FIVE FINGERS FOR MARSEILLES is a very cool 2017 South African movie. I thought it was gonna be a straight-up African western, but it turns out it’s a modern day African western. It’s set in a small town that European colonists named Marseilles. The Africans who originally lived there were forced up the hill, and since most of them worked on the new railway they just called their town Railway.
The title refers to a group of kids who fancy themselves the protectors of the town. It’s weird, though, because there seem to be six of them. The boys are Zulu (the leader), Tau a.k.a. Lion (“Ruthless, the fastest. Sometimes the meanest.”), Pockets (the rich one), Cockroach and Pastor. But also there’s Lerato, who they consider “their heart and soul,” so I sure hope she counts as one of the five and it’s Cockroach or someone who’s just an affiliate, not a full-fledged Finger, like Killah Priest for Wu-Tang. Seems like the heart and soul should get all the privileges of membership. (read the rest of this shit…)
With part two releasing tomorrow, I have been spurned into action – I must complete my review of Zack Snyder’s REBEL MOON PART ONE: A CHILD OF FIRE. To summarize my Snyder history, I’m a fan. In the eras of SUCKER PUNCH, OWL 300 and MAN OF STEEL I seemed to like him more than the next guy, then I fell off as the true Zack Zealots and ZAnons began their ascent. But I still enjoy all of his movies on some level, and love some of them.
REBEL MOON PART ONE: A CHILD OF FIRE is, uh… the short version of the first half of his long-awaited take on the space opera genre. Squirted onto Netflix with extreme fanfare and modest response, it’s unclear when the promised director’s cut will ever be released. But even in this abbreviated form it manages to have plenty of the self indulgence that defines a Zack Snyder film – it’s what powers his rockets, and also what gets him too close to the sun. On first viewing I felt this leaned closer to the latter, that it was one of his worst, but that I still got a kick out of it. Then I watched it a second time yesterday and it was better than I remembered. I cannot tell a lie. I kinda dig it. Not every “new Star Wars” has to really be the new Star Wars. There’s room in my heart for a new CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK. This is way more fun to watch than SPACE RAIDERS or KRULL or METALSTORM: THE DESTRUCTION OF JARED-SYN or even SPACEHUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE although that one’s kinda good. (read the rest of this shit…)
And lo, the forces of boredom and time or what have you separated the Coen Brothers temporarily, and gave us a clearer view of what each brings to the team. First was Joel Coen’s THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH, a beautiful but straight forward black-and-white rendition of the Shakespeare jam. What struck me most about it other than the look was how naturally Denzel Washington could say the original dialogue and still sound exactly like the modern Denzel we know and love. I hope some day we get to hear him do that with some Coen dialogue.
Now we have Ethan Coen’s first solo directing joint*, an original piece written with his wife Tricia Cooke, who’s also editor (as she was on THE BIG LEBOWSKI, THE NAKED MAN, O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU? and THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE). Titled HENRY JAMES’ DRIVE-AWAY DYKES on the credits, this is a goofy lesbian road comedy about a pair of mismatched friends doing a drive-away (getting paid to drive someone’s car one way) from Philadelphia to Tallahassee.
*he says he and Cooke both directed but they didn’t really care about the credits and he was already in the DGA(read the rest of this shit…)
THE VOYEURS (2021) is a type of movie I really don’t think I’ve seen before: an erotic thriller that feels very now. It has the familiar ingredients of a ‘90s Skinemax joint: voyeurism (of course), extremely beautiful people with enviable living situations, obsession that brings out sides of people they didn’t know were there and slowly erodes a previously strong relationship, deception, forbidden desire, kinkiness, long sexual tension building to super hot but dangerous sex, death, a ridiculous twist. And yet it doesn’t feel remotely Shannon Tweedy. You almost question whether it’s the same genre, but clearly it is.
There are obvious surface reasons for it to seem different. It’s beautifully shot in a modern digital style (director of photography Elisha Christian, COLUMBUS, THE NIGHT HOUSE), so even all the scenes happening in the dark don’t have that faux-noir feel. And there’s absolutely no sexy saxophone (score by Will Bates, LOLA VERSUS, IMPERIUM) – in fact, it uses lots of upbeat electro dance music, and the main characters have what I consider good taste so they’re often listening to Mulatu Astatke and Galt MacDermot and shit.
Also, though there’s more nudity and sex than most movies these days and they’re trying to make it look amazing, it’s not that type where there’s, like, frilly lingerie and a thousand candles lit. So even the horniness is kinda different. The intimacy coordinator is prominently credited – good job Amanda Blumenthal (Euphoria, The White Lotus,BEING THE RICARDOS). (read the rest of this shit…)
I’m not a religious horror or nunsploitation connoisseur, but right now there’s a brief window of two new nun horror movies playing in theaters, and I’d heard good things about both of them, so I decided to do a double feature. IMMACULOMEN. IMMACULATE was already down to one show a day here, and I had to take the light rail up to Northgate to see it, but the timing worked out just right to get back downtown and see THE FIRST OMEN immediately after. As if by God’s will.
