Clue (1985) PG

 Clue (1985) PG

 

Six strangers with blackmail-able secrets are invited to a mansion dinner party by the mysterious Mr. Boddy.  When people start dying, it's a matter of wits to find out who the killer is.

If this isn't considered a classic, it should be.  The comedic lineup is stellar with Martin Mull (WKRP), Madeline Kahn (Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles), Christopher Lloyd (Taxi, Back to the Future), Eileen Brennan (The Sting, Will & Grace), Michael McKean (This is Spinal Tap, Laverne and Shirly), and Tim Curry (IT, Rocky Horror Picture Show).

The movie is so iconic that it was paid homage as an episode of Psych, with several of the surviving cast members in re-imagined roles.

When released in theaters, there were three possible endings (and sets of killers), each locale (divided by time zone) receiving a different one.  When released on DVD, thankfully, all three endings were included.

This movie is rich with sharp, witty dialogue, but there are hilarious visual gags too numerous to mention here.  If this is your first viewing, I recommend putting the knitting needles down and taking it all in.  If you've seen it before, or like me have used this as a go-to background movie for several years (or decades) then by all means craft away.  You'll know when to look up.  Five stars, cannot be improved upon, and a must-have for any comedic collection.

Last Days on Mars (2013) R

 Last Days on Mars (2013) R

 

During the last two days of an extended tour in the dome complex on Mars, the crew of the Aurora 2 discover a deep-dwelling bacteria under the crust of the surface.

If you've ever argued with your buddies at a drunken 2 am about who would win, astronauts or zombies, this movie answers that question.  I avoided watching this movie, passing it by on my Netflix list for several months, after the pain and disappointment of Stranded, which gave birth to my eye roll count category it was so bad.  Thankfully I was very pleasantly surprised by this film.

Liev Schreiber (X-Men Origins: Wolverine), Elias Koteas (Collateral Damage) and Olivia Williams (Dollhouse, Man Up) make up half of the crew.  Their days are short, their tour is almost up, they're two weeks from retirement... blah blah blah you know the trope.  Then of course someone does something boneheaded and screws it up for everybody.

There is a reason why the space program weeds out people who break rules and don't follow protocols, people... because one guy screws it up and everybody has a very, very bad day.

One laugh out loud moment, and the rest of the time I was pretty much glued to the screen.  There is a bit of a slump when there's half an hour to go.  I don't know if it's because it's been non-stop tense from the beginning and that's the limit for me before I stop paying attention because I can't take the tension anymore, or if things truly slowed down.  I will say that despite my talking to the screen ("Why don't you headbutt him, you have a helmet on?!?") and the usual horror movie moments of "Don't go in there!  Don't split up!" there were no true eye roll moments for me.

If you loved Aliens or have a soft spot for zombie movies, you might find it hard to craft to this one.  It's not as intense as Gravity, but it's certainly a step up from Ghosts of Mars, which I enjoyed but found a bit campy.  Four and a half stars on this one, and the only improvement that would make it better would be to explain Schreiber's character's constant panic attacks throughout the film. They're represented by surreal visions of his time on the space station before coming on assignment from what I can gather, but early on in the film you're left wondering if he's seeing visions of the past, future, or being contacted by the as yet not revealed enemy via psychic means.

Solid viewing choice, and a nice addition to any sci-fi or zombie collection.

Vintage Tomorrows (2015) TV-14

 Vintage Tomorrows (2015) TV-14

 

This one-hour documentary is a brief examination of the steampunk movement and what it's all about.

Having read "The Parasol Protectorate" on the recommendation of a friend, this was a really interesting documentary for me, and not only because the author is interviewed in it, but also because it's a movie and movement about makers...  Creative, crafty people getting out there with their imaginations on fire and making things happen.

I think we've lost something by not encouraging every child to have at least one hands-on craft as a hobby, whether it's crochet, woodworking, or welding.  Everyone should be able to dream something and bring it into physical reality.  The people in this documentary don't just celebrate making... it's their lifestyle.

