"BIRD BOX"..........BLINDED BY THE .....FRIGHT?

Bird Box (2018)     Yes, we were already aware how much of an international thing this movie became while we buried ourselves in the comforting pudding of Hallmark Christmas movies........

             Surrendering to the pop culture zeitgeist, we duly watched it last night.

             First thought:  no, contrary to everyone else's spot analysis, it's most definitely not a variation of John Krasinski's don't-make-a-sound, alien apocalypse "A Quiet Place".......

              In its premise of inexplicable entities driving people to mass suicide, it's far closer to M.Night Shyamalan's 2008, much ridiculed "The Happening"........(further propelling Shyamalan's downward slide from Hot Young Thrillmaster to Laughingstock......)

                Shyamalan risked and brutally earned derision by coming up with an explanation for his invisible Armageddon........it was nature and the trees, enraged by their mistreatment, who sprinkled the air with suicide dust.  Take that, you human envirioment destroyers......their bark really was worse then their bite.....

                To make matters even worse, Shyamalan ill-served his actors, making them look unintentionally funny and awkward.........(every actor's worst nightmare)

                 "Bird Box" immediately corrects those problems by explaining absolutely nothing about the invisible 'creatures' who drive people to violently take their own lives after seeing the.......well, whatever the hell they are.
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                   Hence the use of blindfolds as vital survival gear.

                  To further confuse you, the film's mythology also throws in some humans turned into Creature Minions........their gazing upon the monstrous whats-its has turned them into mindless creature-cultists whose single mission to force more victims to look at the terrible things......and die.

                  So who or what are these unseen invaders?  And how come they kill some people and turn others into dopes similar to Trumpanzees wearing MAGA red hats?

                   Who knows. Don't ask us........and don't ask it of the filmmakers either, cause they've no interest in cluing you in......

                  The other huge improvement over Shyamalan's disaster.........the acting in "Bird Box" is nothing less than stellar.. Sandra Bullock brings it with everything she's got, along with the supporting cast (John Malkovich, Jacki Weaver, Danielle Macdonald and Trevante Rhodes)

                    In fact, Bullock works at a far higher level here than the movie itself........she turns the final third of the film into such a fiercer depiction of motherhood that you start to believe you're watching a serious, dramatic story.........and not just another booga-booga horror movie.

                   Though the film finally lurches to its end with none of its mysteries answered, Sandra Bullock's the main attraction.......and for her, 3 stars (***).  Forget the social media buzz.......it's mostly mindless hype from people with too much laptop time on their hands.......enjoy it for the actors performing at the top of their game.

"JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM"..........WHEN THE MIRACLE OF DINO-MATION WEARS OUT.......

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)  How fitting this starts out with the older and still wiser Jeff Goldblum re-stating his thoughts from the first 1993 "Jurassic Park".......

              .......that maybe cloning dinosaurs out of prehistoric mosquito blood was a shitty idea.......

              Here's the deep irony.........that the motives of Universal Studios and the all the villains who populate the subsequent 'Jurassic' sequels are pretty much identical.

                Squeeze big bucks from the dinos.

                Whether they're corporate buccaneers, lying shysters,, military madmen or glory-hungry big game hunters, the 'Jurassic' bad guys invariably meet their fates inside the snapping jaws of the creatures they sought to exploit or kill........

                That's the 11th commandment in summer franchise blockbusters.......Thou Shall Meet Poetic Justice.......(this rule excludes B.D.Wong, who plays the scientist who engineered the dinos....he always manages to skate away from the carnage, his character becoming more reptilian with each new episode....)

                 The Universal Studios executives, however, suffer no such fate.........they live and thrive to count the box office money........

                We're not sure if it was inspiration or desperation that led the filmmakers of 'Fallen Kingdom' to turn the last half of the movie into some giant, screwball haunted house story......with dinosaurs instead of ghosts running rampant through the huge creepy mansion.......

                 What next?  Dinos sneaking on board the international space station?

                We know this much........with their ridiculous climactic twist, they've set up an impossible challenge for whoever inherits the next film in the series........(and we hold no doubts about the certainty of another 'Jurassic World'.......never underestimate any studio chief's salivating greed.... they're as hungry for cash as the T-Rex is for a tasty human snack.)

                2 stars (**)........for those who can never get enough chompin', roarin' and snappin'.......for everyone else, a deja vu weariness may settle in......

               

               

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP........SPECIAL "10% PAY RAISE" EDITION..........

