<n>Read the explanation of method, madness, and <b>spoilers</b>.<fn></n> <ol> <a href="#Identity">Identität (Identity) (2003)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0309698/">8/10</a> <a href="#Hush">Hush (1998)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118744/">4/10</a> <a href="#Drift">Driften (2015)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3828614/">6/10</a> <a href="#Cold">Cold Mountain (2003)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0159365/">9/10</a> <a href="#Cheny">Jason Cheny: Taiwanese American Human (2024)</a> --- 6/10 <a href="#Resident">Resident Evil (2002)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120804/">6/10</a> <a href="#Scary">Scary Movie (2000)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175142/">4/10</a> <a href="#Rain">Rain Man (1988)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095953/">8/10</a> <a href="#Dodgeball">Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364725/">8/10</a> <a href="#Pluribus">Pluribus S01 (2025)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt22202452/">6/10</a> </ol> <dl dt_class="field"> <span id="Identity">Identität (Identity) (2003)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0309698/">8/10</a> <div><bq>As I was going up the stairs, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. I wish, I wish he'd go away.</bq> Malcolm Rivers (Pruitt Taylor Vince) is on death row. He's to be executed soon. We see his psychiatrist Dr. Malick (Alfred Molina) listening to some tapes during the credits that suggest that some evidence---his journals---had been misfiled, evidence that would have secured a committal rather than a death sentence. On a nice day that would turn into a very stormy night, several strangers are underway along the same road. Limousine driver Ed Dakota (John Cusack), who's ferrying spoiled star-on-the-wane Caroline Suzanne (Rebecca de Mornay). He allows her to distract him with demands as he's driving through lashing rain and he strikes Alice York (Leila Kenzle), who was standing in the road, watching her husband George (John C. McGinley) fix a tire that had been punctured by a spike-heeled shoe that had flown out of Paris Nevada's (Amanda Peet) car earlier that day. Because of the accident and the flooding, they are forced to stop at a motel run by Larry Washington (John Hawkes), who doesn't take kindly <i>at all</i> to Dakota---whom he calls <iq><i>Gesocks</i> [Riffraff]</iq>---and that pretty immediately, almost as if they'd already met before. Officer Rhodes (Ray Liotta) is also forced to stop, even though he's transporting a convicted murderer Robert Maine (Jake Busey). Ginny (Clea DuVall) and Lou (William Lee Scott) are likewise trapped by the flooding and forced to seek shelter at the motel. George is a bit of an odd duck, watching as Ed, the man who'd hit his wife, ends up being the one who can stitch up the atrocious wound in her neck, stabilizing her. Oddly, their son Timmy (Bret Loehr) is in the room the whole time, watching. Everyone else is acting furtively, with Dakota hiding a pile of cash, Ed taking some pills for his persistent headaches, and Officer Rhodes having a big blood spot in the middle of the back of his sweater. Caroline is trying to get a signal on her phone, heading out in the rain with a shower curtain over her head. At least her feet are in no danger of getting wet (<i>Sie hat gewaltig holz vor der Hütte</i> is what I'm saying). She wanders too far afield and someone strikes her down. Ed finds her head in a dryer. He is joined by Rhodes, who finds his own hotel key in the dryer along with the head. Robert Maine has escaped. We briefly see several men around a table in what looks like a large lawyer's office or a dining room maybe. The group includes Dr. Malick and Judge Taylor (Holmes Osborne). Ginny and Lou fight. She locks herself in the bathroom. Suddenly he's real quiet. Then he starts pounding on the door again but his cries sound more desperate than angry. The pounding on the bathroom door stops. Ginny slowly opens the door. She flees out the bathroom window. Lou's dead. We see Maine running through fields, clearly far away from the motel. He's not the one killing everyone at the motel. But now he's back at the motel! He ran in a circle! Or did he? Is the area around the motel cartesian? Rhodes and Ed find him and start beating the ever-loving Christ out of him. Like, they're really tooling him up. They're beating him like a bad habit. Rhodes tells Paris a bit about his past while he takes pictures of the latest crime scene. The next victim is Robert Maine, who's head is tipped back, with a baseball bat stuck right down his throat. They suspect Larry, who tries to take Paris hostage. She struggles free, opening a freezer, revealing another corpse. Larry runs, gets his truck, drives like a maniac, almost runs over Timothy---who's watching every scene, oddly---then swerves and takes out George instead. Timmy sees everything. Back in the meeting room, Malcolm's defense lawyer (Carmen Argenziano) is arguing that his client has multiple personalities. The journals are relatively clear, as confirmed by Dr. Malick, who starts talking about what a reintegration would look like. Malcolm shows up in a wheelchair. Ed and Rhodes have Larry tied up. He claims that he just found the guy in the freezer. He's not really the proprietor---he'd found the previous manager dead when he'd showed up for a room, after having lost everything in Vegas. A guest had shown up soon after, and he'd given him a room. Then he just kept running the motel, for several weeks. Timmy's in the same room, covering his ears. Ginny is comforting him but this is soooo weird. Where's Timmy's mom? Is she still alive? Rhodes is yelling at everyone. Ginny has a bunch of theories---Indian burial ground under the motel, The plot of <i>Ten Little Indians</i>---so they start to find out more about each other. Rhodes discovers that Alice has died, presumably of her wounds. But Timmy had gone to visit her just a little while before. They find a key under her body. #6. They're finding the keys in reverse order. Ginny and Timmy run to a car to get out of there. The car blows up. Fire engulfs the car but no-one is in it. Now George's body goes missing. So have all the others. Ah, this is a visualization of Malcolm's reintegration. Now little Timmy always being in every scene makes sense. They realize that they all have the same birthday. There are four little Indians remaining. And they all have state names as last names. Ed is trying to