<n>Read the explanation of method, madness, and <b>spoilers</b>.<fn></n> <ol> <a href="#Thor">Thor: Ragnarok (2017)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3501632/">9/10</a> <a href="#School">School of Rock (2003)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0332379/">6/10</a> <a href="#Nuclear">Nuclear Now (2024)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt21376908/">8/10</a> <a href="#Sahara">Sahara (2005)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318649/">8/10</a> <a href="#Glassboy">Glassboy (2020)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt12188452/">6/10</a> <a href="#Moon">The First Men in the Moon (1964)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058100/">7/10</a> <a href="#Dracula">Dracula Untold (2014)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0829150/">8/10</a> <a href="#boom">Here Comes the Boom (2012)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1648179/">8/10</a> <a href="#Arctic">Arctic (2018)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6820256/">9/10</a> <a href="#BuyNow">Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy (2024)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt34350086/">9/10</a> </ol> <dl dt_class="field"> <span id="Thor">Thor: Ragnarok (2017)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3501632/">9/10</a> <div>My <a href="{app]view_article.php?id=3544">review from 2018</a> stands. It's a fun super-hero action-movie that's not trying to be anything else. I watched it in German this time.</div> <span id="School">School of Rock (2003)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0332379/">6/10</a> <div>Dewey Finn (Jack Black) is an over-the-top lover of rock music. Like, he won't stop talking about it. Even his band-mates are annoyed with him. He can play a mean guitar but he's not a team player and he's kind of annoying. He doesn't understand boundaries: during a concert, we see him take off his shirt during a guitar solo, scream lyrics over the lead singer, then try to crowd-surf, ending as you might imagine. He lives in a curtained-off section of his best friend Ned Schneebly's (Mike White) apartment, to the unending displeasure and active hostility of Ned's girlfriend Patti (Sarah Silverman), who takes harpy to a new level. Still, Dewey deserves it; I can't imagine having to live with that slob. Dewey needs a job, though. He needs money for his part of the rent. A school calls the apartment, looking to offer Ned a substitute-teacher job. Dewey takes it instead, even though, outside of music, he's nearly deliberately uneducated. Instead of doing his job, he just starts teaching a music class, inspiring the kids to keep playing their instruments and herding the others into rock-band support staff, like managers, roadies, and so on. Somehow, his so-called charm seems to work on principal Mullins (Joan Cusack), who is arguably even more damaged than he. They make a good pair, I guess. Even though their relationship is based nearly solely on his lies, that might be the best either of them have to hope for. This is just my dark interpretation, though; the film doesn't go anywhere near this level of introspection. Since he'd gotten kicked out of his band, he wouldn't be able to take part in the battle of the bands, which is his life's dream. He's cringe-y, though, so he decides to bring his child-band to the battle of the bands. To add tension, Patti discovers that he is earning his rent money only because he stole Ned's name and quite rightly turns him in, even though it's all portrayed as an unconscionable betrayal. <img attachment="0_school-of-rocks-spider-star-unrecognisable-in-new-career-as-lawyer-1724497306.jpg" align="right" caption="Spider">The movie goes for a twist by making the kids' band come in second place ... but can't hold the line. Instead, it makes it seem as if the crowd voted for the winning band---headed by the slinky Spider (Lucas Babin), who's wearing a leather shoulder-shrug that shows off his mandala-esque chest tattoo---but secretly liked the kids' band better, somehow? Which is why they started chanting for the kids' band to come back out? Anyway, we get a reprise and the crowd goes nuts. The parents now love him and all that he represents, having exchanged their cloistered worldview---a narrow definition of success promulgated by a hyper-consumerist society driven by the engine of a growth economy that privileges the very few over the vastly more numerous many---that led to them doing everything they could, principles and ethics be damned, to promote their offspring into these upper echelons---which would have secured their children's corporeal but ultimately chimeric success, while losing them their souls---for a more open approach that sees the value and virtue of music as a way of expressing humanity, empathy, leading to a world of peace among equals. Dewey is vindicated. He gets to crowd-surf. All is forgiven. He gets to open an after-school program. While I was watching it, I had given it an extra star but, now, thinking about it, it's really not almost as good as other, better movies about nearly the same thing. If you want to watch something about a battle of the bands, may I suggest <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=5051#Metal">Metal Lords</a> instead? It's almost the same plot. Or, if you want a movie about kids trying to keep the dream of music alive in a school setting, try <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=4970#boom">Here Comes the Boom</a>, which features Kevin James as an actually dedicated and cool and, quite literally kick-ass teacher.