                    Baby Orange announces a fictitious 10 per cent pay raise to soldiers he visits in Iraq.....in addition to the make-believe pay raise, B.O. promised each soldier a fully operational Iron Man suit, just like Robert Downey Jr.'s........

                    Surprise, surprise.......Baby Orange's father was the landlord of the podiatrist who diagnosed B.O. with "bone spurs" to save him from the draft...... thereby freeing Baby Orange to continue his own personal struggle......to avoid venereal disease.......

                     Baby Orange threatens to shut down the southern border if he doesn't get his wall......and furthermore threatens to hold his breath and stamp his feet.....

"THE DARKEST MINDS".........SMELLS LIKE TEEN DYSTOPIA.......

The Darkest Minds (2018)   Without BD (Beloved Daughter) insisting we sit down and watch this Blu-Ray with her, we wouldn't have gone within a 1000 miles of this movie.........

              At least BD only coughed up a couple bucks for this, having grabbed it during the Thanksgiving night madness at Wal-Mart.......when all sorts of crummy movies achieve their actual value......

                Why 20th Century Fox put it into production is a mystery beyond us........since every major studio had already flushed millions down the drain as they tried to launch teenage dystopian franchises........(still chasing after the big bucks and mass audiences generated by "Twilight" and "The Hunger Games")

                  Teen Dystopia books and films hinge on one primal, inevitable premise.........after some cataclysmic event turns the world upside down, the adults will turn into psychopathic, fascistic creeps whose one and only goal is to oppress and murder teenagers...........(so the kids don't just get grounded by mom and dad......they get put into the ground....)

                  "The Darkest Minds" blends this exhausted trope with an equally lame imitation of       "X-Men".......with a mysterious new childhood disease leaving its survivors afflicted (or gifted, from a teen's point of view) with a variety of superpowers......mind-reading, telekenesis, conducting electricity, yada yada, yada........

                    So of course the grown-ups herd the kids into concentration camps, where they're regularly abused by beefy guards who look left over from direct-to-video Steven Seagal movies.......

                    Again, we've no idea why the studio thought anyone was left with the slightest interest in watching another one of these tiresome, connect-the-dots, chase-and-kill-the-teens movies.

                     Incredibly, in a show of huge hubris, the movie ends with all its plot points  dangling.......as if they expected to make two or three more films........as if they expected anyone would care........as if they expected anyone even planned to show up for the first movie.......

                       Little did they know, we guess. Now they do.  Zero stars (0)........whoever gave the greenlight to make "The Darkest Minds".....made the dumbest choice......

"ASSASSINATION NATION"........ANTI SOCIAL MEDIA........OR: THE HACKERS ARE DUE ON MAPLE STREET.....

"Assassination Nation" (2018)    Film festival organizers must have reveled in their own hipness when they created 'midnight madness' screenings for films they considered especially off the rails.....

               Naturally, most of the entries were overcooked horror movies with huge gouts of gore......

                What the Festival Culture Vultures weren't smart enough to realize --  that sooner or later their midnight screenings would get hijacked by the same kind of pretentious poseurs who slap together the festival's main attractions.......

                 Exhibit A......."Assassination Nation".........

                 Every so often during its running time, the film stops to wave around its so-called artistic credentials......with supposed impassioned rants about how our current culture is drowning in the toxic sludge of texting, tweeting, facebook and youtube.........

                 Okaaaay......the movie's mad as hell and it's not gonna take it anymore.......yeah, right....

                  The premise seems to hinge on what plays like a social media version of the classic Twilight Zone episode, "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street".......

                 Only this time, it's not clever alien invaders who stir up the the paranoia and rage of middle class ranch-house suburbanites......

                 It's just another hacker, tapping into everybody's google search histories, porn site visits and embarrassing cellphone photos.........the Hack-inator kicks off the online rampage by destroying the lives and careers of the town's mayor and high school principal.......and then it's open season on everybody else.......

                  Without boring one and all with the plot vagaries...... the humiliating reveals of everyone's secret stuff turns the whole town into a masked, gun-toting mob, hungry to find social-media witches to hang from the nearest utility pole.......(which officially starts the 'off the rails' part of the proceedings.....)

                  As their designated targets, the mob settles on the film's four teen girl protagonists......one of the girls computer IP address has been traced back to the hacks.....

