<n>Read the explanation of method, madness, and <b>spoilers</b>.<fn></n> <ol> <a href="#OverTheTop">Over the Top (1987)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093692/">6/10</a> <a href="#Happy">Happy Gilmore (1996)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116483/">7/10</a> <a href="#Interview">The Interview (2014)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2788710/">7/10</a> <a href="#LastMan">Last Man Standing (1996)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116830/">8/10</a> <a href="#Havoc">Havoc (2025)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt14123284/">5/10</a> <a href="#Snatch">Snatch (2000)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0208092/">8/10</a> <a href="#Adu">Adú (2020)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt9616700/">9/10</a> <a href="#Elysium">Elysium (2013)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1535108/">8/10</a> <a href="#Violent">Violent Night (2022)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt12003946/">7/10</a> <a href="#NorthCountry">North Country (2005)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0395972/">9/10</a> </ol> <dl dt_class="field"> <span id="OverTheTop">Over the Top (1987)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093692/">6/10</a> <div>Lincoln Hawk is a truck driver who makes extra money with arm-wrestling. He's quite well-known on the trucker circuit. He's divorced from his wife Christina (Susan Blakely), whose life is pretty much run by her father (Robert Loggia). The grandfather had been instrumental in putting their son Michael (David Mendenhall) into a military academy. Christina is suffering from severe heart disease and, nearing the end, she has had a ... change of heart ... and wants her son to get to know his father. Lincoln picks Michael up after graduation---or whatever; school's done---and they take a road trip together from Colorado to California, taking several days, even though it's like a one-day drive, from what I recall. Michael goes from insufferable, arrogant know-it-all who thinks his dad is a dumb trucker to more-or-less regular kid who thinks his dad is pretty cool. This is Stallone's bread and butter. By the time they get to California, though, Christina has died. Michael blames Lincoln of course and moves in with his grandfather, in his luxurious mansion. Also very much in line with Stallone characters, he breaks the law to do what's right, rampaging his way into the mansion to get his son back. It's jail time for you, boyo. Grandpa agrees not to press charges in exchange for Lincoln signing over custody. Lincoln decides to join a big arm-wrestling competition in Las Vegas to finally be able to buy his own truck, and maybe start his own business. He really just wants the truck, though. He doesn't even really care about being arm-wrestling champion. Not so with the other competitors, who are <i>deeply invested</i> in arm-wrestling. For them, it's a large part of their personas. Meanwhile, Michael discovers that grandpa's a dick who tore his family apart because he never thought that Lincoln was good enough for his daughter. Using the skills he'd just learned from his dad on their road trip---what are the odds?---Michael steals a truck and drives to Las Vegas. Grandpa tries to bribe Lincoln one last time, with $500K and a new truck<fn> but Lincoln refuses, preferring to get his son back. Like, somehow, because hadn't he signed over custody? I might have missed the part where they quickly resolved this minor wrinkle. Guess who wins the arm-wrestling tournament? Guess who rides off into the sunset with his son in his brand-new truck? I watched it in German.</div> <span id="Happy">Happy Gilmore (1996)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116483/">7/10</a> <div>Happy Gilmore had always wanted to be a hockey player. He is, however, not a good hockey player. He can somehow, after a lifetime on skates, barely skate. He does have a helluva slapshot, though. He was raised by his grandmother. She doesn't like to pay taxes, so she's over a quarter-of-a-million dollars in arrears. She's gonna get thrown out of her house. Grandma goes to a nursing home, under the watchful eye of an unnamed sociopathic orderly (Ben Stiller) who runs a sweatshop for knitted goods. Happy discovers that his powerful slapshot also gives him an incredible advantage off the tee in golf, a sport that he barely considers a sport. Chubbs Peterson (Carl Weathers), a one-handed ex-pro, offers to train him, after having seen him making money at the driving range. Happy wins his first local open, netting a few thousand bucks. Otto (Allen Covert) caddies for him. Otto is a homeless man that he'd met in the parking lot. On the one hand, it's a nice gesture that Happy gives the man a job but it's also kind of sad that Happy doesn't seem to know anyone but his grandmother. He has no other friends or support system on which to fall back on when he needs help. Happy is the fish out of water that the golfing crowd loves but that the tour management loathes. They put Virginia (Julie Bowen) in charge of managing him, blaming her for every one of his missteps. She is gorgeous. I was trying to figure out who she was and she's Claire from <i>Modern Family</i>. There are a couple of dream sequences in which she wears very little. What a knockout. So, this goes on until a pro/am tournament where Happy is paired with Bob Barker and there is an epic-throw-down between the two, with Bob emerging victorious and Gilmore emerging with a concussion. Just kidding. Neither one of them is injured, but Bob does win and Gilmore is knocked out. Oh, I forgot that Shooter McGavin (Christopher McDonald) is incensed that Happy is stealing his thunder. This guy is a great heel, just honed to perfection. He even hires a heckler (Joe Flaherty) to ruin Happy's chances when he sees that Happy's short game is coming together and making him a real threat. The 90 days have passed and Happy still doesn't have enough money to buy back his house. Guess who does, though? Shooter. Shooter totally buys the house. Happy is about to pop a vein. He is having serious anger-management issues. There is a showdown on the golf course, with all the money on the line, and there is the predictable final-hole-tied-up situation where a confluence of ten different things in the movie---like a final exam for having paid attention the whole time---leads to the denouement of Shooter and the parallel elevation of Happy in every way that the movie has taught us matters. He gets the money, he gets the house back, grandma is safe, he gets the hot, hot ladyfriend, and his best friend Otto is also by his side.