Films Catch Up 7

More films I watched earlier this year (mostly) in the order I watched them

1. Jupiter Ascending

Jupiter Jones is a cleaner, an undocumented immigrant born on the boat from Russia, living in Chicago. She’s also genetically identical to the dead matriarch of the House Of Abrasax, an interstellar dynasty who own the Earth and other planets. This makes her an heir, as they’re big into genetics, and a target for the three scions of the House Of Abrasax.

What this means is that when Jupiter tries to sell her eggs for money as part of one of her cousin’s schemes, her genetics are noted and weird aliens and chimeric humans turn up to start all kinds of trouble. Fortunately she used a fake name, allowing Caine, a flying-roller-skate using were-wolf ex-soldier played by Channing Tatum, to get to her first. As royalty, both bees and the wolf-soldiers are attracted to her.

The film then moves through various spectacular space opera settings as Jupiter is recognised as royalty, and each of the three siblings try to use her in various ways. Their wealth and power comes from harvesting planets, which involves processing people to make an immortality drug. Obviously this is bad and Jupiter must stop them, possibly with an apocalyptic finale in the harvesting base in the Red Spot of the planet Jupiter.

The ideas and visuals can’t be faulted*, and each individual bit of creating a disjointed, byzantine, feudal yet centralised bureaucratic space opera universe is good. All together it seems very “this happens” and “you need to do this” and “hey come over here, don’t worry about what happened to your loyal-unto-death-were-wolf-super-soldier.”

Watch This: Enjoyable, spectacular space opera
Don’t Watch This: If a hidden princess** and weird space settings aren’t for you

* Okay some are a bit visually confusing 

** We know, of course, that the Wachowskis have read The Sandman*** so I will note that reading A Game Of You might cast some light on this film

*** Morpheus from The Matrix et al is named after Morpheus in The Sandman

2. Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over

Juni Cortez from Spy Kids and Spy Kids 2: Island Of Lost Dreams has quit working for OSS Jr, the spy agency for kids, and is now a private detective. He’s saving his money to pay for the big new game called Game Over. The first player to reach Level Five will win an amazing prize.

He gets called back to be informed his sister Carmen is trapped in the early access virtual reality of Game Over. Game Over was created by the Toymaker, a former OSS agent now in cyber-prison. (Virtual Reality has been in previous Spy Kids, including as a prison). The game is addictive, and will take over the minds of the kids who play it. They have to shut it down by playing and winning(?). Juni has to go in to rescue Carmen.

If you’ve seen previous Spy Kids films you’ll see where this is going. Probably if you haven’t too. Juni meets some beta testers, has to make his way past a bunch of video game challenges (as ever the race is the best and makes most sense as a game). He finds Carmen, meets a girl he likes, brings in his grandfather (who uses a wheelchair in real life, but gets a titanic robot body here in Virtual Reality).

The final confrontation is outside, and brings back almost every character from the previous Spy Kids films in a ridiculous over-the-top re-introduction sequence I couldn’t quite hate. If it’s even more about green screen special effects than the previous films then this at least has the excuse that most of it takes place inside a video game.

Watch This: A madcap kids spy video game adventure
Don’t Watch This: The arbitrary events have slightly more consistency but the film still feels like someone has loaded a machine gun with cartoon lights and sounds and is shooting them at you

3. Future Shock

A psychologist uses an experimental treatment – virtual reality! There are three sections in this portmanteau anthology film. In the first a woman who is paranoid and autophobic is left by her husband as he goes on a business trip. Seeing news reports of pet mutilations she finds herself threatened by worse and worse fates. Her cat keeps getting her into trouble.

In the second, funniest section, a mortuary attendant takes on a roommate to get extra money; that roommate turns out to cause great trouble. The roommate (Bill Paxton) is by turns funny and menacing. Also good is the silent disapproval of the mortuary attendant’s boss.

In the final section a photographer with a fear of death has a near death experience and then recollects what happened to get there. Which revolves around a plane trip, a woman he meets and a funeral. If the first part is some old school woman-menaced-at-home horror and the second man-persecuted-by-roommate dark comedy, this is a dreamy, trippy, morbid character study.

As noted this is all wrapped up in a psychologist’s treatment. There’s a bit of comedy about this – the staff are answering calls about side effects etc. But like most portmanteau films it doesn’t really do anything, and certainly doesn’t reflect on the short films it presents. It seems like this may have got into my notice as the third section is the directorial debut of Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, The Batman, a couple of Planet Of The Apes).