                  Then at long last we arrive at this crummy film's whole reason for being.......a blood drenched gun battle between the girls and the mob.......literally awash in gore, an exhausting, dreary Tarantino-esque slaughter that drags on forever, steeped in its own pandering cynicism.....

                   At that point, you realize the film was only made to make midnight film festival attendees go whoop-whoop and start tweeting and texting to jack up buzz for the movie........you can practically hear the filmmakers rubbing their hands in glee from the back of the theater........

                   We've wasted enough precious time on this.......Zero Stars (0).....if this was a tweet, we'd end it with ...."# It Sucks")

"PAST TENSE"........ONCE AGAIN, CREEPS AND BULLIES BEG TO BE REACHER-IZED.......

Past Tense by Lee Child (2018)    We've always admired Lee Child as one blockbuster franchise author who's unafraid, if the the mood suits him, to tamper with the tales of his hero, the wandering ex Army Major and Military Cop Jack Reacher............even at the risk of angering his huge fan base......

                 Rest easy, Reacher-ites......."Past Tense" is a comforting 'Greatest Hits' tour through all the familiar trope you expect to encounter in any Reacher novel.......

                   Hitchhiking as always, Reacher's travels leads him into a small New Hampshire town  where Reacher's deceased Marine Vet dad might have lived and grown up in.  While checking through the city records,  Reacher still finds finds enough time to do what we love him for..........punch out bullies from two separate powerful families, who promptly send out carloads of thugs to even the score with him........(heh, heh, heh, as if that's ever gonna happen......)

                   In a parallel storyline, outside of town in the deep woods, a young Canadian couple finds themselves taken prisoner in a sinister motel run by a bunch of genial but vaguely disturbing guys. Whatever these characters are up to, you don't doubt how ugly and evil it'll turn out.....once revealed.

                   Like previous Reacher villains who operate suspicious enterprises in the middle of friggin' nowhere, these creeps are practically beggin' for a thorough Reacher-ization....... in which our Jack will wander into their premises to open up a well-deserved can 'o premium lethal whup-ass.

                   No surprise here.....Lee Child makes sure Jack does not disappoint.

                    As a confirmed Reacher Creature, we had a great time with it, a fast, fun read. For franchise fans, consider this entry as a juicy Big Mac and extra special sauce......4 stars (****)

CHRISTMAS MADNESS WRAPUP.......2 DERANGED CORRUPT PRESIDENTS.......(BOTH OF THEM FAKE)

               Happy Holidays!  It's a 2-for-1 deal!  2 fictional Presidents ranting and raving about their reversals of fortune.........

                Tragically, one of the fake Presidents still sits in the White House today, ranting on Twitter......the other fictional Prez (the recently deceased Frank Underwood, a.k.a. Kevin Spacey) has risen from the dead to vent his psychosis on YouTube.......

                  Baby Orange bemoans he's all alone on Christmas....("....poor me")  The tweet left us in tears........poor, poor, poor Baby Orange.......deprived of golfing at Mar-A-Lago......forced to sit in the White House.........leaving thousands of government employees without a paycheck over holidays.........cause Congress won't cough up 5 Billion for the Great Wall Of Trump.......which he promised over and over  again to his Trumpanzees that Mexico would pay for.......Yes we teared up at the tweet..........with laughter.

                    Dead President Frank Underwood YouTubes his various split personalities...proving once again that the only thing more entertaining than a self-obsessed, egotistical actor bloviating in public is a self-obsessed egotistical bloviating actor headed for a courtroom after his arrest for sexual assault.......BQ Memo to Frank/Kevin.........you may have gotten thousands of clicks on YouTube, but Frankie......you're dreamin' if you think this act will play for a judge and jury......

                   Merry Christmas and all good things to all BQ visitors........(except the above mentioned duo.....)

"SANTA CLAUS" (1959).......TRUMP'S CHRISTMAS NIGHTMARE.....A MEXICAN SANTA WHO CROSSES THE BORDER...

Santa Claus (1959)    Let us now praise the immortal K.Gordon Murray, an American entrepreneur who unearthed this indescribably bizarre Mexican film and rammed it into unsuspecting movie theaters as a kiddie matinee for us easily amused Baby Boomers...……

                    Oh where to begin with this unhinged 90 minutes of dubbed-in-English madness?

                    Forget the North Pole......this Santa hangs out in the celestial heavens......aided and abetted by a United Nations of child helpers, each outfitted in their native garb. So we commence with Santa leading his armies of kids in his own demented of "It's a Small World After All" musical number...….(including many kids from Trump's 'shithole' countries.....)

