Trespassers - 2019 - Australia

Trespassers - 2019 - 6/10

 
Their car breaks down on a lonely country road, so Ben and Lucy start walking.
They reach a farm – appears abandoned – and like all movie victims, proceed.
Even after the owner allows Lucy to use the restroom, she decides to explore the interior.
While Ben wanders out back.  Why, oh why, oh why?
This is a pitch, and a good one at that, for a proposed larger film.

The Amazing Maurice - 2022 - UK

The Amazing Maurice - 2202 - 6/10

 
Cheshire cat Maurice and his rat cohort, travel from village to village.
Using their hired piper to rid the town of rat infestation … for a fee.
Yes, scamsters.  Only this time, this town, they’ve run into an adversary.
Entertaining effort, draws from Shaun the Sheep entries, but without the heart.
No songs here.  It does not seem aimed at children nor at adults.
This feels curiously underwritten.  An attempt.
Voices ~ Hugh Laurie, Emilia Clarke, Hugh Bonneville, David Thewlis, Gemma Arterton, David Tennant …

Truck Turner - 1974 - USA

Truck Turner - 1974 - 6/10

 
♫ There's some dudes in a bar, with busted heads and broken jaws ♪
Yeah, and who did it?  Truck Turner, fool!
Isaac Hayes is a lotta fun in this roaring Blaxploitation fest.
He and his buddy are skip tracers, bounty hunters.
After an especially deadly track, the pimp daddy union puts out the hit.
Violent film, punctuated with car chases and shootouts (nary a cop in sight).
A hospital sequence might seem to inform Hard Boiled decades later.
Funny throughout, as well, especially head pimpette Dorinda, a potty mouthed Nichelle Nicols.

I Came By - 2022 - UK

I Came By - 2022 - 7/10

 
A pair of graffiti taggers hit homes of privileged wealth.
Until one explores too deeply in one home and sees something better left unseen.
A secret, and the home belongs to a powerful judge.  Retired judge.
Superior thriller, written with very good logic.
None of the – “How’d that happen?”  or  “Where’d he come from?”  plot cheats.
Most of the characters are intelligent, if flawed as individuals.
Each makes calculated moves, unaware other players observe them.
Smart film that does well by its audience.  An ugly story, however.

Girl On The Run - 1953 - USA

Girl On The Run - 1953 - 5/10

Barebones outline finds Bill and Janet on the run from the cops and a powerful boss.
The charge?  Murder.  They are followed into the traveling carnival where the couple try to hide.
Janet joins the cooch show, Bill takes up boxing.
As far as plot, you got it.  There ain’t much here.
Nonetheless, this gem is all kinds of fun for bad film aficionados.

 
The pace rolls quick.  Diversions include fisticuffs, several cooch shows, and the exotic Gigi.
Renee De Milo as Gigi struts and gyrates and slinks through every scene.
The rest of the dance troupe vary substantially in appeal.
No one can act, even on high school level.
Not that you hunt down a sleazy, carny exploitation flick for acting.

Rose - 2022 - UK

Rose - 2022 - 7/10

 
Rose sits shiva to mourn a young girl, someone she did not even know.
She begins to talk.  To us?  To God?  To the emptiness that is Life?
Rose grew up in the tiny shtetl of Yultishka, geography claimed/ignored by Russia, Poland, Ukraine.  
Fleeing poverty, pogroms and Cossacks, in 1937 she moved to the safety of Warsaw.
In 1939, the Nazis arrived.  Just another of God’s cruel jokes.
Maureen Lipman is an unforgettable one-person tour de force.
Remembrance, kvetching, wearied anger, resignation, fondness, righteousness.
How well you know your history (Auschwitz, Exodus, Palestine) may inform appreciation.
Nonetheless, for theatre fans, an essential performance of voice and facial expressions.

Watcher - 2022 - Romania

Watcher - 2022 - 6/10

Julia and husband Francis arrive in Bucharest, where he has a new job.
Early on, they witness the aftermath of a murder and learn a serial killer is targeting females.
Julia, who cannot speak Romanian, leads an aimless existence.
After awhile, she realizes she has attracted an admirer / observer / stalker.
Her husband, neighbors, police … no one believes her, so she starts following him herself.

 
Well turned thriller, with at least one funky descent.
The anxiety proverb rings throughout.  “Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean …”

Pearl - 2022 - USA

Pearl - 2022 - 7/10

 
Grisly, slow burn thriller might try patience of viewers expecting more X (2022) excess.
This prequel, set in rural Texas during 1918.
Influenza still slaughters millions, while boys perish in the French trenches of the Great War.
Pearl, restless daughter of German immigrants, wants out!
Outta the farm, the one-horse town, her whole dilapidated life.
Like countless others, she daydreams about becoming a Hollywood star.
The exteriors glisten, like the Land of Oz, at variance with Pearl’s home.
Smiling study of madness, delusion and violent release.
Movie buffs, check the poster for Theda Bara’s Cleopatra, lost in a fire.