided to use it in a musical number. Then they got naked, which really doesn't do much to disprove my "all romance flicks are pornos" theory.

Then things got generic.

Then things got whiney.

Then things got generically whiney.

Then they broke in what I believe was a reference to Princess Bride, which was an actually good movie. Perhaps the director should have ripped off "Princess Bride" more if he wanted his film to avoid the fate of becoming a pop-culture punchline.

There was yet another glimmer of hope for the movie during the war scene-- it even had explosions-- but this, too, faded. Rather than doing something interesting, like turning into a war-bear, Gosling just continues to whine about how the Nazis killed that guy who looked like a leprechaun.

Finally, the film had more whining, a little bit more sex, then more whining.

1 out of 4 traffic lights.

*You may think "abliquery" is not a real word. Well, it is now. It means "acting in the manner of someone whom I would brand a complete dunderhead". Feel free to use it in Scrabble.

All well and good, but why do you sugar-coat everything?
Tell us what you REALLY feel, not some Bowdlerised namby-pamby literary pabulum tailored to appease the Silent Majority Bible-Belt creationists.
Who decry the movies as the spawn of the Incubus anyway and never go there.
I stopped reading at "Ryan Gosling", so my comments only pertain to previous to that.
Y'all have a nice day,now... ya hear?

Now taking suggestions for movies to review.