                    Meanwhile, down in Hell.....(yes, we mean the Hell)…..Satan sends out a rubber-limbed, pathetic minion named Pitch to harass and torment Santa on his Christmas Eve trip around the world.

                     Pitch is dressed up in a Halloween Adventure shop devil costume, complete with stick-on plastic ears...….(he looks and sounds like a slightly more animated version of Trump's own Satanic minion Stephen Miller....)

                     More wackiness unfolds...….Santa's communication center consists of a satellite dish with a giant ear in the middle and a radio transmitter equipped with a pair of big fat Rocky Horror lips...…(keep in mind, we swear we're not making any of this up.....)

                      Down on earth, the movie goes even crazier...….a little girl's dream sequence has her surrounded by creepy adult-sized dolls with stitched on faces......for utter lunacy, it rivals anything you'd see from Federico Fellini or Ken Russell...….

                     And here comes Santa, laughing as if he's seen the whole movie in its final edit. He's well armed, by a doddering Merlin The Magician, no less, with magic sleeping powder to keep the kiddies firmly comatose...……(similar to the same stuff no doubt used by Bill Cosby in later years.....in 1959 theaters, the movie itself put kids to sleep faster than Santa's powder.

                      Our personal favorite scene...….Santa showing up (regrettably off screen) as a night club waiter, plying rich insensitive parents with smokin' martini potions to make them remember they left their son home alone on Christmas Eve...…

                    It might be way too lenient a rating, but for our own nostalgia level and its wondrous, sustained insanity, we're Ho-Ho-Ho-ing 3 stars  (***) for this Santa...….who can fly over any border wall with his wind-up plastic reindeer...…(and no, we don't kid about that either.....)

                    

                     

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAPUP..........SPECIAL 'BABY ORANGE APOCALYPSE' EDITION........

                A month before Baby Orange took the oath of office and oozed his way into the Presidency, some political cartoonist created a frightening, true portrait of what we had to look forward to......

                 He depicted Baby Orange as......naturally, a diapered baby.....smeared with blood.crawling on the floor in front of a huge world globe perched on a table above him.......and starting to pull on the American flag tablecloth that would send the globe crashing down to the floor - down to Baby Orange's level.

                  Welcome to the live action version of that cartoon..........

                  Baby Orange wishes "Good Luck" to convicted felon Michael Flynn......easy to understand this.......it's never too soon to start making friends with someone who might end up as your cellmate.......

                   Baby Orange decides to exit Syria after serious consultation with.........himself.......sleep tight, America, he's a stable genius who knows more than the generals.....

                  Speaking of generals......

                  Secretary Of Defense Mattis "retires" (according to Baby Orange)......evidently, B.O. didn't bother to read the letter General Mattis left behind.........which reiterates what anyone with half a brain has known for the last 2 years........that Baby Orange is a stupid, weak treasonous fanboy of dictators all around the world.........

                   Speaking of half-brains......

                    Republicans upset with Baby Orange over Mattis firing..... so the nation's biggest collection of spineless worms suddenly starts to feel a slight tingling sensation behind them....Medical Memo to Republicans: What you feel is your backbones trying to make a comeback.......look it up in WebMD if you've forgotten what a backbone is.......

                    Baby Orange shifts government shutdown from "I'm proud to shut the government down" to "it's the Democrats' shutdown...."......a profile in courage.......

                    Baby Orange quakes in fear at the sounds of........Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.......at long last, we know who's really in charge of White House policy-making.......

                     Baby Orange shuts down his "charity".......damn government investigators......it's getting so a guy can't run a slush fund to write himself checks anymore.........

                Sarah Huckabee Sanders still claims Flynn was tricked by the FBI, even after a Federal judge makes Flynn swear under oath that he lied all by himself without any help......no wonder Bagdad Bobbikins only holds ten minute press conferences........just to drop a few whoppers and head out the door........

                      Baby Orange re-brands his Wall as....."steel slats...."......Steel Slats?  Wasn't he a Private Eye in all those 1930's movies?   ('Steel Slats And The Lady In Red", ").......no, wait a sec, he was the hero of those movie serials......("Steel Slats and the Ray Gun Of Doom")

                      File this one under.......'You Can't Make This Stuff Up'..........

