The Death of Robin Hood - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I enjoyed the trailers for this and was looking forward to seeing it. Taking the story (yes, it's a flat out story) of Robin Hood and making him more in keeping with what a bandit would be at the time. Make him more real to the time. Make a dark movie. Yes!

And then I sat through this thing.

The first act is what I'd hoped for. Robin Hood is an amoral outlaw and knows it. He's old. He's now dealing with his victims' families out hunting him. And he's amorally killing them as they do. I will admit that I found the level of gore in this part gratuitous but I'm generally against gratuitous gore so it's not unique here. Fighting at the time wasn't heroic at all and it got ugly. I was honestly pleased.

And then the rest of the movie happened.

We go from a tired but still vital Robin Hood to a sad, tired Robin Hood. Unfortunately, we get two full hours of sad, tired Robin Hood.

What we also get is lots of Hugh Jackman close up face shots. Full on and then from the left 3/4 profile so he can do the eyebrow lift-side eye that he's done for decades. I'm serious here. I'd be tempted to see it again (A-List) and use a stopwatch to get how much of the runtime is just him and the camera. We also get a nekkid HJ where he's crouched down so you get the full side view. Is it in his contract that he has to be nekkid? Does the studio put it in there? Does he?

After the bait-and-switch first act what we get is a very slow movie building towards an undeserved redemption arc. I guess the director said they left it ambiguous if Robin Hood gets the arc or not but it's more the difference of a sledgehammer or two-by-four hitting you with the answer. It's there. It's very much there. And it wasn't earned.

The slow bits have him being (slowly) taken to some church on an island to be healed. I don't know what it is with having these remote locations for communities that need more than they have to sustain themselves. Sure, they show that there's gardens, orchards, and game there but honestly the number of people shown vs the size of the island means it ain't gonna fly. But it's there.

The slow part is the insistence on showing the scenery. Yes. It's wild country. Yes. There's fog. It's most likely supposed to be somewhere in northern England/Scotland given the number of people with red hair but it's never stated. Not that it matters. There's so much scenery. Oh. And the water around the island. There's a lot of that too. All this is accompanied by so much Celtic music.

Robin Hood is severely injured as part of the arc of helping Little John recover his farm, wife, and daughter. He got the farm, wife, and daughter by killing the man who was supposed to get the farm and then living there to marry and breed. The murdered man's family comes back, runs him off, and keeps his wife and daughter. He finds Robin Hood to help him get it back.

Robin Hood is far more grounded and reminds Little John that it wasn't his life to begin with but is convinced when Little John rhapsodizes about his wife. At no point does he mention the daughter, by the way. The two of them do get the farm back but the kid that Robin Hood shot through the head (yep) survived having the arrow through his skull and out his eye (gratuitous) ends up walking back to his family's farm muttering and then conveniently dying. The family patriarch suits up and leads the family to finish the job.

In that battle Robin Hood is stabbed multiple times in the upper right back and then pretty well pounded with a mace. He'd be dead if Little John hadn't killed the other guy before he could give the coup de gras. He's the one who knows of the whatever place that has "healing magic" and takes Robin Hood on a (slow) journey there. At some point on the road he cauterizes the stab wounds with his dagger (gratuitous and slow). There's a convenient boat that he rows across the channel to drag Robin Hood to the doorstep and leave there.

Once he's there the top whoever woman does his healing. They place him in a room that quite frankly should be at least five rooms but hey, big open airy room with a single bed by the window. He wakes up perfectly clean wearing and laying on white linen. Um. No? There's no way on freaking earth that he'd be that clean with shining clean hair. Especially if he's supposed to have been unconscious.

They've splinted his broken leg. Good. His stab wounds had been cauterized on the road. Good enough. They're using bloodletting for healing. Accurate. Robin Hood not dying of internal injuries. So bad, but we'll leave that aside for later.

The rest of the movie is him moping around the island and having slow conversations with the whatever woman who runs the place. It's a vaguely religious place and religion is touched on but it isn't a driving factor. Maybe there's supposed to be some subtext about him repenting. In the first act he says he never prays. The whatever woman prays for him as soon as he wakes up. She keeps sprinkling religion pellets into the scenes but it isn't too bad.

Robin Hood (Randolph I guess is his given name) spends his time healing, regaining his strength, and doing things like trapping rabbits. The whoever she is asked what his skills were and when she suggested the orchard he was offended and talked about hunting and trapping. Her parting shot (ha ha) was to tell him he was working in the orchard. Note - he never worked in the orchard but we get to see him making himself an arrow so there's that.

