Get out of our house!

Trespass

(2011)

Nic Cage continues cashing pay cheques in this reunion with Joel Schumacher (8mm anyone?) I expect this was greenlit as a post-crash Panic Room without the panic room.

Cage and wife Nicole Kidman experience a home invasion and Cage must use his wits to delay what he sees as their inevitable deaths.

The film requires a great many logic by-passes to sustain itself, as Cage refuses to open his safe to his captors in the first five minutes of their entry. But it nevertheless moves along at a clip in typically overwrought, flashy Schumacher manner.

Nicole Kidman has a nothing part and is unmemorable in it, but I enjoy a good slice of Cage ham and here he gets to play the mild-mannered business men suffering to the max. And still he manages to amp himself up to 11. Very stupid, but fun.

**1/2

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Poor Easy Breezy.

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I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.

Joker (2019)
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I was vaguely familiar with the title, not because I knew much about Jordan Belfort but because the script had been in development for such a long time (Ridley Scott was attached at one time). So part of the pleasure of the film is discovering how widely the story diverges from the Wall Street template. “The Wolf of Wall Street” suggests one who towers over the city like a behemoth, rather than a guy …

In a few moments, you will have an experience that will seem completely real. It will be the result of your subconscious fears transformed into your conscious awareness.

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(SPOILERS) The ‘Burbs is Joe Dante’s masterpiece. Or at least, his masterpiece that isn’t his bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you masterpiece Gremlins 2: The New Batch, or his high profile masterpiece Gremlins. Unlike those two, the latter of which bolted out of the gate and took audiences by surprise with it’s black wit subverting the expected Spielberg melange, and the first which was roundly shunned by viewers and critics for being absolutely nothing like the first and waving that fact gleefully under their noses, The ‘Burbs took a while to gain its foothold in the Dante pantheon.

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He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

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(SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek, but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

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