                      'Fox And Friends' host berates Sarah Huckabee Sanders over Baby Orange's Syria pullout - "He's re-founded Isis!".........Memo To Baby Orange:  When the dumbest of the Fox minions suddenly sprouts a pair of balls and screams at Bagdad Bobbikins, you know you've got big problems.......

                        Baby Orange on the verge of shutting down the government if he doesn't get 5 Billion for his wall.........that's 5 Billion in American taxpayer bucks.......but hold on.......let's flash back to 2016........Baby Orange to Trumpanzee Redhats: "Who's gonna pay for the wall?" Trumpanzee Redhats in response:  "Mexico!"   Baby Orange: "Who's gonna pay for the wall?"
..........Trumpanzees responding:  "Mexico"     Memo To Trumpanzees:   Guess where the 5 Billion is coming from........hint: not Mexico.......

                        And our last update before ending this awful parade.....

                        Baby Orange finally gets his government shutdown,.........true to his nature as a delusional, pathological liar, blames the Democrats.......despite the video that the whole world has seen showing him 'taking pride' in owning the shutdown.........but when did truth ever shut him up.....

                       

                 

                 

"A SIMPLE FAVOR"..........GONE GIRL WITH GAGS.....

A Simple Favor (2018)    We admire the hell out of director Paul Feig for the high-wire act he tried to accomplish here..........a tightrope routine so nervy, you couldn't tell if you were watching a thriller loaded up with gags or an all-out comedy sprinkled with dead bodies and outrageous twists......

                 Did he pull it off?    Not quite........cause by the end of the film, when it swings crazily between the laughs, twists and gunshots, you know Feig never really took any of this stuff seriously.......

                 That doesn't make it any less of a hoot 'n a blast to sit through.......

                 BQ visitors know well that we don't waste 18 paragraphs on scene-by-scene plot descriptions........especially with a film like this, where rolling with the surprises supplies half the fun.

                 We will say this much - the set up's delicious........an unlikely, unsettling sort-of-friendship between the oddest of couples........a Type-A, aggressively perky mom (Anna Kendrick) and a dressed-to-the-nines corporate barracuda with a killer wit and wardrobe to match. (Blake Lively, like a younger version of Meryl Streep's 'Devil Wears Prada' viper).

                  Lively drops out of sight, leaving Kendrick to go on the hunt for her.........and that's all you'll hear from us.........other than prepare for a steady stream of vicious one-liners, multiple twists and endless 1960's French pop songs........(our favorite thing in the movie, smearing the whole film with a James Bondish, euro-trashy vibe)

                   The two actresses are in top form.........and when the film starts to wildly wobble between the various genres it's trying to straddle, their stellar work here distracts you from noticing......or even caring.

                    3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2).......maybe no award winner, but hands down one of the most sheer entertaining movies we've seen in this year.  BQ says don't pass it up........(should you come across it on DVD or Blu-Ray, don't miss watching Feig's absolutely bonkers, dance-number alternate ending.....)

                   

"LEAVE NO TRACE"......AT LONG LAST, BQ FINDS AN INDIE THAT'S A REAL MOVIE.........

Leave No Trace  (2018)   We swore to go cold turkey on film festival independent films.......

                We couldn't possibly punch out another ranting post about how much we hated the puffed-up pseudo artistry of yet another navel-contemplating director who's desperate for a pat on the head from film festival juries........

                 Then we stumbled upon this movie........a breath of fresh air, a simple story told freshly, keeping us intrigued from beginning to end..

                   Not surprisingly, it comes from director Debra Granik, whose "Winter's Bone" displayed the same quiet, spare visual style.......(and made an instant star out of Jennifer Lawrence.....)

                     First thing to love.......that amazing MVP of independent films, Ben Foster, once again inhabiting the role he plays to unnerving perfection.  In this film, he's Will,  a severely PTSD-damaged vet taken to living off the grid (as in.....the woods) with his 13 year old daughter Tom (Thomasin McKenzie).

                    Father and daughter eventually run afoul of the authorities, who won't tolerate squatters on public land. Captured and swept into the social services bureaucracy, Tom warms to living in a structured society, but Will's too far cut off and alienated from humanity to interact with anyone other than himself and his daughter.

                     Moving and modest in its storytelling, the film's dramatic power tends to sneak up on you in its individual moments. And unlike so many film festival phonies, director Granik never calls attention to herself........she single-mindedly concentrates on her characters and their story..

