Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-01-25 (Saturday)

On 1/26/2025 10:50 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:

On 1/26/25 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
 

What did you watch?

 I was supposed to do work yesterday, but did not. (I still have today...) But I did get through soaps, golf, and 2 movies.
 soaps: Y&R - Thur's(?) ep. They seem to be winding down the Ian Ward- Jordan storyline: Nick and Chance determine that Jordan is Ian's accomplice, and figure out that she kidnapped Sharon; meanwhile, Claire feigns disgust at Jordan's "incompetence" for leaving evidence in the hotel room, and gets Jordan to admit that Ian is her accomplice. Sharon continues to fail to escape(!?!).
    DOOL - Fri's ep. So, I guess they've brought Kristen's Mommy back from the dead(!). I had to look this storyline up - if I was watching DOOL during the 1990s "Woman in White" storyline (I disliked the Stefano stuff, so may have stopped regularly watching DOOL during this), it must have been that I was barely watching it at the time, as I don't remember this storyline really at all - however, back in the 90s Kristen's Mommy was a "good guy", whereas now she's clearly EVOL! as she conspires with lil' Rachel (still the same child actress) to kidnap Ava. Meanwhile, there was ancillary stuff with Cat Green, and grieving widow Julie.
 golf - Final day at Torry Pines (which for several years now has been on the weird Wed-Sat schedule because of NFL playoff football) - old-timer Harris English pretty much dominated all day, having the lead from the start of the day, and steadily playing 12 pars in a row on the last holes to outlast all comers which included two young guys.
 I then skipped Lifetime, and watched a couple of movies off Tubi:
 Megan Is Missing (Tubi) - I've been hearing about this 2011 film for a while (though it was filmed in 2008, which explains some things about the film itself, and is set in 2007), and that the film packs a devastating wallop of an ending. I can confirm that the ending does pack a wallop - in fact, this film falls into the category of films like "Requiem for a Dream" - films that I am glad I watched, but have no intention of ever watching again.

I hear that a lot about Requiem for a Dream.  But it's not on my good movies to only ever watch once list.  I like the movie and find it pairs well with other Darren Aronofsky movies.  His movies have a certain mood that flow well together.

    This is not exactly a "found footage" film, but more like a "social- media (IOW, phone and webcam) footage" film - it's presented as if it were a "documentary" involving footage that two early teens took of themselves, etc.
    The story is this: Two 14 year old girls - one of whom (Megan, played by Rachel Quinn) is more sophisticated and popular but who it is also revealed is child abuse survivor, and the other (Amy, played by Amber Perkins) is shy, awkward and unpopular - try to make their way through the unforgiving teen landscape of sex and drugs. (In many ways, the way the teen life of two 14-year olds is depicted is the most controversial part of the film.)
    This makes Megan, who hates her home life with her mom, especially susceptible to predators (IOW, internet predators).
    After being introduced to what is supposedly a skaterboi online, Megan soon goes missing. This leaves Amy to frantically search for her, including hitting up the online skaterboi for info, and eventually turning info on him over to the police.
    That goes pretty much where you expect it to, except the ending is even more horrific than you could have possibly anticipated. In fact, the ending is incredibly bleak (about "Requiem for a Dream"-level bleak!). Though I wanted more from the "ending of the documentary" angle - the final sequence shows you without question what happened to the girls, so I wanted a final "real-world followup" on this, but the "doc- within-the-film" does nothing with it.
    I thought Rachel Quinn as Megan was quite good here, and I am very surprised that she didn't have more of a career, esp. after "Megan Is Missing" was released.
    It does not surprise me that Amber Perkins, who played Amy, left the acting biz cold after filming this movie - Perkins has the much harder part to play here, and I would have quit acting in her shoes after this film as well.
    For the record, this film seems most based on the murders Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis in 2002.
    Anyway, this is strong stuff - effective, but one viewing is probably enough here.
 Top Floor (Tubi) - I was expecting this 2024 thriller to have almost as bleak an ending as "Megan Is Missing", but the film flubs the ending with a massive disappointment.
    This film is pretty simple: a massively popular influencer (Justine Wachsberger, who was an attractive younger actress a few years ago - I sort of remember her from the low-budget 2018 film "4/20 Massacre" - but here is playing 30, and is clearly in her mid-30s IRL) is in a car accident, and wakes up trapped in an elevator. She is soon menaced/ taunted by the elevator's "phone operator" who is instead clearly some hacker with a major grudge against the influencer and who intends to publicly expose her "secrets" and/or kill her in the process.
    This is all well and good as a premise for a low-budget film.
    (Sidenote: While set in NYC, the film is riddled with obviously French or Euro actors, and was actually filmed in Bulgaria, which further decreases the film's effectiveness!!)
    But the ending ("twist") really, really lets this film down - if they were going to try for this ending, the film really, really needed to be better along the way to make it work! As it is, I didn't buy the ending for a minute, and it basically ruins almost everything that comes before it.
  What did you watch?
 

I watched:
Blood Simple (4K disc) 1984 movie written by Joel and Ethan Coen and directed by Joel Coen.  The movie stars Frances McDormand as a woman having an affair with one of her husband's employees.  Her husband (Dan Hedaya) hires a private investigator to follow his wife then later to murder her and her lover.  But the PI decides to double cross Hedaya.  From there is a series of double crosses and misunderstandings leading to more deaths.  I saw it once before and thought it was OK.  On second viewing it's still just OK.
Raising Arizona (Showtime) 1987 comedy written by Joel and Ethan Coen and directed by Joel Coen.  Nicolas Cage stars as an ex-convict who marries the police officer (Holly Hunter) who would regularly takes his mug shot.  After Hunter finds out she is sterile she convinces Cage to kidnap one of a rich families newborn quintuplets.  Once Cage gets the baby in hand some ex-con friends (John Goodman and William Forsthe) escape from prison and try to convince Cage to join their latest robbery.  But with the baby in hand and everyone looking for it, wackiness ensues.  Frances McDormand also has a role of the wife of Cage's sleezy boss.  I haven't watched this since the late 80s.  I recalled liking it at the time, but nowadays this would have been a record then deleted unwatched movie.  I'm glad I decided to save and watch it.  It was pretty good.
Fargo (4K disc) 1996 comedy written by Joel and Ethan Coen and directed by Joel Coen.  The movie stars Frances McDormand as a small-town cop who stumbles upon a murderous pair of Ruthless People (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) hired by William H. Macy to kidnap his wife as part of a con.  Except nothing goes to plan leading to lots of bloody deaths.
No Country For Old Men (4K disc) 2007 movie written by Joel and Ethan Coen and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen.  Josh Brolin stars as a man who finds himself in over his head after stumbling across a drug deal gone bad and stealing 2 million in cash left at the scene.  Javier Bardem plays a psychotic hitman who chases after Brolin and Tommy Lee Jones plays a Sheriff trying put all the pieces together.  I never noticed before, until it was recently pointed out, that Jones plays the hero of the movie but never shares a scene with Brolin or Barden.  And Barden isn't even aware of Jones' existence.  It's one of those things that if it wasn't pointed out you'd never notice.  But once you know you can't unknow.  The hero and the villains never meet.  Weird.
True Grit (blu-ray) 2010 movie written by Joel and Ethan Coen and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen.  Bailee Steinfeld stars as a 14 year old girl in the old West out for revenge against the man (Josh Brolin) who murdered her father.  To bring him to justice she hires an alcoholic lawman (Jeff Bridges) because he has "true grit."  Matt Damon also costars as a Texas lawman who teams up with them.  This is a pretty good Western.