Train to Busan (2016) **1/2

The first live-action feature by South Korean director Yeon Sang-ho got a lot of buzz at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, and it has done quite well with viewers and critics. I'm not sure what the big deal is. It's just a standard, zombie movie, but with subtitles, and not as good as a lot of other films, like “28 Days Later” or even “World War Z,” which wasn't perfect, itself.

The plot is as straightforward as it gets. The zombie apocalypse hits South Korea, and a bunch of people on a train try to survive. As an exercise in action-film-making, “Train to Busan” at least demonstrates technical competence. The shots are well-done, the pace is good, and the fast-moving zombies are as creepy as any on screen. The problem is the hackneyed story: the archetypal villain, the noble hero, and a treacly story of parental love. If this film were made in the U.S., it would immediately be dismissed as an overly-sentimental, derivative mashup of “World War Z” and “Snowpiercer.”

The film does have some bright spots. Star Gong Yoo does a decent job, but the lesser-known actor Ma Dong-seok steals the movie. He is downright charismatic, with his expressive, smooshy face, and he dominates every scene he is in. I would watch more movies with this guy.

For me, “Train to Busan,” suffers from its own hype. It's not the worst movie ever, it's just nothing special. If you forget the hype, it should be possible to enjoy it as a straight-up action flick.

2.5 stars out of 5

The Wicker Man (1973) ****1/2

I recently watched the excellent "Midsommar," which has had a lot of comparisons to the 1973 folk-horror film “The Wicker Man.” Having now watched “The Wicker Man,” I realize just how much of a debt “Midsommar” owes to this horror classic.

Edward Woodward plays Sergeant Howie, a police detective dispatched to the isolated, Scottish island, Summerisle, to investigate a tip about a missing girl. He finds the villagers, even the girl's mother, extremely unhelpful. They first deny the girl's existence, then, when he catches them in the lie, they are cryptic about what may have happened to her. Meanwhile, Howie witnesses villagers performing pagan rituals, including copulating publicly on the village square. The owner of the island, Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee), explains to Howie that they have returned to worshiping the old, celtic gods, to ensure good harvests. When Howie deduces that last Fall's harvest was poor, he suspects that the missing girl may be intended as a human sacrifice, and it's a race against the clock to find her.

The genius of “The Wicker Man” is the way the horror builds, ever so slowly. At first, Howie seems invincible, with his uniform and his authority. He is smart and relentless, and the villagers' simplistic efforts to thwart him seem destined to fail. Even the gorgeous Britt Ekland's naked siren song doesn't draw Howie off course.  The pagan rites scandalize the devoutly Christian Howie, but they are all out in the open, and they seem harmless enough. Who cares, after all, if a bunch of pretty girls dance naked, or people celebrate the fertility of the land by having sex? It's just a reminder of how many modern, Christian traditions, like Easter Eggs, have pagan roots. Gradually, though, we and Howie come to realize how alone he is on this island, where everyone seems to be set against him. What formerly seemed so strong, Howie and everything he represents, including lawful authority and modern civilization itself, starts to look fragile. Howie, in a sense IS the wicker man.

The 1980 novel “Waiting for the Barbarians,” by J.M. Coetzee tells the story of a frontier town. There, on the cowering edge of civilization, government agents torture captured indigenous people in order to prepare for a barbarian attack that never comes. The barbarians, it turns out, are already there, and they are them. “The Wicker Man” also explores what may be lurking under the thin veneer of civilized life. What would it take for our fellow man to turn on us, to sacrifice us? One bad harvest? A viral pandemic? An election?

4.5 stars out of 5

The Velocipastor (2018) ****

The first problem with “The Velocipastor” is that I didn't come up with the title. The second problem is that the title does not do justice to the film. Speaking to all people of discerning taste, “Welcome to your new, favorite movie.”

“The Velocipastor” was born in 2010, when film student Brendan Steere tried to type “velociraptor” into his phone, and it auto-corrected to “veloci pastor.” That may make this the first movie dreamed up by artificial intelligence. Steere first turned the idea into a fake, grindhouse-style trailer for a school project. That was so well-received that he got to work on a screenplay. Oddly enough, it took a few years to get funding for a movie about a priest who turns into a dinosaur. Ultimately, “The Velocipastor” was made for $35,000, which also happens to be the approximate number of f***s that this movie does not give.

Greg Cohan plays Father Doug, a priest who witnesses his parent's death in a car explosion in the first scene, and right away, we see what kind of movie this is. Instead of actually blowing up a car (expensive!), they just show us an empty frame with the words “Video FX: Burning Car.” (At this point, you should either be in love with the movie, or turning it off.) His faith shaken by the loss of his parents, Father Doug journeys to China, where he is given a sought-after dinosaur tooth. He cuts his hand on the tooth, and next thing we know he is back in the U.S., where he discovers he can transform into a dinosaur. A hooker named Carol (Alyssa Kempinski) convinces him to use his powers for good, and soon the dinosaur priest is ripping the arms and heads off of bad guys.