                     And that's why "Leave No Trace" left a big impression on us.......4 stars (****). What a joy not to have to spend time plucking out what's worthy in an otherwise unwatchable indie. Here's one that 's the real deal......all of it's worthy.

"THE GAUNTLET"........THE CLINT 'N SONDRA VARIETY SHOW.......

The Gauntlet (1977)    We thought we'd use this post as a sort of R.I.P. for Sondra Locke, an actress who spent the most high profile part of her career as both co-star and live in companion to Clint Eastwood........

                Honestly, we can't work up all that much praise for the Eastwood-Locke team.......she seemed to go along for the ride, playing primarily abrasive babes along side Eastwood's patented irascible tough guys.........

                If there was chemistry in their relationship, we never saw any of it on screen......they came off as two supremely self-contained actors giving separate performances........they intersected only because......well, that's what the plot called for.......

                  It's possible these film might have improved a bit with actresses who attempted to engage more directly with Eastwood......but who knows.

                 In fact Barbra Streisand was designated for "The Gauntlet" before her falling out of the project.......so inevitably, in came Locke.......

                  Locke was a competent enough actress and she gave it her all, playing a tough-as-nails hooker who's a star witness in an upcoming mob trial. Eastwood's the burn-out drunk cop given the thankless task of transporting her from Las Vegas to Phoenix for her court date.....

                   And it doesn't take long for him to figure out he and Locke have been  targeted for death by the evil police commissioner (William Prince), who's in league with the mob.....

                   Thus starts a bumpy desert road trip, with our squabbling duo regularly assaulted by both cops and mob guys.......who subject them to more sustained gunfire than expended in World War 2.

                 The grand finale (and what seems to be the film's entire reason for existence) features Eastwood and Locke driving a cross-country passenger bus into downtown Phoenix through a hail of bullets, courtesy of the entire city police force.

                   Supremely idiotic......but yeah, a hell of a guilty pleasure to watch.

                  Even more stupid, the heavily armed cops, after subjecting Clint and Sondra to Battle Of The Bulge firepower, patiently gather around the two, allowing them to polish off the villains right in front of them.......cause......that's how it read in the script, we guess........

                  As everyone knows, the Eastwood-Locke pairing ended as badly and toxic as possible with multiple lawsuits and Eastwood using the full force of his influence and stardom to thwart Locke's attempts at a directing career........

                At the news of her death, we contemplated how Locke's career might have gone without her long period of toiling as excess baggage in Eastwood vehicles........maybe even lucking into a film or two that showcased her commitment to fierce performances.......

                 Ironically, she got such a chance with her last Eastwood effort, "Sudden Impact", playing the vigilante rape victim who's the only kind of criminal who could warm  Dirty Harry's cold, cold hear.......but alas, it was, after all, a Dirty Harry movie.......and that's all anyone really remembered about it.........

                2 stars (**).......for the bus finale and for the striking poster done by the legendary sci-fi-fantasy illustrator Frank Frazetta. Standard stuff for Eastwood at the time......but Sondra deserved better movies than this one.........

"LIZZIE".........ANOTHER AX TO GRIND........

Lizzie (2018)    After yesterday's descent into the pulp tripe of "Peppermint", once again it's time to swing back into the other,  equally punishing end of the cinema spectrum........the uppercrust Film Festival award-beggar........(a tossup as to which end is worse to sit through....)

              If you've worked your way through enough films and books about Lizzie Borden, the 19th century O.J., you know all the usual suspects......Lizzie, her sister Emma,  the Irish maid Bridget Sullivan, Lizzie's cold-hearted father and grim stepmother and her creepy uncle John.

               Every author and filmmaker has done their own take on which of this bunch made mincemeat of  Mr. and Mrs. Borden with an ax.......feel free to form your own conclusion......

                To its credit, "Lizzie" heavily dwells on woeful state of womanhood in the 19th century, the second class citizenship, the domination of men......all of it slowly but surely fueling the slow boiling rage of Lizzie, finely planed here by Chloe Sevigny.

                More than matching Sevigny in repressed emotions and sexuality is Kristen Stewart' as the painfully shy, oppressed Bridget.  The film primarily functions as a subtle but effective showcase for the two actresses.

               The film itself comes nowhere near the high bar set by its two stars........it bears all the dreary hallmarks of filmmakers who live only to impress film festival juries......deadened pacing, a moaning, minimal music score, overly artful shots that scream 'look at me! "I'm the director!"......an overall remote, academic dryness........

