Dream a Little Dream
Inktober Challenge Week 2
In the second week of Inktober, as the leaves started to turn something of an autumn hue, my travel plans were in full effect. Between watching movies, good ones and bad, and writing and publishing, I visited Porto, where I had THE best hot chocolate in my life (ruined me forever), and was already on my way to London.
There, I managed to watch some movies at the LFF (BFI - London Film Festival), meet some new people and generally have a great time in one of my favorite cities. I watched Priscilla, The Holdovers, Anselm, On the Adamant, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt and Robot Dreams — all of which were excellent in their own way.
At the time, I didn’t review any of the movies (maybe I will in some form or another later this year), as I didn’t have enough energy to deal with a full-blown film festival and my self-inflicted burden of the Inktober Challenge.
And me oh my, was it a burden. I just didn’t know it, yet.
In the midst of all the travel and the excitement of writing every single day and getting better at it, I didn’t really notice that no one was reading. I felt awesome, I love writing, I love movies — who cares about social media? (not that it’s the thing that got me into this mess in the first place).
Turns out, I cared a lot.
Anyway, on week two, I still felt hopeful and light-hearted, so without further ado.
8. The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is an animated anthology film directed by Jack Kinney, Clyde Geronimi and James Algar and produced by Walt Disney. The feature consists of two literary adaptations: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving and The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, narrated by Basil Rathbone and Bing Crosby respectively.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is a well-known tale not featuring any toads, so I’m focussing solely on the adventures of Mr. Toad today.
Toad, prone to extreme flights of fancy which have left him penniless and in enormous debt, has a new obsession: motor cars. Despite his friends begging him to leave Toad Manor, the only thing he’s still in possession of, in the community, as it is a beloved heritage site, he signs it over to a shady barkeep for a shiny new car, which not only leaves him homeless, but also lands him in jail.
After a while in jail, he seems reformed, but, when he is tempted to escape, he does so with maniacal fervor. He then gets his house back with ease, his friends forgive him almost instantaneously, and, having learned nothing at all, he flies into the horizon on his newest obsession – the aeroplane. The end.
As with The Road to El Dorado, I really tried to focus on the positives here, too, but failed miserably and let my mind wander, so you get this instead (sorry):
Toad is an aristocrat with severe BPD who is surrounded by enablers, who stay with him regardless of his abuse.
As soon as this thought popped into my head, my enjoyment went severely downhill. However, the animation was, of course, outstanding, and Basil Rathbone is always a pleasure to listen to, so sometimes I did catch myself smiling, despite my gnawing annoyance.
Both short films are obviously products of their time, and I don’t deny that sometimes, when one’s in the mood, they can be enormous fun. Unfortunately, I wasn’t, and the old-timey mores, so unfitting for the modern world, got to me.
9. The Bouncer (2018)
The Bouncer was directed by Julien Leclercq and stars Jean Claude van Damme as the titular Bouncer Lucas.
The movie itself is typical direct-to-VOD fare, a listless dirty-looking movie about a bodyguard turned bouncer, who, after he accidentally kills a man on the job, gets pressured to work for a Belgian mob boss by a corrupt cop in exchange for his freedom. As Lucas is a single father, he agrees for the sake of his daughter.
There’s not much to this movie. It’s tedious and boring, tinted a depressing blue, and the characters and dialogue are lifeless. Van Damme sleepwalks through the movie, his character barely speaks, and, much to my dismay, he also barely punches anyone – he just seems tired.
I did like the scenes he shared with his on-screen daughter. Despite being few and far between, van Damme managed to play the single father with surprising warmth and affection, as he fed her breakfast, showed her how to cook and drove her to school. The scene where he goes shopping for school supplies, lost amidst never-ending shelves of right and wrong pencils, was quite touching. She also was kidnapped just once and was returned to Lucas unharmed in the middle of the movie (I take the wins where I can get them).
Although van Damme demonstrated surprising depth in the scenes with the little girl, it’s by far not enough to salvage this movie. So, there. I watched it, so you don’t have to.
10. Cookie’s Fortune (1999)
Cookie’s Fortune was directed by Robert Altman and stars Patricia Neal as the eponymous Cookie, Glenn Close and Julianne Moore as her nieces Camille and Cora, as well as Liv Tyler as her great niece Emma.