</div> <span id="Nuclear">Nuclear Now (2024)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt21376908/">8/10</a> <div>This documentary by Oliver Stone has the sole purpose of convincing people that nuclear power is an unavoidable part of our energy future. Not only that, but it makes a strong case that the primary drawback---the radioactive waste---isn't nearly as much waste as people tend to think, and that the amount of waste from our current energy sources is vastly larger and vastly deadlier. It's a good documentary. The primary thing that it doesn't address is the reason why we're really not going to get nuclear energy. We're accustomed to talking about regulatory capture. We don't talk much about "media capture" or perhaps "mindshare capture", which you get by purchasing propaganda. In this, the fossil-fuel companies are much, much better than the nuclear industry. The nuclear industry has experienced major setbacks in many countries in the west. In Asia, though, they're building many more. It's all a matter of how you sell the idea. What are the drawbacks to nuclear power? <ul>The radioactive waste is highly toxic, and will be so for untold millennia. The fuel source---uranium---is mostly found in "developing countries", which means that the militaries of "developed countries" have descended on those countries to plunder them. To keep prices down as far as possible---how else do you become a wealthy nation if not by stealing from others?---the conditions under which uranium is mined are an ecological horror-show and devastating to the local population. Finally, the nuclear industry is incapable of efficiency, well-known for massive budget overruns, in terms of both time and money. They can't efficiently build anything, preferring instead to pocket as much public lucre as possible. As shareholder-driven enterprises, their goal ends up being enriching themselves instead of actually doing the thing that their company was founded to do.</ul> It's not that these are insurmountable problems, though. We know how to store nuclear waste on this planet. There are ways. The only reason we can't figure it out is that the only solution our shitty society can think of is to bury it under poor people. If we can invest trillions into something as superfluous as AI, then we could find and finance a place to store nuclear waste. If we weren't living in societies run by sociopathic assholes, we'd also find a way of extracting uranium that fairly compensates the people who happen to live on top of it. That's perhaps the biggest failing of this documentary: it doesn't acknowledge at all that we would need to massively change the sociopolitical context---the "system"---in order to properly integrate nuclear power. It only hints at it when it talks about how major countries in Asia---China is a big example---are seemingly able to get the job done, and quickly. Why do we still need something like nuclear power? When people talk about real sustainable, renewable energy, they're mostly talking about wind and solar power. Many of those technologies are built with rare-earth metals, the mining of which is currently done with fossil fuels. You can't cover all requirements with wind and solar. You need batteries. Fossil fuels are incredibly efficient, non-chargeable batteries with a lot of waste products. We have to figure out how to replace those. We are making a lot of progress there, with salt batteries holding out hope that we can transition away from heavy-metal lithium batteries (which also require mining, etc.) but we're not at the point where we can replace coal and natural gas as batteries. Lithium batteries don't have nearly the power-to-weight ratio of fossil fuels, and salt batteries are still currently only a fraction of lithium batteries. How do you keep the grid running smoothly without hiccups, accommodating spikes, without batteries? You can't. You need to be able to store excess capacity for when you need it. That's the definition of a battery. We're not at the point where we have better alternatives than using the most efficient battery we've ever disco ered: uranium. The documentary does not discuss the problem in these terms---this is my interpretation of the problem. The documentary does make a strong case that the pros for fission-based nuclear power far outweigh the cons---especially when considered against the pros/cons of current solutions. There might be an even-better solution down the road that minimizes resource-extraction even more---fusion-based nuclear power?---but we're probably not going to be able to jump there without jumping back quite a bit. What does that mean? Our addiction to fossil fuels comes about from a combination of fossil-fuel lobbying to keep its profit-machine going at all costs, and, also, our insatiable need for more and more energy per capita. The documentary does not discuss that we would not need nuclear energy if only we didn't need <i>so much energy</i> in the first place. If we could live with hiccups in the grid, if we could slow down, if we could stop the consumerist hamster-wheel---then we wouldn't need powerful batteries. We're seemingly not going to change that aspect of our society <i>voluntarily</i>---either because of how we are, or because of how we're programmed by those that benefit from us being that way (but that's a whole other story)---so either we drop back <i>involuntarily</i> when the accelerating effects of fossil-fuel-engendered climate change wreak havoc on our societies, obliterating our ability to even ship more fossil fuels (or even uranium) worldwide, we cut back voluntarily, or we accept that a lateral move to uranium-based batteries is the only stepping stone that moves us away from fossil fuels and toward renewables. We need time to develop alternative battery technology further---it's not there yet. Every year that we spend using fossil fuels rather than nuclear fuels pushes us closer to the "involuntary" choice of a dark age (no pun intended). Honestly? It's already too late. There is no way that enough nuclear power can be brought online quickly enough---at least not in the west---to ameliorate any of the catastrophic effects of the fossil-fueled whirlwind we're already reaping. Not only that but, as we've seen with fossil fuels, once an industry has embedded itself into such an essential role, it becomes nearly impossible to dislodge---<i>under our current economic and planning system.