On the island is a man completely wrapped in linen with a metal nosepiece. He's a leper who's taken refuge. Now if you know anything about history lepers were outcasts and anyone who came in contact with them were outcasts too. But this guy is the one who takes the boat out every day, I guess looking for people who wanted to come to the island, so whatever. He kind of befriends Robin Hood by being well spoken and unthreatening.

Next on the agenda is Little John's daughter showing up on the island. Cue the emotional bonding nonsense. She's traumatized and runs away (still on the island). Robin Hood finds her in a cavern alcove that has a raised part in the center and candles. She trusts him, only having seen him once in her life and that's when she watched her mother get murdered, and he's the one she clings to. Robin Hood takes her under his wing.

Another kid shows up after having been attacked on the road. There's much foreshadowing in how he looks at the girl. So much foreshadowing. Robin Hood notices and rather than tell anyone he keeps an eye on the situation. That's kind of a joke because the kid lost an eye, which is why he's there. Although there's nothing special being done to him - stitch it up, cover it, hope it doesn't get infected.

This all takes place slowly, of course. Lots of scenes of kids that are never explained playing and working. Very few other adults. The whoever she is leaves off her headcovering early on to show short cut hair that's kind of a perfect bob with a bit of bangs. I won't get into how her hair should have been chopped off in hunks instead of a perfectly clean and smooth flattering face framing hairstyle.

There's not much else to tell of the time on the island. Lots of scenes showing it's an idyllic world removed from the harshness of the real one. Woo.

Robin Hood takes the boy to the shore, tells him about the logistical problems of killing and how families tend to take that badly, and gives him one chance to leave or Robin Hood will kill him. There's a whole morality lesson here where I guess you're supposed to see how terrible Robin Hood's life is because of the consequences of his actions and how he doesn't really care anymore.

The kid runs off, he rows back to the island, and the finale creaks into motion.

The leper guy is dying and wants to talk to Robin Hood. He's figured out who he is and asks if he remembers one of the stories. He doesn't. Turns out the guy in the story is the leper. Gasp. He makes Robin promise to never tell whoever she is his name because it turns out he killed her "beloved". Then he dies.

Of course the first thing he does when he gets back to the island is tell her who he really is. Even though she's been done with the bloodletting for a long time she shows up in his room with the bowl and nipper. She tells him how terrible it was when she found what was left of her husband in the house where Robin Hood had barred him in before setting it on fire. And that he'd been wrapped around their children. Then she nips one of the (Hugh Jackman Prominent Veinstm) to do the bloodletting, but this time she lets it go longer and when she reaches for the bandages he pushes them away.

OK. Robin Hood is finally going to die. Took them long enough to get there, right?

Earlier on there's a bit where the whoever she is says she didn't do what Robin Hood asked when he arrived. She apologizes for not letting him die. That's in the trailers too. I'm kind of disappointed neither one of them brought it up at this point in the story.

The daughter is there and he gives her the bow he'd promised he'd make for her. He has her nock an arrow and aim out the window. He'll tell her when to loose it. This is so drawn out as he bleeds to death. He tells her, she releases the arrow, done.

Now I get to rant! Well, rant more than I already did.

Slipping into my costumer role for a moment. The fabrics were pretty much period appropriate except for the perfectly even dye jobs. And that the daughter had fancy white embroidery around the neck of her dress even though the family lived in a tiny farm house that had a small stable open to the living area. A lot of the clothing had the seams to the outside and fraying. Not really a way to make them last. The whoever she was always used fresh clean white linen bandages when she wrapped him up after bloodletting. Nope. Selvedge edges and reuse. Those things would have been stained all to heck.

There's no way Robin Hood didn't succumb to internal injuries. The stabs would have gotten his kidney and intestines. The made definitely broke ribs and probably splintered them. He'd have had a collapsed lung. The broken leg was fine. That man was dead, however.

Bloodletting is a nick on a vein. It lets out some blood but then closes up. It closes up faster with a bandage and pressure but it closes up. There's no way he would have bled to death from that little wound. To do that requires a .. um .. probably best not to say the best way to slit someone's wrists.

If they'd tightened up the timeline and had him die of his injuries as they festered it would have given more of a sense of urgency for him to achieve whatever it was he wanted to achieve before dying. Setting a clock always puts in urgency. There was none of it here. He was tired, he imparted a life lesson on a kid who may or may not have taken it, he saved the girl's life if the kid didn't decide to come back, then he chose to die.