figure things out. His head is pounding. He wakes up in the room with the judge and the doctor. Malick is trying to convince Edward/Malcolm that the murderous personality must not be allowed to survive the integration. Back in the simulation: Paris discovers that Rhodes was also a prisoner and the he'd killed the cop driving him and Maine, taking the cop's place. Larry cold-cocks Rhodes with a fire extinguisher, saving Paris for the moment. Rhodes recovers and shoots Larry dead. Rhodes is hunting Paris. He really just wants the key to the truck. Ed tells Paris to stay put, then shrugs off several of Rhodes's gunshot wounds to finally kill him. Paris wants to save him, but I think that Ed sacrificed himself to allow the nicest personality to survive. Paris gets the key to the truck and leaves the motel. Malcolm is sitting there---Pruitt Taylor Vince's unfocused eyes vibrating in place---and the judge finds him not guilty. Paris pulls in to the orange grove where she'd said she was headed, to live a peaceful life. She's hangin up laundry, then decides to dig near the tree, where she finds room key #1. Timmy is there, He takes the reins for good. Dr. Malick and his driver don't stand a chance. I watched it in German.</div> <span id="Hush">Hush (1998)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118744/">4/10</a> <div>Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow) and her partner Jackson Baring (Johnathon Schaech) visit his old homestead for Christmas. It's a large country horse farm where his mother Martha (Jessica Lange) lives, and is upstate from New York City, where they live. Jackson is a mama's boy; his father died when he was very young. Martha lives for her boy. She is quite manipulative and easily gets them to stay for New Year's, though they'd very specifically planned not to. When they get back to New York in the new year, Helen discovers that she's pregnant. Jackson proposes immediately and Martha quickly suggests that they have the wedding and reception on the farm. There, Helen meets Jackson's mother on his father's side Alice (Nina Foch) who very much does not get along with Martha, which is why she'd not been invited. Helen is not showing at all. Like, she's scrawny. Her pants are practically falling off of her. Then she's suddenly sporting a pillow under her shirt. One evening as Helen returns to the apartment in New York, an assailant follows her. He warns her vaguely about something, taking her locket, then leaving. A few days later, Helen and Jackson arrive back at the apartment after work together---and Martha is there. <iq>The super let me in!</iq> Like, what the fuck? They'd just been broken into and the super just lets anyone into the apartment? Martha reveals that she's going to sell the horse farm at a loss---or that she wants Jackson to allow her to sell the farm that actually belongs to him. Helen decides that she and Jackson should move to the farm to save it. Martha could not be more pleased. She continues to manipulate and scheme but it's unclear to what end. Alice talks to an increasingly suspicious Helen, telling her that Martha has always been manipulative, from the very early days, when she'd been a stable girl shoveling shit, to when she'd shown up pregnant with Jackson, cementing her hold on the family name. Though Jackson blames himself for his father's supposedly accidental death, Alice suggests strongly that Martha had done it. Martha does not like that Helen went to talk to Alice so she pays Alice a visit. She fills Alice's bath with cold water, though it's unclear whether she just wants to torture her or kill her. Helen visits Alice again, who fills in more details from the past. Martha is definitely trying to kill Helen and the baby. With Jackson off selling their prize horse, the opportunity is ripe. Helen discovers Martha's semi-secret baby room, finding the locket that the home invader had stolen from her. Martha catches her. They walk back to the house together but Helen plays rope-a-dope and runs away in a truck. But she's driving like an absolute maniac even though she'd stolen Helen's truck, and so Helen can't chase her on foot. I suppose this is a believable way that someone from New York City would try to escape a farm, though. She gets her truck stuck in the mud, then runs to the highway on foot---where no-one stops for her. Until Martha shows up. Gah. This is so stupid. Oh, wait. It gets even stupider. Helen is somehow at home now, alone with Martha, having her child. It is utterly unclear why she doesn't make a phone call. Helen's in wicked pain, trying to have the baby. The baby arrives. Martha walks away with it. Oh Christ, it cannot be repeated enough how bad of an actress Gwyneth Paltrow is. Jessica Lange is also kind of phoning it in but at least she has something to strive for, at least she could, in principle, act. There's not much of a script to work with here, to be fair. OK. So Helen wakes up in the morning and is walking around like she hadn't lost a ton of blood during her at-home birth the day before. Like she's 100% OK, acting like she had had no medical procedure a mere 10 hours ago. She even nimbly hops over a bag that Martha hurls at her. Helen drops a giant metal thing on the floor, completely uninterested in whether it would wake the baby. No-one seems to be paying any attention to the baby at all. Helen mentions that she had time to call someone that very morning---my one can be so busy when one is an early riser---again, as if she'd never had a baby in the most gruesome way just hours before. This for a woman who looks like she's so severely underweight that she probably sees stars when she eats her one celery stick per day. Jessica Lange is quite good but Gwyneth Paltrow is quickly exposed as an utterly empty shell of an actress. It is, however, possible that Johnathon Schaech is even worse. Nope, I spoke too soon. It's Gwyneth. Absolute rock-bottom actress. And, somehow, at 95 minutes, this movie still feels too long. </div> <span id="Drift">Driften (2015)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3828614/">6/10</a> <div>Robert Felder (Max Hubacher) has just got out of prison. He had killed a little girl during an illegal street race. He was not a good person when he went into prison, and his four years there didn't do much to make him a better person now. He has not really dealt with his guilt at all. He knows that has to be careful, that he has a destructive side that will torpedo him if he gives it rein. He starts work immediately, working at a detailing shop for