Tis November 27, 2015 and all 4 Shots from 4 Films are dedicated to four actors who share the same birth date. A date which all will have now figured out as being November 27. One comes from the Master of the Martial Arts himself, another a veteran character actor, a third who became a prawn and, lastly, the one who made the Glasgow Smile cooler before Heath Ledger.
4 SHOTS FROM 4 FILMS
Enter the Dragon (dir. by Robert Clouse)
Ichi the Killer (dir. by Takashi Miike)
On Wednesday, I saw the movie Creed and what can I say? Creed is exactly the film that we were hoping it would be. Not only does it continue the story of Rocky Balboa but it proves that Ryan Coogler is a major directing talent and that Michael B. Jordan is a film star in the making. Ever since Creed was first screened for critics, we’ve been hearing that “Creed is the best Rocky since the first one.” I would go even further to say that Creed is one of the best boxing films to be released since the first Rocky. Though the story may be formulaic, Creed is a film that will take you by surprise. No one — not even the biggest Rocky fans — was expecting it to be this good.
When the movie opens, Adonis Johnson, the illegitimate son of the legendary boxer Apollo Creed, is just another kid in foster care. His mother has recently died and Apollo was killed in the ring before Adonis was even born. Adonis is adopted by Apollo’s widow, Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashad). Fifteen years later, Adonis is working in an office and has just gotten a big promotion but he spends his weekends boxing in cheap venues in Mexico. Eventually, over Mary Anne’s objections, Adonis quits his job and moves to Philadelphia. Adonis wants to box professionally and he wants his father’s greatest opponent and best friend, Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), to train him.
But Rocky is no longer the man he used to be. He stills owns his restaurant and he still goes out to the cemetery to visit the grave of his wife, Adrian. Since the end of Rocky Balboa, Rocky’s best friend, Paulie, has died and his son has moved to Canada. (Paulie still gets an affectionate shout out when Adonis comes across his old porn stash at Rocky’s house.) Rocky is older, sadder, wiser, and more alone than he has ever been. He is also still haunted by Apollo’s death in the ring. At first, Rocky does not want to train Adonis but eventually, the younger man wins him over. Under Rocky’s tutelage, Adonis wins his first professional fight. When the news gets out that Adonis is Apollo’s son, he is given a chance to fight the reigning world champion, Ricky Conlan (Tony Bellew).
Watching Creed, it is obvious that Ryan Coogler knows his Rocky films. Creed features call backs to every entry in the series, even the ones that have not received the positive reviews of the first Rocky and Creed. Of course, the entire film is haunted by Apollo’s death at the hands of Ivan Drago in Rocky IV. The restaurant and Rocky’s visits to Adrian’s grave were first introduced in Rocky Balboa. When Rocky shows Adonis a picture of him and his son, it is a still photo of Sylvester and Sage Stallone in Rocky V. When Adonis first meets Rocky, he asks him who won the fight that ended Rocky III. Adonis’s fight against Conlan is a call back to Rocky’s fights against Apollo in the first two Rocky films. When Adonis thinks about his father, a clip of Carl Weathers flashes across the screen. Finally, just as Rocky fell in love with Adrian, Adonis falls for a singer named Bianca (Tessa Thompson).
Even though Creed is steeped in the history of Rocky, it still manages to establish its own identity. Creed is not just a film about boxing. It is also about a son’s effort to escape the shadow of his famous father and establish his own identity. Michael B. Jordan gives a performance that feels so real and so honest that it constantly takes us by surprise.
Speaking of surprising performances, Sylvester Stallone has never been better. This is not only his best performance in the role of Rocky Balboa but the best performance of his underrated career. It is a performance that is totally devoid of ego and Stallone has never been this vulnerable on screen. If Stallone is not, at the very least, nominated for an Oscar for his performance here, it will be an injustice.
Coogler does a good job of capturing the mean streets of Philadelphia and watching Adonis’s training montage is an inspiring experience. (It would not be a Rocky film without an inspiring training montage.) Coogler also does a good job filming the action inside the ring. The second fight, which is shown in almost one entirely unbroken take, is especially exciting.
