Greetings! Have you ever wondered if a movie's worth blowing the money on to see at the theater or what to add next to your NetFlix queue? Then you've come to the right place! Enjoy!
It's New Year's Eve and the missus wanted to watch this to cap off a positively miserable year which included her mother passing in February. I've previously reviewed it here and score is unchanged.
In the intervening years it has been re-released by the Criterion Collection adding a director's commentary and some interviews. Since she's not interested in that stuff, I won't be getting it for her, but figured I'd mention it for those who want even more from this superfans-only experience.
Onward to 2026!
Score: 6/10. Skip it if you're a casual Bowie listener; catch it on cable if you're a more in-depth fan; buy it if you're a mega-fan.
The titular Dennis and Lois are a couple of music superfans from Brooklyn, NYC who've been together over 40 years without bothering to get married and are pals with bands as varied as the Ramones (whom they used to sell their merch for in the CBGB's days), The Mekons (which is their vanity plate after getting tired of their RAMONES plate being stolen constantly; no one has nicked the MEKONS plate, womp womp), Joy Division, Happy Mondays, etc., some of whom crashed at their place when first touring NYC.
They figure they've attended over 10,000 shows, but as this documentary shows, it's getting harder as they get up in years as health problems begin to impede. Testimonials from Budgie (Siouxsie & the Banshees), Peter Hook (New Order) are intercut with footage of the couple on the road following some band called The Vaccines around. Everyone loves Dennis and Lois to the point that in gratitude for them FedExing some weed to Happy Mondays in California for their recording sessions, they wrote a song entitled "Dennis and Lois" on their Pills 'N' Thrills and Bellyaches album. We also see their home which is so packed with various music, comic book and movie memorabilia it's almost a hoarder situation except it's well organized and displayed.
The problem with the documentary is that while it's nice they're loved and they love music and helping musicians, director Chris Cassidy doesn't organize it all very well and omits a lot of basic details leaving many questions unanswered beginning with how the heck are they funding their lifestyle which includes two or three trips to England annually (they're very fond of Manchester, home of Oasis, Happy Mondays, The Smiths, Joy Division, etc.) and all these road trips. Lois worked as the manager of the copy room at an architectural design firm until her health got too bad, but they drive a Mercedes crossover, mention giving tenants a rent reduction for Christmas, and simply seem to be living outside their means. (I joked to the missus whether they were slinging crack to the neighborhood kids?) Unless I missed it, Dennis doesn't work and I only know (I think) his last name - Anderson - because I finally found it on a FaceSpace post. What's Lois's? /shrug emoji
Then there's the matter of when was this filmed? The end of their stint with The Vaccines coincided with her birthday and the band wishes her a happy 65th birthday. While visiting Johnny Ramone's grave in Hollywood, she mentions he was born in the same year as her, 1948, so that birthday would've been in 2013. However, there is video of them attending a show by Frank Sidebottom - an act which would be memorialized in the 2014 film Frank starring Michael Fassbender - followed by them learning of the passing of Chris Sievey, who played Frank with a large paper mache head on, which was in 2010. The documentary is dated 2018, but we're never told when events are happening.
While there should be an interesting story about a unique pair, sadly Dennis and Lois does a lackluster job telling it.
Since the missus didn't have her Blu-ray of Vertical Suckage Limit here at Xanadu to pair with Cliffhanger (oh darn) I finally was able to get her to watch the 4K of 1994's Speed which was Keanu Reeves action peak following Point Break before he'd go into another career lull broken by The Matrix. As the "Die Hard on a bus" entry in the long line of Die Hard-inspired action flicks, it also kicked Sandra Bullock up to the A-list.
Reeves stars as LAPD Officer Jack Traven whom we meet in the opening set piece working with his partner Harry Temple (Jeff Daniels) rescuing an elevator full of hostages trapped by a madman, Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper), and held for ransom. Jack suspects the bomber is somewhere in the building and is correct as they find him, though Payne takes Harry hostage. After shooting Harry to get Payne to let him go, Payne appears to blow himself up with the suicide vest he was wearing. Movie over.
Oh wait, there's still another 100 minutes to fill. Some time later, Jack is getting his morning coffee when a bus explodes, killing the driver (and occupants?)? A pay phone rings, Jack answers it and is told by the not-dead Payne that he has rigged another bus with a bomb that will activate when the bus goes faster than 50 mph and explode if it drops below that mark. If any of the passengers try to leave the bus, he'll blow it up. The city has a couple of hours to deliver $3.7 million in ransom or kaboom.