</i> There is every reason to believe that, were we to move to nuclear as a "stepping stone" on a path to an even cleaner future, we would remain on that stone for much longer than would be societally healthy. However, it would still be much, much better than the stepping stone on which we find ourselves today. The deleterious effects of air, water, and soil pollution engendered by fossil-fuel extraction, transport, and burning are largely born by the poorest 90% of the planet. People in the top 10%---those who donate to environmental causes, etc.---generally have no idea just how dirty---both in terms of pollution and in terms of corruption---the infrastructure for "keeping the lights on" actually is. They cheerily order things to their homes fifteen times per day and never breathe in a single hydrocarbon. Their water is clean. Their food is healthy. This is the disconnect that will prevent any meaningful, expedient change: those that benefit the most from things as they are have the most political power. Those who need the world to change in order to be able to do better---or even survive---have none. That is, perhaps, the biggest takeaway from this documentary. We are intelligent enough to know what the situation is. We have technology. We have knowledge. We know what a just and defensible path could be. But we have no economic or political systems in place to effect these changes. We can only look to China and others, and hope that they shame us into doing the right thing---or that they somehow, miraculously, fix everything for us. And we can only hope that China continues its green push, which includes nuclear power. And we can only hope that they don't fuck it up with greed just as badly as we always do. It's a very slim hope indeed.</div> <span id="Sahara">Sahara (2005)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318649/">8/10</a> <div>Eva Rojas (Penélope Cruz) works for the W.H.O. in an unnamed West African country, where a disease is starting to spread. She wants to track the disease to Mali. When she is attacked while tracking down a patient's father, Dirk Pitt (Matthew McConaughey) rescues her, arriving in his tanned, beautifully muscled, tousled, and board-shorted glory. She wakes up on a boat, quickly meeting Al Giordino (Steve Zahn), Rudi Gunn (Rainn Wilson), and Admiral Sandecker (William H. Macy). The boat is a salvage rig that's digging up relics. Pitt is trying to find a Civil War-era ironclad ship that had somehow washed up on the shores of the Sahara. He's getting close and manages to prise a commitment from the Admiral to look for it for three days. The admiral allows it, but doesn't tell him that he's saddling him with Eva and Doctor Hopper (Glynn Turman). Pitt gets them where they need to be and they part ways, with Pitt and Giordino continuing on their quest to find the lost ship. Yves Massarde (Lambert Wilson, the Merovingian from the <i>Matrix</i>) is meeting with General Zateb Kazim (Lennie James), who is trying to retain his stranglehold on his country while many are advising him to combat the disease that is tightening its grip. Dirk, Al, and Rudi are trolling---like, literally, in a boat---for the ironclad when they run into Kazim's troops in their boat. There is a pretty competently executed and exciting, if utterly unsurprising chase and fight scene. They manage to get away from the soldiers by pulling a "Panama" (blowing up your own boat). <bq><b>Rudi:</b> I didn't know you were in Panama? <b>Al:</b> We weren't. We were in Nicaragua. We thought we were in Panama.</bq> Once back ashore, they search for the doctors because they realize that the soldiers were only after them because they didn't know that they'd split up. Kazim tracks down the doctors first, killing Hopper, who won't give up Rojas, who's down a well. Al and Dirk see what's happening and mount a rescue mission, taking out several soldiers. Eva manages to climb back out of the well, saving Dirk's life in turn. They make their way further across the desert before being captured by the Tuareg. They meet Tuareg Sangare (Daniel Njo Lobé), who takes them to his patients. Sandecker meets up with Carl (Delroy Lindo), asking him for help getting his men out of the country. His men are doing just fine in the Tuareg village, where they find a cave drawing of the <i>Texas</i>, the ironclad that they've been seeking. Dirk realizes that the ship is on an underground river that's spreading the toxins but it's also the way that they might be able to get the boat out. Once they get underground, though, they discover that it's not a plague---it's poison leaking into the water from Massarde's energy facility. It turns out that the solar-power-production facility on the surface is only a cover for an underground facility that dumps incredible amounts of toxic waste into the water system. They're using the solar power to vaporize some of the toxins but most of it is just stored in leaking barrels. Rudi and Sandecker discover that the poisons will spread all over the world if they're not stopped. They meet with a functionary who pledges to "do something" but it's obvious that he's not going to do anything at all. And you know whose toxic waste it