Guilty Pleasure No.66: Cloverfield (dir Matt Reeves)

Posted on October 9, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Let’s just be honest, here. In many ways, 2008’s Cloverfield is a remarkably stupid film.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s an entertaining film. It’s a fun film. It’s a film that I’ve seen a few times and I usually enjoy it whenever I see it. But it’s still a film about someone who refuses to stop filming, even in the middle of an alien invasion. It makes sense, of course, that Hud Platt (T.J. Miller) would want to film the going away party that’s being held for his friend Rob (Michael Stahl-David). But why would Hud keep holding onto that camcorder even after the aliens invade and New York starts to explode all around him? There are several moments in the film where it’s obvious that the camera is slowing Hud and his friends down. The easiest thing to do would be to drop the camcorder and run to safety. I mean, it’s not like the destruction of New York by aliens is going to be lost to history if Hud doesn’t film it. But instead, Hud not only keeps filming but, for all the shaky cam effects and the heaving breathing of people running for their lives, Hud still somehow manages to capture every important event on camera.

In many ways, the film epitomizes everything that tends to drive people crazy about the found footage genre but Cloverfield is an undeniably fun movie. I mean, there’s a scene where the head of the Statue of Liberty is literally tossed into the middle of the street. It’s such an over-the-top moment that it’s impossible not to love it and, to be honest, the fact that Hud manages to hold the camera still enough to perfectly capture the image of Lady Liberty’s head crashing to the ground is kind of cool. The film follows a group of friends as they try to make their way across New York City to try to rescue Rob’s girlfriend Beth (Odette Yustman) before then evacuating the city and there’s something rather exciting about the sight of this small group of people continually moving in the opposite direction of the crowd around them. While everyone else runs away from danger, our heroes move straight into it, even though none of them are exactly action heroes. They’re nerdy hipsters on a mission and, even though you know from the start that they’re all doomed, it’s hard not to kind of love them. The film’s final moments carry more an emotional punch than you might normally expect from a found footage alien invasion film.

That said, if the aliens do come and they are literally tearing apart the Statue of Liberty before your very eyes, there’s no shame in putting down the camera and running. In fact, if there’s any lesson to be learned from Cloverfield, it’s that sometimes, it’s best just to run for it.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Catching Up With The Films of 2022: Emily The Criminal (dir by John Patton Ford)

Posted on January 3, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

An hour or so into Emily the Criminal, there’s a scene in which Emily (Aubrey Plaza) goes to what she thinks is a job interview with a prestigious ad agency. For the second time in the film, Emily is forced to tell a potential employer that she has a felony conviction. In this case, it doesn’t seem to matter. Alice (Gina Gershon), the head of the agency, explains that she is looking for an intern to work in the design department.

Emily asks if Alice is asking her to take an unpaid internship.

Alice replies that everyone starts as an intern and that, if they do a great job, they might get a paid position in five to six months.

Emily asks how Alice can expect anyone to work regular hours without getting paid.

Alice replies that Emily will paid in experience. “When I began in this industry,” Alice says, “I have no intention of just being a secretary….”

“But secretaries get paid!” Emily snaps.

Alice replies with an obviously well-rehearsed anecdote about how, when she started, there were no women in the executive office. When Emily cuts her off again, Alice drops the Pelosiesque facade and accuses Emily of being spoiled. When Emily tells her off before storming out of the office, you’ll want to cheer. It doesn’t matter how you may feel about some of Emily’s earlier life decisions or Emily as a person. When Emily calls out Alice for expecting people to work for free, you will totally be on Emily’s side.

You’ll also understand why Emily would chose to be, as the title makes clear, a criminal.

When we first meet Emily, she is a part of the gig economy, delivering food for a catering company. There was a time when she dreamed of becoming a professional artist and living in South America. Now, she’s just trying to figure out how to pay the huge amount of student loan debt that she owes, despite the fact that she never graduated from college. When she learns of an opportunity to make $200 in one hour, she takes it. As Youcef (Theo Rossi) explains it, all she has to do is use a fake credit card to buy a flat-screen TV so that Youcef and his associates can then sell it. (In a nice bit of irony, it later turns out that Youcef is basically an unpaid intern for his cousin.) After her first job is a success, Youcef starts to trust Emily with making bigger and riskier purchases. Soon, Emily is making her own fake credit cards and running her own scams. She’s still an independent contractor but now she’s making a lot more money.

Emily the Criminal takes a matter-of-fact approach to Emily’s activities. There’s none of the condemnation that one might expect as the result of having seen other movies and, regardless of how dangerous things get for her, there’s never a moment where Emily herself reconsiders whether or not she wants to be a criminal. The film doesn’t necessarily celebrate criminality but it does ask why Emily should care about the rules of society that obviously doesn’t care about her. If Emily remains law-abiding, she’ll be stuck in a demeaning job and she’ll never pay off her debts, which means that she’ll just become a criminal by default. (And, let’s be honest, we all know that all the talk about canceling student debt is just something that gets trotted out during an election year. We’ll hear it again in 2024 and again, nothing will happen.) As a criminal, the only risk is that Emily could be arrested or attacked by another criminal but, as the film makes clear from the start, Emily already has a criminal record so what’s one more charge? As for being attacked, Emily continually proves herself to be tougher and far more ruthless than the other criminals around her. Alice might brag about how she’s found success in an industry dominated by men but Emily actually does it.

Emily the Criminal is a relentlessly-paced journey through the shadows of the gig economy, a world where the only law is that everyone is looking out for themselves. Aubrey Plaza gives a career best performance as Emily, playing her as someone who not only turns out to have a natural talent for being a criminal but who occasionally shocks herself with how ruthless she can be. Emily may be a criminal but its hard to judge her. It’s just a job.