There are movies that are so bad , they're good, but “The Velocipastor” is so awful, it's awesome! It's full of quotable moments, like when the senior priest (played by the director's dad) tries to console Doug, “So your parents died, Doug. It's what parents do. They die on you.” The acting is about what you'd expect in a home-made movie. The soundtrack is actually some pretty kick-ass, obscure punk music. The film wisely just teases glimpses of the velociraptor until the end, when we finally get to see it in all its horrible, amazing glory.

The bottom line is that “The Velocipastor” is an instant cult classic. If you love the weirdness of "Buckaroo Banzai" and the absurdity of Monty Python, then this is right up your alley. Really, it's all there in the name. If you are the kind of person who saw this title and thought, “I need to see that,” you're right!

4 stars out of 5

Farewell, My Lovely (1975) ****

In the world of hard-boiled, detective fiction, there's Philip Marlowe, and then there's everybody else. Oh sure, some will point to Sam Spade or that Spenser, For Hire guy, but for me, Marlowe is the apotheosis of the hard-drinking, laconic, battered, white-knight detective. He's a tough guy, but not supernaturally tough. He receives more ass-whippings than he deals out, but he always gets back up and gets back on the case.

Most will point to Humphrey Bogart's depiction of Marlowe in “The Big Sleep,” but re-watching that film, I found that it wasn't quite as good as I had remembered it. It's a little too cute, and the chemistry between Bogart and Lauren Bacall is actually distracting. Bogart always seems to be looking for a chance to get in another clever one-liner, while making sure the camera catches his good side. “Farewell, My Lovely” isn't burdened with any of that. Robert Mitchum's Marlowe is just a tough-guy who likes his whiskey and likes to make an honest buck.

We find Marlowe feeling, for the first time, “tired, and realizing I was growing old. Maybe it was the rotten weather we'd had in L.A. Maybe the rotten cases I'd had. Mostly chasing a few missing husbands and then chasing their wives once I found them, in order to get paid. Or maybe it was just the plain fact that I am tired and growing old.” We follow Marlowe on one of those rotten cases, returning a runaway teen to her rich, arrogant parents. On that case, Marlowe meets his next client, a giant of a man, named Moose Malloy (Jack O'Halloran). Fresh out of prison for bank robbery, Moose wants Marlowe to find his old girlfriend, Velma, with nothing more to go on than her name and the club where she used to dance. The club is now a black club, where no one knows anything about a white girl from seven years ago, but don't think that will stop Marlowe. He follows the cold trail through the seedy underbelly of L.A., meeting washed-up showgirls, madames, gangsters, and a rich judge's young wife (Charlotte Rampling), suffering more concussions along the way than an NFL linebacker.

It has to be said that Robert Mitchum was a bit on the old side for the role. It's especially off-putting to see him at an old-looking 58 flirting with the 29-year-old Charlotte Rampling. Fortunately, Mitchum is so good that he makes up for the age issue. He nails the two essential Marlowe characteristics. First, Marlowe is as world-weary as they come. From his time as a cop to his years as a private eye, he's seen more corruption than anyone should. Marlowe has no illusions about humanity. Despite all that, the second Marlowe trait is his old-fashioned sense of decency. Marlowe lives hand to mouth because he won't cheat a client, he won't take a bribe, and he won't do something that he knows is inherently wrong. He lives in a dirty world, but he refuses to let it make him filthy.

Bogart's “The Big Sleep” Marlowe is clearly the most famous, but for my money, the best Phillip Marlowe is a tie between Robert Mitchum in this film and Elliot Gould's Marlowe from "The Long Goodbye." It's an apples to oranges comparison, because, while the films were only released a couple of years apart, “Farewell, My Lovely” is a classic noir set in the 1940s, while “The Long Goodbye” drags the old-fashioned detective into the swinging 1970s. How to decide between the two? Just watch them both!

4 stars out of 5

Fast Five (2011) **

I have written before that the original "The Fast and the Furious" movie is not completely without charm. Still, I had no interest in seeking out any of the many sequels in this franchise. I read, however, that “Fast Five” is considered the best of the bunch, so I decided to give it a try.