Watch This: Several short shockers in close succession
Don’t Watch This: Bitty and incoherent as with almost all portmanteau films, and each section only really does one thing well

4. C.H.U.D.

There is a photographer who has moved in with his girlfriend into a new apartment. He makes his money at fashion, but his passion is a story he did on homeless people. His shoot of “undergrounders” who live in the sewers and subways and other tunnels under New York was big.

There’s a police captain concerned about missing person reports. He’d been told these were not a priority but then his wife vanishes (while walking their dog*). He interviews the Reverend (not a reverend) who runs a soup kitchen. There have been strange people with strange equipment down below and he thinks there’s a cover up.

C.H.U.D. stands for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers**. There’s mutants in the sewers, who have been attacking homeless people; when they figured it out and left they’ve been coming above ground. Obviously the authorities have a plan; sadly it’s very bad.

A silly monster horror that manages to somehow maintain its seriousness. The groundedness of the soup kitchen, and the lack of care from those in charge of the city are realistic enough to cover a lot mutant nonsense.

Watch This: Scary monsters with just a veneer of real world attitude
Don’t Watch This: Sewer dwelling mutants aren’t for you

* The dog does not make it, sorry about that

** SPOILERS it also stands for Contamination Hazard Urban Disposal. They’ve been barred from transporting nuclear waste through New York, but there was some already there that now can’t be moved; I think this is not the final layer of the cover up so might be a lie.

5. The Pit And The Pendulum

It’s the 16^th century and Englishman Francis goes to Spain to find out why his sister isn’t writing. It turns out she died! Her former husband Nicholas (Vincent Price) and his sister Catherine are a bit vague and shifty about it so Francis vows not to leave their spooky and isolated castle until he learns what happened.

Nicholas and Catherine’s father was a notorious agent for the Spanish Inquisition and hidden in the castle is a set of torture chambers, including the eponymous pit, which has a swinging axe blade pendulum that lowers with each swing. Nicholas is also terrified of being buried alive. As a child he watched his father torture and kill his wife and brother (Nicholas’s mother and uncle) who he accused of adultery.

Very loosely based on an Edgar Allen Poe story, with additional Poe elements stitched in, it relies on a lot of weird and silly coincidences. Some overwrought gothic horror, with Price doing his classic man driven insane by contemplating death. Quite gruesome on screen, with even worse implied.

Watch This: An over the top Poe-inspired horror film with many grotesque elements
Don’t Watch This: Lots of people threatened with torture and then tortured

6. Minions: The Rise Of Gru

The break out stars of the animated kids film series Despicable Me were the minions, little yellow creatures who speak polyglot gibberish and do tasks in a comically inept way for Gru, a villain (SPOILERS: who reforms). They got a spin-off prequel, Minions, and now this film, a sequel to that, a prequel to the mainline Despicable Me films.

It's the 70s, Gru is a schoolchild who idolises supervillain group The Vicious Six*. Their leader Wild Knuckles* leads them in a heist to steal the Zodiac Stone, a chinese-zodiac themed mystical artefact. The rest of the team then betray him, leave him for dead, and take the Zodiac Stone back to their headquarters. There, under the new leadership of Belle Bottoms** they seek a candidate for a new member of the team. Gru is invited to interview for the role.

Dismissing him as a kid he decides to prove himself both evil and cunning enough by stealing the Zodiac Stone from them. He escapes them, handing off the stone to one of the minions who (of course) trades it for a pet rock. Gru fires the minions and is immediately kidnapped by Wild Knuckles who takes him to his lair in San Francisco and gives the minions 48 hours to give him the stone. Three minions who have actual names and characters (and action figures) go to try and rescue him, the one who traded the stone tries to get it back. Meanwhile the Vicious Six, learning Wild Knuckles is still alive, also go to San Francisco.

There’s a giant supervillain battle at the end.

The minions are mostly amusing in their bumbling, naïve approach. Gru, even here in larval villain form, continues to be more of an anti-hero, the films refusing to dial his character back even as far as the opening of Despicable Me. As they probably must for kids. There are several very amusing setpieces and sight gags and the pace of the film prevents anything from being boring. I didn’t feel the 70s nostalgia, and frankly the Chinese/Chinatown/Kung Fu aspects just seem to be there, not really adding anything. Three minions are taught kung fu and then… mostly don’t do kung fu as the final battle is [SPOILERS] about being transformed into giant versions of Chinese Zodiacal Animals.

Watch This: Fun kid’s supervillain adventure with some cool setpieces
Don’t Watch This: Everyone is a one-note caricature and the whole plot is weightless

* By now (2023) all the good superhero, supervillain and super-team names have been used, and trademarked by gigantic media corporations

** Okay not all the good names were gone

7. Hollow Triumph

John Müller is released from prison, immediately decides to hold up a casino run by a vengeful mob boss. It goes wrong, some of the gang are captured and reveal who else was involved. Müller decides to go into hiding by going straight and taking the medical supplies job his brother has arranged for him; he studied medicine and psychoanalysis before turning to crime.