high-end vehicles, which are everywhere in Switzerland. Having a fancy, overpowered car is very much part of male Swiss youth culture. His boss is not exactly a hard-ass---he's pretty sympathetic, all things considered---but he's also very clearly not going to give Robert a lot of leeway. Sandro Cicaletti (Scherwin Amini) befriends him immediately, recognizing him as the racing legend that he'd admired years ago. Sandro wants to be a big racer, like Robert had been before the accident. Robert looks up his old girlfriend Tatjana Rajic (Jessy Moravec) but she is distant, seemingly uninterested in picking up where they left off years ago. She's not moved on, though; she's still kind of in the same place that she was. His former racing buddies also treat him badly when he looks them up, especially their strutting cock of a gang leader. Seemingly bizarrely, the unprepossessing private English teacher Sabine Timoteo (Alice Keller) catches Robert's eye one day. His obsession grows but he is unable to approach her until Sandro invites him to an Ü30 (over 30 years old) party where she's drinking quite heavily and dancing by herself. Sandro sees Robert staring at her and breaks the ice for him. Sabine cruises over afterward and she and Robert close out the evening doing shots. He escorts her home, but makes up a fake name when she asks. Robert ends up taking English lessons from her. We finally learn why he was so obsessed with her, and why he had given her a fake name: she is the mother of the little girl that he'd run over years before. They both have a lot of baggage. They go body-flying together. They continue to learn English together. During a role-playing game, Alice has a breakthrough, still not knowing that she is sharing such intimate moments with the man who killed her daughter. After the breakthrough, they clinch in a mutually aggressive sex act. When Robert heads to the bathroom to clean up, she finds his wallet on the floor and discovers his true identity. When she acts distant on his return, he thinks it's because she regrets the sex. Meanwhile, Tatjana's attitude has thawed toward Robert and he sleeps with her as well. She only does so under the condition that he never race again. His friend Sandro has other ideas, though. He takes Robert out for a debauched night on the town, full of drinking and drugs and racing. Sandro steals keys to a couple of nice, fast cars at the office, intending that he and Robert go speeding over a couple of mountain passes all night, then return in the morning, with no-one the wiser. Robert turns him down. Meanwhile, Alice has found Robert's car, which he'd left with a mechanic friend for repair---the dent that Alice's daughter made in the front bumper was still there---and for possible sale. Alice makes the mechanic an offer that he can't refuse and buys the car. The police show up Robert's home, taking him in for questioning in Sandro's death. He'd killed himself in a car accident on a mountain pass and the police had found a video of Robert driving on Sandro's phone. They have nothing on him, though, and let him go. Robert's boss isn't so forgiving and tosses him out. They have to physically remove the distraught Robert from the premises, as he can't believe that he's watching his life fall apart in front of him, even though he's done nothing additionally wrong. He's not been an especially good person, but he's not done anything especially wrong to anyone since he'd killed Alice's daughter in an illegal street race. Having been thrown out of work, he despondently goes to an English lesson with Alice, who is waiting for him out front, by the car she'd bought, the car with which he'd killed her daughter. Even for Robert, it's clear. She exhorts him to get in and drive, exhorting him to drive faster and faster and faster. She's wild with grief and rage. Out on a country road, he slams to a stop and gets out, telling her to drive the damned car. She obliges, though she can't even get started as the handbrake is still set. With the handbrake off, she gets a bit of the way up the road, then drives toward a truck in the opposite lane. They end up driving off the road on the right-hand side, coming to a stop in the middle of a field with a flat tire. Robert takes out the jack and tire iron to fix the tire. Alice takes the tire iron and begins tooling up the vehicle, smashing windows and bodywork. The film ends with them in the field, having gone through another stage of catharsis, though probably not their final one. I watched it in Swiss German, English, and High German, with Italian subtitles (that's what Netflix gave me, and who am I to argue? It's great practice for learning new words.).</div> <span id="Cold">Cold Mountain (2003)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0159365/">9/10</a> <div> The U.S. is at Civil War, and had been for quite some time. Southerner Inman (Jude Law) is in a trench with his compatriots, just biding his time until the attack. Instead of a fusillade, Inman and his company feel the ground rise and rip under their feet, propelled by tons of TNT, planted in secret by the Union boys. The Rebs fly into the air, clothes torn clean off. The ground heaves. They are gone. We flash back to three years before, when Inman first spies Ada Monroe (Nicole Kidman) arriving in Cold Mountain in the countryside with her father the Reverend (Donald Sutherland), where he and his compatriots are building a house. Ada and W.P. Inman meet. Back in the trench, or what remains of it. Inman claws his way out of the dirt into which he'd been buried by the blast. A young solder Oakley (Lucas Black)---too young to be there---stands bare-chested, his shirt and some of his skin having been burned off. The Union soldiers charge but quickly realize that they can't climb the berm the explosion had created. The surviving Rebs rally and start shooting them like fish in a barrel. Some of the Union soldiers make it to the top. Some of the Rebs leap into the pit. It's like Helm's Deep. It's a complete clusterfuck. Blood flows like a river. The battle is over. The corpses are piled high. The Rebs start to clear out the bodies, piling the Union ones high---presumably for burning---and collecting their wounded. Oakley had been mortally wounded; Stobrod Thewes (Brendan Gleeson) tries to play something sweet for him on the fiddle. A mournful tune goes up. Oakley is gone. Another flashback. Inman and Ada grow to know each other. We learn of Teague (Ray Winstone), to whose family the whole valley used to belong. Another battle---this time at