Jewel Mae, alias Cookie, is old and misses her husband, who’s passed away recently. Estranged from her family, she leads a lonely life in a house filled with happier memories. Although she’s cared for by her friend Willis, she decides to commit suicide on Easter. Her death sets off a chain of events, which unravel long dormant family secrets, unveil a villain in sheep’s clothes and change Cookie’s family forever.
Glenn Close definitely wins the movie for hamming it up as the villainous Camille, who, as she discovers Cookie’s suicide, eats the suicide note and accuses Willis of murder to finally get her hands on the eponymous fortune. As her plot is revealed and she gets locked up, we see her dancing in her cell and cackling maniacally, while reciting Oscar Wilde’s Salome. Perfection!
Despite Close’s best efforts, however, the movie is not fun to watch. It’s tinted a sickly yellow, the music is a generic mix of swamp blues and gospel (you know, because we’re in the South), and the other actors, while not bad, are just not given enough to do, as most of the characters, except Camille, are not properly developed.
The ending, usually the juiciest part of such family melodramas, as the scandalous, pearl-clutching family secrets finally get revealed, turned out to be quite unsatisfying. Camille getting pregnant out of wedlock and Willis actually being related to Cookie but stemming from -gasp- the Black side of the family, while spicy in 1999 in the South, is quite vanilla for modern sensibilities.
Cookie’s Fortune is a nigh biblical morality tale, where the wicked get punished, the good and righteous get rewarded, a wayward daughter returns and finds love, a lost heir gets the keys to the kingdom, and the snake is cast out of paradise. All standard fare, which August: Osage County did far better.
11. The Wandering Earth (2019)
The Wandering Earth was directed by Frant Gwo and stars Qu Chuxiao as Liu Qi, Wu Jing as Liu Peiqiang, Ng Man-tat as Han Zi’ang, and Zhao Jinmai as Han Duoduo.
In a not-so-distant future the sun starts expanding and threatens to take Earth with it. In an act of desperation, humanity forms a United Earth Government that sets its sights on realizing The Wandering Project, which entails sticking several propellant engines on the surface of the Earth and moving it from our solar system to another one. To ensure the survival of at least some humans, huge underground cities are constructed underneath every engine, to house the remnants of humanity at the heart of an otherwise frozen Earth.
Before pilot and engineer Liu Peiqiang takes off on the space station which is launched to accompany Earth on its journey, he secures a spot in one of the underground cities for his father-in-law Han Zi’ang and his 6-year-old son Liu Qi. 15 years later, the Earth is in danger of crumbling under the pull of Jupiter’s atmosphere, and now its up to the now adult Liu Qi, his grandfather and adoptive sister Han Duoduo to save humanity from ultimate destruction.
Where The Wandering Earth succeeds is its excellent execution of the truly ridiculous premise. The filmmakers seem to have actually thought through how stuff works and how to make it believable within the parameters of the story. Otherwise, the movie is built like clockwork. The characters are all well developed with clear goals and motivations as well as very endearing, with the actors doing an excellent job. All plot beats hit the right emotional spots, the deaths are handled with gravitas, but are not dwelt upon, and the darkest hour is so dark that it’s truly not clear whether our heroes will actually make it. The push and pull between hope and despair is handled so well that the ending feels well deserved and cathartic. It’s almost scary in its precision.
The Wandering Earth is a fun adventure movie, with a perfect mixture of dumb premise and excellent execution.
12. Extreme Job – Spicy Chicken Police (German title) (2019)
Extreme Job is directed by Lee Byeong-heon and stars Ryu Seung-nyong as Chief Go, Lee Hanee as Det. Jang, Jin Seok-kyu as Det. Ma, Lee Dong-hwi as Det. Young-ho, and Gong Myung as Det. Jae-hoon.
Chief Go and his motley crew of detectives hit a snag in their careers as they consistently fail to bring in any arrests, while their rival team, who all look like K-Pop idols, manage to catch all the big fish all of the time.
As Go gets a tip from the captain of the “idol” team that a mobster who’s been out of jail for a while is planning to return to the drug trade, Go takes on the case. For observation purposes, the team is forced to buy a dilapidated fried chicken restaurant, which evolves into a foodie hot spot after Det. Jang marinates the chicken in his parents’ secret rib sauce.
Eventually the team comes to a fateful crossroads – do they want to keep their jobs as less than stellar policemen (and woman), or do they want to make money hawking chicken… or can they do both?