There's a nonsensical scene where whoever-she-is was in that same cavern where he found the girl. She's lit the candles, did a sage smudge, and is praying to whatever she sees through the hole in the roof. He spies on her there. I guess that's the island healing magic.

Candles! So many candles! That's not happening. Candles are expensive. If anything there would have been oil and rush lamps with the candles reserved for the religion stuff. They wouldn't have them burning in empty rooms. I so dislike that stuff.

Anyway. If you can't tell I didn't like this movie. I was disappointed in this movie. They started out so well and then literally wasted it after establishing that Robin Hood is A Bad Guy. I'm fine with long movies as long as they're long for a purpose. This one could have dropped probably near an hour and still not lost anything of note.

The non-paid reviews are coming in and they're not good. The things I wrote about are in most of them. The agreement is that it's too long and it's quite frankly boring after that first act. But hey, if you like looking at Hugh Jackman in a long grey wig and beard then you can keep yourself awake with that.

Disclosure Day - My Take (Spoilers)

 

What to say, what to say.

The movie walks, slowly, over ground well-trodden without bringing anything new to the screen. I think that's a pretty darn good summary.

Aliens. Government coverup. "The people can't handle the truth." Long exposition. John Williams bombastic score (he should have stayed retired). And the insulting cherry on the top is YET ANOTHER NON-ENDING.

I'm so tired of movies that don't tie up the story. Ooo. Let's leave it up to the audience's imagination. No. I paid good money to watch someone else's imagination. If I wanted to make up my own ending I'd have stayed home and written something original.

Another peeve is that the aliens are the same very tired little green men with skinny bodies and big heads. Lots of different kinds of ships, all the same aliens. Because, of course, all life in the universe is bilaterally symmetrical, shorter than humans, can breathe in our atmosphere, function in our gravity, and green/silver. Maybe those are the only ones that visit this backwater corner of the galaxy?

What we have here is two people who are two halves of alien intelligence, abducted when they were ten years old. The split is that the guy can understand the language, the woman can do mind reading woo-woo. There's a non-government company that works with the US government to scoop up all the alien goodies and profit off them while hiding the evidence. There's a small group within said non-government company that thinks the world should know.

The guy who can understand the language worked at the non-government company and stole a whole lotta weird looking drives worth of data. He's on the run to hand it off to someone else, only to be told he's the one who has to keep it. His girlfriend, who happens to be an ex-novice nun, brings the religious aspect in when they have to hide out for a night at her old convent. The woman is a weather girl (sorry ladies but that's the only way to say it - she's got a "hail shimmy" ffs) who suddenly starts speaking Russian after a cardinal wanders into her apartment.

Suddenly she's doing the mind reading woo-woo and speaks in that weird clicky language on air, but not after stopping to chat with a South Korean official of some kind who's having trouble with the guy translating so she sits down and speaks, what we can only assume to be, perfect Korean.

She goes on the run. The guy is on the run. There's mind control woo-woo using an alien artifact. There's a hella lot of shiny black cars and SUVs. Chase, chase, hide, hide, get to the people who want to reveal all.

The people who want to reveal all just happen to know how to bring the two people together to do really nothing except work together. The big reveal scene of them being abducted together is a nothing burger. She can use the alien artifact to do stuff. She does stuff with the alien artifact. Another chase scene to her TV station so they can do a big reveal.

The guys with black vehicles and black tactical gear take out the power. She uses the artifact to bring it back. The language guy uploads all the weird drives to the station's servers (fastest uploads I've ever seen in my life btw). She goes live. The guy in charge of the non-government company gives up and watches. The people in black leave. They get on worldwide news showing all the videos that language guy uploaded. Of course they start with Roswell, New Mexico and go from there.

The world picks it up. The pending WWIII is forgotten by everyone. The people who think the world should know literally wheel out a living alien. Said alien is a tall boi, stands up, and whispers to language guy. Language guy whispers to woo-woo lady. She goes in front of the camera. She does the non-ending. Cut to credits.

As you can see, absolutely nothing new to be had. If it weren't Spielberg this script would probably have been laughed out of every studio. It's tired.

A more polite person would call it a slow reveal. I'll call it what it is - too freaking long. They could easily have cut at least 30 minutes, if not more, and it wouldn't have been missed.

I kinda want my two and a half hours back.

Backrooms - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I know this is based off something on YouTube and that's starting to make me leery of anything from there. I'm in the minority on that, it seems, but I'm also pretty sure I'm not the target audience for these. I find them all, well, bad.

Gee. I spoiled the review.

