Ingobernable Netflix Series Will Release March 24

Ingobernable (2017-)
Season 1 - 15 episodes (2017)

Ingobernable will premiere March 24, 2017

Kate del Castillo plays Mexico's first lady who loses everything; her husband, children, and power. 


Set in present day Mexico, Kate del Castillo and Erik Hayser portray the First Lady and President of Mexico. With plans to improve Mexico, the strong willed First Lady is committed to peace, but loses faith in her husband. She faces great challenges

Netflix Press Release

Movies I watched in January

Lizzie will be airing again on TCM on March 28th at 12:30am ET.

Here are the movies I watched in January in order of release year (films with an * have been viewed previously):

1. Public Wedding (1937) - Jane Wyman & William Hopper
2. The Hardy's Ride High (1939) - Mickey Rooney
3. Five Came Back (1939) - Lucille Ball, Chester Morris, C. Aubrey Smith
4. *Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) - James Stewart & Jean Arthur, Claude Rains, Thomas Mitchell
5. Brother Rat and a Baby (1940) - Ronald Reagan & Jane Wyman, Wayne Morris & Priscilla Lane, Eddie Albert
6. Flight Angels (1940) - Dennis Morgan, Wayne Morris, Ralph Bellamy, Jane Wyman, Virginia Bruce
7. Bad Men of Missouri (1940) - Dennis Morgan, Wayne Morris, Jane Wyman, Arthur Kennedy
8. Bewitched (1945) - Edmund Gwenn, Phyllis Thaxter
9. The Razor's Edge (1946) - Tyrone Power & Gene Tierney, Anne Baxter, Clifton Webb, Herbert Marshall, John Payne
10. Crisis (1950) - Cary Grant, Jose Ferrer
11. *Monkey Business (1952) - Cary Grant & Ginger Rogers, Charles Coburn, Marilyn Monroe, Hugh Marlowe
12. I Love Melvin! (1953) - Debbie Reynolds & Donald O'Conner
13. Lucy Gallant (1955) - Jane Wyman & Charlton Heston, Thelma Ritter, Claire Trevor, Edith Head
14. Lizzie (1957) - Eleanor Parker, Richard Boone, Joan Blondell (and Johnny Mathis!)
15. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) - Gregory Peck
16. *Groundhog Day (1995) - Bill Murray & Andie McDowell
17. Tommy Boy (1995) - Chris Farley & David Spade
18. Blind Dating (2006) - Chris Pine
19. Star Trek (2009) - Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelkhin, Leonard Nimoy
20. Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013) - Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Benedict Cumberbatch, Karl Urban
21. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014) - Chris Pine & Keira Knightly, Kevin Costner
22. Star Trek Beyond (2016) - Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg

Favorite Film of the month: Star Trek (2009)
Least Favorite: Brother Rat and a Baby (1940) - Wayne Morris was SUPER annoying in this movie

And yes, I do currently have a thing for Chris Pine. But hey! His dad was in CHiPs (1977-83) and his grandmother Anne Gwynne was a starlet in the 30s and 40s (though I have yet to see any of her films) so I think it's okay ;) Plus, he can sing like Sinatra ♥

The Passenger Movie Review

The Passenger (1975)
 Professione: reporter

Buy The Passenger on Amazon
Written by: Mark Peploe (original story), Mark Peploe & Peter Wollen and Michelangelo Antonioni (screenplay), Miguel de Echarri (uncredited)
Directed by: Michelangelo Antonioni
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Maria Schneider, Jenny Runacre
Rated: PG-13

My rating is simple, Watch It, It Depends, Skip it. Read my previous movie reviews!

Plot
A frustrated journalist assumes the identity of an arms dealer.

Verdict
This is a movie for film students and critics. It's almost made to be studied and re-watched scene by scene. While it's introspective with sparse dialog, that makes the pacing slow.
How's it's put together competes with the actual story for your attention.
It depends.

Review
Another Antonioni film, and while I liked this more than Blow-Up (1966) (read my review), this also made me appreciate Blow-Up more. Blow-Up explored how a character sees a world, and The Passenger explores how a character lives in the world.

Journalist David Locke (Jack Nicholson) is stuck in the desert and unable to complete his documentary on African rebel fighters. When an Englishman in the same hotel dies in his sleep, Locke uses their resemblance to steal the man's identity.

Locke was tired and frustrated with his life. Robertson seemed to have it all. He meets an architecture student who asks him, "What are you running away from?" He's running away from everything. The concept is interesting, but this movie moves at a measured pace. With sparse dialog, it makes what is said all the more important. The ending could be irony or poetry.

It's an introspective movie aimed at a specific audience. That audience is likely film critics and students. It's isn't a movie to watch and enjoy as much as it should be re-watched and studied. I'm not sure that's a reason many people watch a movie though. They're well made films that require you to think about the concepts. You don't just watch The Passenger and Blow-Up, they are both movies that beg for a second watch so you can explore them.

The technical of how this is made and presented trumps the actual story. The camerawork is impressive with a number of long takes, including an in camera flashback.