Creed is a stunningly effective film. When I saw it, the audience broke out in applause at the film’s final shot. Rocky Balboa’s story may be close to finished but Adonis Creed’s has just begun. I can not wait to see where it goes.
It’s the turn of the 20th century and the Old West is fading into legend. When they were younger, Steve Judd (Joel McCrea) and Gil Westrum (Randolph Scott) were tough and respect lawmen but now, time has passed them by. Judd now provides security for shady mining companies while Gil performs at county fairs under the name The Oregon Kid. When Judd is hired to guard a shipment of gold, he enlists his former partner, Gil, to help. Gil brings along his current protegé, Heck Longtree (Ron Starr).
On their way to the mining camp, they spend the night at the farm of Joshua Knudsen (R.G. Armstrong) and his daughter, Elsa (Mariette Hartley). Elsa is eager to escape her domineering father and flirts with Heck. When they leave the next morning, Elsa accompanies them, planning on meeting her fiancée, Billy Hammond (James Drury), at the mining camp.
When they reach the camp, they meet Bill and his four brothers (John Anderson, L.Q. Jones, John Davis Chandler, and the great Warren Oates). Billy is a drunk who is planning on “sharing” Elsa with his brothers. Gil, Judd, and Heck rescue Elsa and prepare for a final confrontation with the Hammond Brothers. At the same time, Gil and Heck are planning on stealing the gold, with or without Judd’s help.
Ride the High Country was actually Sam Peckinpah’s second film but it’s the first of his films to truly feel like a Sam Peckinpah film. (For his first film, The Deadly Companions, Peckinpah was largely a director-for-hire and had no say over the script or the final edit.) Peckinpah rewrote N.B. Stone’s original script and reportedly based the noble Steve Judd on his own father. All of Peckinpah’s usual themes are present in Ride the High Country, with Judd and, eventually, Gil representing the dying nobility of the old west and the Hammond brothers and the greedy mining companies representing the coming of the “modern” age. Ride The High Country‘s final shoot-out and bittersweet ending even serve as a template for Peckinpah’s later work in The Wild Bunch.
Much like the characters they were playing, Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea were two aging veterans on the verge of retirement. For these two aging stars, who had starred in countless westerns before this one, Ride The High Country would provide both fitting farewell and moving tribute. This would be the last chance that either of them would have to appear in a great movie and both of them obviously relish the opportunity. The best moments in the film are the ones where Judd and Gil just talk with the majestic mountains of California in the background.
Among the supporting cast, Ron Starr and Mariette Hartley are well-cast as the young lovers but are never as compelling as Gil or Judd. Future Peckinpah regulars R.G. Armstrong, L.Q. Jones, and Warren Oates all make early appearances. Seven years after playing brothers in Ride the High Country, L.Q. Jones and Warren Oates would both appear in Peckinpah’s most celebrated film, The Wild Bunch.
The elegiac and beautifully-shot Ride The High Country was Sam Peckinpah’s first great film and it might be his best.
Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea in Ride The High Country
Right up front I have to say that this is a big step down from Turkish First Blood. Yes, the actor who plays Rambo resembles the character more than Cüneyt Arkin did. However, what made Arkin so good was his delivery, not his muscles or a more genuinely wounded soldier look. He was intimidating and he made the action exciting. He filled his role with an enthusiasm that isn’t matched even remotely by this Rambo. Oh, and the print I watched had good subtitles, but it looked more radioactive then the set of The Conquerer (1956). Let’s talk about the movie.
Just like the first two Kilink movies, this one opens with the equivalent of a trailer of the movie you are about to watch that seems to seamlessly blend into the beginning of the movie. As such, we are immediately shown this movies Rambo named Serdar (Serdar Kebapçilar). As you can see, he’s got the muscles, and he’s got the I can and will kill you if needed, but I’m permanently wounded inside look about him. We’ll skip the rest of the trailer, cause that’s the rest of the movie. A rest of the movie that is kind of confusing. There is a lot of who is actually working for who stuff going on here. I will try to navigate it, but it’s really just something you wade through to reach the action sequences.