is, right? Remember Somalia? Remember what Europe did to its coastline after its government "collapsed"? They cleaned up their coral reefs, right? Hahahaha. No. They laundered the toxic waste that was most expensive to dispose by paying the Mafia a pittance to take it off of their hands, knowing full well they were dumping into Somalia's territorial waters. This is an action/adventure movie, so it doesn't delve into this point too much, but that's the context. Meanwhile, Al, Dirk, and Eva have been captured by Massarde. Eva is with him, whereas Al and Dirk are on their way to Kazim. Massarde is now worried that the river has been poisoned. Kazim doesn't care. He wants the money. He tells Massarde that he can close the plant but that he has to continue to pay him either way. Dirk and Al escape from the truck and are now dragging the truck-bed to which they'd been cuffed across the desert. They happen upon an airplane wreck and repurpose it to a desert sailer, ripping across the desert, finally fetching up at a small shop where Dirk can call the admiral. Dirk trades his gold coin for a jeep. He and Al drive back to Sangare to tell him to strike against Kazim and save his people and the river. Al and Dirk take Sangare's fancy car (an Avions Voisin C-28) and break into Massarde's plant. Dirk looks for Eva, while Al searches for the bomb that Massarde has planted to make it look like the toxic dumping had been an accident and would therefore not have been his fault. In the end, his concern extends to himself and not to trying to prevent a climate catastrophe. They all escape, there's a helicopter chase, they thwart the plant explosion, and then they use dynamite to unearth the <i>Texas</i>. They break into the ship but its "iron sides" were built to withstand other, weaker types of ammunition. The copter's armor-piercing rounds tear right through it. Al goes back outside to open the gunport so that they can use the cannon. Al's the hero! Now there are tanks as well. The ship is full of gold coins. They ready the ancient cannon to fire it on Kazim's helicopter. <iq>Cut off the head, the snake dies.</iq> They hit it point-blank. The cannonball explodes in the cabin, eliminating Kazim. The rest of the army gives up---not because of Kazim's death, but because Sangare has appeared on the ridge above them with his entire Tuareg army, with a host of cavalry coming up from behind to circle the tanks and soldiers. Cue rock-and-roll ending. The gold ends up with the Tuareg. The U.S. government comes sniffing around but the admiral sends him away. I gave it an extra star because McConaughey and Zahn are great together---and because Zahn was not written as a sidekick, which was a nice change of pace. What a fun adventure movie.</div> <span id="Glassboy">Glassboy (2020)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt12188452/">6/10</a> <div>This is the relatively simple story of a young boy named Pino who has a chronic and potentially debilitating disease (hemophilia. apparently). He is from a wealthy family. The grandmother is definitely old money. Pino's parents send him to public school where he makes four good friends. They are inseparable until his grandmother basically kidnaps him in order to get him the treatment that she thinks he needs. The parents know nothing, thinking that he and his friends have taken off on yet another side-trip. The bullies who used to beat on them get chummy and let the friends know that they heard that Pino was being held by his grandmother. The kids sleuth further to discover that he's in Austria and will soon travel to Stockholm, where the best hospitals are. The friends take a train through Graubünden---there is a <i>Rhetoromänischer Zug</i> in the montage---and then track him down to the castle where his grandmother is keeping him. The kids break in to the castle and try to get to Pino, who they'd seen through the window. The usual kids vs. adults hijinks ensue. Nonna has a change of heart, then has a heart attack. Everyone is friends again. Look, the movie's not for me but it's probably pretty good for kids. The top review on IMDb summarizes it well with <iq>An occasionally inspired kidventure</iq>. The movie is originally Italian but I watched it in German because the original language wasn't available.</div> <span id="Moon">The First Men in the Moon (1964)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058100/">7/10</a> <div>A U.N. spaceship lands on the moon in the late 1960s only to find a British flag and a contract indicating that certain persons had been there in 1899 already. They hunt down one of the members of the expedition Arnold Bedford (Edward Judd), who tells them the tale. We flash back to him living in a cottage in the countryside, idling away, pretending to write a play while keeping American Kate Callender (Martha Hyer) interested in marrying him by pretending that the cottage is his and that he is on the cusp of success. Their neighbor Joseph Cavor (Lionel Jeffries) tries to buy the cottage, which Bedford is only renting. Kate agrees to it because she doesn't know her man is a cad and a bounder but Bedford leans into it and discovers that his mad neighbor has invented an anti-gravity paste. "They" go into business together, with Bedford providing nothing. He offers to sell Cavor "his" cottage and will invest the proceeds into Cavor's experiments---leaving Cavor with ... investing in his own experiments and owning nothing more. Bedford is what we would call a "savvy investor" or "entrepreneur". Cavor is a wild card, focused on his experiments, and played wonderfully by Jeffries. He constantly yells at his handyman Gibbs (Erik Chitty) and his two colleagues, who play the lazy workingman to a tee. None of them want to stoke the