We then meet our plucky heroine, Annie (Bullock), who has a suspended driver's license (for speeding), and the passengers including visiting tourist Doug (Alan Ruck). Jack manages to catch up to the bus and board it, but when a guy with a gun freaks out that Jack will arrest him, the driver is shot in the struggle and Annie has to take the wheel. Hijinks ensue.
Speed was Jan de Bont's directorial debut (he would follow it up with Twister) after a lengthy run as a cinematographer for films by John McTiernan (Die Hard, The Hunt For Red October), Ridley Scott (Black Rain), Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct), and Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon 3) and he clearly paid attention on how to stage an effective action movie. While sharp-eyed viewers can spot that often the bus is travelling well under the boom-triggering 50 mph - they really should've made it something more realistic, while still challenging, like 35-40 mph - de Bont's capably keeps the tension simmering even as impossible moments like the bus jump occur.
The last act where Payne is able to grab Annie and hold her hostage is a bit of a stretch and a bit of a comedown after the bus trip ends, feeling like a second ending. This was Graham Yost's first screenplay which would be followed by John Woo's Broken Arrow and nothing else exceptional, but he'd do far better in television creating Justified and Silo, the latter I'm eagerly awaiting its return for its 3rd season.
The iTunes presentation includes 4K Dolby Vision and while there are some bright sparks and nice orange explosions, the generally silver/gray color palette and naturalistic daytime cinematography doesn't serve as very good demo material. On the extras front, there are two commentaries (which I haven't listened to) and a smattering of making-of and deleted scenes presented in standard-def.
I can't recall how the 2006 Blu-ray looked and if you're not a AV fiend, it may suffice if you're just a fan of the movie. If you want to bump up on a budget, it's frequently available on iTunes for $5, but you must have an iDevice or an Apple TV 4K to access extras/commentaries. The Apple TV app only plays the movie.
It's early-Ninties action movie night at Xanadu and kicking things off is Renny Harlin's best film, 1993's Cliffhanger, which was more or less "Die Hard on a mountain." It's been 8-1/2 years(!) since we've watched it on Blu-ray (never posted a review) and a few days shy of 15 years(!!) since watching it on a so-so DVD along with the missus's fave, Vertical Limit, as a New Year's Day double feature which got reviewed here. I bought it on iTunes in 4K 6-1/2 years ago, so it's time to give it a look and listen.
For those unfamiliar with the plot, Sylvester Stallone plays Gabe, a mountain ranger haunted by a harrowing accident which resulted in the death of the girlfriend of his best friend and fellow ranger, Hal (Michael Rooker). He quits the job, but comes back all mopey and emo to try and convince his girlfriend, Jessie (a luscious Janine Turner), a rescue chopper pilot, to leave the park to come with him to Denver.
Meanwhile, in the skies over the park a daring midair hijacking of $100 million in uncirculated bills in three big suitcases being transported from the Denver Mint to San Francisco has gone awry with the jet being flown by the robbers crashing into the park and the cases scattered across the mountains. The gang's leader, Qualen (John Lithgow), has a tracking device to locate the cases, but needs a guide to lead the gang to them, so they make a bogus distress call about hikers lost in the storm with one going into insulin shock.
The weather is too poor for Jessie to fly the chopper, so Hal sets out to find the "hikers." Gabe wants no part of climbing anymore, protesting he doesn't have the touch, but Jessie convinces him to assist even though Hal hates Gabe for the accident. When the pair find the airplane, they also discover what's really happening: They're being used to find the money cases after which they'll obviously be eliminated. Naturally, Gabe is able to escape the group and the rest of the movie is him and Jessie racing to find the money before Qualen's gang, picking off members, while also trying to keep Hal alive.
Cliffhanger works because Harlin keeps his foot on the gas the whole time, only letting up for brief breathers. Filmed in Italy's Dolomites (standing in for the Rockies) with big practical stunts and explosions including the Guinness World Record for the most paid a stuntman ($1M) to perform the midair plane transfer gag, it gives the action a heft that's often missing these days.
It also benefits from a solid script rewritten by Stallone to set up the characters of Gabe, Hal, and Jessie in the aftermath of the accident. Gabe blames himself for not being able to save Hal's girlfriend, but as Jessie tries to remind him she wasn't experienced enough for the climb Hal took her on. Hal blames Gabe, but has to know he perpetuated the situation that ended in tragedy.
But while the script beefs up the motivations on the good guy side, the villains remain cartoons especially Lithgow's Qualen who sports an accent miles away from the coast of England in the ocean somewhere. If he was hoping for a Hans Gruber moment, it didn't happen. Thankfully, it doesn't fall into the endless quippy mode of lesser James Bond and especially Ahnuld action flicks. The biggest laugh is when Gabe is burning the money to keep Jessie and him warm in a cave, "It costs a fortune to heat this place." Zing!