This guy has been given a blank check to just do whatever he needs to in order to stop these bandits/terrorists in the mountains. He arranges a hit on a car so that some of the bandits will get captured. It’s a little unclear to me how this worked since it appears some people died, but regardless, they now have some of them in prison where they are conveniently placed in the neighboring cell to Serdar. They send Serdar and the bandits away to be delivered to the appropriate authorities when Serdar arranges a breakout.
The men he helped escape agree to take him to their leader. Serdar gives them that choice, or death. At this point, I think we are cutting between the military guys and Serdar helping the other guys, but I think the military guys are shooting at them too. Doesn’t matter because we get another scene like in Turkish First Blood where the girl is having trouble getting up the slightest of inclines.
This, the one in Turkish First Blood, and Black Widow’s capture in Avengers: Age Of Ultron (2015) are the least inconvenient character inconveniences I’ve seen since that guy named Julius tried to fight Jason on the rooftop in Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989).
Now Serdar is taken to a home. I’m not to sure about what goes on here, but Serdar kills some people and his love interest comes out of it.
It’s interesting that director Çetin Inanç returned from Turkish First Blood to make the sequel. He’s not the only one who returned.
Super over the top bad guy returns as well. Now the movie really is just a long string of torture scenes before Serdar goes all Rambo on them. In other words, highlights!
It appears that the big bad guy decides to send Serdar out on a mission for him, but that doesn’t really work out. This is when the action largely takes over the rest of the film. Unfortunately, this is like the last 20 minutes or so of the movie. There are a few dialogue exchanges between Serdar and the girl. More highlights!
The flying knife thing makes a return in Turkish Rambo.
With big bad guy dead after excessive use of a rocket launcher, Serdar is congratulated and let go to return to his unit. End of story!
Watch Turkish First Blood first, then go ahead and take a look at Turkish Rambo. It’s nowhere near as good, but it has it’s moments.
This is one of the most awesome things I have sat through in my entire life. It’s mindless entertainment with frantic editing and cinematography that helps to keep an intense pace. Cüneyt Arkin kicks massive amounts of ass and I don’t care how old he is, he should be in the next Expendables movie. The soundtrack is so epic that you could play it over Moses parting the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments or one of those battles made up of a cast of thousands. I even landed a version that clearly had machine translated subtitles which means I sort of get what was going on, but they say it in the most hilarious way possible. The only issue to say up front is that if you get motion sickness easily, then maybe this isn’t for you because the camera points upward and spins. Not too often, but combined with everything else, it might get you. Otherwise, stop reading now and just go watch it. Turn off your brain and just enjoy.
For those of you who actually want to read about this film first, here we go!
The movie opens up on a house party which is soon invaded by a gang that I will probably see again when I watch Turkish Mad Max. They are looking for somebody and they aren’t going to leave even when one of the people tells them to “get out you fuckers!!!” There’s a fair amount violence here before it cuts to a pair of panties on a woman. She just turns and leaves the room where a guy comes in, wakes a guy up, and kicks him to death.
Now comes one of the oddest scenes in the movie. A lady who is in several of these Turkish movies is driving a car with a child and an old man. They come across what appear to be dead bodies. But then they get up and come towards the car after them. And by come after them, I mean they totally act like zombies.
The only reason I know they weren’t actually zombies is because the leader of that gang finally calls them off of her. It’s the weirdest thing in this movie. You keep wondering are they trying to rape her or literally take a bite out of her. It’s not clear what was going on in this scene even after you find out they’re not zombies.
After the camera gets knocked on it’s side…
and she introduces this guy’s chest to a branch…
we cut to Cüneyt Arkin playing this movie’s Rambo named Riza. He is being walked in handcuffs by two soldiers. They try to help out. It leaves her free to show up later in the film, and Riza to do the leave town scene from First Blood. But first, we are introduced to the main villain of the movie.
Best I can figure is that he comes from Riza’s military past, is a bit of a gangster, and has a personal grudge with Riza. I think Riza was involved with the death or maiming of his son or someone he cared for, which is why he was being taken to court. It’s also why his gang seemed to be trying to eliminate any witnesses that could derail the upcoming court case for him.