night. An ambush. Inman's Native American friend, who'd survived the first attack, is felled by a gunshot. Inman, much smaller than he, tries desperately to drag his body with him. He is rewarded with a shot to the gut himself. He is knocked onto his back. Inman is in a wagon, near death, on his way to a hospital. The doctor (James Rebhorn) goes through, pronouncing most of them as goners. A nurse reads him a letter from Ada, which tells him that her father has died and that she is all alone on her farm. She'd freed her slaves. She has no-one. Teague circles like a vulture. Luckily, Ruby Thewes (Renée Zellweger, in absolutely the best role I've ever seen her play) shows up to save her. She knows how to run a farm and is willing to show Ada, as a partner. They make a good go of it, getting through the winter. Inman sneaks away from the hospital, officially AWOL. He is still wounded but he makes his way across the countryside, surviving on roots and berries. He eventually comes upon Reverend Veasey (Philip Seymour Hoffman), in the middle of the night, just as he's about to drown a slave that he'd impregnated. Godly stuff. Inman forces him to stop, then leaves him tied to a tree with a written confession. A little later, Inman encounters a group of black people---presumably escaped slaves---who turn tail as soon as they see him. He offered to buy some of their eggs because he's starving, but they don't trust him. Instead, he's left to pick kernels from a maggoty ear of corn. Around the bend, though, they encounter Southerners who'd made it their duty to catch slaves and deserters. The pre-Antebellum South is a brutal, heartless place. Inman heads across the cornfields. Inman ends up in a swamp, turned around, not knowing where to go. Reverend Veasey appears out of nowhere, his hair having been shorn by his flock, who'd ejected him from his parish. He offers to guide Inman a piece of the way. They come to a ferry crossing, where Inman pays the Ferry Girl (Jena Malone) $30 to take them both across. Less than a minute later, she takes that $30 to a watery grave as she's shot by the pursuing posse. Veasey and Inman manage to steer the boat away and, on the shore, meet a young man Junior (Giovanni Ribisi), who takes him home to his extremely ribald family---it looks much more like a cathouse than a family home---and treats them to a meal, with lots of white lightning. Inman and Veasey are very drunk. Veasey heads off to the smokehouse with a few of the girls while Inman just want to get some rest. Junior's wife takes a liking to him, fighting off another girl who was already crawling all over him. It's Jude Law, so <iq>he's a pretty man.</iq> <bq>He's mine. I'm goingta make him hug me 'til I grunt.</bq> Inman is very drunk and Junior's wife sticks her bare rump quite appealingly and lasciviously into the air, grinding against Inman. Just as he's about to give in, Junior returns with soldiers searching for deserters. They find Inman and Veasey easily, the latter of whom is buck naked and being ridden by the roomy sister. The next day---or perhaps a few days later---the chain gang of deserters and their guards hear Union soldiers coming up behind them. They hide up a ridge. Inman realizes that they can run because the Rebel soldiers don't dare make a noise. They all head up the hill together, six of them chained together. They make noise anyway, to alert the Union soldiers, then the Rebs start shooting them. Veasey is killed, as are all of the others save Inman. Again. When he awakes, he tries to escape but cannot get free of the chains. Inman awakes in a makeshift sledge, being towed by an unnamed hermit, the "goat lady". She takes him back to her solitary home, where she keeps a herd of goats. She gently takes the life of one of them for a hearty supper for her guest. She is one with nature. She nurses him back to health and he's on his way again. Meanwhile, back in Cold Mountain, Teague and his crew have taken to marauding, starting with the Swanger farm. They outright kill Esco Swanger (James Gammon) and then torture his wife Sally (Kathy Baker) until her sons, who'd been hiding, come running out. Albino Bosie (Charlie Hunnam) guns them down too. Ruby and Ada find poor Sally near death, wishing fervently to make it to that finish line. They don't let her. Instead, they nurse her back to health. Stobrod Thewes, who turns out to be Ruby's father, appears with his friends Pangle (Ethan Suplee) and Georgia (Jack White) but the women are leery of them. <bq><b>Ruby Thewes:</b> Wooo! He's so full of manure, that man! We could lay him in the dirt, and grow another one, just like him.</bq> Inman finds Sara's (Natalie Portman) cabin, where she's taking care of a baby who'd never met his father. She takes Inman in and feeds him. She puts him up in the barn, loaning him her husband's clothes, but he sleeps on corn cobs in the barn, at first. Ada, Ruby, Sally, Stobrod, Pangle, and Georgia are having a bit of a hoedown for Christmas. Sara invites Inman into her bed, but just for company, <iq>to not need to go further.</iq>. She's desperately lonely and this is a poignant scene. She holds his hand. War is absolute hell. It allows the absolute scum of the Earth to prosper and ruins the lives of the best amongst us. War is always hell. Collateral damage, what a joke. Sara throws Inman out in the morning when Union Army soldiers show up to steal food. They tie Sara to a pole, then kidnap her baby Ethan and then leave him uncovered out in the cold. They steal her hog, consigning her to starvation for the winter. But they're gonna have their fun first. Ethan is still on the ground, crying. The pig is squealing as one of the soldier's slaughters it. Inman kills one of the soldiers with an axe, while Sara has gnawed a hole through the jugular of the man raping her. Inman makes Bardolph (Cillian Murphy) strip to his long-johns and tells him to run. Sara ain't havin' it. She guns him down. Winter has fallen. Inman moves on. Sara and Ethan will probably starve before the winter is through. War is hell. People are awful. Men are the worst. Some men are the worst. Some men are OK. But man, it's hard to stay positive here. Now it's time for Teague and his crew of assholes to ruin some more people's lives. He and his disgusting crew happen upon Stobrod and Pangle---poor, dumb-as-a-post Pangle---who has no idea how duplicitous Teague and his evil crew are. The song they sing is beautiful. Even Teague sings along. Albino Bosie is mostly unmoved. Poor Pangle is so dumb; he has no idea that they're going to be executed. God, this film is brutal. It's probably not half as brutal as things really were but it's brutal enough. When Ruby learns that her father's been killed, she tries to put a brave face on it, but then breaks down for a beat, <bq>Every piece of this is man's bullshit. They call this war "a cloud over the land" but they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say "Shit, it's rainin'!"