Anyway. I do like the premise and liminal spaces is just creepy. Having someone find a liminal space that doesn't conform to anything hidden through a soft spot in a wall is a good writing prompt. I guess the original concept started as a 4chan post and there's a bunch of short stories about it. Before I saw the movie I saw that it was based on a book, so I figured I'd get around to reading the book afterward. I'm not reading the book.

A divorced frustrated architect who drinks and runs a very low-quality failing furniture store finds a "soft spot" in the basement wall that leads to a liminal space. In the middle of the first room is a pile made up of a bunch of furniture similar to what he sells. He picks up a stacked chair and finds it's fused to the one below. Then he wanders around the place without any rhyme, reason, or clear method to find his way back.

I have to interject. If I found a soft spot in the wall I'd back up, nope out, and start my "going out of business" sale the next day.

The guy is in therapy for his drinking and divorce issues. The therapist is annoying and we get flashes of her past that aren't useful for anything, really. Neither is she. She's used as a plot advancement because he shows her the drawing he's made from his explorations.

He recruits his employees to go with him and film what's there. They go. Stuff happens. There's screaming and things moving in shadows.

The therapist shows up at the store, goes into the basement, and watches a bug go through the wall that has been taped with a doorway. She goes through and does her own wandering around aimlessly.

This is where it really goes off the plot rails. The guy captures the therapist and there's a really wacked out scene in a kitchen. There's three "people" there and I guess one of them is the ex-wife. A version of people since they're very much not alive and not right. This is where the body horror comes in.

The guy's internal demon (or something like that) is out and about, kills the guy, and goes after the therapist for some reason. She does her own running about before she's caught because gas canisters all around the room have gone off.

Now to back up and condense the other thing in the plot. There's cameras in the space and there's a very brief shot of someone watching the feed. They show up again watching TV and seeing the furniture store commercial (that was shot by the employees who are no more) the guy realizes the owner is the person he saw in the liminal space.

M'kay. We're caught up.

People in colorful hazmat suits show up to cart the therapist away. She's put into a room and eventually the watching guy shows up. He says they used to make MRI machines but now they're whatever this is. Then she's shown as her own liminal space and not human.

I really dislike that two of the three YouTube movies have used ambiguous endings and they don't have the chops to write them properly. They seem like a cheap way to end things without having to write an ending. A good one will leave you guessing what's happening (Inception) but a bad one makes you feel like you just wasted a couple of hours of your time and attention.

There's no reason to care for any of these characters. There's no explanation or way to try to sort out what this space is. They shove some people into the situation and let them wander around a set that was so large the crew got lost at times. There's those few set pieces and the rest is really just watching them walk/run/scurry/hobble/crawl through rooms that sometimes have weird stuff in them.

I think I know the premise that this space is a memory of a memory. Kind of like a copy of a copy thing. That's great. Now tell us why the heck we should care.

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Groku - My Take (Spoilers)

 

First the bad news - it helps a lot to watch the TV series before watching this movie. The bad news is that the word "series" is both singular and plural.

Obviously watching "The Mandalorian" is kind of a no-brainer. It's right there in the title. But unfortunately they didn't put everything into that series. They dumped some of it into "The Book of Boba Fett". It's unfortunate because that series isn't very good, in my opinion.

"The Mandalorian" season two ends with Luke Skywalker coming to take Groku for his training. Let me expand on that. A digitally de-aged Luke Skywalker - both visually and vocally. Season three starts up with Groku back with the Mandalorian. Err?

The answer to that riddle is in "The Book of Boba Fett". The dedicated one episode and part of another to just Mandalorian stuff. Short version is that Mado misses Groku, wants to visit him, and has a chain mail shirt made for him (out of the beskar steel spear he acquired in season two). Aww. The cloth it's tied into looks like Groku's head. He goes to the planet where he's being taught, gets talked out of visiting Groku, and leaves the shirt for him.

TBoBF also introduces the villains - a pair of twin Hutts who are cousins to the late, unlamented Jabba the Hutt.

Luke makes Groku choose between Yoda's lightsaber and Mando's chain mail shirt. The general fan consensus is that this is a dick move on Luke's part, given the relative time they've spent together and Groku's age. The episode ends with that, the next one has Groku arriving in a bot flown ship to Tattooine and Mando, wearing the shirt. Turns out Groku failed the jedi "No attachments" rule.

And that's how they get back together. Not a love story for the ages and they try to do the tear jerker thing but it doesn't hit. Season three is somewhat relevant because it shows Mando taking Groku on as an apprentice and formally adopting him, as much as it seems formal adoptions are done. Groku is now officially a Mandalorian apprentice. He's even got his own little beskar steel rondel he wears as a breastplate with the clan symbol Mando wears.

