Brandon's movie memory

Somehow when I wasn’t paying attention to the drug TV shows and the Russian-made genre flicks, Bob Odenkirk became an action star in his sixties. Here he’s a traveling fill-in lawman, and while halfheartedly playing sheriff for some Minnesota town a lot of shit goes down – a bank robbery brings the yakuza-payrolled townsfolk to armed warfare. “That’s not where I was aiming” – Bob’s first return shot blows apart Evil Mayor Fonz. The dead ex-sheriff’s daughter Jess McLeod teams up with him. It’s…

Opening scene is so lousy, but the colors are bright, I remember liking the first movie (and that’s all I remember about it) and there’s promise of a Pyramid Head monster (which is also what I’ve been calling the pileated woodpeckers buzzing around the cabin), so, keeping an open mind. Ivor Novello (Benediction) meets the lovely Mary (a horror regular, of various Saws and Purges). Flash-forward, she is dead because he’s such a bad driver (this is his defining character trait), but still sends…

My movie watching is outpacing my progress on the James Naremore book, so I don’t know the whole deal with Norman Foster and this Mercury Theater production, but it stars all my Kane and Ambersons buddies and is obviously a part of the big Welles picture. Annoyed to discover that there’s a longer reconstructed version with ten extra minutes that played MoMA a decade ago, but which never came out on video, so I watched the dull censored version, and it was still pretty great. The Kane Boys: An…

Clint was just innocently farming when some assholes come along, steal his wife, murder his kid and burn down his house. Cue a training montage! The assholes are a murderous rogue group in the union army, so Clint joins the confederates. Cue a war montage! The last of the confederates surrender when the war is over, and while pledging their loyalty to the revived union they’re all gunned down. Clint sees this, chain-guns 100 unioners, and goes on the run. “After I get to likin’ someone they…

Paper Trail (2026, Don Hertzfeldt) Following the life of a guy named Steven through marks he has made on paper, all kid drawings then love letters then lease agreements then forty years of signing off on bland work documents. Subtle! Will revisit it at a later date (haha). – Duck Pimples (1945, Jack Kinney) Hoped from the title this would be a Daffy, but it’s a Donald – fortunately one of his more insane ones. Home alone and easily scared, he’s attacked by scary stories from inside radio and…

Revisited one of the greatest battle-of-the-sexes 1960s-flashback non-musical comedies with K and her mom. Really a two-person show, with good supporting parts for Ewan’s boss Niles (who should’ve been in more movies) and Renee’s agent Sarah Paulson (unfortunately best known as the psychologist in Glass).

This one is set 28 days later than 28 Years Later. Our kid Spike has been kidnapped by the Jimmy Gang run by Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal, spends most of the movie semi-panicking since his new friends have a kill-or-die policy and they like to torture local homeowners to death for no apparent reason. They plan to grow in numbers and take over the land, but their plan seems mathematically challenging, since you have to kill a Jimmy in combat to become one. Spike Jimmy does make friends with Girl Jimmy…

After a flashback scene with her drugged-out dad uncle, stoned teenage Alpha gets a tattoo at a drug party, then it won’t stop bleeding. She inevitably will catch the medusa virus going around that’s turning people to stone, but first she’s gonna become unstuck in time and live her past/present life with her troubled uncle. I liked the range of weird tones in Titane, the dark humor in Raw – this one is all grim all the way, following lives of pure misery, and whenever something almost positive…

Table (Ernie Gehr) Flicker film of a table setting, with a teapot and some cups and saucers, maybe some scissors back there. A shot from one angle in red light, another shot slightly offset in blue light, a third in white, giving the impression of a 3D movie gone haywire in editing, or a preview of late-period Ken Jacobs. Watched this as the director intended (a video copy at home, which was seemingly rephotographed off a film projection, while listening to Makaya McCraven in the headphones). –…

A pretty poor movie to split up and watch across two nights. The first half is pure episodic comedy, vaguely setting up the characters and detective agency (very good!) and the second is episodic plotty stuff, the guys working somewhat-together to solve cases and/or foil a big robbery they accidentally got in the middle of (pretty average!). So after tonight’s mid-70s grey/brown adventures, trying to hold on to the laughs from the night before. Neckbrace Ricky costarred in Mr. Vampire, kung-fu…

Multimedia hyperlink cinema done right. A reporter boards a futuristic superyacht, hears various stories and maybe becomes unstuck in time and experiences some of them. Guest directors/writers/DPs take on different sections, Joseph acting as curator, with the cinematographer of Arrival and editor of Everything Everywhere All at Once. Reminded us of Adam Curtis and Dahomey and a hundred other things. It’s very difficult to explain – fortunately, Robert Daniels is on the case.