I enjoyed both of these movies, and they made a good double feature because they’re weirdly overlapping in their stories, but tonally and stylistically pretty different. Both are about an American woman who comes to Italy to become a nun and (mild spoiler?) becomes pregnant with something not normal. In one it might be Jesus and in the other it might be the opposite, and both happen as the result of a secret Christian plot that has been in the works for years, with many previous failures. Both have (spoiler) a not-up-to-spec c-section attempt, and a horrifying scene where a nun falls off of the roof of a convent. Also they have little insignificant similarities like I think they both have an extreme closeup of the protagonist’s eye when she wakes up, they have her peeking through a door crack or keyhole and seeing nuns torment someone, they have her get locked into a room against her will and then bang on the door and cry as the camera pans across the room, they have someone telling her how pretty she is before she takes her vows, they have a version of “Ave Maria” of course… the list could probly go on. (read the rest of this shit…)
A great thing about action movies as opposed to some of the other genres I get excited about is that they often have a chance to sneak up on me. I had no inkling of a movie called MONKEY MAN coming until the trailer dropped just a couple of months ago. And then all the sudden that morning I knew that the actor Dev Patel (THE LAST AIRBENDER, THE GREEN KNIGHT) had practiced Taekwondo since he was ten years old, had competed in national and international competitions, and grew into a passionate fan of international action cinema, so now he was not only starring in a violent martial arts revenge movie set in India, but also making it his directorial debut. And I read that Netflix produced it but Jordan Peele saw it and convinced them to sell it to Universal so it could play theaters. (Later we learned that Netflix was trying to get rid of it because it kinda seemed like it was criticizing the current right wing regime in India and might complicate their business dealings. Embarrassing for them, good for us.) (read the rest of this shit…)
I don’t know why I never got around to seeing the THE CROW sequel from the director of SIX-STRING SAMURAI. Always was curious. Still took me 19 years. Lance Mungia’s THE CROW: WICKED PRAYER, just like the previous one, was meant for theaters, but I think it only played somewhere around here? Wiki(dprayer)pedia says its theatrical run was only in Seattle and only for one week, and I do remember seeing an ad for it and being confused, but I was thinking it was in Eastern Washington. Anyway, I didn’t go.
SIX-STRING SAMURAI is an artifact from another time – the early internet days, when movie nerds like us were a fringe group beginning to ascend to power, and before people would make fake trailers and put them on Youtube. Specifically it was the fall of 1998, after a strange summer of blockbusters everybody hated (GODZILLA, LOST IN SPACE, THE AVENGERS) but also some classics (BLADE, THE MASK OF ZORRO, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, WILD THINGS, OUT OF SIGHT) — see my overview of the season here. In the middle of all that Palm Pictures released this low budget post-apocalyptic movie about a Buddy Holly lookalike battling his way through the desert to get to “Lost Vegas.” It only played 16 screens, but it lasted 15 weeks. People must’ve been watching it.
I didn’t get a chance until it came to DVD, but I’d been hearing about it for months on The Ain’t It Cool News. In researching it I found an interview with director Lance Mungia where Harry Knowles acknowledged that his “over-the-top” review had raised expectations too high and led many people to be disappointed. And that’s my memory of what the reaction was at the time. I think I liked it more than some, I thought it was pretty cool, but it didn’t change the world. (read the rest of this shit…)
I’m going to continue with my THE CROW studies but there aren’t many actual THE CROW movies to review, so here’s a little bit of a side mission.
EL MUERTO (as it’s called on streaming, THE DEAD ONE on DVD) is a 2007 DTV movie I always assumed was a THE CROW wannabe. It stars Wilmer Valderrama (SUMMER CATCH) as Juan Diego, a guy who’s really into Day of the Dead and on the way to a Day of the Dead celebration (while wearing skull makeup and a mariachi suit decorated with little white bones) he crashes into a tree and is possessed by Aztec gods. Then when he gets to the celebration he sees a shrine to himself and realizes oh shit, I died and a year has passed and now I’ve come back with supernatural powers. Like THE CROW, except different. Adn on his favorite holiday. What the fuck. (read the rest of this shit…)
GODZILLA x KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE is the fifth of the “Monsterverse” movies, and to me the best one. Don’t get me wrong, I kinda liked the attempt at a serious Spielbergian approach in GODZILLA, and the more fun and colorful (but weirdly nostalgic for Vietnam War imagery?) take of KONG: SKULL ISLAND, and the Hesei nightmare atmosphere of GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS, but my previous favorite was GODZILLA VS. KONG, because it finally went headlong into having cool giant monster fights where you’re still in awe but you get to see what’s going on.