</div> <span id="Interview">The Interview (2014)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2788710/">7/10</a> <div>I watched this in <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=3074#Interview" author="" source="">2014</a>, when it first came out. The review and rating stand. It's a bit uneven. Some scenes and some of the dialogue are worth more, but it's scattered through more-mediocre stuff, so it's a wash. I noted a few lines that made me laugh right out loud. At <b>26:00</b>, agreeing with Aaron on some point he's making, <bq><b>Dave Skylark:</b> This is 2014; women are smart now.</bq> At <b>30:00</b>, referring to how Aaron though that Agent Lacey had worn non-prescription glasses to make herself look sexier to him, in an effort to honey-pot him, <bq><b>Agent Lacey:</b> You’re saying that my only use to this agency is to attract men, and that is offensive. <b>Dave Skylark:</b> I think it’s offensive, too and that is exactly what I said to Aaron. I said, ‘that bitch is blind as a bat.’</bq> At around <b>43:00</b>, referring to what he honestly hopes isn't a tiger about to eat his friend, <bq><b>Dave Skylark:</b> It's like a big, orange, stripey dog.</bq> Soon after: <bq><b>Dave Skylark:</b> I didn't want it to come to this, but you're going to have to fight that tiger.</bq> </div> <span id="LastMan">Last Man Standing (1996)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116830/">8/10</a> <div>John Smith (Bruce Willis) rolls his Model T (-looking car) into a dusty town called Jericho. He catches a look at the nearly shockingly striking Felina (Karina Lombard), for which Felina's boyfriend's henchmen rough up his car. He meets the sheriff (Bruce Dern), who ain't gonna do a damned thing about it. He goes to the bar and meets proprietor Joe Monday (William Sanderson), who tells him about the town, about how it's being fought over by two gangs. Willis's gravelly voice narrates this noir-ish movie, sometimes accompanied by pouring rain. That's the mood. One of the gangs is run by Doyle (David Patrick Kelly, from <a href="{app}view_article.php?id=3241#Warriors">The Warriors</a>), whose main henchman is Hickey (Christopher Walken). The other gang is Italian, run by Fredo Strozzi (Ned Eisenberg), who works with Giorgio Carmonte (Michael Imperioli) Meanwhile Joe straps up and goes out to <iq>see the fellas who roughed up my car.</iq> He kills one of them and is quickly hired by the Italian mob. He goes back to Bob to get a room and then goes three doors down to the brothel, where he meets Wanda (Leslie Mann). She's chattering away while he's pumping away...when two guys break in, guns a-blazing. John Smith rolls off in a flurry, his guns also a-blazing, naked as the day he was born. This feels a bit like an homage to <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=5708#Plains" author="" source="">High Plains Drifter</a>. It rhymes more than a little bit. Joe plays everyone against each other. he talks to Strozzi's girlfriend Lucy Kolinski (Alexandra Powers), whom he tries to turn to get information. John Smith would become an avenging angel for the two women, Felina and Lucy. As the sheriff says, <bq>You know what, amigo? I think I just spotted a chink in your armor. When you go down, it's gonna be over a skirt.</bq> It begins. Smith walks in to the safe house where they're keeping Felina and blows away eight guys from a standing start. He takes out the last one even though that guy had a gun to Felina's head. John gets Felina out of town. The Irish catch up to him, having copped to his having killed all of their men. They beat the living Christ out of him. <iq>He's nothin' without a gun.</iq> His face is a shattered mess, one eye completely sealed shut. <bq>After a while you stop hearing your bones break, your teeth rattle. You just concentrate on holding tight to that little part right at the center. The rest doesn't matter. They're gonna take the rest anyway.</bq> He gathers himself and gets the drop on two guys who come back to pick up his body. The Sheriff and Joe Monday both help him get out of town. Meanwhile, the Irish tear up the roadhouse, where the Italians were holed up. It's a fiery slaughter. Smith comes out of hiding when the Irish pick up Joe for helping him. Guns a-blazing, John tears a wide swath through the Irish headquarters. He kills everyone. He's wounded, of course, but when has that ever mattered in movies like this? Some time later, after he's healed, he gets back into his Ford and continues on his way, to Mexico.</div> <span id="Havoc">Havoc (2025)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt14123284/">5/10</a> <div>They were going for some sort of <i>The Raid</i> or <i>Oldboy</i> aesthetic but it didn't quite work out. The action is reasonable if sometimes a bit unintelligible through being too frenetic. The endless rounds of ammunition just became too much not to notice. Some of these people have what look like little hand-held pistols that they fire, machine-gun-like, with what seems like hundreds of rounds without reloading. Some of the action is decent---the splatter!