furnace because it's not their job, so they piss off down to the pub for a pint. The furnace explodes, setting Cavor back not at all. I do not know why. I can only surmise that he can the plot forward with his enthusiasm alone. The "sphere" that will take them to the moon is in the hothouse---which, at 123ºF, is very literally "hot"---along with a half-dozen named geese whose purpose is unknown. Katherine gets involved and starts packing things for her sweetheart, like food and an elephant gun. Bedford is making himself semi-useful by stoking the furnace to create the last batch of "Cavorite", which is the anti-gravity paste. Katherine drives her little 1899 car everywhere, when it's easily walking distance over to her cottage. She and Bedford also wear incredibly impractical clothes everywhere. Cavor releases his geese, again without mentioning what their contribution was. Katherine is served with a summons for having illegally tried to transfer the title of a cottage she doesn't own to Cavor. She heads over to give Bedford a piece of her mind and interrupts the launch. They grab her into the sphere just as it launches. They travel for quite some time---what seems like days---with no sign of a toilet. They are all still dressed in wildly inappropriate and fancy clothing. Bedford and Katherine find chickens under a bench---I'm not kidding---and are fixing to eat the eggs they've produced. Cavor is asleep. Cavor wakes and releases the chickens into the cabin. In the next scene, they're gone. Cavor shifts blinds covered with Cavorite to control its effects. They "land". Bounce, bounce, bounce, crash. The two fellas put on diving suits while Kate stuffs herself into a bulkhead to survive while they go outside---there is no airlock, you see. Before they go, Cavor has Kate take a letter to "claim" the moon for themselves. Then they stuff her into the bulkhead, her role complete. They exit onto the moon's surface, with no attendant outrushing of air. They are not wearing gloves. After messing about a bit, a portal into the moon opens, evincing signs of a quite advanced civilization. They both fall in, with Bedford losing his helmet but still able to breathe. Lucky for him. They head deeper, searching for his lost helmet so that they can return to the capsule. They spot shadows of moon-men. Bedford says, <iq>I knew we should have brought that gun.</iq> Typical colonial mentality: they break into someone else's building but it's obviously theirs by right, so they can shoot whomever they please. They meet the Selenites, who are armed with what look like halberds. Bedford goes wild, throwing miniature Selenites left and right, off the cliff. They find the helmet and manage to escape, climbing back out, only to discover that the Selenites have dragged the sphere away to another fortress of theirs. The two men follow the tracks and break in, releasing a tremendous amount of air, with Cavor blocking the doors open with his helmet. I kid you not. The Selenites are trying to pry open the sphere while Katherine yells at them from inside. The two men encounter a giant caterpillar-like bug that they fight off inside a crystal forest. They run in opposite directions, with Cavor having lost his entire spacesuit at this point. The Selenites capture him. He joins Katherine, who's also been captured. They begin to communicate with the Selenites, who are exceedingly clever and have built incredible machines exceeding anything that mankind has created. None of this will prevent the humans from thinking that they are their rightful superiors, though. Some of the Selenites are children in costumes while the more insectile ones---with skinny arms---are stop-motion animated. During a quite fortuitous eclipse, the selenites go into a deep-sleep. Bedford is back, now also shorn of his spacesuit, retrieving his elephant gun. Bedford and Cavor tussle: Cavor wants to communicate with them, while Bedford wants to get Kate and flee. They both get what they want. Cavor communicates with a big-brained member of the Selenites while Bedford and Kate reconstruct the disassembled sphere. Bedford interrupts Cavor's audience with the Selenite using his elephant gun, throwing Selenites left and right as before. He bullies Cavor back to the sphere to make him fix the blinds---because Cavor is a genius while Bedford is a good-for-nothing brute who thinks he deserves success with no effort. Remember, his entire role in this is because he placed himself into the situation, thinking it the most natural place for him to be, despite him not being able to contribute anything. It doesn't occur to Bedford that contributing to an endeavor might be a prerequisite for reaping its rewards. Why would it? It's never mattered before. This is the kind of person that our societies train to rule. The sphere lifts off without Cavor. Bedford lands with Kate in Zanzibar. Fade back to the present, where Bedford finishes his story. They wheel in a television showing the present-day astronauts investigating the Selenites' city, which is now in ruins. Why? Cavor's microorganisms killed them off---just like smallpox helped eliminate so many indigenous peoples. The first half was a lot more fun than the second half, to be honest. Overall, it held up quite well. Cavor in his laboratory was in his element. I gave it an extra star for Jeffries's role. As soon as he no longer had Gibbs to yell at, though, it's like half his personality had gone. I can't remember what the book by H.G. Wells was like, so I don't know how faithful the adaptation was; I can only suspect that it was actually <i>quite</i> faithful.