PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 1016

Upgrade 2018 Written and directed by Leigh Whannell.

Grey is a car restorer takes his wife Asha along to meet a client called Eron who lives in a massive hole in the ground by the sea. Eron reveals his new chip to the couple. On the way home the couple's car fails and they are attacked by criminals. Asha is killed and Grey has his spinal cord cut. Months later Grey is approached by Eron who wants to install the STEM implant. Eron claims Grey will walk again.

The chip does work and it talks to Grey. It  helps him get revenge on the men who murdered his wife. The chip can take over his body and make him a super fighter. He starts killing the people responsible. The police are on his trail but they have no idea how he could be killing anyone what with being a paraplegic. Eventually the whole story is revealed and it's all bad AI. Most everyone dies.

It's a fairly good action revenge film with a downbeat ending. Not something I would want to watch again.

Assassin Of The Tsar 1991 Written by Aleksandr Borodyansky and Karen Shakhnazarov, directed by Karen Shakhnazarov.

Malcolm McDowell is an inmate in a Russian mental asylum called Timofeyev. It's 1991 and a new doctor arrives to take over. He meets Timofeyev who claims to have killed both Tsar Alexander in 1881 and his grandson Tsar Nicolas II in 1917. In reality the assassins were two different groups of Russians. Timofeyev also tells the new doctor he died, twice. The new asylum doctor talks to the retiring doctor. Big parts of the movie are flashbacks of the assassinations.

It's vaguely interesting but I don't know much about the death of the Tsars. I was struggling to stay awake in the middle act but it's soporific quality knocked Joe out for nearly half an hour. Malcolm did a great job with the character, that was the highlight of the movie for me. It's not enough for me to sit through the movie again.

Bloody Beast 1994

Bloody Beast 1994 Written by Jimmy Leung Chi-ming and directed by Richard Yeung Kuen. A Chinese movie about a serial killer psychopath. I'd first seen this movie back in 1997, it was on VHS and rented from one of the many Asian video stores in the area. I watched 2-300 films, I even copied some but I didn't keep the tapes when better copies came along on DVD.

A creepy guy stays home and cooks for his father and sister. He doesn't work, he spends his days mopping around the house or creeping about the small town. He spies on the local women and out of the blue he attacks a woman and her two children. He kills the kids and rapes the mother before killing here.

The rest of the movie is spent watching him murder more people and watching the poorly trained mainland police try to figure out who he is so they can arrest him. They do catch him, part of the movie is told in flashback as he confesses. Creepy guy keeps insisting that they kill him after he confesses and over the end credits you can hear a gunshot.

It's a bit below average, the creepy guy does well portraying a monster but he's no Simon Yam or Anthony Wong. The rest of the cast is fair for the most part. Nothing really exceptional or new. You can check it out on Dailymotion, link above. Not for everyone.

 

Bethune: The Making Of A Hero 1990

Bethune: The Making Of A Hero 1990 Screenplay by Ted Allan and directed by Phillip Borsos. Ted Allan meet Bethune 5 years before Bethune's death in 1939, he wanted to make a film about Bethune as early as 1942. Allan submitted scripts to major studios but nothing ever happened. Allan got nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing and won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film for Lies My Father Told Me.

Donald Sutherland plays Bethune for the third time with this film. Unless you are Canadian or Chinese you probably haven't heard of Norman Bethune. The Chinese still revere him, General Mao wrote his eulogy, Canadians were taught about Bethune in school in the 60s. I don't know if they still teach about him anymore.

The film covers Bethune's life in Canada's medical profession, his work doctoring soldiers in the Spanish Civil War and his work doctoring the soldiers of the Eight Route Army. He died of sepsis after cutting himself while operating.

Bethune is seen as an important factor in nationalizing medical systems and advocating for the health of the poor. He joined the Canadian Communist party and wasn't too well accepted by the upper echelons of the medical profession. He was a troubled man with grand ideas and no patience. Complicated guy, not someone I would want to work with.

There are plenty of good locations in Canada, Spain and China. There's a good cast with Helen Mirren, Colm Feore, Ronald Pickup, Geoffrey Chater, James Hong, Anouk Aimée and Helen Shaver.

I mostly enjoyed the biopic, I gave it a 6 out of 10 but decided I didn't need to watch it again. You can watch a nice copy on the Internet Archive.

Friday Night Movies 997

Alicia En El Pueblo De Las Maravillas 1999 Screenplay by Aldo Busto Hernández, Luis Felipe Bolaños and Daniel Diaz Torres, directed by Daniel Díaz Torres. A movie about the social state of Cuban in the 1980s that alludes to Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland but isn't an adaptation of the book. It was considered controversial when it came out and was banned in Cuba 3 days after release.

Alice travels to a small town where she has some weird and disturbing things happen to and around her. It's a horrible filthy town that's home to failed officials. Like Alice in the novel Alicia gets caught up in local activities that hardly make any sense to her.

It's a satire that's rather confusing if you don't know much about the country and the era. I had to read the Wikipedia page to get details that the movie didn't always provide. You can watch the movie and decide for yourself, it's not a great copy but it's watchable. There's a DVD on Amazon but it's not worth $15.43 to me, plus tax. I'm not likely to watch it again.

Pig 2020 Story by Vanessa Block and Michael Samoski, screenplay and direction by Michael Samoski. It's his first film. I normally avoid a drama but I'll make an exception for Nicolas Cage on occasion. 

Nic lives in the woods with his pig, they hunt truffles for a living. They sell them to Amir who sells them to fancy restaurants in Portland. One day Nic is attacked  and his pig stolen. The movie has Nic travel around with Amir and it leads to some trouble for them.

They locate the scummy crack heads that stole the pig and learn it was taken to Portland. They travel to Portland where a whole lot of story is heaped on our plates before they find out what really happened to Nic's pig.

I enjoyed the film and would watch it again.

Gawain And The Green Knight 1991

Gawain And The Green Knight 1991 Screenplay by David Rudkin and directed by John Michael Phillips.

A British TV production from Thames TV for the BBC. It tells the story of Sir Gawain fairly well. It's pokey and not as entertaining as the 1973 version of Sir Gawain's story. You can check it out at YouTube.

A Brighter Summer Day 1991

A Brighter Summer Day is a Taiwanese film from 1991. It's nearly 4 hours long and it's one horrible sad story about stupid teens. Turns out the teens in Taiwan are just as stupid as the teens where I live. And everywhere else. I didn't need to watch it but there you go. Other's might like it's sad shit but not for me.