Vampyr Movie review

Vampyr (1932)

Rent Vampyr on Amazon Video
Written by: Sheridan Le Fanu (based on a book by), Christen Jul and Carl Theodor Dreyer (screenplay)
Directed by: Carl Theodor Dreyer
Starring:  Julian West, Maurice Schutz, Rena Mandel
Rated:--

My rating is simple, Watch It, It Depends, Skip it. Read my previous TV reviews!

Plot
A man intrigued by the occult stumbles upon a nearby house where a girl is turning into a vampire.

Verdict
This is a mostly silent movie. As an example of early horror it's great, though it has certainly been surpassed. Despite the age it excels at creating a mood.
It depends.

Review
This is understandably a classic, but now it's lauded not for what it does compared to modern horror but for what it did at the time. It's a groundbreaking movie, but it's a film history class movie. It's going to feel dated, though it does often feel like a horror movie.

While it's not a silent film, the dialog is sparse and it uses title cards to forward the plot. Later a book on Vampyrs provides information on the creatures that suck your blood. Edits often cut to pages in the book. In a modern movie the bulk of this plot would serve as the introduction.

It explores psychological horror as drifter Allan stops at a hotel and receives a mysterious package with instruction not to be opened until the sender is dead. He follows an old man and discovers a sick girl, bitten by a Vampyr.

I hate to discount this, but it's outdated despite it's contributions to the genre.

PODCAST 241: Def by Temptation & Dolemite [Boom Mic Edition]

This week the Horror Duo kick off Black History Month with a pair of "urban related" films. Forest takes a look at the Troma released supernatural film of faith, Def by Temptation. Cory shares his thought on one of the key blaxploitation films of the 70s, Dolemite.

CONTINUE READING

New in Theaters for February

A lot of movies are premiering in February, but only a few of them interest me. This is why they might be worth watching... or avoiding.

WATCHING

John Wick: Chapter 2 (February 10, 2017) 
Is this sequel necessary? No. Do I want to see it? Yes. If this movie is half as good as the first one that makes it almost worth it. One of the neat things about the first was the world that we only glimpsed. Wick is part of thriving underground assassin world that plays by it's own rules.

The Space Between Us (February 3, 2017) 
The first child born on Mars travels to Earth. I'm a sucker for sci-fi. While this might fall into sci-fi romance territory, it could be a neat look at Earth from a Martian.

Bitter Harvest (February 24, 2017)
Set between the World Wars during a famine engineered by Stalin in the Ukraine, this could be a powerful movie.

Get Out (February 24, 2017)
From Jordan Peele, a young African-American man visits his Caucasian girlfriend's mysterious family estate. This looks like another entry in the self aware horror genre.

AVOIDING

Fifty Shades Darker (February 10, 2017)
This one is self explanatory. A shock novel generated a shock movie, and somehow people want more?

The Great Wall (February 17, 2017)
Matt Damon defends the Great Wall of China. Is Damon right for the lead? It looks like Damon goes to China to save the country.

Patient Zero (February 17, 2017)
After a global pandemic, a man that can speak to the infected tries to track down patient zero for a cure. This feels like it's going to end up being derivative zombie movie in the vein of the great 28 Days Later and lesser World War Z.

Dark Star Movie Review

Dark Star (1974)

Buy Dark Star on Amazon
Written by: John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon (original story and screenplay)
Directed by: John Carpenter
Starring: Dan O'Bannon, Dre Pahich, Brian Narelle

Rated: G

My rating is simple, Watch It, It Depends, Skip it. Read my previous movie reviews!

Plot
A small crew twenty years into their mission and deep into space suddenly find everything going wrong.

Verdict
This is certainly a budget film, and the production leaves a lot to be desire. While it presents interesting ideas, it can't overcome a movie that becomes comedy due to lack of budget. This isn't far from a couple of guys making a movie in their back yard. The result doesn't match their ambition.
Skip it.

Review
As John Carpenter stated, a "great looking student film" became a "terrible looking feature film" as they padded the film to reach feature length.

The only reason to see this is for a glimpse of Carpenter's early work. Everything is rough and the plot meanders with no clear destination. The 'alien' chase is rather long. The crew is trapped on a ship that is falling apart. If it can go wrong, it has.

This is incredibly low budget. The interesting concepts are completely overshadowed by the production. This includes a beach ball alien. There is no mistaking they attached rubber feet to and painted a beach ball. While it's comedic, I don't think that was their intention at all. Look at what Carpenter did in the future. O'Bannon went on to write Alien. These guys don't do comedy. You could call this dark comedy, but the only overt comedy is the smart bomb that is eager to detonate. Most of the 'comedy' ties back to the low budget.

The ending goes for broke, but with a movie like this, what else can you do? The smart bomb that was earlier talked out of exploding with reference to philosophy, uses that same philosophy to justify exploding. There may also be a space surfing scene.

This was Carpenter and O'Bannon's first movie, a student film. It shows, but you have to start somewhere. O'Bannon used this script as the basis for  writing Alien (1979). Carpenter went on to do Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) next, followed later by Halloween (1978), Escape from New York (1981), and The Thing (1982).