The Movies, Films and Flix Podcast – Episode 500: 3000 Miles to Graceland, Franchise Pictures and Kurt Russell
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Mark and John (@MFFHorrorCorner on Twitter) celebrate 500 episodes by talking about the 2001 heist film 3000 Miles to Graceland. Directed by Demian Lichtenstein, and starring Kurt Russell, Kevin Coster, Bokeem Woodbine, Courteney Cox and Christian Slater, the film focuses on a group of Elvis impersonators who successfully rob a casino and then unsuccessfully survive the aftermath as greed runs rampant. Most importantly, this film was produced by Franchise Pictures, the company responsible for movies like Battlefield Earth, Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, and A Sound of Thunder. The story of Franchise Pictures is just as interesting as the shenanigans in 3000 Miles to Graceland, and in this episode they discuss how the two are tied together. Enjoy!
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To celebrate our 500th podcast episode, we recorded a weeks worth of episodes that celebrate all the things that we here at MFF love (Bloodshot, Keith David, The Night Comes for Us, Doctor Sleep, and Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar).
To kick off the celebration Megan and I drafted our favorite films released since 2018. It’s a fun episode that covers movies like The Night Comes for Us, Test Pattern, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Crawl and more!
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The Movies, Films and Flix Podcast – Episode 499 – Manhunter, Michael Mann and Gorgeous Sunset Shots
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Mark and Nick (@TheRehak on Twitter) discuss the beautiful 1986 crime thriller Manhunter. Directed by Michael Mann, and starring William Peterson, Brian Cox, Tom Noonan, and Joan Allen, the movie focuses on the manhunt for a serial killer called The Tooth Fairy. In this episode, they also talk about excellent cinematography, home movies, and the excellence of Michael Mann. Enjoy!
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MY CALL: This begins charmingly bad, but ends up perhaps a bit wildly, or even exhausting and annoyingly bad… which can also be really “fun bad” if you’re in the right mood. If this is for you, I think you know who you are. MORE MOVIES LIKE The Vagrant: Things like The Dentist 1-2 (1996, 1998) and Dr. Giggles (1992) come to mind.
Immediately after purchasing his fixer-upper first house, young businessman Graham (Bill Paxton; Frailty, Aliens, Near Dark, Mortuary) walks in on a wheezing vagrant who has somehow wandered into his kitchen. Perpetually sounding his presence with some bodily function, our vagrant (Marshall Bell; Tales from the Crypt, Virus, A Nightmare on Elm Street, part 2) is covered in sores and scars, and utterly terrifies Graham.
Obsessed with keeping this gross vagrant off his property, yuppy Graham financially leverages himself beyond his means for a gated fence and security system. His girlfriend Edie (Mitzi Kapture; House II) makes things worse by bleeding his credit cards to redecorate his humble abode, and defending the hungry homeless man. So as Graham’s stress mounts to madness, his finances are collapsing in this hobo-infested money pit.
Director Chris Walas (a special effects guy who directed The Fly II) comes from a special effects background, and this is the strongest suit of the movie. This lower budget flick does well on Bell’s wounds and disfigurement. His swollen scarred hand, burnt face and dead eye make him an unnerving presence. So when he behaves like a rabid Muppet, it comically fits very well. But the cartoonishness is not limited to Marshall Bell’s performance or even Paxton’s paranoid reactions. Graham’s relationship with his boss and interactions with homicide detective Lt. Barfuss (Michael Ironside; Prom Night II, Still/Born, Extraterrestrial, Scanners, Turbo Kid) are likewise wacky. Leaning into the surreal, Graham’s sexual nightmare with the vagrant is just bizarre.
This vagrant even begins to deliberately terrorize Graham. Continually tortured by this vagrant who keeps sneaking into his home, Graham is being driven mad. He finds the contents of his refrigerator hanging from the ceiling, all of the doors in his house removed, and a local murder victim’s severed fingers in his basement. Eventually, we even find severed body parts in his fridge. I was constantly wondering if these were Graham’s stress-induced delusions, or if the vagrant was actually doing these highly elaborate things to sabotage his life.