Now Riza is walking down the road and passes the gang. They tell him to leave and he doesn’t. In fact he walks behind them as they drive away and seems to be able to walk as fast as they can drive. They turn around, but the way it’s done it does make it look like he magically transported in front of them. Now they take him to some ruins. This is when we get some of those glorious subtitles.
Then they beat him. This is the equivalent to the scene in First Blood where they pull the razor out to shave him and Rambo flips out. This scene is actually done quite well as it cuts from Riza tied up and cut in flashback to them beating him in the present, while a shot of his unflinching face is zoomed in on.
Arkin is pretty intimating and you know these guys are in trouble. Then this happens.
He breaks free and apparently there is a heavily forested area nearby. They follow him into the forest and we do the whole jumping off the cliff thing. It cuts him up, but he’s fine. He’s Cüneyt Arkin. The man punches rocks.
See! He’s fine. He just got hit by some ketchup on the way down. Now we meet this movie’s Colonel Trautman.
He is trying to deal with the villain of the movie who isn’t listening. The guy tries to tell him he has hundred of witnesses, but Trautman says witnesses are for sale. It doesn’t matter what he says because this guy says “Riza was convicted and he is outlaw now.”
After emerging from leaves and rolling from one part of the forest into another, he kills and eats a crab that is stock footage one minute, then actually there.
Next we meet this guy who isn’t happy with Riza as you can see. I’m not sure if he is supposed to be the son of the bad guy who he said was dead or is just somebody else who is angry with Riza. Regardless,
To which the guy responds “I have to see his carcass clad. I’m a dead, everybody will die!”
Now Riza finds himself in a cave that I’m pretty sure is Superman’s lair from The Return Of Superman. The director of that film was even involved in the production of this movie. Guy still has an unfortunate first name. Especially when this film is introduced in the opening credits as a Kunt Film.
Anyways, after angry no arms and legs guy kills a guy with a bomb and Riza cuts something off his skin with a knife, the film really starts to get manic with it’s editing. Riza is digging in, Trautman is beginning his search for Riza, and the gang head into the forest some more to get themselves killed. I know The Cinema Snob review of this already mentioned it, but seriously, sometimes it does look like Cüneyt Arkin is posing for the epic soundtrack.
Meanwhile, more bad subtitles.
Now that Riza has a walkie talkie, they start to try and reach out to him, but he basically ignores them. He hears someone and throws the knife and pins the girl from the beginning of the movie against a tree. After unpinning her we get a scene that rivals Black Widow being captured for what felt like three minutes in Avengers: Age Of Ultron (2015).
Riza just walks up that tiny little incline, but she seems to be having all the trouble in the world. You’d think she has something wrong with her leg or something that could explain this, but I didn’t catch anything. She was standing before, and stands up the second he gives her his hand. I get why we see her bathe in a river though. She’s beautiful and she could use a little wash after the attack at the beginning of the film. Then she gets out of the water and walks over to Riza and the epic music kicks in. It’s hilarious. Think he’s going to do anything about it. Nope. It just cuts to her dressed and they eat. There’s a lot of sudden cuts in this movie.
Time to go back to the bad guy who does a great job playing a really deliriously angry man who wants Riza dead. That, and more hilarious subtitled lines.
To borrow from The New York Dolls song Stranded In The Jungle: Meanwhile, back in the jungle. Riza is wearing a bush, then we cut to the girl in the caves. It’s supposed to be rain on the outside of the caves, but it sounds more like some monster is scratching at the walls to come and get her. That, or rocks falling from the sky. But then Riza shows up and suddenly those effects go away. Now they try some more to get in touch with Riza on the radio. Then he and the girl have a brief exchange in which we find out some more about Riza.
It’s all clear to me now. Actually he does go on to say “a war between good and bad but who is the good?”
At this point, it’s basically non-stop action. So let’s just do some highlights.
Now the bad guys have Riza and the girl corned in a cave. They bring in a bulldozer, a giant hammer, and explosives to try and kill him. It does kill her, but Cüneyt Arkin of course emerges from the rubble.
He now does this mad run where he slits the throats of each person he meets basically without stopping.
