Tag Archives: Netflix Streaming

Mr. Jones (2013)

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mrjones02I’m not sure I can be unbiased.  I started watching Cam2Cam and got so bored in the first 5 minutes that I had to bail — and I never do that.  Switching to Mr. Jones, in the first 15 seconds, I had a fun couple who don’t seem to hate each other, and even more rare, I didn’t hate them.  It banked about 20 minutes of goodwill immediately.  It would need them later.

Scott and Penny are on a road trip, and I am encouraged by the fact that they are lost. How quaint, to be lost on a paved road in daylight in the age of GPS.  The next morning, they arrive at their destination, a cabin not quite in the woods, but in a rural area.  I am again encouraged by a title card which says “DAY 1” as that always means the characters are going to start ramping up (or is it down) to Hell in a day or two.

The first day starts pleasantly enough with a lot of magic-hour photography, heavenly choir type music, and philosophical questions from Scott.  They have come to the woods for a year to “work on their relationship,” or was it to make a documentary?  I feel vindicated in fleeing Cam2Cam.

Frankly, this did not pan out as I had hoped.

Frankly, this did not pan out as I had hoped.

DAY 51 — wait, what?  That’s quite a leap.  Scott tells Penny that he stopped taking his meds, but we never learn what they were.  Possibly some of the last act could be attributed to that, but it really only seems to cloud an ending that wasn’t sky-blue to begin with.  Penny starts nagging him that she gave up everything to come out here with him, and he better start working on that documentary.  Maybe he just ran out of of meds, having doubled up listening to 51 days of that shit.

They do manage to get to sleep — in the same Queen size bed, so things aren’t too bad yet — but are awakened by noises downstairs.  Turns out to be birds flying into the side of the house and occasionally breaking through a window.

The next morning, Scott is giving a Survivor-style confessional to the camera, in the background we see a black-clothed figure steal his pack.  Going in search of the pack, they discover another house is near theirs.  Getting no answer, they go in and find a very junky house with parts of walls and the ceiling missing.  Luckily Scott has a special camera that can film both frontward and backward.  On the upside, we should never miss anything; on the downside, lots of distorted super close-ups of his face.

mrjones21Scott discovers a cellar door and asks Penny to be his lookout.  Scott quickly finds his pack, but now it is Penny that wants to stick around and look at the grotesque figures handing in the cellar.  Naturally the owner comes back, but they are able to escape.  Penny recognizes the figures as being the work of the reclusive artist Mr. Jones.  Penny compares it to living next door to JD Salinger or Banksy.  You know, if they lived in hovels and created creepy scarecrows out of branches and parts of animals.  Who’s to say there isn’t a first draft called Butcher in the Rye under Salingers’s floorboards?

Scott goes back to NYC and starts interviewing scholars and critics about Mr. Jones for the documentary.  Over the years, nine random people have received packages from Mr. Jones containing his artwork.  Those receiving the gifts seem to have nothing in common, but the works are valued in the six figures.

Penny stays in the woods, taking pictures of Mr. Jones works which are hanging from trees in the woods.  As Penny takes pictures, he creeps up behind her.  She asks him for an interview but is startled when he looks a little like one of his scarecrows.

When Scott comes back from New York, they discuss a plan to break into the cellar again to film.  I’m not sure why just knocking on the guy’s door is not an option.  The scarecrows are gone from the woods.  Scott returns to the basement and discovers another sub-basement.  He finds chambers with burning scarecrows, but has lost walkie-talkie contact with Penny.

mrjones34Scott finally finds his way out of the basement and goes back tom their house which has been decorated with scarecrows.  They decide to make a run for it in the morning, but by 9:30, it still is not light.

The old night never becoming day trope is one of my favorites, but it just does nothing for me here.  I leads into a very ambiguous final act which could be hallucinations, the supernatural, the missing meds?  The overlapping dialogue, callbacks to earlier scenes, and light shows are really in service of nothing.

Frankly, they would have been better off keeping it simple and making the sub-basement with the flaming dolls and shifting passageways be the final act.

There was one interesting concept, that Mr. Jones was actually a protector rather than the real threat.  Again, though, not enough, was done with this theory to even make it a good thought experiment.

So, decent couple, nice set-up, huge let-down in the final act.  The potential was there, though.

Post-Post:

  • From the writer of The Divide, which I don’t remember hating.

Proxy (2013)

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proxy001Esther Woodhouse is at the doctors’s office with some sort of enormous tumor; no wait, she’s pregnant. The doctor is running an ultrasound, and everything looks good.  Of course, they told Rosemary Woodhouse the same thing.  On the way to the bus stop, she is conked on the head by someone in a red hoodie who then repeatedly bashes her baby bump with a brick and robs her.