</bq> Amen, sister. Amen. They head into the hills to find the bodies. Teague and his Godless companions have left the bodies out on the ground like animals. Pangle is dead as a doornail, the poor goofy boy. Stobrod is still alive somehow. They pull the bullet in the field and get him to an old Cherokee campsite. Ada goes out hunting pheasant for dinner and who should be coming up the road but Inman. Ada doesn't recognize him at first, but then ... she does. There are so many great scenes in this film. All the sweet, tiny moments that bridge them through the horrible times, like when Ada gives Ruby one of her bracelets for Christmas, or when the goat lady gently caresses her goat's head before slaughtering it. The southern music, just a voice and a fiddle. The beautiful framing of Inman in the wintry trail when he finally finds Ada again. After initial suspicion---Ruby doesn't want to lose the farm to Inman---she shaves him because he's botching the job so badly himself. That night, Inman tends the fire. Ada wakes and goes out. <bq><b>Inman:</b> You are all that keeps me from slidin' into some dark place. <b>Ada:</b> How did I keep you? We barely knew each other. It was a few moments. <b>Inman:</b> A thousand moments! They're like a bag - of tiny diamonds. Don't matter if they're real or things I made up. The shape of your <b>neck.</b> That's real. The way you felt under my hands when I pulled you to me. Ada: You were plowing a field. <b>Inman:</b> You were carrying a tray. <b>Ada:</b> You wouldn't come in. <b>Inman:</b> No, I wouldn't go in. <b>Ada:</b> So that's why I had to carry a tray. So I could come out to see you. <b>Inman:</b> That kiss - which I kissed every day of my walking. <b>Ada:</b> Every day I was waiting, longing. Longing to see your face.</bq> Ruby comes out, fussing and cursing, then goes into Inman's shed to sleep, leaving the cabin she'd shared with Ada empty. A well-earned and well-filmed consummation. The next morning, Ruby and Ada walk back to the farm, leaving Stobrod and Inman. Fucking Teague shows up. Things move quickly. Stobrod appears, distracting Teague, who draws a bead on him. Ruby shoots him, but he shoots her back. Inman shows up and shoots nearly everyone off their horses. Ada takes out a few. She beats Teague off of his horse with her empty shotgun. Inman shows up and shoots Teague with his own gun, then gives chase to Bosie, who's the only one left. They both get a shot off, but Inman wasn't going to shoot first. His principle is his personal undoing, as he's also been mortally wounded. Ada chases them down to find Inman framed, once again, in the most beautiful, wintry stone-ringed path, where he collapses, having tried to walk back to her. <iq>I came back.</iq> War is fucking hell. <bq>Ada: What we have lost will never be returned to us. The land will not heal - too much blood. All we can do is make peace with the past and try to learn from it.</bq> Many years later, on Easter, Stobrod, Georgia (married now to Ruby), Ada, Sally, and Inman's young girl have lunch on the farm, outside, under a tree. This is definitely my favorite Renée Zellweger movie and it's probably my favorite Nicole Kidman movie as well. Jude Law is almost always brilliant. I watched it in English, with Italian subtitles (that's what Netflix gave me, and who am I to argue? It's great practice for learning new words.).</div> <span id="Cheny">Jason Cheny: Taiwanese American Human (2024)</span> --- 6/10 <div><media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rc0Ss8gxlA" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/1Rc0Ss8gxlA" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="Jason Cheny" caption="Taiwanese American Human (Full Comedy Special)"> He was competent and amusing but not really laugh-out-loud funny for me. I thought "being able to pay bills" was his best bit, and that's the one that I'd seen him post on Reddit, so he knows that that's his best bit, too. <a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/StandUpComedy/comments/1rmvu7x/brink_of_homelessness/" author="jasoncheny" source="Reddit">Brink of homelessness</a> <bq>When I was a kid, I never understood how there's so many homeless people. I never understood that. My dad was always like, 'Oh, 'cause they're lazy. They didn't work hard.' And I just believed that! But, then, as you grow, ... you start to pay bills. ... Every month? Not one month off?!? Everybody just doin' this? Every single month? And then your perspective changed. Now, I'm like, 'How is there not more homeless people?' Like, how are most of us not homeless?!?</bq> Set list: <ol> Violence and guns Being able to pay bills Small dogs and their owners Annoying dog owners Intentions matter<ol> Degrees of murder Virtue-signaling and shaming (collecting transgender friends) Jeffrey Dahmer's love language</ol> China and Taiwan<ol> Are you fighting for Taiwan? Fuck no. </ol> Suffering is too far away, so we don't care Everyone is a little bit racist<ol> Sad sushi is best sushi Parental disappointment is motivating Picking a sweet watermelon (disappointed grandma) </ol> Spanking versus caning (the latter has an implement and involves chasing) Breasts A little bit gay Showing love to combat racism (exposure therapy) Accept that you're a hypocrite (driving) Feeling like a loser because your TV is too small Camping is like LARPing homelessness (can't wait to home) Awesome toilets don't do the <iq>peasant swirl</iq> Pooping in the wild (<iq>watch my perimeter</iq>) </ol></div> <span id="Resident">Resident Evil (2002)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120804/">6/10</a> <div>This is the original in what would end up being a long line of sequels. As I wrote after a recent watching of the third entry <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=5708" author="" source="">Resident Evil: Extinction</a>, <bq>I would like to note that any movie that starts with a naked Milla Jovovich, waking up in a luxury shower with a very strategically draped cloth over her has <i>got my attention</i>.