Movie time.

The brief review is that it's stuntmen in the armor unless Pedro is showing his face. They're fighting and interacting with mostly CGI characters against CGI backgrounds. 

Anyhoo. On to the movie in a bit more detail.

Mando is now exclusively hunting down Imperial war criminals. He's hunting at the start of the movie. Many Stormtroopers meet their untimely/timely demise. Three AT-ATs are sent over the edge of a mountain while Mando and Groku run after his quarry on a kind of mechanical ostrich. Those things are seriously impractial with their high center of gravity and the ability to be taken out by damaging a single foot. But I digress.

This time the quarry is I guess brought in "cold", but they never show Mando going with the spatula to get proof of the job being done. Maybe they did it off screen but also the New Republic colonel who hired knew it was done messy but also didn't ask for any specific proof. Again maybe something handled off camera? Then again I don't remember him not bringing in his bounty "warm" in the series. Dunno.

She wants him to do another job. The combination of the two will get him a new ship - his beloved Razor Crest. He only gets the ship if he does the second job. He already refused payment on the first one, calling it a gift. Bad mercenary. Bad. The second job involves finding and returning the nephew of the Hutt twins. See that link to TBoBF? In return the Hutts will give information about the location of a known Imperial war criminal who has lots of information but has very little identifiable information to follow.

He takes the job. He meets the Hutts. They have an older picture of the nephew and it's an adorable baby Hutt hologram. Mando tracks him down as a really buffed pit fighter who's got one more fight before he's worked off his contract. He's also very aware that his cousins are looking for him because they need him very much out of the way to cement their place. This Hutt speaks perfect English (basic?) and just wants to make his own way in the world without having the specter of his father over his head.

Mando tries to buy out his contract and finds out that the fight is one where the kid is gonna die. Not might. Gonna. It's a type of fight where they keep sending opponents out until he's dead. Mando tells him this and while they're trying to break him out they're all gassed, Mando ends up in a cell, Groku ends up a bird cage.

I'm detailing a lot because this is where things are still kind of interesting.

Mando is tossed into the arena as the first opponent. The promoter had offered Mando a job as a pit fighter because he'd be a big draw, Mando declined impolitely. But hey. he's here now. Mando tells Hutt what kind of fight it is and the two of them work together to fight off all the creatures. Woo. They all escape and there's an honest to goodness speeder chase in the city.

Turns out Hutt knows what Mando needs and that the promoter is the Imperial war criminal. Now that he doesn't need the information from the Hutt twins he works with this Hutt to capture the guy. He brings the guy to the colonel, who then expositions that they had a deal with the Hutt twins and now Mando is in the crosshairs for skipping that step. Seems like it doesn't matter that the end result is standing there in cuffs. Seems like they're not willing to do a darn thing to help Mando after he got the results more quickly. Feels a bit .. how the Empire would do things.

Mando takes him back to his little farm he was given on Nevarro (assuming, not given any real reference for that one) and gets him a lift with a gunrunner he knows so Hutt can do his best to live his life and avoid his cousins.

Mado is captured by a bounty hunter (heh). Groku follows them in a ship with the little mechanics from season three. The twins have captured the nephew and are torturing him. They blame that on Mando, saying that they'd have given him a quick death if he'd done his part. Then they dump Mando into a pit pool filled with nasty creatures.

But first! They take his helmet from him! After all the crap he went through to atone for taking off his helmet they did worse and they knew it. I guess there's a loophole that it doesn't count if everyone who saw him is dead.

Nasty monsters. Fight scenes. Pedro's actually present in the movie. Groku and the little mechanics rescue Mando. But wait! Mando was bitten by the big monster and is now poisoned! Oh no!

He sends Groku off with the little mechanics and says he'll be right behind them. That's because the Hutts sent out a lot of their forces out to get him back. Mando goes off fighting until the poison drops him. At which point Groku pops up and tends to Mando, including healing the physical wound with the Force. Hence the "the old take care of the young, then the young take care of the old" stuff. Groku meets up with a CGI Cajun swamp dweller who can make an herbal poison remedy but - gasp - it may be too late.

Now I'll put in a bit that's meant to make people, mostly kids, laugh. Groku makes a mud hut for Mando and then uses the Force to push him into it. The helmet goes "boing" when it shows he's longer than the hut. Groku tries a few more times (boing boing boing) before covering his legs with ferns like he'd done earlier. Ha ha. Helmet go boing.