While the action is mostly practical, it's not always realistic like the boots they're wearing aren't what climbers wear (except in the opening scene), the bolt gun not being a real thing, and how Gabe doesn't die of hypothermia despite sometimes being down to a t-shirt in the cold. Yes, he is really shivering in one scene, but let's be real. Minor technical quibble: Digital wire removal was in its infancy so there are a few shots where Stallone is hanging off cliffs (heh) and above him is a distractingly obvious blurry line where they attempted to hide the safety line.
I faulted the old DVD's image quality and frankly can't recall how good the Blu-ray is, but the iTunes 4K presentation is very nice with good detail - I noticed for the first time in a shot where the baddies are hiking atop a cliff face that Gabe and Jessie were directly beneath them on the face (you won't see that on your phones, kids) - and the boost from Dolby Vision enhanced the lighting in some shots like "God rays" from the Sun in one stunning vista I'd never noticed before as well.
Shot anamorphically on film there is some softness at times due to the format and lens and the snowy gray mountains limit the color palette, but splashes of color like explosions, the red-orange of helicopter, and green trees pop nicely. The Dolby Atmos audio gets your height speakers going with helicopters, jets and explosions.
Unfortunately, there are no extras included when the Blu-ray had two commentary tracks (one with Harlen and Stallone), deleted scenes, and other featurettes, so this isn't a one-and-done purchase for completionists. You'll need to keep your old disc if you care about that stuff, so hold for a $5 sale to buy this.
The Nineties were a peak time for action movies but for some reason Cliffhanger gets overlooked in favor of titles like Speed or even Under Seige, but it's top shelf fun and barring the paucity of extras, it's worth getting in 4K.
Let's get this over with: Five Nights At Freddy's 2 is the sequel to 2023's surprise smash hit Five Nights At Freddy's, which grossed nearly $300M from fans of the videogame series which began in 2014, but as a gamer have never played. I didn't write up a review for the first one, but gave it a 5/10 - catch on cable/streaming score. I vaguely remember it having some interesting elements, but had to look up a synopsis to try and remember what happened and it was so convoluted I stopped caring since I'm not getting paid to write these reviews.
Anyway, that which is rewarded gets repeated so we're back with the original brain trust of director Emma Tammi and screenwriter Scott Cawthon (who is also the creator of the games) guiding returning stars Josh Hutcherson and Piper Rubio as siblings Mike and Abby Schmidt, Elizabeth Lail as local cop and daughter of evil serial killer Vanessa Shelly, and Matthew Lillard as William Afton, her child-killing father and founder of the Freddy Fazbear's Pizza chain whose animatronic mascots were powered by the souls of murdered children and, no, I'm not making that up.
It's some time after the events of the first movie and Abby misses her murderbot pals which may be why she insanely believes she can pull off a hairstyle that's part bob and has bangs, something most women struggle to pull off just one of those. She has an jerk teacher (Wayne Knight) who won't let her participate in the science fair.
Meanwhile, a team of ghost hunters investigate the original Freddy Fazbear's Pizza location and get murdered by the various spirit robots or something, led by the Marionette, a new monster who harbors the soul of a little girl murdered by Afton in the prologue and whose father is played by Skeet Ulrich who seems to be here solely to be able to say the original killers from Scream were together again in a movie though they never meet.
So, anyway some bloodless PG-13 mayhem transpires predictably - one kill sequence I called right before it happened, it was so telegraphed - and it ends up setting up the inevitable sequel which I will not be watching after only having watched this because the missus wanted to see it. (I made her watch Speed later, which is hardly payback since that's good.)
While the first one was no great shakes, the decline in quality across the board while it still grossed over $200M doesn't bode well for the future of horror cinema.
If there's a band many people know of, but have never heard, it would be Gwar, the shock rock heavy metal band whose members - with names like Oderus Urungus, Flattus Maximus, and Beefcake the Mighty - dress up in wild sci-fi/fantasy costumes and whose shows are packed with monsters and all sorts of simulated bodily fluids soaking the crowd like a Grand Guignol Gallagher show. They are every parents nightmare and every kid who wants to piss of their folks' dream.
But who and/or what is behind this wildly long-running freakshow? That's what This Is Gwar does a pretty good job in recapping starting from their surprising origin in Richmond, VA when a pair of Virginia Commonwealth University students named Hunter Jackson (who would go on to become Techno Destructo) and Chuck Varga (Sexecutioner) set up what they called The Slave Pit as a production space in an artist collective set up in an old dairy bottling plant to make a movie called Scumdogs of the Universe.