</bq> At the time, I was unaware that this was a <i>callback</i> to the first installment, because that's how we meet Alice (Milla Jovovich). She is in a mansion with someone who is purportedly her husband but who the hell really knows or cares? What is actually happening is that some dude has released a zombie virus in a giant underground structure call "The Hive", leading the AI that runs the facility to seal it off and kill everyone. The people don't die, though, because they're zombies, but they don't look great. Alice's mission is to get down there to shut down the Red Queen (the AI). Get it? Alice?!? The Red Queen?!? Isn't that cool? Anyway, there are a bunch of them down there, and they're all going to fall like dominoes, with one of the first ones getting bit---Rain (Michelle Rodriguez)---being the last one to succumb to zombification. Logic is not driving this plot. And neither are Rain's acting skills, which hadn't gotten any better by the time she starred as Letty in <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=6059">The Fast and the Furious</a>. One of the more memorable scenes is a series of lasers in a hallway that slices and dices several members of the party before the zombies appear. One of the zombies is the piece de resistance: a so-called Licker, which is a mutated, lizard-like thing with a giant long tongue. They vanquish all of these things, with only Alice escaping unscathed, though one other survives, but is wounded. Topside, they meet a bunch of haz-mat-suited scientists who take them in, bundling him off to form the spearhead of the next zombie army and getting her onto a gurney. When she awakes later, she is, once again, naked, except for a few very strategically placed bits of paper, much like when she played Leeloo in <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=5199#Element">The Fifth Element</a>. She strips off the wires and electrodes, then goes out into the hall to find all the doors open, and no-one around. She makes her way upstairs to exit into the street, where she discovers Raccoon City in ruins, cars strewn every which way, buildings in ruins. The end.</div> <span id="Scary">Scary Movie (2000)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175142/">4/10</a> <div>This movie just keeps getting worse. It's as full of non sequiturs as <i>Family Guy</i>. I had remembered it as being better than it was. It was trying so hard to be <i>Airplane,</i> but it just couldn't get any traction. The cast would go on to become at least semi-famous. The star is Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris), who's dating Bobby Prinze (Jon Abrahams), who is long a suspect for being the one who's murdering everyone. Oh, yeah, it's a classic horror movie á la <i>Ten Little Indians</i>, where they drop one by one, or sometimes in groups. Reporter Gail Hailstorm (Cheri Oteri) is ruthless, sleeping with Doofy (Dave Sheridan), a caricature of a mentally handicapped junior police officer to get information. One of the first ones to go is Drew (Carmen Electra), who runs through sprinklers in just a very skimpy bra and panties before being stabbed to death by the man in the mask and robe. She's not <i>not</i> spectacular but c'mon. The scenes get more and more ridiculous after this. There is a running gag about one of the main characters being gay that has not aged particularly well, though I doubt it was particularly hilarious a quarter century ago either. After nearly everyone has died, and after Bobby has admitted to being the killer, along with Ray, who is his gay lover (they really, really, really thought that being homosexual was funny), they are also killed by the real killer---surprise!---who turns out to have been Doofy, the last person anyone would have suspected. They show him leaving the police station like Verbal Kint from the <i>Usual Suspects</i> The best line is in the first quarter of it, when a reporter is interviewing a witness who'd seen a woman murdered in cold blood. <bq><b>Reporter:</b> What was the last thing you said to her? <b>Shorty:</b> Run bitch run!</bq> I remember the first time I saw this in German, many years ago, when I learned that the word <i>Schlampe</i> means not just "tramp" but also "bitch". The more you know. 🌈 I watched it in English this time with Italian subtitles.</div> <span id="Rain">Rain Man (1988)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095953/">8/10</a> <div>Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) is a young man running what appears to be a relatively shady luxury-car import business. The absolutely gorgeous Susanna (Valeria Golino) works for him---chattering in Italian with exporters---but has also been dating Charlie for a while. It's incredible to imagine the situation in which a beautiful soul like Susanna would have stayed with a shallow narcissist like Charlie for that long but the story required it. Let us assume that she had a martyr complex and was convinced that she could save him. When Charlie's estranged father dies, the lawyer informs him that he has inherited his father's car---the car whose theft had led to their estrangement---as well as his prize-winning hydrangeas. Charlie is not pleased, as his father was quite wealthy. The $3M of the estate have been left in a trust for another person. Charlie does not know who this might be---and discovers that he has a brother Raymond (Dustin Hoffman). Raymond is in the care of Dr. Bruner (Gerald R. Molen). Raymond is autistic, a high-functioning savant. Charlie decides to try to get control of half of Raymond's fortune. Charlie kidnaps Raymond from the institution, absconding with Raymond and Susanna in the car. They hit the road. Raymond really likes Susanna because <i>she's nice</i>. She, however, cannot abide how Charlie treats Raymond and leaves them. Charlie seems to be trying to be nice, but he has no patience for Raymond's patterns, at least at first. He's incredibly frustrated with how difficult it is to communicate with Raymond. In a way, it's like watching someone cajole an AI chatbot. I have no idea whether this experience is accurate for some autistic people because I have vanishingly little personal experience. Charlie's making calls, trying to save his business, but also talking to Dr. Bruner, who was left in charge of the estate. Charlie just wants his half of the fortune. He doesn't deserve it, nor was it in the will, but he is determined to have it. This is how Charlie is. He is not a good person. As expected, he is not great with Raymond. He has little patience and seems incapable of grasping the basic limitations of autism. Raymond does manage to put his foot down and refuses to fly back