They use the battered gun runner's ship to storm the castle. Lots and lots and lots of mostly robot creatures fighting. Two big Warhammer 40,000 type terminators (if made by the Dark Mechanicum on a budget) guard the door. Groku gets inside and is playing with the wiring of one, making it random and damaging the other terminator. When they're both down he pops up and that's how Mando finds out he's still around.

They get in the throne room, more fighting. The bounty hunter that captured him gets a singlular fight. The nephew Hutt fights the twin Hutts. All three of the Hutts break through the grate into the pit pond. Groku uses the Force to lift nephew Hutt out of the pit pond. Yay.

A convenient save by New Republic ships, led by the colonel and including some of the characters from the series, takes out the entire compound. Mando, nephew Hutt, and Groku all survive. They go back to base, Mando and Groku take off, nephew Hutt decides to hang around and try to help the New Republic.

Honestly this thing couldn't have been tied up with a bigger bow.

On to the critique that I haven't already done.

One big issues is that there's no stakes here. We all know Mando and Groku are going to survive. We all know nephew Hutt will survive. All the good guy characters are walking merchandise opportunities. The only ones who die are the bad guys. The bounty hunter's dog-thing had taken one of the little mechanics and was playing with eating it but didn't. Groku gentled the thing with the Force when it was coming for him.

Something more subtle was that most of who got killed were faceless or Badtm. Storm troopers in armor. Robots. Fighting/non-sentient creatures. The Big Bad Guys (even then it's not quite confirmed that it's final). This was very kid-coded in that respect.

Knowing that Mando was mostly stunt performers and listed right after Pedro in the credits doesn't take away the sour taste in my mouth. Yes. I know. Darth Vader was acted by one performer and voiced by another so it's not new. It's just that giving him top billing when he's doing 99% voice work feels off. I've felt that way through the series too.

Groku is still cute and non-verbal. This time he's more proficient in things and him jumping around like Yoda was explicitly shown as part of his training by Luke. He's stronger in the Force too. They keep up the bit of him constantly eating, which still amuses me.

One big thing of note is that this movie excludes the female characters from both series. The only one is the colonel and even that role is minor. The series built up several good female characters but nope, they aren't given any consideration here. This has been very much noticed out in the wild.

A flat movie. Mostly CGI. No stakes. I'm not sorry I watched it but I have no plans to watch it again nor will it be on my movie server, taking up precious hard drive space.

In The Grey - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I went into this expecting some pleasant action and eye candy. What I got was a movie that was surprisingly smart, slightly snarky, twisty, and tightly told. And entertaining. It was refreshing after the series of duds I've had lately.

I had my doubts when I saw it was a Guy Ritchie movie but I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and two hours of my time. I'm glad I did. It has an "Ocean's Eleven" pacing at the start, right down to the on screen captions as they describe what they've done for planning. Steal from what works, right?

The woman is a lawyer who specializes in recovering large unrecoverable debts for an equity-type company. She uses not-quite-legal tactics when all other avenues have been exhausted. She's got Henry and Jake as her team (I'm not going to bother with character names), who then do all the wet work. She handles the courtroom and such.

Where does the money come from to set all this up? A very large up front payment from the equity-type company in return for her taking the job. The woman who is hiring her is slimy, as expected from an equity-type executive working her way up the building to higher ranking jobs. Needless to say the two women don't like each other.

Henry does intelligence, Jake does hands-on. The two of them have built up a strong partnership and are completely devoted to the woman lawyer. It's revealed later she got them out of a Chinese prison and they've worked for her ever since.

Between the two of them they set it up so the woman lawyer can go to the evil billionaires island to get the money, and get out. Unlike the last person who tried. They set up three different extraction scenarios and have their own team to do all the work. Of course the evil billionaire controls the island, the police, etc. plus his own private security wet work team.

As the billionaire refuses to pay, she goes after him in court and gradually starts impounding and otherwise getting injunctions against his businesses. She goes after his toys first - the private jet and yacht. Both needed to get on and off the island and meant to piss him off. It works. There's also a scene after the initial meeting where he sends a lot of goons out to kill her but they all get mowed down by her guys/team.

One interesting part here is that it's left ambiguous as to whether or not Henry and Jake are a couple. They dip into it but not enough to say for certain. They may just have worked together long enough that they have that kind of banter. I liked how they left that .. in the grey.

There's an escalation of meetings and court stuff until the evil billionaire gives in and agrees in exchange for her returning all his stuff. She agrees. They part ways. She lets the woman at the equity-type firm know the deal is done and to give him back his stuff.