A neighbor in the complex was a band called Death Piggy fronted by singer Dave Brockie asked to borrow the costumes from they'd made so that Death Piggy could masquerade as their opening band, Gwaaarrrgghhlllgh, barbarians which hailed from Antarctica. When Death Piggy realized people were coming for the opening joke band then leaving before they played, they phased out Death Piggy and committed to Gwar.
They built a following for their outlandish stage shows, but the musical direction was in flux. We're they serious metal, were they seriously goofy, were they something in between and beyond imagination? A self-released videotape called Phallus in Wonderland earned them a Grammy nomination for Long-Form Video and they signed to Metal Blade Records in the early-1990s, but promptly wrecked the label's chances for distribution with Warner Bros. because they wouldn't tone down some of the more extreme lyrics.
Band members also came and went with replacements donning the costumes leading to a real Band of Theseus situation where now there are no original members left after the death of Brockie in 2014 of a heroin overdose. The creative tensions between artistry and commerce also clawed at the band as well as crazy incidents like a guitarist being shot (in an incident the movie makes sound like he was shot by cops, but I can't find any confirmation for) and another dying of a blood clot in his tour bus bunk with the band only missing one show, choosing to grieve by soldiering on.
Jackson and Brockie seriously clashed with Jackson either quitting or being fired (depending on who's telling the story) and the animosity was so strong that after Brockie's death he refused to attend the funeral because he was afraid he'd say what he really thought of the deceased. (He would eventually join the band onstage years later.)
Ironically, as the band's music got more accomplished, their shock value declined though part of that may've been that what's shocking had shifted in no small part due to Gwar's shifting the Overton Window. (To paraphrase Elvis Costello, what used to disgust us now amuses us.) With over 100 people having played in or participated on the periphery of Gwar, portraying the "slaves" and operating the elaborate props there's obviously going to be picking and choosing as to what's featured, but in reading other reviews I've learned that there was a brief post-Brockie attempt to have a female singer (Vulvatron) that is glossed over in favor of the return of the OG Beefcake the Mighty, Mike Bishop, to front the band as Blöthar the Berserker. (To be fair, she was only there for a year whereas Toledo native Todd Evans, who was Beefcake for five years is relegated to a mass roster title card at the end).
While not exhaustively complete, This Is Gwar, is a good primer on a band more known-of than known with a more colorful backstory than the surface joke implies.
Score: 7/10. Catch it on cable/streaming. (Viewed on AMC+; also on Shudder)
Over the summer the missus and I saw Simple Minds for the first time. They were touring on the 40th Anniversary of their signature hit, "Don't You Forget About Me", from The Breakfast Club (which they ironically didn't want to record because they didn't write it). It was a good show and made us want to hunt down this 2023 BBC documentary about the band.
After finally finding it on the high seas (it may be available thru the BBC iPlayer app, but we don't do that here in the former Colonies), Simple Minds: Everything Is Possible is merely an adequate 20,000 foot overview of the band's history beginning with singer Jim Kerr and guitarist Charlie Burchill meeting as young boys on a construction site sand pile in 1967 Glasgow, Scotland.
The sole consistent members of the band, the doc zips through their forming a band in 1978, getting and losing record deals as they struggled to find their sound, but gradually finding success, appearing on Top of the Pops, becoming a successful band everywhere but America, then launching into superstardom thanks to John Hughes the same way The Psychedelic Furs were boosted by Pretty In Pink (which Hughes copped the title from them). Eventually rock star excesses started peeling away members of the band and by the early-1990s they were burned out from 15 years of constant activity.
The intervening years are given short shrift as Kerr apparently moved to Italy and sponsored the local soccer team. We spend some time with him wandering the pitch, but what does this have to do with Simple Minds? They makers also bafflingly omit the roles of the musicians interviewed, presumably presuming the audience already knows so-and-so was the kazoo player? Various producers and presenters are tagged, but there is one woman whom I have no idea is.
Simple Minds: Everything Is Possible falls in between being useful for people who know nothing about their history and those who are familiar, but want more. Basic details like just how much older Kerr's wife, The Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde, was than him (A: nine years) aren't spelled out though mentioned. While passingly informative, it falls short for both audiences.
I've been increasingly down on Edgar Wright's work over the ensuing 15 years since his peak with Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (which I've grown to love more as I figured out what Michael Cera's Scott was supposed to be about and how Ramona didn't suck as much as I thought). The World's End was Wright beginning to coast; Baby Driver showed he can't write as well as he directs; Last Night in Soho was stylish, but again underbaked (though the missus loved it). Even so, I was interested in the rumors that he'd be helming an updated take on Barbarella starring hot vavoom queen Sydney Sweeney. Sadly, after enduring his remake - or more accurately, readaptation of Stephen King's 1982 novel The Running Man - I'm no longer as sanguine about its prospects.
