.png)
I watched 13 films in the first 14 days of January 2025. Five of those were movies I had seen at least once before. Here is my ranking of those five.
5. V/H/S/2, 2013, multiple directors, streamed on Prime Video, 2.5 stars.
I dove into this the night after I saw V/H/S, which I'll discuss in a later post. A couple minutes in, I realized that I had seen this one a year or so ago.
It's a found-footage anthology, consisting of a wraparound story that leads us into four separate self-contained short stories. Two of the segments aren't very good, the wraparound is just OK, one segment is entertaining and one segment is tremendously batshit crazy.
Unfortunately, the batshit-crazy segment, titled "Safe Haven," lands in the middle of the movie, and is followed by the anthology's worst segment and the inconsequential conclusion of the wraparound. So instead of going out with my head spinning round, I was left pissed off that I had to sit through 20 minutes of anticlimactic drivel. That seriously dampened my enthusiasm for this movie and, indeed, the rest of the franchise.
4. Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, 1978, directed by Philip Kaufman, streamed on Kanopy, 2.5 stars.
I remembered this movie fondly for 46 years. I remember enjoying it greatly when I saw it around 1978, and that iconic final scene has been etched in my brain since.
And then I gave it a rewatch, with much anticipation. And I was so disappointed. I was appalled right up front with the highly inappropriate relationship between the main characters, played by Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams. I actively tried to overlook that problem, passing it off as different societal norms in different times.
But I could not overlook all the holes and inconsistencies in the plot, which raised more questions than it could answer. Now, I'm not one to get too worked up about plotting problems in good movies. Generally, my focus is solidly on how the characters are written and how they interact and respond to the situations they are faced with. Maybe it's because I was so turned off by the two lead characters this time around that I turned my focus to the plotting. And I found it frustrating as hell. How does this invasion work exactly? Why do some pod people walk around like mindless zombies and others simulate their human counterparts perfectly? How can some humans be duplicated in an instant while others have to be in a deep sleep? Why does Brooke Adams get to run around buck naked while every other pod is fully clothed?
By the time we got to that iconic final scene, I was completely checked out.
3. Rest Stop, 2006, directed by John Shiban, streamed from Movies Anywhere digital library, 3 stars.
This was a direct-to-video release from a defunct Warner imprint. I acquired a digital copy several years ago as part of a sign-up promotion for a defunct Target streaming service. I watched this a long time ago, but I remembered nothing about it except the basic plot, a woman being terrorized and stranded at an abandoned rest stop.
I was pleasantly surprised this time around that Rest Stop (aka Rest Stop: Dead Ahead) is a reasonably effective psycho-stalker flick. It got a bit off-track at a couple of moments with the appearance of an inexplicably bizarre family traveling in an RV. But when the story was focused on Jamie Alexander's central character and her predicament, Rest Stop was richly engaging and tense.
Rest Stop definitely is worth your time if you like these kinds of stories and if you stumble across it somewhere. Justwatch.com says it is available as a digital purchase, and a quick Google search turned up a DVD.
2. Electra Glide In Blue, 1973, directed by James William Guercio, streamed on Prime Video, 3.5 stars.
Yes, that James William Guercio, best known as the producer for the original lineup of Chicago (Chicago Transit Authority in 1969 through Chicago XI in 1977). This is the only film directed by Guercio, who did it to launch a production company that didn't last very long.
Guercio truly caught lightning in a bottle with this movie, which launched Robert Blake's 1970s TV-cop career into the stratosphere. I was a fan of Blake from his early-1970s appearances on The Tonight Show, and I went to see this movie in its opening weekend. I remembered it being pretty good, and that was confirmed with this long-awaited rewatch. It drags in the middle act, when Blake's character joins his mentor for a homicide investigation. But the first and third acts, with Blake as a motorcycle cop, are fantastic.
Blake's performance is outstanding. It makes this movie what it is. It's an early-1970s cop action movie with a twist -- it isn't so much about the action as it is a fascinating character study of this ambitious but morally centered cop.
1. Kalifornia, 1993, directed by Dominic Sena, Shout Factory blu-ray (2019), 4 stars.
Writer Duchovny and photographer Forbes take a cross-country road trip to visit historic murder sites for a book project, and they take along Pitt and Lewis to share expenses after the younger couple have been evicted from their rented trailer. Hijinks ensue as the urbanite couple learn more about their redneck companions than they cared to know.
Sena was a music-video and TV-commercial director who took this stab at expanding his career into movies. He nailed it artistically. But Kalifornia was a box-office flop, sending Sena back to his roots. This film did well in the post-theatrical home-video market after Pitt became a major star, and Kalifornia now has a legacy as a cult classic.
I've watched it several times over the past 30 years. It's definitely dark, a little bit on the creepy side. But it holds up very well -- especially as a look at the early work of a couple of emerging superstars.
--------------------
Amazon purchase links (I am an Amazon affiliate, and your clicks help support this blog):
Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
Rest Stop (aka Rest Stop: Dead Ahead)
Comments
Post a Comment
Spammers will not be tolerated. All comments containing links to external sites will be removed.