to Los Angeles because airlines are not safe. They have to drive instead, which is going to take several days. They have to try to stay on Raymond's routines, which includes watching People's Court and Jeopardy every day. Also, they can't drive in the rain. Charlie discovers that he'd known Raymond when he was a child, and had called him "Rain Man". There was a misunderstanding when Raymond supposedly almost scalded Charlie, which led their father to commit Raymond. It turns out that Raymond had actually saved Charlie from the hot water. Because of the long time they're taking to get across the country, Charlie's cars are repossessed. He hatches a plan to use Raymond's counting skills in Las Vegas, where they use the last of his money to get fitted out with nice suits and a little seed money. Raymond delivers. He is amazing and manages to keep his cool, playing Blackjack with his brother. The casino allows them to keep their $85K+ in winnings but tells them to hit the road. With the business out of business, Susanna joins them in Vegas, somehow already ready to reconcile with Charlie. He has made an impressive transition to a much kinder, more gentle person. He now knows how to take care of Raymond's needs, to a degree. In Los Angeles, they arrive for the "custody battle," where Dr. Bruner offers Charlie $250K to just walk away from Raymond forever. Charlie refuses, saying he doesn't care about the money anymore, that he just wants a relationship with Raymond.<fn> Raymond is unable to express what he wants and Charlie interrupts the questioning to save him from any further duress. Raymond returns with Bruner to the institution but Charlie will visit soon. The movie ended so abruptly that it reminded me that movies used to do this all the time---they would just end when the story was over, rather than filling in a bunch of useless feel-good details. We don't need to see Charlie and Susanna running a successful business, with Raymond occasionally staying the weekend in their sumptuous Malibu home. It's nice: Charlie was capable of becoming a better person, better than the greed-monster that society had taught him to be. Susanna was with a much nicer person. Raymond had his brother back. We don't need more detail than that. The end.</div> <span id="Dodgeball">Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364725/">8/10</a> <div>White Goodman (Ben Stiller) is not a good man. He is a cartoonishly bad man with a cartoonishly oversized inferiority complex around which he's built a fitness empire (of sorts) called <i>Globo Gym</i>. His gym is fancy and high-tech. It humiliates its patrons into exercising all the time to get thinner. You can always be thinner, can always be in better shape. This movie is not primarily about him but his presence looms large. Peter La Fleur (Vince Vaughn) also runs a gym, called, somewhat predictably, <i>Average Joe's</i>. His gym is much more low-key and laid-back. He doesn't really charge his members, which explains why he can pay neither his own bills nor his mortgage. The lovely Kate Veatch (Christine Taylor) appears one morning to inform him that her bank will foreclose on him unless he can come up with $50K in 30 days. It turns out that Globo Gym plans to acquire Peter's gym, demolish it, and build a parking garage. Peter flirts with Katherine, who, despite herself, responds positively. White is also interested in Kate; he doesn't seem to notice at all that she is visibly repulsed. Peter's guys at the gym think that they can help him save it. Dwight (Chris Williams) actually works there, as does desperately dimwitted Owen (Joel David Moore). Gordon (Stephen Root) is a sad-sack and frustrated husband, whose asian wife doesn't respect him. Justin (Justin Long) is a reasonably physically talented failed cheerleader, who is supposed to be in high school, I guess? There's also Steve the Pirate (Alan Tudyk) to round out the crew. They first propose a car wash, which predictably fails but not because the guys are wildly unattractive but because a gaggle of wildly attractive college-aged ladies run a lascivious and lasciviously filmed car wash at the same time, right across the street. Gordon finds a dodgeball tournament in Las Vegas with a prize that is coincidentally $50K. They have no idea how to play, so they watch a training film that stars a young Patches O'Houlihan (Hank Azaria). They start training but it goes very poorly. They lose to a team of girl scouts in their qualifying match but end up winning by default because one of the girl scouts had failed a drug test. Almost before they can finish celebrating their qualification, White reveals that his team has also qualified for the tournament, though he bribed his way in (of course) with the dodgeball chancellor (William Shatner). Afterward, a man in a wheelchair approaches to offer his help. It's a much-older Patches O'Houlihan (Rip Torn). His training methods are unusual and cartoonishly brutal. <bq author="Patches O'Houlihan">If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.</bq> Cue a training montage. Then they're already in Vegas, at the tournament. Average Joe's and Globo Gym climb past the other contenders in their respective brackets, until they're unsurprisingly facing each other in the final. The other contenders have a couple of famous faces: the German team is coached by David Hasselhof. White offers Peter a $100K bribe to throw the match. Peter seems to take it, heading to the airport. There he encounters Lance Armstrong, who's a huge dodgeball fan and he's disappointed to hear that Peter has given up. Not only is Peter gone, but Pirate Steve's having an existential crisis and Justin is following his cheerleader dream to step in to help his high school's cheer team and his love interest Amber (Julie Gonzalo) win their competition, which is fortuitously happening simultaneously in Las Vegas. It looks very much like Average Joe's is going to be forced to forfeit for not having enough players, as noted by moderators Cotton McKnight (Gary Cole) and Pepper Brooks (Jason Bateman). <bq><b>Cotton McKnight:</b> I'm being told that Average Joe's does not have enough players and will be forfeiting the championship match. <b>Pepper Brooks:</b> It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for 'em.</bq> Chuck Norris's vote is the tie-breaker on the council, allowing Average Joe's to overturn their forfeit when Peter and Justin reappear, late but still in time to play. They play hard, resulting in just Peter versus White in a one-on-one special matchup. Peter blindfolds himself. <bq><b>Cotton McKnight:</b> In 23 years of broadcasting I thought I'd seen it all, folks. But it looks like Peter La Fleur has actually blindfolded himself. <b>Pepper Brooks:</b> He will not be able to see very well, Cotton.