The Carey Treatment (1972)

A surprising engaging medical mystery with (even more surprising) James Coburn doing a credible job playing a pathologist.

Boru

City Heat (1984). Not awful, but I wasn’t expecting much going in. Burt Reynolds typically charming. Clint Eastwood practically a parody of his Dirty Harry character.

Boru

I tried watching the movie Sayonara (1957), and I watched, I think, an hour of two and a half hours.
As expected, the movie suffers from being the usual postwar lecture (or dare I say propaganda), which is that it comes down to teaching Americans about the Japanese culture and that Japanese people are humans. Thus, Marlon Brando plays an officer who doesn't consider Japanese people to be quite human, but then during the course of the movie, he learns that Japanese people are humans as he talks to a Japanese man played by an American actor, Ricardo Montalban (which could indicate that Japanese people are so human that they can even be played by a white American man), and as he falls in love with a Japanese woman. Now, I didn't watch till the end, but I suppose that Brando goes back to the Korean War, where he pilots an airplane, and he has an accident, but then his girlfriend and her family worry about him, which proves their deep emotional connection equal to that of the white people, especially as he comes back and she drops her hard-to-get charade so they get married at the end of the movie with Red Buttons as his best man.

Day of the Outlaw (1959). Really good Western film, almost noir in its tone. Robert Ryan as the hero, Burl Ives as the sadistic villain (!), with Tina Louise and Venetia Stevenson as two very stare-able bits of crumpet.

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Wake Up, Dead Man (2025), the third Knives Out film. Great cast and a better film than I was expecting - you know what happens with sequels.

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Ghostbusters (1984)

Apparently, when Zuul possesses you, not only does he grant you the paranormal ability to open a portal for Gozer the Gozerian, but he also takes care of your hair, makeup, and wardrobe.





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The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998)

I don't know if I'm getting crazy or if this movie is completely insane. What I'm talking about is that this movie is centered around the Oklahoma City-like bombing only three years after it happened.

The movie begins with Mulder discovering a bomb in what looks like a government building or some office building. Then the bomb experts arrive, and Locke from Lost is the main expert who tells them to get out only so he could let the bomb go off, and we get a scene that mirrors the Oklahoma City bombing—which also means that he was purposely misleading the FBI from finding the building with the bomb until Mulder stumbled on it. The rest of the movie is them investigating why this happened, or at least kind of because this is the X-Files after all, so everything is overcomplicated and confusing, but the answer is something, something, aliens, FEMA trying to poison Americans, black helicopters, federal government bad, and you will find out more in the show.

But what is especially disturbing about this all is that Timothy McVeigh was obsessed with conspiracy theories like aliens, black helicopters, and government agencies. Not just that, but he was an X-Files nut who demanded that X-Files episodes be played during his trial so that the jury could "see the truth."

So for Chris Carter to incorporate McVeigh's deeds into the show's lore is pretty much him awarding McVeigh and, even worse, atoning for him because it showed that there was some sort of government conspiracy and corruption behind it that validated the terrorist attack.

Or maybe I'm just overreacting, and this has nothing to do with the Oklahoma City bombing. It's just a coincidence.

This certainly wouldn't be the first real-life psycho Chris Carter exonerated with his show. There is Lee Harvey Oswald, who is pretty much innocent considering all the conspiracy they featured about JFK.

In any case, it is astonishing how they got away with a scene that mirrors the Oklahoma City bombing just three years after it happened. I mean, if there was a movie in 2004 containing a scene that mirrored 9/11 attacks, that movie would not be playing in cinemas, and its creators would probably have their careers put on hold (Donnie Darko was pulled from cinemas just because it had a scene of a jet engine falling from the sky). I guess people were different back then.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024)

Not bad, if you approach it in the right frame of mind. If you’re looking for a better than average action film, it’s pretty good. If you’re expecting a more-or-less historically accurate account of Churchill’s Special Operations Executive, you’ll spend the whole time shouting at the telly. Things like, ‘You’ve GOT to be kidding me!’ and ‘That’s not how it happened!’

I’m a little hoarse this morning.

Boru

Exorcist II: The Heretic

This is actually a metaphysical movie rather than horror, like its predecessor.

It has an interesting idea, which is examining exorcism with science; thus, this investigates God with science. This is why it should have been titled Exorcist II: The Scientist. And indeed, if exorcism is something real, then it should be investigated by science.

But since these are all unscientific things, the movie quickly falls apart and rather becomes trapped inside itself as it wants to exist no matter what.

So it gets metaphorical and dives into symbolism, religion, art, and science. Richard Burton, who plays a Catholic priest, stumbles on James Earl Jones, who is a shaman dressed as a locust, sitting in some rustic African village, only to suddenly turn into a scientist in a laboratory examining locusts. Needless to say, it gets very confusing, and I felt like my head started spinning—as if I were being the one that was possessed.

The Breadwinner

When a supermom lands a Shark Tank deal, she switches roles with her breadwinner husband, who struggles to adapt as a stay-at-home dad to their three daughters.

Mandy Moore looks different.