The comical tone, budget and execution comes off like a long episode of Tales from the Crypt (1989-1996) or, again, something of a cartoon. The highlight was when someone was stabbed with a chair—like, with all the legs of the chair. There’s also a “death by cactus.” And like the zany deaths and hobo antics, the plot takes a few really weird turns.
It’s not great, never reaching the comic relief of The Dentist 1-2 (1996, 1998), to which I would most closely compare The Vagrant. But it would be a very worthy Bad Movie Tuesday for those delighting in silly bad movie fare.
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The Movies, Films and Flix Podcast – Episode 498: Babylon, Margot Robbie, and Rattlesnake Fights
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Mark and Joey Lewandowski (@soulpopped on Twitter) discuss the epic 2022 film Babylon. Directed by Damien Chazelle, and starring Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt, Deigo Calva, and about 40 pounds of elephant poop, the movie focuses on the rise and fall of several ambitious actors and producers in 1920s Hollywood. In this episode, they also talk about Margot Robbie, blank check movies, and the best movies released since 2018. Enjoy!
Make sure to listen to the 2 Fast 2 Forever (@2Fast2Forever on Twitter) podcast!
If you are a fan of the podcast, make sure to send in some random listener questions (we love random questions). We thank you for listening, and hope you enjoy the episode!
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The Movies, Films and Flix Podcast – Episode 497: I’m Gonna Git You Sucka, Keenen Ivory Wayans, and Big Hats
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Mark and Aaron Neuwirth (@AaronsPS4 on Twitter) discuss the 1988 comedy I’m Gonna Git You Sucka. Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans, and starring Bernie Casey, Antonio Fargas, Damon Wayans, Kadeem Hardison, and several staircases, the movie focuses on what happens when a group of crime fighters battle a guy named Mr. Big. In this episode, they also talk about theme songs, bunions, and the films directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans. Enjoy!
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MY CALL: I can see how this might have been a jaw-dropper in 1972. But this is one of the longest 85-minute movies I’ve ever seen. There are good visuals and good ideas, but the execution was just too uneven between the gory and the excruciatingly boring. MORE MOVIES LIKE Death Line: For more “Morlock horror” you should watch Barbarian (2022), The Descent (2005), Bleeders (1997) and C.H.U.D. (1984).
An American graduate student (David Ladd) and his British girlfriend (Sharon Gurney; Crucible of Horror) are stuck in the middle of a missing person investigation after making a report to the police. What little evidence they can find leads them back to the London Underground depot of the disappearance and then deeper into the tunnels.
Train Horror SIDEBAR: Truth be told, I thought Death Line would be a “train horror” movie. But alas, it is not. But if it’s “train horror” you seek, consider the likes of Terror Train (1980), Beyond the Door III (1989; aka Dark Train, Death Train), Midnight Meat Train (2008), Howl (2015) and Train to Busan (2016).
POV and raspy, drooly breathing trumpet the presence of these abandoned train tunnel troglodytes. And when we see them, they appear diseased, covered in open sores and boils like zombie lepers. They may have contributed to the inspiration of The Hills Have Eyes (1977).
Plenty of chunky, low budget, antiquated gore, as chunks of flesh and mangled corpses festoon the subterranean cannibal lair that feels like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) source material. Men are impaled with sticks and shovels.
The greatest flaw I find in this film is the exhaustingly lengthy scenes of Inspector Calhoun (Donald Pleasence; Prince of Darkness, Phenomena, Halloween 1-2/4-6) explaining every trivial detail or criticism about every little thing. His character isn’t interesting, nor is his conjecture driving the story anywhere. Thankfully, the troglodyte scenes are not so stale. In fact they are gross, weird, and even emotionally provocative as they, too, suffer loss and loneliness—though they lack the ability to articulate it beyond painful, mourning bellows and screams echoing through the tunnels.