They try to drive away, but you can’t escape Cüneyt Arkin. He’ll just grab onto the car, which he does. Then he has a final battle with the gang leader.
Now Riza just has the big bad guy to deal with and the maimed guy. Riza just shoots the bad guy in the head after giving him some parting words. Then we finally learn what this armless and legless guy’s problem is with Riza.
Riza and this guy were fighting in a desert with the camera on it’s side. The guy got ahold of some water, drank it, then ran into a minefield. The guy tries to blow him up, but Riza figures it out and it’s the guy who blows up instead. With everyone dead, Riza is apparently a free man now, and he walks away from the townsfolk and Trautman.
He truly became “honoured wild blood.”
Nothing I can say about this can do it justice. I’ve seen The Cinema Snob review numerous times and even it doesn’t do it justice using actual clips from it. You’ve got to see it to believe it. It’s so much 80s action fun. Also, it’s honestly pretty well put together. It does a great job of keeping the crazy pace and that soundtrack will periodically kick in to give you dose of adrenaline. Whether you find it with subtitles or not, just see it.
Before I stuff my face with turkey, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, etc, I’d like to share a laugh with you, so here’s a 1945 cartoon from MGM titled JERKY TURKEY, directed by the great Tex Avery, with the voices of Daws Butler and Bill “Droopy” Thompson. Enjoy, and have a safe and happy holiday!
Apparently, Japanese actress Setsuko Hara passed away on September 5th, but it seems we are only hearing about it now. She is probably best known for the films she made with director Yasujirô Ozu, but she worked with other well known Japanese directors as well.
Sound Of The Mountain (1954, dir. Mikio Naruse)
Tokyo Story (1953, dir. Yasujirô Ozu)
Late Spring (1949, dir. Yasujirô Ozu)
No Regrets For Our Youth (1946, dir. Akira Kurosawa)
Wow! This should have been called Kilink: Strip, Kill, and Please Explain This Movie To Me. Well, when this happens, you can turn to somebody else’s plot summary. Let’s see what it says on IMDb:
The 3rd of the long Kilink series picks up exactly where the 2nd film (KILINK UCAN ADAMA KARSI) left off. This time Kilink is between 2 rival gangs and manages to turn one against the other. All of them are after a precious microfilm and a big foreign treasure. Kilink proves to be the most perfect Fantomas of them all, changing disguises more often than he changes socks. At the same time, it’s raining gorgeous ladies all over the place. Most of them rivals….All of them falling for him or off balconies, pushed by him. In a brilliant sequence, he punches a treacherous pussycat, strangles her with his bare hands and chucks her off a balcony. The film features the classic torture-the-tied-woman scenes. In one of them, even a snake is used for a quicker confession. Endless shootouts, car chases, murders, beat ups and plot twists make this sequel one of the best Turkish auctioneers ever. This time, our anti-hero proves to be a real HERO in at least one instance! But above all he proves to be a fine nationalist who loves and supports his country!!
Hmmm…it is the third movie in the series. I know that because I watched Kilink In Istanbul and Kilink vs. The Flying Man. That part is right. Not sure how long running this could be seeing as I can only find one more of these Kilink films, but maybe there are more.
It does pick up where the first one left off. Well, first it tells us this one is “fictional, based on comics and fairytales.” I get the fictional and comic book part, but what messed up fairytales is this based on? Okay, then it does go to the ending of the second film.
At the end of Kilink vs. The Flying Man he did fall off a tower to his death. Or at least as much of a death as a character like Kilink can have. But then he seems to just magically pop up again. They don’t even pull a Hell Up In Harlem (1973) for this. He’s just back.
He’s with a girl of course. I guess Turkish women in the 1960s all had a Zentai fetish. He tells her he needs to go to “a place you cannot even imagine.” And by that, he means “New York, honey”. And by New York, I’m pretty sure he means San Francisco.
I can’t honestly say for sure because I’m no expert on either city, despite living next door to San Francisco, but that doesn’t look like New York to me. There’s also these two shots as well. Even if I did know them better, the stock footage looks so bad that I’d still probably not recognize either city.