---but the crucial scenes just fall apart to cheesiness. There are good actors in this but the acting is too wooden at clutch moments. Oh my God. I wrote the paragraph above and then something even cheesier happened. Hey, neat. Everyone's dead. Nah, just kidding. There are a few left. I don't know how everyone isn't deaf yet, though. This is an action film. It stars Thomas Hardy. I find him charismatic and interesting, which is why it gets an extra star. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havoc_(2025_film)">Wikipedia</a> summary is long and detailed and largely a waste of time. The plot has nothing to convey. It's something about triads and gangs and murder. Look at this paragraph summing up the final moments of the movie, <bq>Charlie guns down Jake in revenge for his father. Vincent is shot by Walker. They talk but he shoots Walker, prompting him to shoot Vincent dead. Ellie lets Charlie and Mia go. Walker, wounded, urges Ellie to arrest him. She refuses, and Walker looks upon the arriving police cars, his fate uncertain.</bq> Isn't it neat how it doesn't spoil or explain anything? That's not the fault of the Wikipedia article---the movie itself is a mess. I'm sure the summary is accurate but how in God's name are you supposed to care about this? It even seems like they were hoping for a sequel, for God's sake. They're so interested in making money that they're trying to get sequel money without actually having made an initial film. Everyone's hustling, everyone's grifting. Even if you like Tom Hardy, you can skip this one. He's good in everything but not given much of a chance in this one.</div> <span id="Snatch">Snatch (2000)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0208092/">8/10</a> <div>I watched and reviewed this movie in <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=3188#Snatch">2015</a>. The review and rating stand.</div> <span id="Adu">Adú (2020)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt9616700/">9/10</a> <div>A city, near the border. Migrants climb a fence. One falls and dies. Officers try to revive him. They fail. We meet Mateo (Álvaro Cervantes, a police officer. Jungle. Hacking noises. Two children creep through the giant leaves. Men in a clearing. An axe rises and falls. A tusk falls off an elephant. Later, the rangers come upon it. They burn the body. The local rangers wanted to give the meat to the villagers. They are in Cameroon now. The top-down view of the river village is beautiful. What an eye. A little girl poles a giant boat along, short, flowered skirt billowing. The children are back at home. Their mother admonishes them. The boy says that the elephant's name was Kimba. They knew the elephant. The rangers have a dispute. The Spanish one Gonzalo (Luis Tosar) doesn't integrate well. He doesn't like the people, doesn't like the villagers. The people don't like him either. The little boy is Adù. Later, at night, two men attack their home. They beat his mother. Adù (Moustapha Oumarou) and his sister Ali (Zayiddiya Dissou) escape into the water. The next day, they emerge from the swamp. Hitchhiking. Gonzalo drives right by. They are, after all, not elephants. On a bridge, Adù collapses, dehydrated. His sister Ali carries him to water, brings him back around. The Gonzalo picks up his entitled daughter Sandra (Anna Castillo) from the airport. She reveals that he's wealthy, back home, in Spain. She is enjoying the colonial lifestyle. She smokes pot, chats with the locals, unaware of the racist divide. Adù and Ali get to their aunt's shanty, under a bridge, in a filthy slum. She gets them into new clothes and gets them on a boat to Spain, to their father. <i>Changement des plans.</i> They are now to take a plane to Paris. No tickets. Gotta climb up the wheel well. They watch the planes. Adù doesn't want to go. Ali's going for it. They're in. They're up. It's cold. Ali keeps Adù warm as long as she can. He wakes. She is frozen. The wheel drops out again as they approach. Alika's body drops away first, disappearing into the clouds. Adù is alone, for the first time. The plane lands. He drops out the hole, into Dakar airport, in Senegal. He awakes at a police station, where he meets another illegal, Massar (Adam Nourou). At a stop in the city, Massar jimmies the rear door of the paddy wagon open and they flee. They try to hitch a ride but have no money. Sandra is kicking up dust, being a teenager, predictable. It's fine. I suppose it's <i>real</i> but it's always the same story. We can see the story unwind before us, each step of the way foreordained. Father abandoned daughter but he's rich, so she's raised well. Spoiled. Does drugs. Defiant. Entitled. Doesn't see it. Justifies all of her behavior by assuming her dad is an unalloyed asshole, so he deserves whatever she dishes out, that she can take from him what she can with no consequences or moral repercussions. She will likely learn that things are more complicated than that but it will almost certainly be too late. I think these kinds of stories reassure parents of asshole kids that they're not alone. Adù is hungry. So is Massar. Massar knows how poor, young men earn money from truck drivers. For himself, he would have held out longer; for Adù, he sacrifices. Told without words. Massar speaks English, Adù French. Massar understands him a little and vice versa. They are at the beach. They have no money, little food, no shoes. But they glory in glorious nature. They are poor and yet rich. Back in the city, Adù and Massar join a street crew; Massar juggles; Adù gets water. A filthy man picks up Adù with promises of chocolate and magic, trapping him in his car. Massar hears his cries and rescues him, knocking the man out with a stone. They take all of his money. They are back in the sea cave. Adù is happy and well-fed. <bq><b>Massar:</b> Plus jamais. <b>Adù:</b> Mais toi, tu la fait. <b>Massar:</b> It's different. <b>Adù:</b> Pourquoi? <b>Massar:</b> Tu es enfant. <b>Adù:</b> Mais je veux faire la magique.