</div> <span id="Dracula">Dracula Untold (2014)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0829150/">8/10</a> <div>Vlad (Luke Evans) is trying to keep the Turks out of Transylvania. At first, he pays the tribute---but the Turks ask for much, much more: they want all the teenaged boys to fight for them. He meets with Sultan Mehmed (Dominic Cooper), who refuses to back off, telling Vlad that he will also have to give up his son to serve directly for Mehmet. His wife Mirena (Sarah Gadon) is not happy, to say the least. His son Ingeras (Art Parkinson) decides for himself that he will go. Mehmet's messenger mocks Vlad that he had expected more resistance, to which Mehmet responds with his sword, sending Ingeras back to Mirena, chopping the messenger's hands off, killing him, then slaughtering the rest of his troops. He's of course in deep shit now but it had to be done. He heads back to the cave where Master Vampire (Charles Dance) had killed his two best men and where he'd seen the monster. The monster mocks him, showing him his power, but interested to see why Vlad is hopeful rather than scared. The vampire makes him admit his crimes, that he'd impaled thousands of enemies to protect his land already. The monster tells Vlad that he doesn't yet know anything about being a monster---but he's willing to show him. Vlad drinks the Master Vampire's blood, thinking that he will be able to avoid the fate set out for him. He will die, and then he will become a vampire. He will drink blood. He is immortal. His senses are incredibly heightened. He can avoid being a vampire forever if he resists drinking blood for three straight days. He wakes in a river and realizes his powers. His silver ring burns him. He keeps it on a leather thong around his neck instead. Bats fly into his body; he absorbs them. He returns to the castle to find his folk besieged by the Turks, who've returned to take their price---the sons of all of them. He goes to battle alone, against thousands. He is unstoppable, turning into bats and back, slashing and hacking, a one-man vampire army. Fade to him standing victorious over a field of the slain. The others come running, with swords drawn. They were not needed. Sultan Mehmet vows to lead the next, even-larger army himself. Vlad says that he will win the war in three days. His second-in-command says, <iq>Why not two? Now that would be impressive.</iq> Vlad has other problems. He can't watch people eat. He makes love to his wife but her pulsing carotid is nearly too much for him. He flees to the forest where he meets his first familiar, who offers him blood from his hand. Vlad refuses, resisting the spilled blood, but just barely. Mirena wakes the next morning to find him on the yurt's floor, feverish and shaking, with his silver ring burning his skin. His old scars have healed. Vlad shows Mirena that he is a vampire, showing her how the sun burns him. he tells her that he will be better in two more days---if he can resist the call of blood. The Turks ambush the castle on its way to their mountain keep. Vlad is too late to save his right-hand man, who dies protecting his wife and son. The rest make it to the keep. Brother Lucian (Paul Kaye) confronts him, with his whole townsfolk calling to kill Vlad because, obviously, he is a monster and must die, even though he's totally the only thing keeping them alive right now. But they are cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Vlad survives the fire and steps into the daylight. He is not happy. <iq>Glaubt ihr seid noch am Leben, weil ihr kämpfen könnt? Ihr seid nur wegen mir am Leben.</iq> Vlad has survived two days. He prays for the strength to defeat the Turks and survive another day without drinking blood. The night is over. The giant Turkish army nears the keep. They are coming up an enfilade, as if they had nothing to fear. Vlad is once again accepted by his troops. Bats appear and roost in the castle's dome. Thousands of them gather around the keep in a swirling wall. The Turkish soldiers are blindfolded. Vlad unleashes his bat army on them. They are torn to shreds. A bat tornado rises above the battlefield and thrusts down into the remaining troops like a fist of God. Vlad attacks Mehmet personally. However, Some of Mehmet's crack troops have snuck in through the back door and are about to throw Mirena and Ingeras off of the parapet. Mirena falls, Vlad gives chase but the sun is burning him. She plummets to Earth. Vlad is inconsolable. He'd said earlier that, if she were to die, he would no longer have a reason for fighting. How about revenge? Mehmet turns around and leaves with his remaining troops, happy to have ruined Vlad's life. Mirena begs him, with her last breaths, to take her blood. He does. He regrets it immediately. Master Vampire exits his cave, freed from his curse. Vlad offers his own blood to a soldier, who takes it. Vlad unpacks his super-armor from when he'd last had to kill thousands. He now leads a vampire army. He converted his remaining townspeople, who are laying waste to the Turks. His troops and townspeople are not shy about drinking blood. Vlad meets Mehmet on a pile of silver. This, of course, makes it possible for Mehmet to play the heel in this kayfabe. Like, Mehmet has no fear at all about fighting the vampire that has killed thousands of his troops. It's kind of ludicrous. Of course Vlad turns the tables and takes Mehmet's blood. Perhaps the funniest part is considering that Mehmet had dragged so much silver so far just for that little party. Vlad saves his son but now his troops wants to turn his son. Vlad impales his oldest friend and mentor for the transgression. Brother Lucian comes to the boy's rescue, holding up his cross, which works on Dracula's townsfolk (even though it has no effect on Dracula). Vlad sends Ingeras off with Lucian, then allows the clouds to part so that he and his vampire family are destroyed. The familiar from the forest finds Vlad's body and restores it. We see him in the modern day, where he meets Mirena again, in a modern city. Now her name is Nina. Master Vampire is there as well. Honestly, this is one of the better vampire movies I've seen. I saw it in German.