Glenn Powell stars as Ben Richards, a man whose daughter is sick with the flu. Due to his inability to let injustices against coworkers go unopposed, he has been blacklisted from pretty much all employment and he and his wife live in the slums of Co-Op City. Desperate for money, he goes down to Network's TV tower apply to go on one of their less dangerous game shows to earn some money for medicine. Instead he gets selected to go on the Network's #1 show, The Running Man (roll credits!), where contestants win $1 billion New Dollars if they can survive 30 days being hunted by the show's executioners while everyone in the nation can win money by spotting and calling in his location to the show. No one has ever survived the full 30 days, but Ben just hopes to earn enough to get his family out of the slums.
Allowed a 12 hour head start and some seed money, he visits a friend (William H. Macy) who supplies him with disguises and fake IDs, then tries to stay out of sight while sending in the required daily videotaped diaries. Sometimes this is a problem because people loitering around the mailboxes (which fly away after the tape is deposited, which doesn't seem very efficient) may spot him. He also discovers that Network is editing what he's submitting, censoring politically verboten topics and deepfaking incendiary rhetoric in its place in order to keep the audience riled up.
Along the way he is aided by rebels - Bradley (Daniel Ezra) and Elton (Michael Cera) - who try to shepherd him to safety, but the deck is massively stacked against him as it becomes clear that Network head honcho Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) can cheat at will and is manipulating events for maximum ratings and audience enervation.
The original 1987 take starring Arnold Schwarzenegger was no great shakes, only lightly following the books gritty premise and directed with TV movie style by Paul Michael Glaser, best known for playing Starsky on Starsky & Hutch. But despite a big upgrade in budget and having Michael Bacall, his co-writer on Scott Pilgrim, sharing the adaptation duties Wright seems to have had no idea what kind of movie he was making and what to say with it.
While I knew I was hoping against hope they would keep the book's ending (where Ben crashes an airplane into the Network tower while flipping off Killian; though they almost tease they will), referring to the Wikipedia synopsis (I read it back when Reagan was President, so I don't remember specifics) shows they hit almost every story beat (except the ending, dammit) but managed to whiff on telling a focused story. It looks good with plenty of CGI-enhanced cityscapes, but doesn't know if it's a campy satire of reality game shows (one reminded me of Ow, My Balls! from Idiocracy), a dystopian anti-capitalist screed (so edgy for a $110M budget movie), or something in between.
Core to this tonal dissonance is Powell's smirky performance which Wright allowed. From my first noticing him on the Scream Queens TV series through his appearances in Top Gun: Maverick, Hit Man, and Twisters (haven't seen Anyone But You yet despite Sydney Sweeney being in it, too), he's always played the smirking, cocksure, handsome guy. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But here when he's trying to play Desperate Father Trying To Save Family (and Take Down the System) and he's whipsawing between Anguished Father Mode to Profane Rabblerouser Mode without landing on an effective medium. Wikipedia says Wright initially planned to have Chris Evans as the lead and if the script had picked a lane he probably would've been excellent as he can do snarky a-hole (as in Scott Pilgrim) or deadly serious (his Captain America) without one bleeding into the other.
Brolin just has to play corpo sleaze, but does it well. The standout of understanding the assignment is Colman Domingo who amps up the camp for Bobby T., the host of the show. I'm not sure why Lee Pace (Foundation) was cast for his anonymous (until the last act) role and Emilia Jones (CODA) just kinda shows up to be a hostage at the end who learns that the system is rigged.
Back to bitching about the ending, while I guess I can understand why they didn't go with the book's, the happy ending they cobbled together feels cheap, not earned, definitely not satisfying.
If you approach The Running Man just seeking empty, mindless action, then it's somewhat OK and Powell's smirky take may fit, but why can't movies try to be a little be more betterer written?
The 4K Dolby Vision presentation wasn't bad with some good neon highlights in the darkness, but nothing shouts demo material. SDR is fine.
I saw some animal on TwiX sneering that 2003's Elf wasn't a good movie and people only liked it because they were kids when they fell in love with it and don't want to admit it sucks. Yeah, his inner child is on a metaphysical milk carton somewhere. Coincidentally, I was able to snag the 4K disc for only $5 so even though I already have it on Blu-ray and HD digital, I upgraded. How is it? Read on...
For those avoiding Christmas movies for the past 22 years, here's the quick recap: Will Ferrell plays Buddy, a human baby who crawled into Santa Claus's (Ed Asner) sack when Ol' St. Nick was delivering to the orphanage he was at. When discovered at the North Pole, an elf looked at the brand of diaper - Lil' Buddy - and just as Marty McFly's mother thought he was named Calvin Klein from his underwear, Buddy became known as Buddy and was given to the childless Papa Elf (Bob Newhart) to raise.
