For the Love of Spock (2016)

 'For the Love of Spock' is director Adam Nimoy's tribute to the iconic Star Trek character and the actor who first played him, his father Leonard Nimoy. While I don't think I can quite call it "fascinating" it is rather interesting, I knew little of the actors past and personal life, and the complicated and sometimes strained relationship between father and son made for an effective dramatic arc, something you don't always get in a tribute doc like this. Some playful editing. ***

Long Weekend (1978)

 The 1978 Australian film 'Long Weekend' wasn't a hit when it first came out, but overtime became iconic enough to warrant a remake 30 years later. It is the story of Peter and Marica (John Hargreaves & Briony Behets) a suburban couple in their mid 30's who decide to take a long weekend vacation at an isolated stretch of beach. The couples relationship is not in the best place, swingers who've recently decided to revert to monogamy to try and save things, they have secrets from and hidden resentments towards one another. 

The whole weekend begins wrong, a fight at home about bringing the dog (they do), and getting lost on the way there. When they arrive in addition to their domestic problems nature seems to be against them, Peter is attacked by an eagle and chased by a shark while surfing, ants get at the food, small animals into the tent, the dog disappears, and the corpse of a Dugong (a sea cow like marine mammal) keeps moving locations. In addition there is a van parked further down the beach and a small base camp, but the people that go with it are never seen. 

The film is an intriguing mixed bag, there is much slow tension building that can get a little old, punctuated by intense moments. There's seeming homages to things as diverse as 'The Bird's' and  'Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf'. Things get increasingly surreal, and it's never entirely clear exactly what's happening. The wrath of God for disrespecting the environment? Ghosts? Are they victims of a prank gone out of hand? Are they just going mad? I can't say I really enjoyed it, but I was kind of impressed by it, and may have to watch it again to try and make more sense of it. Sometime graphic, very not for everybody. ***

Currently free on Prime. 

Midnight Mary (1933)

'Midnight Mary' is another Wellman directed pre code picture, this one featuring a 19 year old Loretta Young who is astoundingly beautiful. She's a good girl whose had a rough life, got mixed up as a gangsters moll, then get's an opportunity and goes straight for awhile, but ultimately has to back out when her old life threatens the safety of the good man for whom she's fallen in love (Franchot Tone). Film is bookended by her murder trail. More then competently done, but still unable to transcend it's genera limitations. It's Young's presence that makes the movie not completely forgettable. ** 

Frisco Jenny (1932)

 'Frisco Jenny' is a William Wellman directed pre-code picture that is an ode to the love and scarifies of motherhood. It really lays it on thick. Frisco Jenny Sandoval (Ruth Chatterton) works in her fathers bar/brother (notably not as prostitute) but hopes to change her life by marrying an aspiring musician. Both her fiancé and her father are killed in the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake (this film came out 4 years before the better known 'San Francisco', it's effects shots are much more limited) and she is left pregnant and unemployed. 

Jenny has her baby boy and try's to go straight, but economic desperation drives her back and into the world of organized crime (it's never quite said outright but she's a pimp). After tangential involvement in a murder Jenny's well connected employer arranges to stash her kid with a wealthy family until the smoke clears. That process, and Jenny's efforts to put away enough money so that her and her son can make a new start of things somewhere far away, well it takes years. By the time Jenny is ready to go her son has forgotten about her and bonded with his new family. So Jenny let's him go but keeps an eye on the young man's progress even while re entering the world of shady dealings.

Jenny's son grows up to be a prosecutor who runs afoul of Jenny's boss who tries to kill him, but Jenny kills the boss before he can do so. Jenny ends up on trial, prosecuted by her own son, and is sentenced to death. Jenny refuses to divulge her real identity to her son fearing that it would ruin his life, and in the end makes the ultimate sacrifice. 