I gave this four stars, mostly because it seemed to almost hold one or two of the participants up for ridicule, and that was most definitely not in the spirit of the subject matter.  A couple of laugh out loud moments, and the story of the couple where the man wrote a three act steampunk play to propose to his now wife made me misty-eyed... worth a watch if you have an hour to sit down and make something.

Deep In The Darkness (2014) NR

 Deep in the Darkness (2014) NR

 

 

A city doctor (Sean Patrick Thomas, Save the Last Dance) and his family move to a rural town to take over a practice and escape city life.  The town harbors a generations-old secret that they find difficult to escape.  With Dean Stockwell (Quantum Leap) in a small role.

While I would normally go into the plot in more depth at this point, and explain what I liked and didn't like about this film, instead I'm going to explain why I'm giving it a single star.  They started out with my most-hated trope of all time, the How We Got Here trope, or what I call "Fourteen hours earlier...".  It's lazy writing, and in this case was kind of a spoiler for the ending, which would have been better served not being shown ahead of time.  Following that, the only reason it's even getting a single star is because the buildup of paranoia, and creepy vibe, is very well done... up to a point.  Unfortunately someone decided that bloody, gory, sexual dream scenes needed to be inserted very abruptly and unnecessarily.  The film was sufficiently horrifying enough before those were dropped in, and they actually ruined the slow building effect they had going.

Then when I realized that the whole film is a textbook case of big-city people's fears of a small town, with their local customs and quirks, I just shut down.  We've seen it before, in everything from Torchwood's episode "Countrycide" [sic] to Deliverance and a myriad of treatments in between.  Sure, we get the opposite of the spectrum, like Northern Exposure or Gilmore Girls, with their love-affairs with small town living, but people really do love to drag out the horror stories about small towns and their presumed "cults".  It's insulting.

The isolates were creepy, but once we're shown them fully and in bright light, they lose a lot of their terror and become curiosities.  Really gross curiosities.

One laugh out loud moment, one holy crap moment at the very end, and about three eye roll moments before I stopped ticking those off.  There were a dozen different choices they could have made that would have let me continue to enjoy this story, but they were not made.  The acting was all top-notch and felt sincere, it was just the subject matter and editing I had a problem with.

Only watch this if you're in the mood to see a figurative train-wreck.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) 

 

Led astray by the machinations of a young Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) fears the possible ramifications of a superhero with no oversight, and goes after Superman (Henry Cavill).  The hero of Gotham goes on a quest to find kryptonite to take down the Man of Steel.  Will the arrival of Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) show him the error of his thinking?

Where do I begin?  First, this movie is long.  Ridiculously long.  Don't get me wrong, I love superhero movies.  I am currently working my way through the Marvel universe for the third or fourth time, for fun, and I love it.  I also love the characters of Wonder Woman, Superman, and Batman, but this?  This movie does them all a grave disservice.

It is my opinion that DC has seen the success of Marvel, and is trying to play catch-up.  The problem is you canNOT jam the content of hundreds upon hundreds of issues of a comic into a single movie.  This movie was a chopped up mishmash of a thousand events that they tried to distill into a single script.  It cannot be done coherently.  It was NOT done coherently.  Watching the movie with a friend, who has read all the back issues of the comics related to these three characters and the Justice League, at several points we stopped, looked at each other, and said "What the heck is going on?".

If you're a crafter, and don't care whether or not you're following the story, this can be great... its noise and the occasional flashy bit of action to keep your brain occupied while your hands are occupied on something else.  Just be sure to set aside three (!) hours of uninterrupted time.  More if you have dogs or children who need to be fed.

I did not have any counts for this movie... I was so annoyed by Bruce Wayne's flashes of imagination to his future dystopia with Superman as an evil villain (all of which could have been cut... seriously) that I just couldn't muster any kind of response to anything on the screen.  No laugh out loud moments, no "holy crap!" moments, no dropping of the needles distracted by the action, and I couldn't even be bothered to count any eyeroll moments because the whole movie is one big one.  Even by the time Wonder Woman used her golden lasso, all I could muster up was an "Oh, neat." And she's my favorite super hero.

So thanks, DC.  You managed to let a very large group of people ruin her for me.  Two out of five stars for this movie.  And for the love of all that is good, don't waste your money on the 4k Ultra version.