Plot summary said Kilink is going to get in between two rival gangs. This is when you know you’ve just starting watching one of the weirdest Kilink movies. Oh, and the movie began with music from Dragnet, and I’m pretty sure that along with the James Bond stuff, they have also lifted music from Forbidden Planet (1956).
Yep, a bunch of guys walk into a room dressed like the KKK with numbers on their hats where one of them proceeds to do the Hitler salute. After that, the fact that Kilink can still somehow put on another man’s face and hands is the least weird thing about the movie. I guess these guys are one of the gangs and Kilink is there to find out what’s going on. They talk about some microfilm “in the safe of the Paragonic Embassy for the launch of the missiles, can affect the world history?” I love subtitles. Also, according to them “Istanbul is the only paradise on earth. The center of international smuggling, with the treasures at Keratius and the diamonds of Topcapi.” They “will steal the microfilm of Turkish radars and missiles and we will sell it back to the embassy for many millions.”
Well, that’s one gang. Where’s the other one?
Ah, there they are. I love how we have a guy wearing an eye patch, a guy in sunglasses, and a third guy who looks like he has a giant spike for his hairstyle. We know these guys are bad.
No, not because they have kidnapped this lady and are holding her kid, but because of this.
Oh, it’s on!
According to the plot summary, it’s “raining gorgeous ladies all over the place”. This person forgot it’s also raining hilarious looking bad guys as well.
However, the person is right that there are gorgeous ladies too. Luckily, this lady is smart cause…
she figures out that’s Kilink, and I’m pretty sure it’s without having sex with him. Not that Kilink hasn’t had sex in the other movies…somehow. But here he’s in disguise. I really don’t wanna know how sex with him works then. Well, the plot summary is right. He does do away with her by choking her, then chucking her off a balcony.
And apparently, he also now leaves “the mark of Kilink”. That is he punches the person in the face to leave an imprint of his ring. Something I couldn’t help but think here is that these guys must be sweating bullets if it’s warm enough for her to be lounging around in a bikini.
Also, let’s throw in Turkish Barbara Streisand while we’re at it.
After Kilink kills a guy, then apologizes for having to take his clothes, we find out just how evil eye patch gang is.
I bet Hakki also likes to give them Pavulon so he can see them chill. But before this goes anywhere, Kilink shows up to stop it.
Skinning grown men so he can wear their skin is just fine for Kilink, but don’t you dare touch the children.
Now people are really starting to catch on that they weren’t prepared for Kilink. Just look.
See! Nobody realized Kilink. Especially this lady.
After more awkward kissing, Kilink tosses something on her face that kills her. With the microfilm in hand he does something that can only be termed as magic in order to invisibly imprint the microfilm on her back, which he can retrieve from her body with “infrared rays” later.
Now those “endless shootouts, car chases, murders, beat ups and plot twists” really kick in. It’s all very confusing. All you really need to know is that Kilink is still a bad guy, is a fan of Yojimbo, and must have suddenly got a conscience with a dose of nationalism by falling off that tower. What else did that plot summary say? Oh yeah, the snake.
Cause blondie apparently knows where Kilink is, so dark haired lady decides to torture her to get the information. And by torture, I mean string her up and threaten to have this snake empty it’s poison into her. Also, they get really slap happy in this movie. A lot of people get slapped. There’s even two times where the sound jumps the gun and makes the slap sound before the person is actually hit.
Kilink decides to pay a visit since it is his movie. He and dark haired lady have sex. At least I’m as sure of that as one can be considering it’s a guy in a skin tight skeleton costume. However, the poor guy can’t get any privacy. A shadow moves across the bottom right hand corner of the screen during this scene.
At least the boom mic didn’t pop in to make the poor guy feel inadequate. What else did that plot summary say?
I guess this is the one time he’s the real hero. He pretends to be on the side of the dark haired lady, but he cuts down blondie on his way out. She says she “should have realized!” As we learned earlier in the movie, “nobody realized Kilink.”
Now we get a lot of Kilink running around. To give you an idea what basically the remainder of this film is like. Take a look at at this longplay of Pepsiman.