The good thing about action movies with such meaningless plots is that it's easy to jump into the middle of a franchise. In this case, if you have seen the first movie, you can easily skip ahead to this, the fifth without missing a nuance, because, of all the things this franchise has – guns, fights, explosions, cars jumping over things – nuance is one thing it doesn't have. In “Fast Five,” you quickly figure out that Brian O'Connor (Paul Walker) has left the FBI and become a criminal fugitive to be with Mia (Jordana Brewster) and her hulking brother, Dom (Vin Diesel). It's also apparent that, at some point, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Dom's girlfriend from the first movie, has died.

Things pick up in Brazil, where the crew is hiding out. Their friend Vince (Matt Schulze) has put together a heist so they can score enough cash to get new identities and disappear. The heist goes wrong, of course, leaving our anti-heroes on the run from both the law and a powerful cartel boss. A couple of American DEA agents are killed in the heist, so the U.S. responds by sending over a crack team of FBI agents led by agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson). Brian and Dom, meanwhile, assemble a cast of hard-driving crooks from the previous movies to help them rip off the cartel guy.

That's way more than you need to know. Plot is of such little importance to these movies as to make it ridiculous to try to summarize the story. These movies are about buff guys flexing their arms, hot babes leaning over, and fast cars drifting around corners. “Fast Five” has all of these in spades. As for what makes this one better than any of the other sequels, I'm at a loss. Maybe the arms are bigger (see Dwayne Johnson) or the babes are hotter (see Gal Godot). The cars couldn't really get any faster.

2 stars out of 5

Yesterday (2019) ***

Struggling musician Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) wakes up from a bike accident to find himself the only person in the world who remembers The Beatles. The next move is obvious: Jack starts performing all the Beatles songs he knows, pretending they are his own. It's slow going at first. People aren't really primed to receive these songs from an unknown, British-Indian guy, but the genius of the music eventually leads Jack to a superstardom that he isn't sure he wants.

It's a brilliant premise, and all director Danny Boyle (“Slumdog Millionaire” “Trainspotting”) and his cast have to do is let the story tell itself. They do it quite well. Himesh Patel, a newcomer to film, is excellent. Lily James, as Jack's manager and love interest, is charming as can be. Ed Sheeran capably plays a version of himself, providing some great comedy when he suggests Jack change the name of one song to “Hey, Dude.”

I enjoyed “Yesterday” immensely while watching it. Reflecting on it a few days later, I would have to say that the story is fairly thin. Nothing wrong with it, but once you accept the underlying premise, it's just a typical, sweet, romantic comedy. What really stands out about the film is, unsurprisingly, the music. (It should. They paid $10 million, almost half the film's budget, for the rights to these Beatles songs.) Hearing the songs presented in this new context, as if they were just written, really highlights how amazing they are. Seeing characters' faces as they hear, for the first time, “Yesterday” or “The Long and Winding Road” takes me back to when I first heard them.

Otherwise, the best thing about “Yesterday” is the clever premise, that Jack suddenly finds himself in a world where the Beatles never existed. It turns out, though, there's some controversy about how original the idea is. It's based on an original screenplay by Jack Barth, written in 2012 and originally titled “Cover Version.” However, a guy named David Blott released a graphic novel in 2011, also titled “Yesterday,” about a guy who gets sent back in time to the pre-Beatles 1960's and becomes a pop star by recording Beatles songs. The internet also points out other projects with similar themes, including the 2013 novel Enormity, a science fiction series called “Otherworld,” and the BBC series “Goodnight Sweetheart.”

Does any of that make a difference? A little bit, for me. I was giving the filmmakers a lot of credit for the idea, and beyond that, what we have here is a pretty straightforward rom-com, a bit on the sentimental side. “Yesterday” is still a fun time, and a nice love-letter to some great music.

3 stars out of 5

Sleepaway Camp (1983) ** or ****

I've watched some really excellent horror movies the last few years. “Sleepaway Camp” is not one of those. The movie is weird, cheesy, low-budget, nonsensical, and did I mention weird? Perfect material for a cult classic.

The story starts on a lake in upstate New York. A dad and his 2 kids flip their sailboat, and as they bob in the water, a distracted counselor from the camp across the lake runs them over, killing the dad and one of the kids.

Skip ahead a few years, and the surviving kid, Angela (Felissa Rose), is now living with her weirdo aunt. Angela and her cousin, Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten), are heading off to spend the summer at that same camp across the lake. Ricky is an athletic, well-liked kid, and he tries to watch out for his quiet, withdrawn cousin. Angela still gets bullied by other campers, including the camp vixen, Judy (Karen Fields), as well as one of her counselors, Meg (Katherine Kamhi). There's also a creepy camp chef who tries to molest Angela.