</div> <span id="boom">Here Comes the Boom (2012) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1648179/">8/10</a></span> <div>I've not rewatched a movie this soon but it's a fun movie. I <a href="{app}view_article.php?id=4970">reviewed it earlier this year</a>.</div> <span id="Arctic">Arctic (2018)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6820256/">9/10</a> <div>Overgård (Mads Mikkelsen) is digging a giant S.O.S. into the arctic wasteland. He returns to his crashed plane, which is definitely not going to fly again but is also whole enough to provide shelter from the elements. He has no firewood, no heat source other than his own body. He stays busy, using his watch's alarm to schedule his day. He checks his ice-fishing holes; he puts another rock on a cairn in a small gully (later we learn that it's a grave marker); he troops up a promontory with a hand-cranked signaling device to try to reach someone. He goes up each promontory five times. He keeps track on a map. He is missing some toes, presumably due to frostbite. He barely utters a word. To whom would he speak? I would be speaking to myself, but would perhaps also stop after a long enough period. One day, one of his fish coolers has been torn open. A polar bar has found his campsite. He sees the bear in the sun a few days later, far in the distance. it walks off. We have no idea how long he's been there. It looks like it's been quite a while. His red coat is the only spot of color anywhere. Everything else is black and white. One day, the signal goes from red to green. He sees a helicopter in the distance. He lights his only flare. The chopper pilot sees him. He flies over. The wind and storm catch the chopper, sending it down. Overgård's disappointment is palpable. He gather himself and runs toward the black plume to see if he can rescue anyone. There are two unconscious people in the chopper: a male pilot (Tintrinai Thikhasuk) and a female passenger (Maria Thelma Smáradóttir). He drags the pilot out but he's dead. The female passenger is hurt pretty badly, with a wound to the belly, but is still alive. He stays with her in the wreckage. In the morning, he ransacks the wreckage for supplies: food, flares, a map. He rescues the woman and drags her on a makeshift travois back to his plane. As he's putting her into his bunk, he revels in the warmth of another person for a second or two, even though she's unconscious. He gets her to drink some water. She wakes briefly but her eyes are shifting side-to-side in a not-very-healthy way. She asks about the pilot. <iq>I'm sorry,</iq> he says. He returns to the chopper to salvage more supplies. He takes the dead pilot's clothes and supplies, then buries him and builds a small cairn. He finds a working lighter. The wind bangs a door open on the back of the copter, revealing a sled. He laughs ruefully, then looks at his loaded sledge made out of a plane door. Back at the plane, he cares for her stitched-up wound with hydrogen peroxide, then fires up a gas burner. His gaze toward it is worshipful as he warms his hands. He begins mapping a route. His fishing line clanks. He runs out to find the biggest fish yet. He yells jubilantly. He <i>cooks</i> the fish---his first hot meal in God knows how long. he feeds the woman. She won't eat. She's not recovering very quickly. Or perhaps at all. He climbs the hills. He cranks the signal. The light blinks red. He studies the map. He starts to think. He climbs a solitary slope into the sun. He looks at the mountains through which he'd have to go to get to the "seasonal station" he's seen on the map. He packs up his things, including her, packing it all on the sledge. He writes his plan on the inside and outside of the plane. The weather is good. They're on their way, him dragging her. How in God's name does he know where he is? As twilight creeps in, he digs a shelter in the snow, big enough for both of them. He cooks a meal. He always makes her squeeze his hand to prove she's cognizant even though she seems to be sleeping all of the time. The day breaks, sunny, cold, and clear. He's off, a dot in the vast snowy expanse. A storm comes up. He finds someone else's camp, marked with "1 alive due South". He keeps the ID he finds. Onward. Halfway there and the way is blocked by a cliff. He maps out an alternate route but it's twice as long. He climbs up to see that the former route would be easy going. He's already nearly there. He could to the seasonal station pretty easily. He drags his sledge up. She's still down there, though. She's next. He pulls with all of his might. It's not enough. There's no place to use leverage, no way to halve the weight. Down she goes. Again. He turns to look up the easy valley. He crosses off the route. <bq>We'll take a better way.