</bq> A bus covered in sacks of goods and people crosses a vast desert on a barely discernible road. The boys are on top of it, with many others. Massar coughs, not for the first time. The boys have made it to northern Morocco. It is colder now. Red-cross workers arrive in the camp. One hears Massar's cough; she sees the sores that have recently appeared. She tells him he needs to go to a hospital; <iq>No papers.</iq> <iq>It's an emergency.</iq> He refuses, crawling back to his tent. In the night, he goes to look out over the coast, at the Mediterranean. He has decided something. He seems to have decided that he will give what remains of his life to rescue his young friend. Gonzalo leaves Sandra because she's insufferable. She mopes around a bunch. He finds hashish that she smuggled in a fake elephant tusk. Massar and Adù are at the coast with inner tubes, staring across at what looks to be the tantalizingly near shore of Spain across the Strait of Gibraltar. The water is freezing. Massar paddles, dragging Adù's ring on a rope. The police officers who'd killed an immigrant at the fence at the very beginning of the film, and whom we'd seen throughout the film in snippets, win their court case. They call it justice as they toast with glasses of wine, lamenting how tough of a time they'd had. They are, of course, not in camps. One of them will be posted to Málaga, which is, apparently, a fate worse than anything those immigrants suffer. This is called justice. Mateo has doubts. He has had doubts all along. The ringleader follows Mateo outside for a smoke, <iq>Why aren't you drinking?</iq> <iq>My shift starts at 10:00</iq>.. When Mateo tries to tell him what he'd learned about the man they'd killed, the ringleader says, <bq>Do you know what the problem with Africa is? They all leave. Teachers, politicians, nurses. If they all leave, who the fuck is going to fix it? Do you know what that fence says? Solve your own problems.</bq> The rope breaks. Panic. Wind. Waves. Adù and Massar are each left alone. The current and dark have their way with them. The cold lulls them to sleep. A red beacon. Adù fetches up against a buoy. A searchlight illuminates the ice in his hair. Mateo pulls Adù on board. <iq>Look, we found your friend!</iq> Massar appears out of the dark, wrapped in a space blanket. They ride back in the morning light, onto Spanish territory. <iq>Good luck,</iq> says Mateo as they are taken away by other police. Mateo smiles because he feels that he's done a good thing, managed to help some immigrants, after having helped cover up the killing of another. At the land crossing, Gonzalo lets Sandra cross into Spain on her own. The border guards choose her for inspection. They find the hollow in the tusk. Papa has replaced the hash with a little flag from his charity. She's free to go. Happy ending for her. No so much for Massar. He is thrown back into Morocco. Alone. Adù awakes in a strange bed. Alone. He goes outside. There are others about. Young men. He is alone. Again. This is a beautifully shot film. Rich. Lush. The city scenes, at the Spanish embassy. The old buildings. The jungle, of course. Women on prayer rugs, eight of them, evenly spaced, filmed from above. I watched in Spanish, French, and English, with English subtitles.</div> <span id="Elysium">Elysium (2013)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1535108/">8/10</a> <div>I'd already <a href="{app}view_article.php?id=2897#Elysium">seen and reviewed this movie in 2013</a> but wanted to revisit it to see why I gave it a 5/10 the first time around. First off, it definitely resonates more in 2025, with robot police officers randomly checking people in a line waiting to get on a bus to go to shitty jobs. That the whole neighborhood is latino is a bit too on the nose. Do people in the Trump administration watch stuff like this and think that it's an instruction manual? Oh, holy shit, Max's (Matt Damon) interaction with his robot / AI parole officer is also a bit too on the nose. Seriously, does all of Silicon Valley have these kind of films on repeat in their offices? Do they unironically whine to each other about how assholes like Max ruin everything for the beautiful people in orbit? So, the robot cop hassles him at the bus stop and gives him a bullshit charge for hassling a cop. They break his arm, so he ends up in the emergency room, where he meets his childhood friend Frey (Alice Braga) working as a nurse. Next, he has to visit his parole officer to find out that he's gotten eight more months added to his parole, and then he shows up late to his shift and is dinged half a day's pay. All the while, he's gotta keep his cool because getting mad just makes things worse. At the factory, a suited man John Carlyle (William Fichtner) overlooks the work floor from a white, glass cube. At the factory, Max builds the robots that oppress him. up on Elysium, Delacourt (Jodie Foster) rules her queendom. She is in charge of handling a group of illegal shuttles approaching the space station. Wait, she orders someone on Earth to fire surface-to-space rockets to blow up the shuttles? I know I'm supposed to focus on Delacourt's cruelty in killing women and children but it's just weird that they shoot at things in orbit from Earth. That's like the dumbest way to do it? Anyway, one of the ships makes it through and a mom carries her sick child to a medical bay, where she starts to heal her child's illness. They are rounded up and deported back to Earh with the other survivors. Back at the factory, Max's boss rides his ass into doing something dangerous. You know, or else he'll lose his job. He goes into a dangerous chamber and is trapped. A robot drags his unconscious, heavily irradiated body out. <bq>You have been exposed to a lethal dose of radiation. You will experience catastrophic organ failure. In five days' time, you will die.