What happens to all these malefactors who transgress against Angela? It's no spoiler to tell you that, one-by-one, they die in various, horrendous ways. The scenes are so foreshadowed, and the acting so bad, that none of it is really scary, but I will say that there are some good, low-budget, makeup effects in this movie. Somebody in that department really gave it their all. Otherwise, the movie is a hot mess, but just weird enough to be watchable. Plenty of things in this movie make no sense at all, like why Meg, who looks about 18, would be romantically interested in the 70-something camp owner, or why the camp chef would be able to openly leer at the young campers in front of his co-workers. The movie also spends about 10 minutes on a campers-counselors baseball game that winds up having nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of the story. Fortunately, Jonathan Tiersten is actually a halfway decent actor. Karen Fields and Katherine Kamhi aren't winning any Oscars, but they chew up the scenery and clearly enjoy their villain roles. Felissa Rose doesn't really do any acting as Angela, she just gives this blank, wide-eyed stare to everyone. That stare is actually the third scariest thing in the whole movie.

In any slasher movie, there are two big questions: “Who will die next?” and “When are we gonna see some more titties?” “Sleepaway Camp” differs from the rest, in that the answer to the 2^nd question is, never. In this movie, the girls keep their 1-piece bathing suits on, while the guys strip down. When they aren't showing off their bare asses, the dudes wear little short shorts and cropped, mesh shirts that would be at home in an '80s Pride parade. Oh, did I mention there's a scene with two men in bed together? As queer cinema goes, “Sleepaway Camp” is even gayer than “Top Gun”.

Oh, what are the scariest and second scariest things in the movie, you ask? The second scariest is Angela's bizarrely-perky aunt. I don't have words to describe how strange she is, but she made my skin crawl. As for the scariest thing, I'm not gonna tell you. “Sleepaway Camp” has one big twist, and I won't ruin it for you. As schlocky as it is, if you're into this sort of cult classic, this is one you should probably see.

2 stars out of 5, but on a cult classic scale, 4 out of 5

Blow-Up (1966), The Conversation (1974), Blow Out (1981) ***

1966's “Blow-Up” is not named after an inflatable lover, although if you search for this movie on the internet, you may come up with some material on that subject. It's the first english-language film by Italian director Michaelangelo Antonioni, known for films like "La Notte." His signature is having his characters roam a city, going from one mad party or bizarre nightclub to another. “Blow-Up” is about a fashion photographer who discovers a possible murder in one of his pictures. There's an amazing sequence in which he uses his home photo lab to make progressively larger prints of the pictures. The images get really grainy, and while we can finally see what he is seeing, the image is too spotty for him to feel he can simply call the police. He heads out to wander the city, Antonioni-style, in an attempt to solve the alleged crime.

Besides probably being Antonioni's best film, “Blow-Up” is known for its dynamic, jazz soundtrack, its scantily-clad models, and its racy sexual content, including a brief full-frontal shot of Jane Birkin's bush. The image is incredibly fleeting, but it was an affront to the Hollywood Production Code, and may have helped lead to the end of the Code in favor of our current MPAA ratings system.

Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 picture “The Conversation,” is not a direct copy of “Blow-Up,” but the similarities are striking. Gene Hackman plays a socially-isolated security expert who specializes in recording sound. He is able to bug conversations under the most challenging circumstances. While cutting together the sound from a recent job, he becomes convinced that his targets are going to be killed.

I just recently saw these two films, but I immediately recognized the theme of a perfectionist, isolated, technical artist who is so absorbed in his work that he discovers the clues to a murder. Years ago, I saw a Brian De Palma movie that clearly was inspired by these films. 1981's “Blow Out” stars John Travolta as a sound professional who is out collecting samples for movies when he captures the sound of a fatal car accident. As he analyzes the recording, he begins to suspect that it wasn't an accident, after all. Little did I know that the film was just the latest remake of a story from the 60's. 

Naturally, I had to re-watch “Blow Out,” and I found that it is the most conventional film of the three. “Blow-Up” and “The Conversation” are both rather artsy and ambiguous. “Blow-Out” is more of a traditional whodunit, and not a particularly well-written one. The movie's charm largely depends on its lead, John Travolta, who fortunately has charm to spare. Despite some pretty ridiculous plot points, the movie is fun, and it manages a pretty edgy ending.

Of the three films, I would say “Blow Out” is the weakest, but also the most fun. Nancy Allen plays a dumb blonde really well (maybe too well), and Travolta is in his prime. “The Conversation” is a bit slow, but Gene Hackman plays it well, and it's a decent noir. “Blow-Up” is New Wave artsy, a bit confounding, and the closest to a classic of the bunch. Watching all three films is a fun, little film festival you can do at home. It's like a jazz record, with each movie a different instrument coming in to do its own variation on the theme.

3 stars out of 5 for each film