The first Sam Raimi movie since Drag Me To Hell, from the writers of Freddy vs. Jason. Humiliated office worker Rachel McAdams has the upper hand when a plane crash kills all her idiot coworkers except Dylan “Twinless” O’Brien, who cannot build shelter or a raft or find his own food, but still tries to pull rank on her. Fun back-and-forth as they poison each other, and she tries to stay lost by avoiding rescue boats. Despite the all-natural setting Raimi doesn’t know it’s even possible to make…

Benning constructs his own versions of Thoreau’s and Kaczynski’s cabins and films the trees through their windows (on his property in California) synced with audio recorded in Massachusetts and Montana. Part of a larger art/cabin/unabomber project for Benning. Each cabin gets one 15-minute shot, so there’s not much to look at, just sounds. Odd to hear a big-ass truck drive past Thoreau’s place, distant clanking and traffic near Ted’s. I took the opportunity to listen for birds. Merlin mostly…

A near-doc, near-drama with flights of fantasy, it must’ve looked like a whole new thing at the time. Luis and Armando pass some ladies at a mysterious cave and end up traveling seven generations into the future. A silent episode, serving snow for dinner. Too much with the rural rhythms, but quite beautiful, even in my TV copy. Cordeiro and Reis were a married couple who made three features together set in this region of Portugal, which is convenient for film viewers who are obsessed with…

Watched this meta-remake because I trust the Pipeline guy, and Director Daniel did not let me down even if Writer Daniel (and his Cam co-writer) strayed increasingly into dumb-ass territory. I find his internet thrillers less compelling – let’s blow up some more pipelines. Barbie Ferreira of Euphoria is a viral-snuff-video survivor who now reviews flagged violent videos all day for shithead boss Josh (of multiple LaKeith Stanfield movies) until she uncovers a serial killer who’s recreating…

Redux Redux (2025, Kevin & Matthew McManus) A great concept turned into an unfortunately bad movie with boring music. I watched on fast-forward. The Block Island Sound directors cast their sister as a multidimensional force of vengance, hopping parallel universes in search of a world where her murdered daughter is still alive, taking out serial killer Jeremy Holm each time before moving on, until she picks up one of his survivors Stella Marcus and they get to repeatedly save each other. with…

Scott “Biff” Grant of The Monolith Monsters yachts through a glitter cloud, his wife (of I Was a Male War Bride) unaffected since she was in the cabin. “People actually decrease in height during the day,” says a doctor trying to comfort him. But it’s no use, doc, Biff is definitely getting smaller, and being a real pain in the ass about it. He goes out on the town and meets circus midget April Kent, but that doesn’t help either. Finally he’s small enough to be chased around by the family cat –…

Ann Seyfried totes her little brother (Lewis Pullman of a Salem’s Lot remake) as she discovers a Christian sect called the Shakers, marries Chris Abbott but can’t have kids, gets arrested and returns as their messiah, moves to America and leads the group as they grow and inevitably diminish, since her main rule is strict celibacy. The US arrests her for being a treasonous witch but releases her for lack of evidence, then vigilantes burn their place down and murder a bunch of them – this country…

Sometimes the vulgar auteurists are wrong. This brit-accented antiquity drama mixed with fast-cut bloodless gladiator action (edited to hell, the same way I recall RE6) from the writers of Batman Forever was a nice-enough waste of time between Resident Evil episodes. Pretty girl Emily Browning (The Uninvited) likes slave-gladiator Kit Harington (best known as the star of Xavier Dolan’s eighth-best feature). Her dad Jared Harris (Benmont in Dead Man) and Emperor(?) Kiefer Sutherland are playing…

A wrecked movie theater where they project Pompei-related films (but not color ones) The fire department answering callers after earthquakes, all wanting to know if Vesuvius is exploding. Archaeologists and grave robbery investigations, a ship unloading tons of grain from Ukraine. Another lovely doc with gorgeous photography by Rosi, who would probably not be amused that I chose his movie for a double-feature with the Paul W.S. Anderson. How did the city name lose an “i” in the intervening…