</bq> This movie is brilliant, all show, no tell. There's almost no dialogue. Of course he can't go on without her. What's the point of surviving with that amount of guilt? You have to be able to be the hero in your own story; otherwise, what's the point of surviving? He finds a cave in which to shelter for the night. He wakes to hear grunts that tell him that the cave might have had an occupant who's returning home. His charge coughs, alerting the beast. Now it knows something's in its cave and it starts digging. It sticks its lovely head in the small entrance. Overgård lights a flare and drives it off. The camera pulls back across the valley to show the tiny light flicker out. The next morning, the bear is gone and the sled intact. They set out but the weather is impossible. He flips the sled to break the wind, then jumps into the sleeping bag with her, shutting out the worst of the cold. They are both freezing but the shared body heat has its effect. His watch beeps. He digs them out. The sled is stuck fast. His water bottle is frozen solid. He sticks it up his coat to heat it. They continue. His fingers are freezing. The tundra is endless. They shelter in the lee of a rock. He gives her water. Asks her to squeeze. Orders her to squeeze. No response. He burns some supplies for warmth. He sleeps rough. He's looking shabby as the day dawns relatively clear but with no direct sun. He checks on her. She seems to be alive but her wound is putrid. He makes her hold the picture of her family. He wipes the drop of blood away that has escaped her mouth. She's dead. He leaves her in the giant sleeping bag, sort of as a coffin, I guess. He's moving on, but spots a plant growing incongruously in the snow. Near the plant, he falls through a hole in the snow into a cavern. He wakes, half-trapped under a rock. His leg won't budge. He has his first doubts. They don't last long. They never do with this kind of person. He wrenches hard to pull his leg out. His leg has a huge cut on it. He manages to crawl back to the surface. He manages to shuffle back to his sled, and then back to her final resting place. She coughs. He rallies with purpose. He binds his leg. He hooks up the sledge. He grabs a crutch. He drives himself onward. She coughs. He peels back the tarp to give her water. The evil wind takes the tarp out of his reach. He watches it, but can't chase it. He fills ice into the flask. He is indomitable. They encounter a big hill. He is forced to stop in the middle. He throws out as much weight from the sled as he can, except for her. He crawls to the top to have a look. at the top, he sees a helicopter landing on a pad. He slides back down to her and pushes the sledge up the hill. He cries to the chopper. They're too far away. He yells. He lights his last flare. He stands on his broken leg. Last ditch. All in. He sets his coat on fire and holds it up on his walking stick. The chopper takes off, heading away from them. Once again, he doubts. But you can see him rallying his remaining resources, the little he has left. He has no coat, though, and nothing left. He finally lets go, lying on the snow with her. The wind comes up. The chopper is back.</div> <span id="BuyNow">Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy (2024)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt34350086/">9/10</a> <div>This is a great documentary about the predations of capitalism as expressed through the compulsion to consumerism to feed an insatiable drive for growth. This burning of resources at a fever pitch is all to benefit of a handful while others simply spin in their hamster wheels, imagining that they're happy and fulfilled but all the while feeling empty and just running more, not knowing what else to do. The world burns at an incredible rate and no-one even knows why. It is just the way of nature, we are told by those for whose benefit we do it. The main plot device is an ethereal robotic voice that guides you through the principles of how to do business in the western-style system of capitalism. The robot is deliberately unintentionally ironic as it describes how to pretend to care about the deleterious effects of generating as much profit as possible for your personal fortune. The five principles are: <ol>Shop more. Waste more. Lie more. Hide more. Control more.</ol> <bq>A profit-maximization strategy will lead to an inevitable environmental transformation. Don't be scared. Your continued success will delay the most extreme impacts affecting you. You just need to convince others that you are trying to solve the problem.</bq> <bq>If you have been following these rules diligently, you should now be fabulously wealthy.</bq> <bq>Please only share the information contained in this interaction with other trusted users. Widespread dissemination of these rules may negatively impact your sales.</bq> The voice reminds me of the game <i>Portal</i>, even down to the promise of a "surprise" at the end that never transpired---in <i>Portal</i>, it was a "cake" that never existed. A woman from Ghana says: <bq>People throw something "away". They imagine that "away" as something abstract. For us, "away" is here.</bq> Clothes are a particular problem, taking so much space, breaking down, and causing microplastics because so much of it is synthetic. We see people shopping, they show people going on shopping binges, using their privileged disposable income to buy entire roomfuls of clothes. Most of these clothes are made of synthetics, which means that they're made of oil. The lady from Ghana says, <iq>just stop. There's just too much clothing in the world. Just fucking stop.</iq> Unlike the <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=5290#Nuclear"><i>Nuclear Now</i></a> documentary, this one comes right out and says exactly what the only viable solution is. <bq>As long as we define success in terms of more growth, of more profits, then we are in trouble.</bq> <bq>Just buy less. It'll be fine.</bq></div> </dl> <hr> <ft>These are notes for me to remember what I watched and kinda what I thought about it. The amount of text is not proportional to my enjoyment. I might write less because I didn't get around to it when it was fresh in my mind. I rate the film based on how well it suited me personally for the <i>genre</i>, my mood and. let's be honest, level of intoxication. I make no attempt to avoid <b>spoilers</b>. Links are to <a href="https://www.imdb.com/user/ur1323291/ratings">my IMDb ratings</a></ft>