When our cannibals are on screen, it’s very stimulating—even if drawn out every bit as much as Pleasance’s oft-empty dialogue. When the cannibals are not on screen, this is a slog. Not even a cameo appearance by Christopher Lee could defibrillate my interest. Whereas the movie poster advertises a “tribe” of tunnel-dwelling Morlocks, there is no such thing. The movie hints at a past in which there may have been many, but delivers a present in which there are only two. Sigh…
Director and co-writer Gary Sherman’s (Dead & Buried, Poltergeist III) early foray into Morlock horror may have worked well at the time of its release. But just find it a bore despite some excellent gore work and make-up. It just ages poorly, mostly due to its pacing and long-winded dialogue style. And this is such a shame, because I truly loved revisiting Sherman’s 1982 classic Dead & Buried—which did age well.
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The Movies, Films and Flix Podcast – Episode 496 – The Lost in Translation Soundtrack Draft
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Mark and Petros Patsilivas (@cagedinpod on Twitteer) talk about all things Lost in Translation (2003) and draft their favorite songs from the epic soundtrack. In this episode, they also talk about Sofia Coppola, Bill Murray, and shoegazing music. Enjoy!
Make sure to listen to Caged In Presents Coppola Connections wherever you listen to podcasts.
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John’s Horror Corner: Climax (2018), a very stressful and trippy French “drug horror” about young dancers and LSD.
MY CALL: This is hardly horror, nor is it not horror. What this is is stressful, tense, provocative, trippy and unnerving. MORE MOVIES LIKE Climax: Closest thing that comes to mind is the dance horror giallo Murder-Rock: Dancing Death (1984).
From IMDB—“French dancers gather in a remote, empty school building to rehearse on a wintry night. The all-night celebration morphs into a hallucinatory nightmare when they learn their sangria is laced with LSD.”
We meet our cast of dancers like it’s a 90s MTV reality TV show. Videotaped interviews with each performer introduce us to perhaps too many characters with a broad range of interesting peccadillos. They all want to be chosen to work with this great choreographer (their interviewer). Most notable among the cast is Sofia Boutella (The Mummy, Monsters: Dark Continent).
The dance choreography is impressive. We enjoy a long, elaborate, fast and very stylish performance to be followed by a wrap party. It’s really cool! Celebrating their rehearsal, the group indulges in a little party with sangria and, yes, more dancing. A lot more dancing. The dancers, being in their late teens and early twenties, talk about sex… a lot! It occupies a great deal of rather graphic dialogue—who likes who, wants to do what to whom, what they probably do or are like in bed… a lot of that.
So this is a horror movie for dance lovers. But it’s not like Suspiria (1977) nor Murder-Rock: Dancing Death (1984), which are true horror movies. No comparison at all. This film showcases its dancers’ technical prowess every bit as much as it showcases its social horrors once the drugs kick in. It’s basically all about dance… until it’s not. And then it’s all about drugs and paranoia… well, it’s basically about tripping on acid and the domino-effect of things going very wrong.
The violence, what violence there is, is mean. There’s violence against women, child abuse, severe verbal abuse, self-abuse, some ludicrous dangerous accident, mob mentality, and mass hysteria. In other words, this film is a “trigger” buffet. After passing the halfway point of the running time, it would easily be described as a very stressful watch. These young dancers turn on each other readily, with onlookers too wonked out of their minds to know how to react. There’s an abundance of crying, panicking, confusion and screaming.
Some of the lighting styles conjure memories of Argento’s Suspiria (1977) shifting from a blue-lit hallway to a red room to a blue room. And one of the most interesting things about this film is that something active, heated, physical or provocative is almost always transpiring on screen after the initial introductions, even if it’s in the background. Like the sense of our hallucinating dancers, we are overwhelmed with stimulus and constantly wondering which of these stimuli will lead to the next transgression.