</bq> OK, so that's Max's story now. Meanwhile Frey is told that her daughter's disease can't be cured because <iq>This isn't Elysium.</iq> Now, I see why I had a problem with this movie the last time. The whole premise is super-dumb. Like, they'll expend a <i>tremendous</i> amount of effort and resources to build robots to keep people on Earth at work, building the robots that watch over them, but they won't give them medical care? I know that's a bit too on the nose as well, but the oligarchs in our world at least benefit from that situation. I don't see how the oligarchs in Elysium would care one way or the other, unless the cruelty is the point. I bet the cruelty is the point. The movie still resonates much more with me today, though, despite its flawed premise. They are talking about billionaires <i>as if it were a sci-fi concept</i>. There were billionaires 13 years ago but nothing like what we have now. We now have those Elysium assholes striding the Earth and <i>dreaming</i> of a big wheel in the sky to which they could escape. Or <i>dreaming of Mars</i> to which I would wish them a hearty <i>bon voyage.</i> Max goes to an old partner Spider (Wagner Moura) with Julio (Diego Luna) to get surgery to fix himself up for a few days---servo-armor and a data-implant---and then plans a heist to steal the data out of Carlyle's brain. But Carlyle's brain has a secure program stored on it that will reprogram Elysium to make Delacourt president. Delacourt sics her mercs on them. The worst of them is Kruger (Sharlto Copley). But Max is now protected because Delacourt wants what's in only his brain now (Carlyle expired during the firefight). Max is back in the favelas. A drone flies overhead; a little old lady bids him to take shelter under her pig cart. I'm getting Gaza vibes as well. Long story short: Kruger kidnaps Max, Frey, and her daughter and take them to Elysium, to Delacourt. Now we're back to ICE vibes---<iq>two illegals heading east in zone 3</iq>---as Frey and her daughter run to a med bay after their ride crash-lands on Elysium. Kruger takes a grenade to the face. They really wanted to show Kruger get his face rebuilt by a med-bay, to really bring home the fact that they can heal anything. Everybody's captured and has been brought together. They're trying to extract Max's neurological payload. Spider and his crew land on Elysium (because the station is no longer blocking ingress, for no reason I can fathom; I thought they were on a war footing). Max breaks free of his surgery and soldiers on despite his increasing radiation sickness. Delacourt chirps hard at Kruger and he slices her carotid for her. He plans to grab Max's payload and make himself president. His crew starts tearing up Elysium's ruling class. Kruger fights Max while Spider hacks the mainframe. That's not surprising but it's the story. Guess what else, though? Max beats Kruger. Also, Frey heals her daughter. Spider guesses the pin. Spider hands him a cable to upload the package. Transfer is lethal. Spider sees it. Max accepts his fate. Spider lets him press the button. <bq>Tell Mathilda I really liked her story. I figured out why the hippo did it.</bq> System reboot. Who's a citizen? Everyone. Who's president? How terrible is it that this movie has moved closer to being a documentary in the 12 years since I saw it the first time? It has a very happy ending, one we're unlikely to get. Elysium sends shuttles full of med bays with robots to heal the sick of the Earth. Really, though, local warlords would take over the ships and charge for access.</div> <span id="Violent">Violent Night (2022)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt12003946/">7/10</a> <div>Santa (David Harbour) is a sloppy alcoholic. He is jaded. Everyone wants video games. Everyone wants cash. He has a soft heart: in one home, he leaves a gift for a sleeping toddler, while leaving her father a chunk of coal and taking the sleeping man's six-pack. Santa is at grandmama Gertrude's (Beverly D'Angelo) house. She is a rich, old lady who keeps her entire, mostly horrible family on tenterhooks. Her granddaughter Trudy is nice enough and she strikes up a conversation with Santa on her walkie talkie. He tells Trudy about his past, as a thief, a plunderer, a warrior with an axe. Mr. Scrooge (John Leguiziamo) takes over Gertrude's house, taking the whole family hostage. He tells a tale of woe how he never had Christmas, no decorations, no presents---but the neighbors! They had everything! Now Santa appears. He knows all their names, he knows all of their histories, he is Santa. They believe. The criminals break into the high-tech safe to find that everything has already been cleared out. Santa is trapped in a shed. He has given up. He's dropped his ring. It has rolled across the ring, fetching up against a sledgehammer. The ancient warrior awakens. The soldiers arrive at the shed. It's a bloodbath. The solider outside watches one body-cam after another wink out of existence. Santa is sledgehammering, stabbing with a candy cane, slicing with a hockey skate, strangling and chopping with a snowblower. The montage is accompanied by <i>Christmas Time</i> by Bryan Adams, which is a God-awful song but appropriate here. Trudy is holed up in the attic. Her traps have an air of <i>Home Alone</i> to them but they are considerably more vicious. A bed of nails elicits a ton of blood from one attacker. The bowling balls aren't any