Altered States: the documentary. Lilly invented the isolation tank, did psychedelic drugs, got naked, and “regressed through generational time.” He survives experiments with dolphins, the US government, hollywood, LSD, and the isolation tanks, only to go insane on ketamine (“hourly injections of ketamine inspire increasingly apocalyptic visions”). Besides Altered States, works based on his studies include Ecco the Dolphin, Day of the Dolphin, Holy Mountain, and probably parts of the Hitchhikers…

This collection of TV music videos with a loose framing story seems more like first-take/b-roll mess. Is it for kids? Was it influenced by The Monkees? They probably explained briefly in Anthology how this turned out so badly, and I already forgot. At least each song gets a different visual treatment and some are nice (like the color-filtered mountainscapes over an instrumental song) and not just over-literal imagery (showing policemen in a row for the line “policemen in a row”). And at least…

“This is going to be a copyright nightmare. If you’re watching this in theaters, thank your lucky stars.” Annoying handicam fake-doc transforms into a very good Back to the Future ripoff. Narratively goes through great lengths only to loop around itself and accomplish nothing. I laughed for five straight minutes during the CN Tower lightning rod sequence. Calum Marsh: It didn’t surprise me to realize that this movie was largely built around unused webseries footage, because they have so much…

Watched at the bar on mute, this appeared to be quite bad. The director was a real 90s Guy, starting out with Erik Estrada and David Carradine then breaking through with Tom Berenger and Billy Zane. The editor did Miller’s Crossing and the DP did Jaws, but the writers did Turner & Hooch and Legal Eagles, and the lure of dodgy CG and a crazed Jon Voight as the villain dragged this down. The entire cast would make quick recoveries (Out of Sight, Three Kings, Heat Vision & Jack, Mr. Jealousy,…

Remake of Edge of Tomorrow. The lines and colors are all neat, and especially Rita’s hair – her overall character design is better than Tom Cruise’s. It’s anime, which means angsty teens are saving the world while wearing battle armor, but first Rita has to figure out why she’s caught in a time loop, getting killed by Jim Woodring creatures every day. Halfway through she meets fellow looper Kenji (was Russian Doll based on this?), who will eventually absorb the enemy alien and sacrifice…

Scorsese tests us by opening the movie with a harsh version of “Like a Rolling Stone,” Dylan’s voice never sounding worse. Then it develops into one of the few good rock docs, by not singlemindedly focusing on a particular artist but bringing in his influences and surroundings, making an artistic portrait of an era. Great editing by his usual rock doc collaborator David Tedeschi, skips around in time and makes it work. Animals *and* birds?? “You can’t be wise and in love at the same time.” For…

People who watch movies for the human drama, the “empathy machine” people, are the overwhelming majority in the arthouse realm, leaving us bird people to scan every title and plot description for some sign of avian life and not bird-as-metaphor. Once a decade we hit absolute gold, and coincidentally the same month H Is For Hawk came out, right around when I was watching the egret of Alamar, this incredible crane movie popped up. This is what the cinema could be: vague stories featuring doc…

Why does Herbert Marshall do so much walking in this? Besides being very good at walking, he’s an important rich person with neglected wife Marlene Dietrich (shortly after her great Sternberg run), ditching her for work events in the same way as Ray Milland in The Big Clock but with much more charm than Ray. There’s a love triangle in Paris facilitated by Madame Pittypat, and Marlene starts secretly dating her husband’s old army buddy Melvyn Douglas. Melvyn is hunky and all, but extremely…

Edward G arranges for a desperate nazi to escape prison so he’ll lead them to the big man. Eddie (just after Scarlet Street) gets knocked out and loses the trail of his guy (K Shayne of a Boetticher noir), so he doesn’t see Orson Welles strangle Shayne in the woods, decides to hang around this Connecticut town until more leads turn up. When your old nazi friend drops in on your wedding day: Orson is so confident in his new wife Loretta Young (oscar winner the following year) that he admits to…

The title and premise sound exciting, but the movie is a sweaty bewigged newscaster (Roman Wilhelmi of Zulawski’s Chopin biopic The Blue Note, with Robert Picardo vibes) being tormented by everyone, including martians, who look like silver-spraypainted oompa loompas in puffy coats. Decaloguists Krystyna Janda and Jerzy Stuhr get a big scene each. The most believable detail is that the biggest music act in the country is called The Instant Glue. Gotta watch the blu extras and learn more about…