</bq> Peter prevails against White, collecting the trophy. White is triumphant anyway, because Peter had sold his gym for the bribe the night before. Peter switcheroos him by revealing that he'd bet it all on Average Joe's to win at 50--1 odds. Peter buys Globo Gym and fires White. The end.</div> <span id="Pluribus">Pluribus S01 (2025)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt22202452/">6/10</a> <div>I think that this show is OK, maybe even pretty good. It's kind of embarrassing to see some of the proponents of this show touting it as groundbreaking, which I guess it would be if you'd never read a single piece of speculative science fiction in your life. I grew up reading silver and golden-age science fiction and Pluribus's concept, while quite interesting, is not unique. I would go so far as to say that the story so far is a quite shallow treatment of this concept. I don't mind that it doesn't address the hard-science bits, that many of the plot points are pretty unrealistic, because it's stylized. I get that, so I don't bother pointing out those things. This is the story of a mind-virus transmitted to Earth across the depths of space. The message was received, deciphered, and played. Anyone who listened quickly succumbed to the virus and underwent a transformation. They became part of the hive mind, the hive mind that would come to comprise nearly all of humanity within days. Soon, all forms of conflict have ended, everyone cooperates, and humanity has common goals toward which it makes progress. This is Pluribus. This show is about the people who weren't affected, who didn't become part of the hive mind. It is primarily the story of Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn), who is an abrasive author with a rabid fanbase, always eager to learn more detail about the adventures of the characters in her relatively cheesy romance novels. Her publisher and partner Helen (Miriam Shor) does not survive the transformation to Pluribus. Carol manages to find out that about 10% of humanity didn't manage it. Pluribus is obsequious to Carol, serving her every whim, even as it works furiously to determine what made her so different, what made her <i>resistant</i> to the mind-virus. Was it, perhaps, pure orneriness? At any rate, she works to defeat it, to put humanity back to the way it was, while Pluribus works to subsume her and the double-handful of others who also resisted the mind-virus and survived. Pluribus cannot deny her anything within its power---and it has the resources of all of human civilization at its disposal---and it also seems to be incapable of lying to her. She arranges a meeting with the half-dozen others who speak at least some English, gathered by plane from around the world. This does not go as she planned, mostly because her plan was terrible and she is a drunken, abrasive person who really only her partner understood and loved. She fights with everyone, then goes home. She starts to investigate what might be underpinning this world but here we see part of the problem with modern life: She doesn't really know how anything works, nor does she have a particularly scientific inclination. This makes "investigating" somewhat difficult. She gets onto the trail of the many, many milk-based drink containers that she finds, seeking out the factory at which it seems to be produced. This is the cliffhanger in the middle of the season. It turns out that no-one possessed by Pluribus can harm any other life-form. They can eat apples that have fallen from a tree but cannot pick them. They cannot eat animals. They cannot harvest grains? Is that right? I don't think that's right. They'd be starving much more quickly than they seem to be. At least half of human agriculture---and the calories produced by it---must be from harvesting grains. I'm not sure how well-thought-through this whole concept is. In the second half of the season, I realized that there was going to be no more to this than being about a small-minded, egocentric, arrogant, and deeply entitled U.S.-American woman who ends up being one of the last dozen survivors of an alien invasion. She is not even really an amusing antagonist. The writing---such as it is---is thin. Gilligan resorts again and again to his signature style of showing people doing a task for long, long minutes. This is fine, and I usually like this. But now the people are doing something deeply boring and stupid, something that could have been handled in a couple of seconds of plot. There is no need to drag each moment out into minutes. This first season could have been a two-hour movie. The finale was deeply stupid and unsatisfying, promising more tedium in the next season. The show is mostly quite nicely filmed, more so at the beginning than at the end. The dialogue scenes are jarringly bad. E.g., Zosia and Carol talking in the stupidly luxurious ski chalet, where half the screen was constantly filled with the back of someone's head. Or consider that almost no-one in the show speaks with any sort of affect. Faces don't move. Emotion remains largely unexpressed. It's fine if that's the point! You know? Humanity has been erased! Look at how boring and lifeless life can be without that human <i>je ne sais quoi</i>. But the show really makes you do a tremendous amount of this work on your own, and my suspicion is that this interpretation is just me reading it into the show in order to rescue it from being deeply mediocre. And I'm nearly 100% sure that the people who claim to love this show aren't doing that work. They like it because they've been ordered to like it by their social-media silo. Needless to say, I was quite disappointed by the end. The last four episodes were boring and muddily plotted. It's lucky to get the rating it did. It did because I like Rhea Seehorn and Vince Gilligan's style is good, even if his writing has fallen off since <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=5446#Saul">Better Call Saul</a> and <i>Breaking Bad</i>.</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>It just occurred to me that this movie stole nearly its entire plot from <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=5925#OverTheTop">Over the Top</a>, which had come out the year before. The road trip, the reconciliation, the refusal to take money; it's all there.</ft>