worse than what Kevin Mcallister did in that film, but the glue trap is brutal. Just as her traps run out, Santa arrives to hammer the lady across the attic. The lady lives. So, Santa asks Trudy to close her eyes, cover her ears, and sing <i>Jingle Bells</i> while he finishes the lady off. Meanwhile, Gertrude's no-good son Jason---and father of Trudy---is showing the criminals where he'd hidden the money that he'd already stolen. Was there always going to have been a snowmobile chase? Santa Claus gives chase on a child's sled, which he uses to upgrade to a snowmobile. The hammer comes along. Scrooge baits him into slamming into a rock. He gets Santa's scroll and sees that Santa's real, bro. Scrooge is going to go for it, though; he's going to try to end Christmas forever. Santa takes a lot of damage but drags Scrooge up a chimney with him, turning him into soup. It's not over, though. Scrooge's partner has a score to settle with Santa for a past of shitty presents and he fills Santa with lead, dropping him off the chimney. In a wonderful irony, Jason is forced to burn money to keep Santa warm. His sister begs him not to burn the money, that Santa's <iq>presque mort</iq> (almost dead), so what's the point? And Jason doesn't even believe that it's the real Santa! Neither does Linda. They all have to declare that they <i>believe</i>, which brings him back. He is looking rough. Covered in blood. <bq><b>Jason:</b> Vous, vous etiez mort? <b>Santa:</b> C'est la magique Nöel.</bq> I watched it in French with no subtitles (they weren't available). It went surprisingly well! I mean, it's not a complicated movie. There's a lot of room to miss details here and there.</div> <span id="NorthCountry">North Country (2005)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0395972/">9/10</a> <div>It's Christmas, 1989. A sweet little girl fondles ornaments on a tree. Josey Aimes (Charlize Theron) watches a truck approach, sluing through the snow. She looks worried. She has reason to be. She's crumpled on the kitchen floor. She levers herself up, wiping blood from her face. Wayne's gone. For now. She gathers her tweenaged son Sammy (Thomas Curtis) and daughter Karen (Elle Peterson), packs their bags and drives off, up a bleak road. The wintry cinematography is lovely, striking a stark contrast to the horrible, judgmental people. Though both are harsh, the harshness of nature feels less deliberate, less personal. She fetches up at her parents' house. <bq><b>Dad:</b> (Richard Jenkins) ...he catch you with another man? Is that why he laid hands on you?</bq> Interleaved scenes from a trial, where Josey is being harangued by a harsh prosecutor. The prosecutor is of the opinion that Josey brought her misery upon herself. In flashbacks, the townspeople agree. <iq>Poor Alice, that girl has been nothing but trouble since the day she was born.</iq> Her mother Alice (Sissy Spacek) doesn't join in; she makes them stop. Josey meets an old schoolmate Glory (Frances McDormand), who <iq>drives truck</iq> at the mine. There are jobs there. Pays well. <iq>As much as your dad makes.</iq> <bq><b>Dad:</b> You wanna be a lesbian now?</bq> Back at trial: <bq><b>Prosecutor:</b> You submitted to the exam willingly, correct? <b>Josey:</b> Yeah. I <i>submitted</i>. Before your law firm hired you, they put your feet up in the air and look around your insides?</bq> Wayne's (Marcus Chait) back. She sends him on his way. Her parents are appalled that she's not willing to try to make it work. On the road again, heading to the mine, staying with Glory and Kyle (Sean Bean) instead of her parents. Josey gets her introduction to the mines and meets shift supervisor Bobby Sharp (Jeremy Renner), whom she'd dated in high school. <pullquote author="Mao Zedong" align="right" width="10em"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism_in_Chinese_communism#Mao_era_(1949–1976)" source="Wikipedia">"Women hold up half the sky."</a></pullquote>Glory's a union rep, asking for portajohns. <iq>If we get you those, what are you gonna for us?</iq> asks another union rep. This is the problem, in essence: Americans have had class solidarity bred right out of them. It's a fait accompli. They'd rather stupidly split along gender lines than class lines. Where the early Soviets made all people equal from the very beginning, even the most labor-friendly of organizations in the U.S. are rife with all sorts of discrimination because people in that society are not taught to think along class lines. They are taught to think about everything <i>but</i> class, lest they get ideas about <i>really</i> getting organized. That's why even the few remaining unions in the U.S. are shitty and weak. I have a close family member in a teacher's union. Their stories about what the union does are sad. I've had to ask them several times whether they're sure they know what a union actually is. Anyway, the harassment is obviously not going to stay restricted to the men being dicks at union meetings. It's obviously going to go straight to sexual harassment, justified to the perpetrators by how butt-hurt they are about the jobs that women are taking away from them, instead of blaming the politicians that they all voted for, who are eliminating jobs and industries right and left. Men like that always gotta punch down. They know no other way. They are blinkered bullies, small-minded and savage. The neat thing is that they show that the bone-deep stupidity is not just in the men; it's also ingrained in some of the women. For example, Bill White (Woody Harrelson), a friend of Glory and Kyle's is in town from "New York". Sherry, a 19-year-old co-worker of Glory and Josey asks him to dance. He demurs, eventually saying that he's <iq>wearing underwear older than her.</iq> He'd already tried gently rebuffing her but she was coming on strong. She reacts with <iq>you really are a homo, then.