It’s like that. Also, for who knows what reason, it’s become a Thanksgiving tradition of mine to watch that longplay. Figure that one out. But we don’t have time for that oddity because Kilink has to go and retrieve the microfilm off the girl he killed earlier in the movie.
He’s there with dark haired lady and of course she betrays him. Lot a good that does her. She tells him “your end has come. Hell awaits you.” Not this time because she is then killed by a magic bullet that somehow goes through her dress and her skin to land inside of her and kill her. Even Kilink seems perplexed.
After confusing Turks just trying to drive to work by running around in a skeleton costume…
Kilink gets some new skin and…and…who cares! It’s just more of the same stuff. All we need to know is this.
Now Kilink has his final showdown with the bad guys, and actually gets captured by the police.
So when did Kilink go from fighting Superman so he can make an ultimate weapon to being a symbol of Turkish nationalism? I buy that he cares about the people of Turkey about as much as I buy that the criminals in M (1931) actually cared that children were being murdered.
I guess we hit all those points in the plot summary, and I still don’t get it. Well, we have one more of these Kilink movies left. Next time he and Django are going to go at it.
I would have thought this movie was shot by the same cinematographer who did Love On The Air (2015), but IMDb tells me differently. Love On The Air was shot by Jon Joffin and according to the credits of this movie, a Todd Williams shot this one. But both films were directed by Kristoffer Tabori. I guess Tabori has developed a fondness for random camera obstructions and large sections of the frame being out of focus. The blinded by the light shot even makes a return from Love On The Air.
Now in all fairness to Tabori, you can tell that he is probably trying to bring some style to the cinematography of the Hallmark movies he makes. You can see it in shots like these.
I remember Rainer Werner Fassbinder having a fondness for using mirrors like this shot from Ali: Fear Eats The Soul (1974).
Just like one of Fassbinder’s idols Douglas Sirk did as shown in this shot from Written On The Wind (1956).
Even those other shots show a purpose. Throwing things in front of the camera is probably an attempt at composition in depth, which director Josef Von Sternberg was best known for. Here’s an example from The Scarlet Empress (1934).
That one shot where things are out of focus around the character is framing like this shot also from Ali: Fear Eats The Soul.
The point is, I think I see what he is going for, but it doesn’t come together in this, nor in Love On The Air.
He also brought us Just The Way You Are (2015), Portrait Of Love (2015), A Ring By Spring (2014), and My Gal Sunday (2014). So obviously this movie is going to be about a baker who has been burned by a previous relationship who wants to follow rules for dating someone new, which includes going out of focus transitions, reuses shots from other Tabori Hallmark movies, screws up at least one computer screen, and ends with a bomb being stopped by a wedding ring. Well, not quite. It’s shot the same way Love On The Air was. It’s considerably better than Just The Way You Are. It’s not sleepwalking through it’s plot like Portrait Of Love. It does screw up two computer screens, but not in particularly bad ways. Finally, while it is at least 1/3rd as confusing as My Gal Sunday, it doesn’t end with a bomb being stopped by a wedding ring.
I am actually going to take a shot at talking about the plot of this movie. Something that will probably be disappointing seeing as I’m terrible with these murder mysteries, and the Hallmark ones are particularly confusing for me. I even watched this with my Dad who reads murder mysteries, and he attempted to explain it to me afterwards largely unsuccessfully. I’ll try, but first.
If you’ve read some of my other reviews you’ve probably picked up that I am a fan of The Cinema Snob. What’s odd is that watching this movie had ties back to the two most recent reviews he’s done. The first comes in the form of the commercials. During one of the breaks there was an ad for Liberty University. They are the ones who brought us Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas (2014). During these same commercials, Hallmark promoted their upcoming Thanksgiving Day thing hosted by Candace Cameron Bure, who is Kirk’s sister. The Snob reviewed that movie last week.
The other tie-in is a little more loose. The guy who dies in this movie is named Larry Jaeger. This week’s Snob episode is on a really really really bizarre Christmas special called Ms. Velma’s Most Incredibly Magnificent Christmas Week. Velma’s last name is Jaggers. And of course this special comes on a disc along with Rock: It’s Your Decision which I have reviewed on this site.