No one explained to Buddy why he was so large as he grew into Will Ferrell, so when he finally overhears other elves discussing how he was too dumb to realize he's not an elf, his world is shattered. Papa Elf explains that his father was a man named Walter Hobbs (James Caan) who'd knocked up his girlfriend but didn't know and that his mother had given him up for adoption then died like this was a Disney movie without Walter ever knowing of Buddy's existence.
Armed with this information and a snow globe of New York City, he travels to the Big Apple to find Walter at his Empire State Building office where he publishes defective children's books to be on Santa's Naughty List. Walter has no idea who this large weirdo in the elf costume is, but when it's confirmed Buddy is his son, he takes him home to stay with his wife, Emily (Mary Steenburgen), and son, Michael (Daniel Tay). Buddy briefly gets a job at Gimbels department store (a real store chain that went out of business in 1986) where he meets Jovie (Zooey Deschanel), a jaded coworker whom he takes a liking to.
The bulk of the plot involves Buddy wearing everyone down with his relentless, guileless enthusiasm. The script by David Berenbaum as directed by Jon Favreau is cute without being cloying, refreshingly uncynical except for the cynical characters, and actually safe for kids with a PG rating. And the ending involving New Yorkers pulling together to express enough Christmas cheer to make Santa's sleigh fly seems so quaint considering they just installed a radical Ugandan Islamist Communist who's never held a real job in his life as Mayor and is now promising to divide and punish the disfavored folks. Elf was made on location in the wake of 9/11, but NYC just surrendered to the forces that brought down the Twin Towers.
I can see why some may be adverse to Ferrell's crazy-eyed performance, but he plays it straight instead of making Buddy seem dumb instead of sheltered. Caan probably had no effing idea what was happening, but that older style works. This was also probably Peter Dinklage's best-known role before he became Shorty Lannister on Throne Games and his one scene is a classic. Deschanel is cute but nearly unrecognizable as a blonde without her trademark bangs. She also shows off her pipes with two renditions of "Baby It's Cold Outside" which made her later She & Him musical project not the usual actor side foolery, but actually quality retro pop.
As for the new disc, they've made a new scan and grade in the correct 1.85:1 aspect ratio, correcting the previous Blu-ray's matted 1.78:1 AR. (Unfortunately, the included BD disc is the old one, not a 1080p disc of this new master. Booooooo to cheapness!) The cinematography and visuals aren't particularly flashy so the fact the disc's HDR10 grade (no Dolby Vision) seems capped to 613 nits isn't a major flaw. What it does deliver is solid primary colors and surprising detail in the costumes which makes the felt look like it could be felt. They used forced perspective camera tricks to make Ferrell seem enormous and the higher resolution slightly exposes where the seams are if you know what to look for.
Unlike what the Scrooge on the Internet says, Elf is a sweet family movie and Christmas classic. The two commentaries - one by Favreau that sounds informative from the bit I sampled and the other by Ferrell (didn't check) - and over an hour of making-of featurettes are all recycled from the old release, so they only new thing is the 4K feature. If you want the best possible visual presentation and you can get it cheap on sale, this is a no-brainer. If you're not so picky, but want a better version if you don't want to go the disc route, look for a sale on the 4K digital version for $5. It's a Movies Anywhere title so there are a lot of purchase and playback options.
It's True Crime Documentary Time and tonight's entry is 2022's The Thief Collector which tells the story of a stolen modern art masterpiece found in the most unlikely of places, apparently stolen by the least likely of thieves.
In 2017, an estate sales dealer in rural New Mexico was contacted to sell off the contents of a home of deceased couple Jerry and Rita Alter. Packed with all sorts of odd knick knacks gathered from the couple's world travels, the walls were lined with amateurish paintings which the dealers felt would have little market. However, in the couple's bedroom, hanging behind the door so it would only be visible inside the room with the door closed was one painting that clearly didn't match the rest, though it's aesthetic merit was debatable. (If you're like me and find much of what's called abstract Expressionist "art" to be garbage, you'll agree that this painting doesn't scream, "Good!")
They took it to their shop and almost immediately a customer spotted it, asked if was "a de Kooning" and offered $200,000 for it on the spot. That got their attention and they rapidly determined this painting appeared to be a mid-Century work by Willem de Kooning called Woman-Ochre which had been stolen from the University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tucson in 1985 on the day after Thanksgiving after being cut from its frame. A couple who visited the museum were suspects, but obviously the case was ice cold, the work believed stolen under contract for some wealthy collector's secret stash. (At the time it was recovered, it's estimated selling price was $160 million, though the conditions of its donation to the museum was that it could never be sold.)