               This movie doesn't want an audience..........just accolades for the meticulous way it's put together.  You could flip through a newspaper while you're watching it and not miss much........

                 2 whacks of the ax for Sevigny and Stewart....(**)......and as usual, zero for everything else......

"PEPPERMINT"..........SCRAPING THE BOTTOM OF THE POPCORN TUB.......

Peppermint (2018)     Having spent any number of posts bashing the obtuse, unwatchable efforts of film festival "artistes"........time to aim the missiles at the other end of the cinema spectrum.....

                   By that we mean the professional, bottom-feeding popcorn panderers.......no talent slugs who slap together aimless, brainless pulp to score some quick weekend cash off the multiplex suckers......

                    These guys don't actually make real films.........they stitch together pieces of whatever random genres they think will make marketable TV ads.........then throw their misbegotten, vomitous  collection of tropes on to the theater screens, like throwing spaghetti on the wall to see if any of it sticks........

                     This is how we come to have a Frankenstein-assembled nothing of a movie like "Peppermint".......a mutated mass of steaming manure strip-mined from "Death Wish", "Taken" and the last 30 action movies anyone's ever seen.........

                     Its primary selling point:   Putting Jennifer Garner back in 'Alias' mode......punching,kicking and shooting people again......only now with plenty of R-rated splatter.

                    That sound you hear.......the entire movie going populace sighing...."who the hell cares?"

                     Avenging the drive-by killings of her husband and young daughter, Garner enthusiastically slaughters her way through the villains responsible.........a horde of beefy, tattooed Latino drug dealers........(this gang is designed to represent how Trump views all south-of-the-border immigrants asking for asylum....)

                     Bang bang.....kick kick.....punch punch......shoot shoot......stab stab........and a one-two-three....one-two-three....one-two-three.......(pardon us while we swallow an aspirin and yawn.....)

                    There's not a single frame of this trainwreck that wasn't cribbed, borrowed or outright stolen from other equally rotten movies.......but supposedly cinematic diarrhea like this still goes over big in China........probably the one and only reason for the film's existence.......

                     The overwhelming tragedy here........the disappearance of  the middleground filmmakers capable of engaging a mass audience with solid storytelling skills and great, compelling stories to tell.

                     What we're left with now is a choice between two extremes..........the dreary, pompous bilge of something like 'Galveston' (see yesterday's post)............and the butter popcorn muck of endless comic book movies and even lower-level gunk like 'Peppermint'.........

                    A sad, sad state of affairs........as for 'Peppermint', it earns a well deserved AFH from us......an undiluted and pure ABOMINATION FROM HELL.........waste not one second of time on this trash......the people who made it certainly didn't.....

"GALVESTON"........ELLE AND HIGH WATER.....

Galveston (2018)  Once again.......back to the salt mines......

                By that we mean trudging our way through impenetrable, pretentious, self-indulgent film festival sludge......in search of the good stuff hiding within......

                 This ain't no job for wimps......to pluck out worthy performances and moments from movies that were designed not for wide audience consumption, but only for film critics and well-heeled cinema purists who can afford film festival tickets.......

                  Okay......pardon us while we take a deep breath........here goes......

                  Ben Foster.......quietly goes about his business giving profoundly internalized, brilliant performances of souls in torment.......he burrows deep into his characters, working from the inside out, with every performance a revelation.  He's incapable of doing work that's anything less than riveting.

                   Elle Fanning........another one-of-a-kind actor. We don't know how she does it, combining worldly wise weariness with childlike innocence......all at the same time. But somehow she pulls it off and defies you to take your eyes off her......

                   Beau Bridges........living proof of that hoary adage that actors live by...."there are no small parts, only small actors...."   Stuck in a worthless, throwaway role - the oily, duplicitous crime boss - he still makes you stand up and pay attention......

                  And there you have the good stuff.......now briefly, the sludge....

                 Hitman On The Run From His Double Crossing Boss Befriends And Protects A Young Innocent.......any director making use of a plotline that's already been beaten to death in hundreds of other noir movies had better try to freshen it up........and not bury it with phoney-baloney barely visible camerawork.......

                  Still Life Film Festival Pacing........we've hammered this point home before.......about directors who abandon any attempt at telling a coherent story that'll engage a viewer.......preferring to pitch their movie only to graduate student culture vultures sitting in the festival screening rooms.