Smash cut to three months(?) later and the woman lawyer is now in the desert somewhere. Exposition wise she's on the phone trying to get her payment. Both of her companions end up dead and the evil billionaire's head of security bundles her into the SUV. Before they do that she activates the tracker in her watch that she's still wearing.

This was an unexpected twist. The job was done. Normally the movie ends here. But nope. Now there's the issue of the woman lawyer at the equity-type company screwing both of them over. The evil billionaire plans on using the woman lawyer as leverage, only for her to say she also didn't get paid so she's useless for that reason. He leaves her in prison, not happy with not having her for leverage.

Now it's a prison breakout. Henry and Jake scouted the prison for the original job. All the unused equipment is still scattered around the island. They use the plans from earlier in the movie to make it happen. The bad guys are a teeny bit smart in this movie but still rely on cannon fodder for the big shootouts.

Henry and Jake don't accompany the woman when she leaves the island. They kidnap the evil billionaire, put him in a shipping container, and send him to the US.

Henry and Jake try to explain to the woman at the equity-type firm that it's in her best interests to keep her end of the bargain. Then the woman lawyer comes in and drops the big bomb of the evil billionaire turning state's evidence against the equity-type firm for making knowingly illegal loans, specifically her making them. And how the woman lawyer has talked to the bosses on those higher floors about it. She leaves and the phone rings for the woman at the equity-type firm, implying she's going to get called onto the carpet.

Anyway.

The action was tight and mostly believable until the big explosions started. Henry and Jake work well together and they played it convincingly on the screen. Their absolute devotion, and their team's absolute devotion, to the woman lawyer is a weak spot in the story but it's a small weak spot. There's good banter between Henry and Jake, and I'm a sucker for good banter. They're pretty to look at as well.

As I said I was pleasantly surprised by how much I like this movie. I will probably watch it again at home at some point when I need some mindless entertainment, and eye candy.

Obsession - My Take (Spoilers)

 

CW: Pet death, self harm

I'm going to say I'm not the right audience for this film. It's really geared towards the same audience as "Iron Lung".

As I did not like "Iron Lung", I didn't like this movie either.

The premise is a fairly standard one and it's either an official or unofficial tagline: "Be Careful What You Wish For". There's nothing wrong with the premise. It's a good premise. But if you know the premise you know the entirety of the story.

This one has the more common variant of wishing for someone to love them. This is never a good idea. Anyone who has read/watched these knows it's a bad idea and why. This follows in that track. Imposing your wish on someone else leads to them being, shall we say, conflicted.

I will say that this movie does a decent job of hauling the story through beginning to end. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

This movie concerns a group of four friends: two guys and two girls. Because I don't care enough to look up and continue to try to remember their names I'll be using placeholers.

Guy 1 likes Girl 2 and is too hesitant to tell her. He's concerned that he'll lose the friendship that they've built over the years. Guy 2 is helping/pushing him to do it, except not at their weekly bar trivia night because he likes that night and doesn't want it to get weird. Great friend, I know.

Guy 1 goes home and finds his cat dead. The poor thing got into his meds somehow and that was that. He picks up the scattered pills and puts them back in the bottle, back in the medicine cabinet. *cough cough Chekov's Gun cough* He then puts the cat in a garbage bag and scrubs the floor where it was. Lovely.

Talking to Girl 1 on the phone she tells him she dropped her crystal necklace down the drain. They're casually chatting, as friends do. He goes to the local metaphysical shop (because I honestly do think every city has at least one of them - we do) and the uninterested clerk points him to a display of crystal necklaces. While he's trying to figure out one to buy he sees a display of "One Willow Wish" for $6.99. Abandoning the crystal necklace idea he buys one.

He doesn't want to go to trivia night but also won't tell his close friend group "Hey, my cat died today and I don't feel like going out for trivia" so he goes. He tries to tell Girl 1 what he's feeling and Guy 2 confession-blocks him. Guy 2 is a bit of a dick. Girl 2 is background at this point.

Guy 1 drives Girl 1 home. He's on edge and forgets to give her the wish that he was going to do. Instead of doing that he reads the box while she's walking from the car to her house. Break to get your wish, one wish per person. He makes the fateful wish for her to love him more than anyone else in the world. Oo. Mistake.

Now we get into her working through the mental changes as the wish settles in. She's swinging between herself and what he wants. Or at least what he said. They end up at his place for a platonic night. He gets up and looks at not-Reddit to find out if the wish thing is true. He gets mixed answers. It's not-Reddit. That happens.