Delivering some supplies to a dentist, the dentist says he looks just like a psychoanalyst in the building, Dr Bartok*. The resemblance is uncanny; when Müller visits the office Bartok’s secretary Evelyn Hahn mistakes him, kissing him, until she realises he doesn’t have the scar.

Müller decides to murder and impersonate Bartok. He dates Evelyn, reads up on psychoanalysis and breaks into Bartok’s office to read his files. This works surprisingly well, despite a couple of mistakes along the way (the scar!). However Bartok has secrets of his own.

Watch This: Fun if silly noir with some fun twists and turns and a heart of dark cynicism
Don’t Watch This: The whole double thing is just ridiculous

* Yes, played by the same actor.

8. The Sword Of Monte Cristo

It’s 1858 in France. Minister La Roche (fictional) is clamping down on resistance to the Imperial regime of Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III) (Real). A masked cavalier rescues some prisoners; they just want the freedoms and rights of a Frenchman! The cavalier is Lady Christianne, the niece of the Marquis. She pledges the fabulous treasure of the Count Of Monte Cristo (fictional) to the cause.

The key to finding the treasure in on the titular Sword Of Monte Cristo, but the only person who knows how to decipher it is the Marquis, Lady Christianne’s uncle. There follows several convoluted scenes in which the minister and his henchman Major Nicolet take possession of the sword and lock up the uncle while searching for the masked cavalier, never suspecting that the fencing mad lady Christianne (whose portrait in the mansion shows her fencing) is him. She tries to get Louis Napoleon to intervene. This is very funny to me, the idea that the monarch has been fooled by his evil advisors is a classic but applying it to Napoleon III is just silly. (La Roche is supposed to be his half-brother and behind the coup that Louis Napoleon committed as president, that made him emperor).

This is barely connected to the Count Of Monte Cristo, being more like a Zorro film; indeed this as The Daughter Of Zorro would hardly require much rewriting. Amusingly the lancer regiment keep using two metre* spears to fight, even when dismounted, even at very close quarters when they are awkward. It’s particularly silly and blasé about historical accuracy, even for films of this sort, but it moves along with a decent pace and the villain is pretty despicable.

Watch This: Exciting swashbuckler with Lady Christianne riding, fighting and using her charm
Don’t Watch This: The history is laughable to the point of being insulting and there are no surprises in the plot or characters**

* Actual French lancer regiments of the period used 3m lances.

** Well there are surprises if you know anything about the historical Napoleon III, but other than that, no.

9. The Woman King

It’s the 1820s and the Kingdom of Dahomey is being raided by the Empire of Oyo; their relationship is broken down in part because the Oyo are greedy for the fruits of the slave trade. Nawi is a girl who refuses to marry the man her father chooses for her so he takes her to the palace to join the Agojie, the female regiment of troops*.

General Nanisca is training a new cadre of Agojie in preparation for what all see as the coming war. Nawi goes through the training, showing herself to be skilled, dedicated and also rash and impetuous. Portuguese slave traders arrive, including the half-Dahomey Malik; there are some half-hearted ideas to stop slave trading and instead trade palm oil and repatriate Dahomey slaves are put forward. They don’t work out and there are several fights.

If this historical action film is a little light on the history, making heroes and villains for a modern Western audience, it still manages to reveal a few things about the time and place. And the action sequences, lots of acrobatic machete fights, are good.

Watch This: Cool action film about African women fighting slave traders
Don’t Watch This: Bloody, violent and gritty, yet somehow with the weightlessness of modern action films

* Historical, called by Europeans the Damoney Amazons because the outlandish idea of female warriors can only be understood through out own legends

10. I Bury The Living

Richard Kraft is elected chair of the committee that runs the graveyard, one of the things that local dignitaries have to do (he’s in charge of the department store). His friend comes by to pick out a plot for him and his new wife, another tradition. They’re marked on a map with pins; white pins to book a space, black pins when they’re filled. Kraft accidentally puts black pins in.

They die in a car crash.

Is This Real and also What Is Causing This are the questions that then occupy the rest of the film. Kraft can’t believe it, then does, and then no one else believes him so they have to keep making tests, as more people die. It’s one of those high concept Outer Limits or Twilight Zone style films from the 50s! The resolution? Eh.

Watch This: An old school thriller with a macabre twist
Don’t Watch This: The idea is better than the execution and much better than the final reveal(s).