Film Review: Vendetta (dir by Jared Cohn)

Posted on September 27, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s a dangerous world out there, make no doubt about it.

William Duncan (Clive Standen) thought that his days of violence were behind him. Sure, he did a tour of duty in the military. And yes, he was trained how to kill a man. In fact, he was trained how to kill dozens of men and he did just that as a part of his patriotic duty. But that was the past. Now, William lives in the suburbs of Atlanta and he’s got a pretty nice life.

Unfortunately, one day, William’s life falls apart, shortly after he picks up his 16 year-old daughter, Kat (Maddie Nichols), from softball practice. William’s plan is to pick up his daughter, grab some food for dinner, and then head home. Unfortunately, a gang led by Rory Fetter (Theo Rossi) has a different idea. The time has come for Rory’s younger brother, Danny (Cabot Badsen), to be initiated into the gang. At first, it seems like Danny doesn’t even want to join the gang but still, when he’s ordered to murder a random bystander, he does so. That bystander happens to be Kat.

Danny’s arrested for the murder but he’s released due to the influence of his father, a powerful gangster named Donnie (Bruce Willis). Having been failed by the legal system, William decides to put his military training to good use and get his vengeance. At first, he’s armed with only his dead daughter’s softball bat. Later, he joins up with an arms dealer named Dante (Thomas Jane) and the war truly begins.

It should also be noted that Dante is friends with a shady garage owner named Roach. Roach is played by Mike Tyson. Yes, that Mike Tyson. Tyson doesn’t really get to do much as Roach. His garage does serve as one of the film’s many battlegrounds but, for the most part, Tyson is something of a bystander. It’s easy to see that the main reason he was included in the film was because it would inevitably cause at least a few potential viewers to say, “Hey, Mike Tyson’s in this! Let’s watch!” That said, even with his limited screen time, Mike Tyson has a surprisingly likable screen presence. I don’t think that anyone will ever mistake Tyson for being an actor of great range but he does a good enough job here that it would be foolish for someone not to cast him in a bigger role in a future low-budget action flick.

As for Vendetta, it’s about as pulpy as pulp can get. It’s an action/revenge flick that makes no excuse for being an action/revenge flick and, as a result, it’s difficult not to be entertained by it. The story moves quickly, there aren’t really any slow spots, and the cast does well with their roles. That includes Bruce Willis. This, of course, is one of Willis’s final films. Watching the films that were released after Willis revealed that he was retiring due to aphasia can feel a bit awkward as it’s obvious that the Willis who appeared in these films was quite a bit different from the Willis who appeared in Die Hard. That said, Willis is effectively intimidating in Vendetta. Even if he doesn’t display the wiseguy charm that was his trademark, Willis still has enough of his streetwise, tough guy screen presence that the viewers will be able to buy him as being a feared crime boss.

As far as 2022’s collection of Bruce Willis films go, Vendetta isn’t bad. It’s maybe a smidgen below Gasoline Alley (which, as of this writing, is the best Willis film of 2022) but it’s a hundred times better than American Siege and A Day To Die.

Ghosts of War

Posted on April 3, 2021 by casewright

(Dir Eric Bress)

Review by Case Wright

What makes you you? Better yet, what’s the meaning of life? Lucky for you, I know the answer to both of these questions. You are your experiences. That’s it. The meaning of life is choice. You are a sum of your experiences and choices. Life is a series of choices from the lowliest earth worm going into soil or the sun to a person deciding to risk their life to save themselves or their own skin. Sorry, the meaning of life isn’t more exciting, but that’s it just the same. Choice after choice after choice is what life is and what makes you you are the results of those choices. You may now go about your business.

Ghosts of War was written and directed by Eric Bress for Netflix. I am very grateful to Eric Bress because without him we wouldn’t have Final Destination 2 or The Final Destination and that is a sad life indeed. FD2 is Super Awesome: there’s people sliced in half and trees that take your head off and death itself is really into Rube Goldberg machinations of killing you. Death is kinda bored and goes a little nutty.

Ghosts of War was a lot of fun. The ending was hard to watch, but not because it was poorly done; it was just pretty realistic. Also, GOW has Billy Zane that alone should make you watch it. I also liked that the film had both Brenton Thwaites and Alan Ritchson of Titans (See it on HBO Max), which is Breaking Bad levels of awesome! Yeah, I said it.

GOW centers around a WWII era platoon assigned to protect a house in France. When they arrive, they realize that the house quite haunted. Bress solves the why not leave the haunted house question by putting them into a loop, wherein, no matter where they travel, they are back at the haunted house.

There are some good scares and not just jump scares. It has the gross stuff that you loved in Final Destination 2, which must be a Bress signature. There’s at least three people who are immolated in this movie. If you miss the gore of Supernatural, this movie is for you!

Brenton and Alan both have some real stand out performances and make me want to re-watch Titans again because of it. Brenton and Alan play frustration, fear, and rage better than anyone I’ve ever seen.

On a personal level, I’m always watching how well people play Soldiers. This movie is VERY realistic. The characters talk like us, think like us, handle stress like us, and move like we really do. I could understand why and what they were doing at all times. It was amazingly accurate. I was very impressed and would recommend the movie just for its realistic portrayal of Soldiers. This movie accurately showed how Soldiers would react to a supernatural enemy. This doesn’t just happen. It was clear to me that the actors and director took care to do this correctly. It is appreciated.

The ending was a good twist and there were clever subtle clues along the way to lead you to solving the mystery. I would highly recommend this movie and hope to see Brenton and Alan work with this director again.