GxK is the first one with a returning director (Adam Wingard, YOU’RE NEXT) and he’s able to hit the ground running and improve on GvK with a crazier mythology and a better-integrated human story. I had a big smile on my face pretty much the whole time, without having to say “Well, too bad they were just traveling in that tunnel for a third of the movie.” My only real complaint is that the great Brian Tyree Henry (WIDOWS) still has a dumb one-joke character to play – a Roland Emmerich type “funny conspiracy guy” updated to have a podcast and a Discord – but he not only gets some laughs but gets to be around the actual monsters this time instead of trapped in a needless b-plot. (read the rest of this shit…)
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
Miguel Hombre on Eraserhead: “Man 2025 really is getting off to an awful start: RIP David Lynch 1946 – 2025 Terrible, terrible news.” Jan 16, 11:45
VERN on Speak No Evil (2024 remake): “Dread, I really like that reading of the movie. You make a strong argument for the importance of the ending.” Jan 16, 10:03
Dreadguacamole on Speak No Evil (2024 remake): “Oops, forgot to put a warning about spoilers, but hey, hopefully not needed this far down. Also, “Ferrin” is obviously…” Jan 16, 07:53
Dreadguacamole on Speak No Evil (2024 remake): “On the one hand… I don’t think I’d watch a straight remake. Once was enough I also get why they…” Jan 16, 07:47
CJ Holden on Highlander II: The Quickening: “I finally watched this one yesterday (European Theatrical Cut) and man, is it frustrating. This might be the best looking…” Jan 16, 07:30
Aktion Figure on Speak No Evil (2024 remake): “Also, I guess I’m a typical American, but I looked up “ferrin” and I do not get what I’m apparently…” Jan 16, 03:48
Aktion Figure on Speak No Evil (2024 remake): “I appreciate sliding from “robots” to subservient folk who don’t know they’re being used. Subtle, the way I like the…” Jan 16, 03:38
Crudnasty on Speak No Evil (2024 remake): “Yeah that comment from the director of the original (and campeonato’s reiteration if it) just made me roll my eyes…” Jan 15, 11:55
zikade on Speak No Evil (2024 remake): “SPOILERS I didn’t watch the original because I couldn’t imagine watching something so agonizing that ends with what sounds like…” Jan 15, 10:57
O Campeonato on Speak No Evil (2024 remake): “Sounds like the typical USAn remake rubbish: they take a film, they throw out everything which they are unable to…” Jan 15, 09:36
Adam C aka TaumpyTearrs on Silent Night (2023): “Hell yes Miguel, that is fantastic news. Funnily enough, I just in the last year finally tracked down good looking…” Jan 14, 20:55
FIVE FINGERS FOR MARSEILLES is a very cool 2017 South African movie. I thought it was gonna be a straight-up African western, but it turns out it’s a modern day African western. It’s set in a small town that European colonists named Marseilles. The Africans who originally lived there were forced up the hill, and since most of them worked on the new railway they just called their town Railway.
With part two releasing tomorrow, I have been spurned into action – I must complete my review of Zack Snyder’s REBEL MOON PART ONE: A CHILD OF FIRE. To summarize my Snyder history, I’m a fan. In the eras of 
And lo, the forces of boredom and time or what have you separated the Coen Brothers temporarily, and gave us a clearer view of what each brings to the team. First was Joel Coen’s THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH, a beautiful but straight forward black-and-white rendition of the Shakespeare jam. What struck me most about it other than the look was how naturally Denzel Washington could say the original dialogue and still sound exactly like the modern Denzel we know and love. I hope some day we get to hear him do that with some Coen dialogue.
THE VOYEURS (2021) is a type of movie I really don’t think I’ve seen before: an erotic thriller that feels very now. It has the familiar ingredients of a ‘90s Skinemax joint: voyeurism (of course), extremely beautiful people with enviable living situations, obsession that brings out sides of people they didn’t know were there and slowly erodes a previously strong relationship, deception, forbidden desire, kinkiness, long sexual tension building to super hot but dangerous sex, death, a ridiculous twist. And yet it doesn’t feel remotely Shannon Tweedy. You almost question whether it’s the same genre, but clearly it is.
I’m not a religious horror or nunsploitation connoisseur, but right now there’s a brief window of two new nun horror movies playing in theaters, and I’d heard good things about both of them, so I decided to do a double feature. IMMACULOMEN. IMMACULATE was already down to one show a day here, and I had to take the light rail up to Northgate to see it, but the timing worked out just right to get back downtown and see THE FIRST OMEN immediately after. As if by God’s will.
A great thing about action movies as opposed to some of the other genres I get excited about is that they often have a chance to sneak up on me. I had no inkling of a movie called MONKEY MAN coming until the trailer dropped just a couple of months ago. And then all the sudden that morning I knew that the actor Dev Patel (
SIX-STRING SAMURAI is an artifact from another time – the early internet days, when movie nerds like us were a fringe group beginning to ascend to power, and before people would make fake trailers and put them on Youtube. Specifically it was the fall of 1998, after a strange summer of blockbusters everybody hated (
I’m going to continue with my 
GODZILLA x KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE is the fifth of the “Monsterverse” movies, and to me the best one. Don’t get me wrong, I kinda liked the attempt at a serious Spielbergian approach in 