I’m somewhat reminded of Kids (1995). Director Gaspar Noé (Irreversible, 8, Enter the Void) captures the potentially diabolical social behavior of youth under the influence of drugs, competitiveness, stress and sexuality. It’s not truly horror, but it’s not not horror.
All in all this was an interesting film experience. I doubt I’ll ever want to watch this again. But that in no way means that I didn’t enjoy the ride. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call this provocative than “enjoyable.” It’s just not the kind of ride I care to revisit, taste-wise. I could say the same about Antichrist (2009), albeit for different reasons.
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BlackBerry (2023) – Review
BlackBerry – Grade – A: – Directed by Matthew Johnson, and starring Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton, BlackBerry is an expertly crafted look into the rise and fall of the first smartphone.
I always know when I love a film because immediately after it ends I find myself scouring the internet so I can learn more about the production (I found some cool interviews). BlackBerry is a movie that I greatly admire and it makes me really happy knowing that director Matthew Johnson and his crew created a visually impressive experience on a $5 million budget that was slowly pieced together throughout the production. Based on the book “Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry” the movie follows Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel), Douglas Fregin (Johnson), and executive Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton) as they take the BlackBerry phone from a simple prototype in the early 2000s, to owning 43% of the smartphone market share in 2011 – and then only 5.9% of it in 2013. It’s a classic rise-and-fall story that we’ve seen many times before (Social Network, WeCrashed, The Dropout), but it still feels fresh and new which is due to Johnson’s documentary-style approach to filmmaking.
Credit should also go to Jay Baruchel, Glenn Howerton, Michael Ironside, Cary Elwes, SungWon Cho, and Rich Sommer, who portray the various tech innovators, middle managers and competition who all pop up throughout the movie and create memorable characters. Johnson and co-writer Matthew Miller didn’t want to “Hollywoodize it and make these guys seem like Elon Musk. They had to be like LAN party nerds who — by happenstance — wind up changing the world and not even realizing they did it.”
I like the idea of accidental world changing because it really does come across that nobody expected the BlackBerry popularity explosion (and implosion). My favorite moment in the movie takes place when Lazaridis and Balsillie have lunch with Carl Yankowski, the CEO of Palm Inc. After not accepting Yankowski’s offer of a merger they are threatened with being bought outright, which forces Balsillie to start adopting dubious means to keep his company from being acquired. It’s fun watching him telling the sales people to step up their game by any means necessary and it’s a joy watching him travel around the country in a private jet in order to recruit the best in the business. The script and Howerton do a fine job of making Jim Balsillie believable as he breaks laws to ensure the company isn’t bought out by larger companies. He is never a caricature, and that’s why the movie is excellent.
Also, Baruchel excels as Mike Lazaridis, a soft spoken and wildly intelligent engineer who alongside his partner Douglas Fregin figured out a way for smartphones to be able to send emails and instant messages (for free!). What’s nice about Lazaridis is that he isn’t an super ambitious entrepreneur and he’s not a naïve “nerd who lets Balsillie run all over him. The characters feel real, and their motivations don’t seem too dramatically stretched as they scratch and claw to gain market share.
What’s interesting is that despite Johnson having very little knowledge of Silicon Valley and tech companies, he based the story of filmmaking. In an interview with IndieWire, he said “We tried to make it very close metaphorically to what filmmaking is like, how success can change the culture of a production company — we just grafted that onto corporate culture.“ Johnson’s filmmaking approach features a lot of wide shots and a documentary-style that watches characters through windows and listens in on personal interactions at a distance which makes it seem like the viewer is eavesdropping on something important. The cinematography by Jared Raab should be applauded because it makes the various office spaces and conference rooms seem vibrant and alive. This is a tough task because the amount of setups and shots they get out of each location is massive, which means extensive planning and patience had to be observed by the cast and crew.
Final thoughts – I love this movie. Watch it.
Movies, Films & Flix 