Extreme Job is a funny-at-times cop comedy with a very endearing found family of ridiculous misfits, who you want to succeed in any endeavor, chicken-related or not. The characters have quirky, almost anime-like personalities, distinct in style, movement and type. The villains are fun, albeit queer-coded, but also deliciously violent and greedy, while also being dumb as rocks. The fight scenes are fast, creative and just fun to watch – especially the last fight at the end of the movie, where everything comes together in a chaotic scene of character moments and lots of punching.
Although a lot of the jokes fall flat, partially because of the language and culture barriers (apparently chicken is some kind of symbol for the poor and downtrodden in Korea), I mostly enjoyed this light-hearted and spicy movie.
13. Rise – Blood Hunter (2007)
Rise – Blood Hunter was directed by Sebastian Gutierrez and stars Lucy Liu as main character Sadie Blake, Michael Chiklis as Det. Rawlins, Carla Gugino as Eve, James D’Arcy as Bishop, and (in his last role) Mako as Poe.
Intrepid journalist Sadie Blake is kidnapped, raped and killed by a cult, after writing about vampire-themed underground goth parties, which had their teenage participants partake in animal blood and other kinky stuff. She doesn’t stay dead for long, however, as the cult turns out to be vampires and, unfortunately, she’s become one of them.
After a failed suicide attempt, Sadie is scooped up by the Alchemist, a vampire, who helps Sadie take revenge on those who harmed her, with the main target being Bishop, the cult leader and Sadie’s killer. Armed with a crossbow, an attitude and nothing to lose, Sadie sets off on her path to revenge.
Rise is a typical rape revenge movie, but with vampires. Gutierrez, being a 2007 edgelord, doesn’t use the word “vampire” of course. However, with one of the core features of the genre being a woman taking on the violent traits of her abuser to exact revenge, Gutierrez helps it along by making the rapist an actual blood-sucking monster. Therefore, Sadie’s transformation is a more visible representation of a woman taking on the monstrosity of what’s happened to her. Although her begging for death at the end because she is a monster negates the “catharsis” aspect of the genre.
The movie seems to have fallen victim to vigorous recutting, and I have a strong suspicion that a longer version of Sadie’s rape was cut, along with other more plot-relevant content. A lot of plot threads set up at the beginning were left unfinished, the characterization of all but Sadie feels incomplete, and the whole vampire thing is kind of superfluous, as they don’t serve any narrative purpose. Isn’t a rape cult enough in and of itself?
The acting was fine for the most part, with the exception of Lucy Liu who was excellent. Otherwise, the movie is a drab and boring mess of weird editing and unfinished plot threads.
14. A Castle for Christmas (2021)
A Castle for Christmas was directed by Mary Lambert and stars Brooke Shields as romance author Sophie Brown and Cary Elwes as Myles.
After Sophie Brown faces backlash for killing off the male lead in the latest book of her long-running romance series, she escapes to Dunbar, a tiny village in Scotland, where her father initially grew up as part of the family who kept the grounds of Dun Dunbar castle. While visiting the place, Sophie runs into Myles, who is initially quite charming and even volunteers to show her around. His mood, however, turns sour when Sophie goes to an off-limits part of the castle to look for the carving of her father’s last name “McGuinty”, which he secretly carved into a door when he was a child.
Having fallen in love with the castle, Sophie buys it on a whim, not suspecting that she will have to contend with Myles, who turns out to be the heir of Dun Dunbar and who, although in dire need of money, will not let go of his castle that easily.
Grumpy and Sunshine? Forced proximity? Enemies to lovers? Quirky side characters and a dog?
What more could a romance-loving heart desire?
Although Scotland is thoroughly romanticized, the stereotypes are not too egregious and work well within the movie. The characters are all lovable, especially the local knitting club, which takes Sophie under its wing when she first arrives in Dunbar. The leads have great chemistry, and I love me a romcom with middle-aged leads and the fact that Sophie buys a castle from her hard-earned writer money (goals!).
A woman finding herself in her forties is much more appealing to me than heroines in their teens or early twenties, who think that love is a grand immutable thing worth dying for. Not only does Sophie find love in Scotland, she also reconnects to her roots, changing her name from Brown to McGuinty at the end of the movie.
A Castle for Christmas is a perfectly valid cozy Christmas movie, and although it will never surpass The Holiday in my mind, I might give it watch once in a while, when the days grow darker and the hot chocolate beckons.