That the Alters were almost certainly the culprits is rapidly determined, especially when the fact they spent Thanksgiving in Tucson with relatives, they resembled the police sketches, had a car and clothes similar to the suspects, and the odd lack of entries in the diaries Rita meticulously maintained listing everything and everywhere they did and went as if to not have a written record of being in the city where they pulled off the heist. Not to mention the whole it was hanging in their bedroom thing!
Filling out the rest of the documentary is a lot of speculation about how the couple managed a globe-trotting adventurers lifestyle on a single income. They weren't just doing the usual London-Paris-Rome tourism thing, but would go to exotic places where they'd pay someone to sneak them into the neighboring country one couldn't visit directly or they'd live in a hut somewhere for a month. They'd do these expeditions a few times per year.
Adding to the intrigue is a self-published book of lurid short stories written by Jerry which some believe are tantamount to confessions to untold crimes including possibly murdering an itinerant Mexican laborer who may have gotten too friendly with Rita and dumping the body in the septic tank.
Director Allison Otto uses cute, deliberately cheesy reenactments, of the heist and other speculations as to what the Alters were up to, but ultimately nothing comes of it as no other reportedly stolen items were found in their home, though there was a bunch of valuable things that sold at auction for a tidy sum that no one knows how they came into their possession.
If you watch your crime docs to have a complete story told, The Thief Collector isn't for you because even the obviously closed case is only circumstantially resolved. While the speculation is interesting, the lack of resolution moots its relevance. But if you like having more questions than answers, The Thief Collector is for you.
Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable/streaming. (Viewed on Amazon Prime Video)
It's viewable for free with ads on YouTube as well:
One of the surprises of 2022 was Sisu, a kicky, brutal action flick from Finland starring Jorma Tommila as Aatami Korpi, a former one-man walking genocide soldier turned prospector, as he killed many many MANY Nazis at the end of WWII after they stole the gold he'd mined. Seemingly invincible, the old guy made John Wick look like a beta soy bitch as he withstood massive physical abuse while dishing out much worse.
Since that which is rewarded gets repeated, it's not much surprise as writer-director Jalmari Helander has returned to the well for Sisu: Road to Revenge which takes place a couple years after the events of the fist film. After WWII, Finland gave up a chunk of their Eastern border to the Soviet Union causing hundreds of thousands of Finns to migrate Westward. Korpi's family home was in the territory forfeited, so we open with him crossing into the USSR with a truck to dismantle the house, stack it up, and take it back to Finland.
As he's doing this, we jump to Siberia where Igor Draganov (Stephen Lang, Avatar) is imprisoned. He's hauled out of his cell and told Korpi has entered Soviet territory and since he murdered Korpi's wife and two young sons, hacking them to pieces with shovels - "We were saving ammunition," explains Draganov - and Korpi then killed over 300 Ruskies in response, he'll get a pardon if he cleans up his mess.
The rest of the film, each chapter titled like videogame levels, consists of Draganov dispatching forces to kill the seemingly unkillable Korpi who turns the tables in increasingly cartoonish manner. (Don't watch the trailer because it gives away almost everything.) But even after suspending disbelief from a crane atop Mt. Everest some of the scenarios really test credulity considering at the end of the first movie Korpi survives a plane crash a black box wouldn't have.
More annoyingly is that at the beginning of the pursuit the antagonists face off and while Korpi murderizes everyone else, he doesn't kill Draganov because the movie would be over. While Sisu: Road to Revenge shares the same ~90 minute runtime, it feels padded out and could've been tightened at least 15 minutes.
Tommila portrays the grieving rage of Korpi as well as he did last time with one less line of dialog than in Sisu which if you were keeping score was only one line of dialog. That's right, he doesn't say anything this time. Lang plays Draganov the way he's played everything since Avatar, meaning Quaritch with a Boris Badenov accent. While it's fun to watch the pair whose combined ages are 139 years throw down (or more likely their stuntmen), the movie works too hard to make it happen.
The 4K Dolby Vision presentation captures cinematographer Mika Orasmaa's (taking over from Kjell Lagerroos) moody widescreen vistas well. The movie is heavy on practical explosions which give the sound system a workout as well with good positional surround audio.
While Sisu: Road to Revenge is a step down from the original, fans of the original wanting more of the same should be satisfied. But for me this should be the old guy's last adventure.