A mixture of the syrupy and rough, Chatterton tries but the movies still trite and even with Wellman's expert technical handling the films only fair. **

Easy A (2010)

 'Easy A' is an early Emma Stone vehicle, and a good one. Comedy is a variation on 'The Scarlet Letter' where good girl Stone gains an unearned reputation as the school slut (she's still a virgin) when a rumor she started to appease a friend gets out of hand. Good cast, Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson play unusually enlightened parents. Thomas Haden Church, Amanda Bynes, Aly Michalka and Malcom McDowell also appear. I enjoyed it, though it's hard to buy the films conceit that Emma Stone starts the story largely ignored by the men in her high school. ***

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

Now I had never previously seen a Terminator film after 'T2', but I watch enough film criticism on YouTube to know that the biggest problem the franchise faced after the sequel is that there really wasn't anywhere left to go. Now of course it's fairly easy to come up with all sorts of ideas to continue to franchise but the problem is that 'T2' resolved all the major plot lines, it and the original 'Terminator' act as a coherent whole, the story is done. Subsequent sequels subverted the resolution of 'T2' in an attempt through various means to bring SkyNet back as a threat. 'Terminator: Dark Fate' had the moderately clever idea not to do that. 

Ignoring all previous subsequent films in the franchise 'Terminator: Dark Fate' is a direct sequel to 1991's 'Terminator 2'. It jumps events forward from the end of that film in 1997, to an awkward coda in 1998, and then on to 2020. Here the threat is not 'SkyNet' but a subsequent military computer system called 'Legion' which like it's now alternate reality predecessor eventually unleashed a war of extermination on men by way of a mechanized army. 

Embracing a kind of determinist reading of the future, event's repeat with changed players. A resistance in the 2040's send a cybernetically enhanced Mackenzie Davis back in time to protect a youngish Natalie Reyes, whose survival is deemed pivotal to humanities hopes in the future, from a new Terminator played by Gabriel Luna. What I liked most about Luna's Terminator is that he is polite, operating on the 'get more flies from honey' philosophy, instead of going head on against copes, the boarder patrol, and the military, he attempts to integrate himself into them, and is nice about it.

Linda Hamilton returns to the franchise after 28 years, her son Connor was killed by an unaccounted for 'back up' terminator a year after the events of the second film. Hamilton's Sarah Connor has spent most of the decades subsequent fighting other robots sent from the future, regularly tipped off to the time and place of their appearing by a mysterious allie who contacts her by text messaging.

Conner joins forces with the two new leads in an attempt to save the future of humanity again, and comes to realize that despite all her sacrifice she is unremembered in the future she helped save. This is an interesting idea, there is some pathos there, but as an action franchise this is undermined some by giving Hamilton lines like 'I kill Terminators, and then I drink myself unconscious'.

Sarah's adventures over twenty plus years might have made for a more interesting story, such as under what circumstances she earned the unwavering loyalty of a military Colonel who helps the group acquire both an EMP and air transportation.  

The most ridicules part of this movie, which mixes a few intriguing concepts with basic character types, uninspired dialogue, and over produced action sequences is the return of Arnold. Schwarzenegger plays that back up Terminator we see kill young John Conner in the brief 1998 sequence near the beginning of the film. Now cut off from a future that doesn't exist, and with no further orders to carry out, this Terminator proceeds to grow a conscience, feel bad for what he did to Sarah and act as her mysterious contact, his systems being able to track time distortion waves from incoming time travels several days before their actual materialization. 

In addition to this the Terminator now going by the name 'Carl' has a wife and step son (who he saved from a previous domestic abuse situation) and is in the draperies business outside of Laredo, Texas. Now that is the Terminator film I really want to see, the domestic life of a killer robot drapist.

It is the moments where 'Dark Fate' touches on the existential, or just goes in bizarre directions, that make this movie watchable. Otherwise it's jus forgettable Michael Bay type stuff. Still the improbable and odd ball story decisions earn this film a borderline recommendation. **

Viva Zapata! (1952)

Elia Kazan directs Marlon Brando (who does not yet seem to hate his job here) from a screenplay by John Steinbeck. Slanted bio pic of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. Film lacks for actual Mexican's, even Anthony Quinn is part Irish. The film is pretty earnest however and thus better then it should be. Reportedly John McCain's favorite movie. ***