                   Yeh, we get it......life sucks and then you die. What else is new? French Actress-Director Melanie Laurent literally suffocates this movie that peculiar high-toned nihilism that critics used to cream over in the l960's.  By the time she drags her film to its woeful finish line, you may or may not be awake.....

                   Proceed with extreme caution.......2 stars (**) for the presence of Ben Foster, Elle Fanning and Beau Bridges........the rest of it? Zero. 

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP.......SPECIAL 'ENQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW' EDITION.....

                     National Enquirer flips on Baby Orange.......So we're guessing B.O. no longer thinks they deserve the Pulitzer Prize.......on the bright side, looking forward to future Enquirer headlines....."TRUMP AND ELVIS ADOPT UFO BABY!', 'TRUMP'S SECRET SEX SLAVES IN WHITE HOUSE BASEMENT!', 'TRUMP SHARES HOT TUB SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS AND KELLYANNE CONWAY!'...........

                       Baby Orange's new Chief Of Staff once called him......"a terrible human being...".......so once upon a time, before he became a soulless, mindless minion, Mick Mulvaney still had a few functioning brain cells......Memo to Mick:....when you wake up from your trance, you'll realize your first assessment of Baby Orange is even more true today......

                       Melania's poll numbers drop......meaning what's dawning on more and more people......the sick perverse hilarity of an Anti-Cyberbullying campaign run by the wife of the worst cyber-bully on the planet......

                     

WE WISH YOU A MERRY NETFLIX......THE CHRISTMAS ROUNDUP SO FAR.......

             Last year, as if the Hallmark and Lifetime Christmas movies weren't enough for you, Netflix waded into the fray, sprinkling their oodles of cash on their very own Christmas romances......

              Did we way 'their very own'?  Not quite......since the streaming service's holiday offerings are mostly cobbled together by the same Canadian production teams who pump out the Hallmark holiday baubles........

              Since we've already freely admitted we can't get enough of these junky, clunky guilty pleasures.....(the movie equivalent of  Hickory Farms sausages).....here's a bunch for you fellow Holly Jolly fans to binge on......

               The Princess Switch (2018)  We couldn't live with ourselves if we said anything snarky about this one, a loopy mash-up of "The Parent Trap", "The Princess Diaries" and "The Prince And the Pauper".......it'd be like kicking a puppy.....

                Perfect casting.....with too-cute-for-words Vanessa Hudgens playing both the uppercrust Princess of one of those mythical kingdoms populated by Brits and naturally, her twin, the workaday girl from the States.

                Just imagine the wacky fun and complications if they switch places!  Oh wait....they do switch places.....and you don't have to chew your nails worrying if the twins will secure their designated squeezes before Christmas...... for the fans of this stuff - 3 stars (***)

                A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding (2018)  Deck the Halls with one more sequel!
Yes, it's the continuation of last year's 'Christmas Prince', which Netflix customers indulged in so many repeat viewings, it confounded the company execs.

                In yet another mythical Kingdom.......our sweet journalist heroine, now engaged to the Prince, has to cope with all manner of malice in the Palace, including micro-managing royal minions and  a kingdom villain who's sabotaging the country's economic recovery. 

                 What's a girl to do? Where will it all end?  A Happily Ever After Royal Wedding?  If you really need these questions answered, you're not watching nearly enough TV Christmas romances.
But if you watch way too many......it's a reliable 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)

                 The Christmas Chronicles (2018)   Now here's the surprise joker in the deck......produced by that purveyor of family blockbusters, Chris Columbus ("Home Alone", the first two Harry Potters)

               No imitation Hallmark romance going on......it's nothing less than an ambitious attempt to duplicate the Spielberg-Columbus, special-effects stuffed family films of the 1980's.........complete with loads of sentiment, visual splendor and up-to-date gags.

                 The film's centerpiece showstopper:  Kurt Russell as the coolest, wildest Santa Claus ever seen in a Christmas movie. From his first appearance to his last, you just know that Russell's having the blast of his life playing Santa.......and he comes equipped with cleverly rendered CGI elves and reindeer.

                 Deliberately designed to look like a movie that would have been an incredible box office smash in 1986, we don't mind admitting we had a ball watching it.........call us suckers for nostalgia, but we're still givin' it 4 very merry stars (****).......and wouldn't mind at all if Netlix put Kurt back in the sled for Christmas 2019.

                  And while we're at it, Happy Holidays to all BQ visitors.  Thanks for stoppin' in.....sorry we drank all the eggnog......