Band On The Run popped on my radar because it was filmed in the Metro Detroit area and was getting hyped up on FaceSpace after its landing on streaming. As a musician, the plot about a scrappy indie band going to play the then-relevant SXSW music festival in Austin, TX in 1999 (just ahead of the garage band explosion spearheaded by The White Stripes which had labels making their way to Motown the way they pillaged Seattle a decade before) piqued my interest because as a Detroiter I had a front-row seat to this time.
Jesse (Matthew Perl) works at an ad agency by day and plays drums for Hot Freaks with his two bandmates. They dream of being selected to showcase at SXSW where they're sure they'll be discovered, but that honor seems reserved for rival band Bull Roar, a press darling band fronted by J.J. (Landon Tavenier), whose gimmick is a "magic mike stand" with a head that allows the microphone to spin around, presumably for a Leslie effect, and has Hipster Records rumored to be coming to sign them.
He lives with his parents including his wheelchair-bound, chronically-ill father, Thomas (Larry Bagby), who's angry demeanor prompts his wife to leave him after one too many arguments. This proves to be a major problem when Jesse discovers the band has been invited to showcase at SXSE after finding the envelope hidden away. With no one to care for Thomas, the decision is made to take him on the trip to Austin. So, the quartet pile into a rusty van of questionable maintenance status and hit the highway.
A coincidental pit stop at a gas station where Bull Roar is gives them an opportunity to swipe J.J.'s precious mic stand and their magnetic band sign after which they proceed to post photos to message boards of the stand being defiled. But much of the time is occupied by Jesse at first being disgusted by his father before beginning to learn about his life and what they share in common without his somehow ever knowing.
I know I'm expected to grade Band On The Run on a heavy curve because it's a scrappy no budget indie effort from my hometown, but I can't quite get there and it's not a critic's job to hand out As for effort. Starting with the positives, Bagby's - the one "real" actor in the cast with numerous film and TV credits - performance is very good because Thomas starts off as an insufferable a-hole whose rage is poorly explained but he manages to make him more sympathetic over time than despite the thin, cliched script.
It's also fun to hear clubs like The Gold Dollar (where the White Stripes debuted) and Lili's name-checked as well as how Jesse responds to co-workers asking to be put on the guest list for their shows, "It's only five dollars." (So true. Been there.)
But going down the list the plot halves don't really mesh. For a story about a band, we never see them play more than a few seconds and while a point is made about how they feature three-part harmonies there is only one microphone at their practice space and the final show. The family drama half is completely borrowed from a forgotten 1986 dramedy called Nothing In Common starring Tom Hanks as an advertising executive whose elderly parents split up leaving him to care for his cantankerous father with hidden health issues played by Jackie Gleason in his final role. (Ironically, the best movie about being in an up-and-coming band is That Thing You Do, written & directed by Tom Hanks.)
Finally, the rivalry with Bull Roar resolves so conveniently with everyone getting along and the stupid mike stand actually not being that important to J.J. that it begs the question what was any of that about? His remark of what their next gimmick would be is also a second veiled shot at the White Stripes the movie makes where the writers clearly diss the Motor City duo, but aren't brave/dumb enough to do so by name and alienate what little interest they'd have in town.
And while I'm kicking the makers - The Powers That Be (think they have matching hats that read this?) - while they're down, the movie's website is a mess with five paragraphs about the Garage Era in Detroit before getting around to mentioning the movie while saying nothing about it. The cast run down uses the cast's headshots and lists their credits like a theater program and doesn't really explain who their characters are. One cast member, whom I'm not even sure who he played (and I'm not about to sit through 2-1/2 minutes of Amazon Prime commercials to go check the movie again), has a link to his various links and his own link to "First Radio Performance" goes to a YouTube video from what appears to be a Brooklyn cable access thing where he cues it up to AFTER his segment, starting on some unrelated act. One could write it off to TPTB being better at filmmaking that website design, but they're all from the ADVERTISING business according to their bio!
Finally finally, co-writer & director Jeff Hupp chose to shoot this in 2.4:1 widescreen because "widescreen equals cinematic" but due to the cramped confines of the practical locations it means many instances of 80% of the frame being walls while the remainder shows the people in the next room. Just as Saltburn goofed on its aspect ratio by going 1.37:1 thus denying the grandeur of the estate's locale, this should've been done in perfectly cinematic 1.85:1.
While I've definitely been critical of Band On The Run, I'm not so down on it as to recommend skipping it completely. It has a bit of the low-fi DIY charm that Clerks had while lacking that classic's focus. There are some amusing and/or heartfelt moments and if you're knowledgeable about the Detroit music scene's history at the turn of the millennium there may be just enough to catch it. Oh, and despite the movie's claims, I've never heard SXSW referred to as "South by."
Score: 4/10. Catch it on cable/streaming. (Currently on Amazon Prime Video)
