South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)

 Nope I'd never seen this, my 'South Park' phase was 2002 - 2004. It's interesting to note in the films 25th anniversary year that 'South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut' was originally intended as a series wrap up, however the shows now been on the air for about 28 years. Very much a product of its time, how to evaluate this? I enjoyed the hutzpa of making this a musical, a foul mouthed musical; I enjoyed even more how well it works as a musical, even Stephen Sondheim acknowledged this. At just shy of 90 minutes it's the perfect length not to outstay it's welcome, and it really brought me back to a more juvenile mindset. Frankly, I enjoyed the break. ***

Montana Story (2021)

 Estranged half siblings Haley Lu Richardson and Owen Teague reunite at the Montana ranch where they grew up, their abusive father being in a coma and not expected to live long. An old horse and a Kenyan male nurse help brother and sister work through a painful past. Very good central performances, I knew Haley Lu Richardson was an excellent actress but wasn't familiar with Owen Teague, I hope to see more work from both of them. The supporting characters are also unusually well realized. The film looks beautiful, wonderful shots of Big Sky Country. 'Montana Story' feels like it was adapted from a novela, but was actually written for the screen. Came in not really sure what I was getting, but left very impressed. ***1/2

Venom: The Last Dance (2024)

 'Venom 3' is easily the best Venom movie because it cares the least. Tasked with wrapping up Tom Hardy's contract, it's like the writers room just spitballed ideas that sounded fun and strung them together with a weak plot. Wouldn't it be cool if Venom and Brock were hanging off the side of a commercial airliner? Wouldn't it be fun if they meet a hippy family? Wouldn't it be fun if they went to Vegas? How about Venom and Mrs Chen dance to an ABBA song (Dancing Queen of course). Turns out these things are kind of fun. There is no Michelle Williams this time but we do get Juno Temple, plus the final action sequence is set at Area 51. I had fun and can imagine myself watching this movie a bunch more times, which is more then I can say for the others. Still I can't exactly call the movie "good", so I'm going with **1/2

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)

 The 'Birds of Prey' are an all female vigilante group from the DC comics, with Harley Quinn being it's best known member. What I liked most about this is that it feels more like a crime movie then a comic book movie. We have an attractive female cast with Ewan McGregor doing good work as a legitimately unhinged villian. However, this is an origin story movie so the girls aren't all together until the end, I'd have been intrigued to see where they might have gone with a sequel had the DCEU not been decommissioned. **1/2

Here (2024)

 Robert Zemeckis famously loves his gimmicks and playing with new technologies in his visuals, he has ample opertunites for both in his new film 'Here'. 'Here' takes a single spot of ground in what is now New Jersey, and with one single camera angle (save the films closing shot) tells the story of what happened there over a vast scope of time. We see dinosaurs, the ice age, American Indians and an illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin. The bulk of the narrative however is set in a home built on that spot in 1900 and 4 families, one of which stays two generations, who live there over roughly one and a quarter centuries.

The story is not told entirely in chronological order, and as this is based on a graphic novel we occasionally have insert panels showing us happings at the same location in different times. The most screen time by far goes to the Young family who lives there from roughly 1945 to 2010, genertion one presided over by husband and wife Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly, generation two husband and wife Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, in a belated reteaming from Zemeckis's 'Forrest Gump'.

Critics and to a lesser extent audience's have not loved 'Here', it has 36% and 58% respective positive ratings from those groups on Rotten Tomatoes. I however liked this movie, I feel similarly about this as I do the movie 'Hardcore Henry', which is shot entirely in first person like a video game; someone was going to make movies with these conciets eventually, but we only really need one of each.

The characters are reasonably investiable 'every man' types and I am partial to multi generational sagas and seeing the scope of time presented in film and literature. Though most memorable for its visuals the story of 'Here' is really more literature then "movie" in type. It can be surifacey, it can feel condensed, and it can go out of its way to work in fads and other dated references. However, there is something powerful in its central idea of showing one place over a long period of time, and there is a scatering of workable joy and pathos throughout. I'm glad I saw it on the big screen because there will be nothing quit like it in theaters again. ***

The Midnight Meat Train (2008)

 In 'The Midnight Meat Train' Bradley Cooper is a photographer who snaps a picture of a beautiful woman at a New York subway station, only to later learn he was the last person to see her before she disappeared. Cooper becomes obsessed with the disaperance and the actual butcher he thinks did the lady in. His trip down that rabbit hole leads him to find a patern of disapernces going back to at least 1911. Soon he's dragged his girlfriend Leslie Bibb and his best friend Roger Bart into the investigation with him, he also comes to suspect that the police department is in on what's going on.

The film effectively invokes the vibe of slimey early 80's urban horror from 'Manniac' to 'Varity' to 'CHUD'. The films director Ryuhei Kitamuar is Japanese and the influence of Asian horror films is felt as well. An hour and 43 minutes in length I think the movie would have benefited from being 10 to 15 minutes shorter. Still the film is fairly effective and I really appreciated the effort to do something different from the standard American horror fair of the Dubya era. **1/2

No Stranger Than Love (2015)

 In 'No Stranger Than Love' Allison Brie is Lucy Sherrington, beloved, small town Connecticut art teacher. Seemingly all the men in town are smitten by Lucy, though she is extremely polite in turning down their advances, none of the quirky locals are doing it for her; Save Clint Cobern, the gym teacher and football coach, played by Colin Hanks, who is really giving off 80's comedy Tom Hanks vibes in this. They like each other but Clint is married, after three years of sexual tension at work they decide to have an affair. Moments before they are set to consummate things, a hole into a bottomless black void opens up in Lucy's floor landing Clint in a sort of floating purgatory. Lucy can hear Clint but not see him and the pair set about trying to find a way to get him back on Tera firma. 

In the mean time a debt collector played by Justin Chatwin shows up in town to collect gambling debts from Clint, so when the coach disappears locals assume the visitor did him in. Only Lucy and Justin know he didn't, things are made more complicated when the two of them starts falling in love.

Heavy on the quirky, whimsy and metaphysical, yet still extremely lite on substance. One can tell what they were going for, a kind of Gilmore Girls on acid, but it just dosen't work. Way too self aware and more absurd than funny, the movie falls into its own hole to the bottomless black void. *1/2