</iq> At Glory's urging, Bill screws up his courage to ask Josey to dance but he's cut off by Ricky, who Josey dances with her instead. Her naiveté is painful to watch, ... <iq>Are you nice, Ricky? You seem nice.</iq> So vulnerable. You cringe at what's going to happen. Josey, Sammy, and little Karen are looking at their own house. 5% down and it's hers. They move in. The job at the mine is rough, tough, and staffed by animals, but it's the first thing in her whole life that's given her a lease on life, where she feels like she's <iq>really living</iq>. The animals will take whatever they can, though. They are interested only in plunder, in taking something for nothing, in extracting more value than they give. They have no moral code. They just hate with a dull-eyed and beetle-browed fervor. Bobby Sharp traps Josey at the top of a giant conveyor and goes for his first kiss. Just boys being boys. But again, they show that it's <i>not just the men.</i> Some of the women are absolutely <i>Stockholmed</i>. In the kitchen. Karen's on the table in what looks like communion dress. Grandma is taking it in for her, on account of how young she is. Josey says, <iq>she's a little young for communion, isn't she?</iq> <iq>You're never to young to be with God.</iq> Josey turns up the TV. Anita Hill is testifying about Clarence Thomas's stories about the size of his penis. <iq>Turn that off! That poor man's family.</iq> Her dad is also a grade-A piece of shit. Just through-and-through an absolutely, close-minded demon of a man, cooking on a slow boil, peevish, egoistic, fragile. Even the kids in the village are strong-armed by the parents into ostracizing the kids of women who work at the mine. It gets better. Bobby Sharp's wife shows up at a hockey game and yells at Josey to keep her whore ass away from her husband. Her son decides to go home with his girlfriend (they're 12 or something) but Josey won't let him. Josey blows up and the whole town does the Hester Prynne thing as if 400 years hadn't passed. This is how it is everywhere. I remember that this is how our lovely neighbor was driven away. She was a great neighbor. Lovely kids. She was pretty. The other neighbor ladies ganged up on her and accused her of sleeping with their husbands. But what really worked was accusing her eldest son of having molested a neighbor's girl. The neighbor's girl was a known little shit and a liar. She made the whole thing up. Her mother absolutely supported it because her daughter had accused the whore's son. The case went to Swiss court and the judge threw it the fuck out in five minutes. He was pissed. It was enough, though. Our neighbor picked up sticks and left. OK. Interlude over. The ladies of the mine are talking about sexual harassment at a makeup party but they can't stop sniping at each other. They're even calling each other whores! For God's sake. Where is the solidarity? God, the stupid is just palpable. Where do you even start? No-one wants to fix anything. Just broken. A bunch of guys tip poor Sherry over in a porta-potty, which is, like, straight-up assault. Just boys being boys. Josey is at CEO Pearson's office. Her boss has been invited as well. He interrupts her immediately. His generous offer is to allow her to quit without the two-week notice. When she refuses to quit, he tells her to <iq>spend less time stirring up your female co-workers and less time in the beds of your male co-workers, and more time trying to find ways to improve your job performance.</iq> <bq>Josey, thank you again for making the drive down here. Now, if you don't mind, we have other business.</bq> She goes home to get a lecture about <iq>stealing other people's jobs</iq> from her son, who's pretty happy to just repeat what the worst people in his world tell him. On account of he has a whore mother who can't stay home to cook and clean, <i>like a woman should.</i> The boy is twelve. He has already been programmed to be just like those assholes in the C-Suite. Fuck, man. This is (based on) a true story. I am positively <i>praying</i> for a happy ending or I'm gonna have to break something. Glory has ALS. It's progressed pretty far. Frances McDormand and Sean Bean are amazing in this scene. When the excellent gentlemen at the mine smear their shit all over the walls, writing "Cunts" and "Rats", the other ladies finally bail on Josey, telling her that she's the one making it worse for everyone. No solidarity. Just a bunch of weak-willed fools. They make her clean everything up herself, because of course their boss makes the women clean it up---cleaning bathrooms is women's work. This gives Bobby an opportunity to sexually assault her in the "Powder Room". When she goes back to the cafeteria to accuse him, a friend lies that he was with him all afternoon. No-one wants to drive her home, not even the ladies. Nearly every person in this movie is a selfish monster. What kind of society produces people like this? Even Bill takes some convincing. He knows how the world works. But Josey needs a lawyer. He's thinking about it. But he thinks she doesn't have a chance. The world won't change. But he comes around. <iq>Can you get the other women? It's called a class-action suit.