Odd coincidences that I had to mention. But let’s actually talk about this movie now. Or at least as much as I can before I say I don’t want to spoil things because I actually have reached a point where I’m too confused about the plot to discuss it further.
The movie opens on Hannah’s Cookie Jar Bakery & Cafe where Hannah is played by Alison Sweeney. I don’t remember her place looking like this in the previous film, but I also watched that movie back in August. During the opening scenes where we meet friends, customers, and her nutty mother, we learn that there are a lot of blondes in this town. Also, we hear a Dr. Love (Calling Dr. Love by KISS) on the radio.
No, not that Dr. Love. This lady’s catchphrase is “that life without love is only half a life.” So what’s the other half? I’m assuming it’s referring to having that other person whose happiness becomes and fills in the other half of your life. We also learn that “Crazy Elf is crazy!” And so are his prices!
Later in the film Crazy Elf learns that he should stay in his little house because he gets shot. Crazy Elf is the mascot for a Christmas tree lot owned by Larry Jaeger who as I said is found dead. This is one of those cozy mysteries where the main character really doesn’t have a reason to be investigating other than that she is a busy body. At least the cop friend played by Cameron Mathison keeps telling her this.
Wait…
the mother is played by Barbara Niven. Last time I saw her was in that lousy lesbian love story A Perfect Ending (2012). I thought I recognized her.
Anyways, now that the body has been discovered, it’s a good time to get a look at Hannah’s license plate.
And they make sure you get a good look at the plate several times throughout this movie. It’s kind of like those movies that want you to believe the movie totally takes place in America because of the American flag in the scene. Like Italian Batman and Prom Night III: The Last Kiss.
However, late in the movie they left in this shot.
Fido is a Canadian cellular company. It’s kind of sad they didn’t fix that considering they went through the trouble of getting the license plates, using actual text messages, and near the end of the film properly faking a phone call to her cellphone that even shows up as Cameron Mathison’s character’s name.
Easy to fix too. Oh, well.
The remainder of the film is her mother nagging her about dating, Mathison telling her to stop putting herself in danger, and a red herring that gets picked up by the cops and jailed. That being Dr. Love who turns out to have been and technically still is married to Larry Jaeger who apparently was a con man. The rest would be just laying out the plot point by point. Otherwise known as this is when the film really lost me.
At this point, having seen quite a few of these Hallmark mysteries, I would say this is a series they can drop. Lori Loughlin is enjoyable enough in the Garage Sale Mystery movies. It’s always funny to see Candance Cameron Bure run around playing Aurora Teagarden like she’s on speed. And I think The Gourmet Detective one’s are the best I’ve seen recently. Even though I wish they would just change Brooke Burns character to being an Inspector given that is what she would be called if she were really on the SFPD. You can even see Prentice E. Sanders referred to as an Inspector in my review of Law Enforcement Guide To Satanic Cults. I only recommend this movie if you are already a fan of the books, which I’m sure my book gal Michelle will probably tell me about if she reads this review.
And this has been possibly the longest and only film school dissection of a Hallmark movie that I will probably ever write.
“A Titan against a Titan!”
Captain America: Civil War is the opening shot of Marvel’s Phase 3 for their cinematic universe. The huge success of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, both in the box-office and among critics, even convinced Marvel Studios and Disney to pit this upcoming sequel against DC’s own Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. One of the two had to blink and move their release date and it ended up being DC.
In what many have called Avengers 2.5 due to the amount of Marvel superheroes involved in the story, Captain America: Civil War will look to explore the consequences of the collateral damage incurred by Captain America and his teammates in the Avengers whenever they fight it out in public. The destruction of Midtown Manhattan during the Battle of New York was the start. The wreckage of three advanced SHIELD Helicarriers in the Potomac was another. Yet, it looks like the destruction of the capital city of Sokovia during the team’s fight against Ultron may have been the straw that broke the global governments’ back.
So, will Tony Stark and his team of Pro-Registration win out over the out-gunned Team Captain America who do not want to be beholden to the agendas of any world government?
We shall find out when Captain America: Civil War drops on everyone on May 6, 2016.