M'kay. I'll tighten this up. She gets more and more obsessed with him and he realizes that obsession is, quite frankly, terrifying. She harms herself a few times as she tries to get him to say that he loves her as much as she loves him, being jealous, etc. The other friends are concerned.

One scene that stands out is when he goes into work and she doesn't. She stands, staring at the door with a rather creepy smile, and it's quite obvious that she pees herself while she simply stands. When Guy 1 gets home he finds her there and she's vomited on herself for some reason. He keeps looking down, saying he'll clean up the mess, and as he takes her to the bathroom to clean up they show that she's voided from all three holes as she stood there.

Oh. And she does things with the dead cat. Because obsession.

Guy 1 calls the number on the box to find out if he can change his wish. Nope. The only way to break the wish is for him to die because the wish centers on him. He tucks that one away.

Girl 2 gets him out of the house in the middle of the night to talk to him. She tells him that Guy 2 and Girl 1 have been hooking up occasionally for the last couple of years, while Guy 2 knew Guy 1 was infatuated with her. Then Girl 2 talks around that she's more suited to him. She really is, to be fair.

Girl 1 has followed him and the predictable happens after he leaves the car.

Guy 1 goes back to the store and buys another wish, after a brief moment of not finding them where he expected. He gets one and recognizes the voice from the phone to the new clerk he's talking to. He tries to use the wish but it won't break. It really is one to a customer. He goes to Guy 2 and begs him to make a wish that Guy 1 had never made his wish. Guy 2 shows who he is by wishing for a billion dollars and money starts raining from the ceiling.

Finale! Guy 1 goes home and finds Girl 1 has done .. things to Girl 2. Guy 2 shows up in excitement about his wish and catches a bullet in the forehead for being there. Guy 1 gets away to the bathroom and tries to screw up his courage to use said gun on himself. He can't but eventually does slam down the whole bottle of pills that killed his cat. *cough cough Chekov's Gun cough*

As he's sitting there his face smooths out and he eagerly goes back to Girl 1. She's found the second wish he bought and used it, obviously to make him love her as much as she loves him (her common wailing refrain). Alas, the pills take hold. Because he's dead she's free to remember everything she did while she was under the influence of his wish. Fade to black.

Her using the wish on him was a nice touch. I'll say that.

The acting carries this movie and they do a pretty good job of it. It's not as transcendent as the reviews are trying to say. The actress for Girl 1 does carry the crazy well but she's not a "Scream Queen" as she's being dubbed. It's one movie. The characters all project what they're supposed to project.

As I said earlier, once you know the story you know how it will unfold. The ending can vary and I think they chose a good one for the pace of the movie. It does build nicely and doesn't focus too much on gross things. Too much. But honestly it's not as good as the critics want it to be. But people for whom it's targeted seem to like it.

I have a feeling there's going to be more of these two kinds of YouTube movies in the near future. The two that are out have done oddly well. So we'll see more until the format crashes.

The Sheep Detectives - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I saw this as a Screen Unseen, which was on a Sunday afternoon instead of the normal Monday Evening. Given that, the rating, and the (estimated) run time it was pretty obvious that this was going to be the movie.

First and foremost - I do not like Agatha Christie books. I just don't. There's a reason why I stated this.

The movie is very much Agatha Christie coded. That's fine since the premise is that the shepherd reads the sheep books very much in the Agatha Christie style. Given that it should be pretty obvious that I wouldn't like the movie. And I didn't like the movie.

There's lots of CGI sheep with some celebrity voice actors, who aren't really noticeable as to who they are. To me that's a slap in the face for voice actors but hey, what do I know? Except that this movie spent a lot of money on celebrities when they got no real return from them.

The bungling police officer was flat out annoying. Seriously. They swung the pendulum way too far to make him ineffective. I can suspend disbelief but this was a bridge too far. An inexperienced police officer in a small village isn't going to be doing a murder investigation without experienced help. Maybe that's just me but if I were part of that village I'd be screaming for them to get a real detective in there.

As with all Agatha Christie stories there's the cast of potential murders, etc. In this case there's also CGI sheep who are working to solve the crime. They end up dropping clues in front of the police officer's face to move the story along.

There's also a substory about discrimination but that's kind of a distraction. There's no value in it nor does it have a darn thing to do with the story itself.

Anyway. Everyone's potential motives and secrets are revealed, the police officer stumbles along the path the sheep provide, the murder is exposed after the steps they took to disguise themselves. Yippee.

It's not a bad movie. It's just not a good one for me. I didn't like much of anything about it, to be honest.