</iq> Josey's out of a job. Things are getting worse at the mine for everyone. The men are going insane and no-one seems to be interested in stopping them. She can't get any of the other women to help her out. Her mother moves out on her Dad, though, so that's something. Where some might think that it's overdone, I think that the reactions from the men are absolutely par for the course. Their behavior at the union meeting is not surprising. This is the country I grew up in. This was the late 80s. I was 17 at the time. I didn't notice how it was. I can only look back through my memories and realize how things were, how I'd not seen how certain things were. This wave of hatred is still barely held in check in a lot of societies. This default attitude that women are inferior. We're accustomed to a default attitude that other countries, other people are inferior. But all women? What the fuck is wrong with us? Her dad stands up and tells his brothers that they have to let her talk. He finally sees his comrades for the animals that they are. Of course, his wife had moved out on him, so maybe the lights went on. <iq>I've been a ranger all my life. But I ain't never been ashamed of it until now.</iq> After his speech, some men clap. Is it maudlin? No. It's great cinema. It's like saying that Jack Nicholson was chewing the scenery in <i>A Few Good Men</i>. Of course he was. That's why it was great cinema. I can't even believe that she had been raped by her high-school teacher, that it was raised by the defense in court, and that they used to accuse Josey of being a whore. It's in the Wikipedia article cited below. It's a cultural indictment to think that we even entertain the thought that this might be a true story. Most people can easily imagine this being a true story because that's just how things were (ARE). It is an absolute indictment of an entire gender and of an entire society. The case was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenson_v._Eveleth_Taconite_Co." author="" source="Wikipedia">Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co.</a> and it says that she started working in 1975 (not 1989 like the movie says). Nearly all of the horrific harassment in the film is listed in detail in this article as well. They didn't even have to make anything up. The article goes on to write, <bq>It is infrequently noted that women who were not seen as “desirable” by these men still faced harassment whether sexual or not. Oftentimes, in male-dominated workplaces, when men do not look at a certain woman sexually, they will harass her in other ways to try and get her to leave, because they believe she is taking the place of a man.</bq> This sounds more like anthropology about mountain apes, as written by Dian Fossey. It's almost written to excuse the men for their behavior like they just can't help themselves goshdarnit. Get fucking civilized, you goddamned animals. Stop rutting and reveling in your ignorance. Jesus. These are women. It's not like we're talking about <i>faggots</i> here, ammirite? HIGH FIVE. Oh, it goes on: <bq>It is evident that females working in male-dominated workplaces are treated differently than their male co-workers. This is suspected to be due to sex-role spillover, a theory suggesting the carryover or spillover of gender roles or expectations into the workplace where it is not relevant.</bq> Again, I feel like I'm reading an article about <i>bonobos</i> and not human beings, who have <i>consciousness</i> and, ostensibly, <i>intelligence</i> and, ostensibly, a <i>moral core</i> perhaps accompanied by a pinch of <i>principle</i>. Have you no shame? The court case continues. The cross-examination by Woody Harrelson of Jeremy Renner interaction was spectacular (a reviewer below cried that it was too melodramatic but fuck that guy). And now Sean Bean is putting in a great performance. He's been great all along. I can't believe that he actually survives this film. I think he's actually going to make it.<fn> Nothing really beats on-site photography, either as stock footage or as footage where you really see the actors in the giant factories. I know that the bar is really low now, but we've gotten to the point where you have to appreciate that the actors didn't just talk to a ball on a stick in front of a green screen. And, just for a cherry on top, let's look at the Rolling Stone review extensively cited in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Country_(film)" author="" source="">Wikipedia article</a>, <bq>Any similarities between Josey and Lois Jenson, the real woman who made Eveleth Mines pay for their sins in a landmark 1988 class-action suit, are purely coincidental. Instead, we get a TV-movie fantasy of female empowerment glazed with soap opera theatrics. The actors, director Niki Caro (Whale Rider) and the great cinematographer Chris Menges all labor to make things look authentic. But a crock is a crock, despite the ferocity and feeling Theron brings to the role . . . Though the dirt and grime in North Country are artfully applied, it's purely cosmetic and skin-deep</bq> What a piece of shit. Peter Travers is a piece of shit. This is a masterful, deeply felt movie. It's not a "TV movie." He's an asshole who thinks anything that attacks his tribe is a "crock". God, the message of this film is so <i>important.</i> <bq>In the St. Petersburg Times, Steve Persall graded the film A and called it "deeply, undeniably moving . . . crusader cinema at its finest."</bq> Yeah. Duh. ✊✊✊ I though this movie was so goddamned good, albeit frustrating to watch because the people in it HOO BOY but anyway, if you want to watch a movie to get angry about a whole gender to (HINT IT"S NOT HERS) and generally about how a whole society used to be in the 70s and 80s JUST KIDDING IT'S STILL MOSTLY LIKE THAT, then this is a good one.</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> <ft>Holy shit! In 1987 that was a lot of money! In 2025 money, that's about 3x more, or $1.5M! That's not including the semi! Grandpa was not kidding around!</ft> <ft>The joke here is that Sean Bean dies in most of the movies he's in. <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnzk5qAaNLk" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/Lnzk5qAaNLk" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="Sundries" caption="Sean Bean Death Scene Compilation 1986-2016"></ft>