Fortunately, it seems that an ambulance is very quick on the scene.  Not so fortunately for her or me, she regains consciousness just in time to see the bloody corpse of her dead baby being cut out of her.

A detective comes to her hospital room.  Not much is learned except that the father was from a sperm bank.  Next she gets a visit from Mary Wilkins, a social worker at the hospital.  Esther doesn’t have any friends or co-workers to contact.  By the time she gets home, even her goldfish is dead.

Esther goes to a support group.  She is befriended by Melanie who lost her husband and son when they were hit by a drunk driver.

She returns aimlessly wandering in the hospital where she was treated, does jigsaw puzzles, applies for a job at a department store.  While there, she sees Melanie and stalks her for a while.  Melanie seems to be searching for her dead son as if he were merely lost in the store.  She makes a scene, crying, calling over the store manager.  She says she is going to look outside, then calmly walks to her car.  She gets a little boy out of her car and takes him into the store.

proxy014Esther and Melanie get together again for coffee in the park.  Melanie says she used to bring her son here.

Later that day, someone in a red hoodie breaks into Esther’s house and rapes her.  It turns out to be her lesbian lover Anika.  The first attack was a ruse that Esther dreamed up.  Lot’s of lying going on here.

Melanie calls late at night for another coffee klatch.  Esther tells Melanie that she was nine months into a healthy pregnancy and loved the way people treated her.  Not being much of a looker, she was unused to this attention.  But she never wanted to be a mother.  She tells Melanie she is the only one who understands and kisses her on the lips.

Melanie gets up to leave and Esther tells her she saw her with her son at the mall.  Melanie slaps her and tells her not to call again.

I could go on and on, and actually did — damn you Chromebook for not having a backspace key!  But there are so many interesting scenes and twists that that they have to be seen to be appreciated.  I was wary of the 2 hour running time, but the film fills the time.  It is slowly paced, but there is always something happening and your mind is constantly working to stay up with it or out-guess it.

Director Zack Parker has a few amazing scenes which are Hitchcockian in their twists and in the great use of Bernard Herrmann style scoring.  Really great stuff.

proxy026Anything else would be giving away too much.  For most posts, I spoil freely because it just ain’t that big a deal (and, really, who am I spoiling?  Searchbots?).  This should be seen with fresh eyes.

Post-Post:

  • Alexa Havins — wow!

Come Back to Me (2014)

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comebacktome02Reno Nevada 2002 — Dale is listening to his mother and boyfriend have the biggest little fight in the world.

He stays out of it as long as he can, stroking his pet bunny, then goes to their bedroom where his bloody mother begs for help.  It is a pretty big leap that the next thing we see are cops rolling up to the front of the house.  Did the boyfriend just let him call?  Did a neighbor call them? Whatever, the cops managed to let the boyfriend escape despite having guns drawn on him, and another one vomits up his donuts after seeing the bloody woman.

Las Vegas 2014 — Dale moves into the sunny neighborhood of Josh and Sarah who bring him a plate of cookies as a welcome gift.  Dale gives Sarah a thousand well-manicured yard stare before saying that she reminds him of someone.  Josh is a croupier on the strip and Sarah is working on her dissertation on internet pornography.  Wait — I can get a degree for this?  Dale was wise to have moved to Las Vegas where apparently a grocery store bagboy can afford a $300,000 house.

Sarah begins experiencing night terrors, blackouts, sudden vomiting.  Also, a scar she received in a bad car accident 3 months ago has faded completely.

After weird neighbor Dale asks where she has been for the past week week during a vacation with her husband, she decides to check out his house which is conveniently unlocked.  Another night terror.

She goes to the doctor and finds that she is pregnant.  She goes to tell her husband who is pretty surprised as he thought he was shooting blanks.

She continues with the night terrors, frequently finding blood on her hands and clothing. Finally she wises up and installs a security cam.  She invites Leslie, her doctor / friend over to stay with her since Josh has understandably bailed.  We get a Paranormal Activity view of them sleeping in the same bed.  Sadly watching all that internet porn has not given her any ideas.

Leslie is awakened by her dog barking, leading to some chilling scenes which turn out to be more night terrors.  But this time both Leslie and Sarah wake up from it.  It scares Leslie into labor.  Being the queen of diversity, she knows the father was either Korean or Black, but she somehow gives birth to a white baby.

Sarah wakes up from more night terrors and checks the security cam to find out the nightmares are real.  Dale had come into her room and raped her,and cut her throat, and  placed her back in bed where she “woke up.”

She does a little research and and finds out about how Dale had mysteriously brought his mother back to life many years ago after the police said there was no way she could be alive.  She is now in an institution.  Leslie realizes that her baby was fathered not by her croupier husband but by the creepier Dale.

Sarah goes to the institution.  we only see his mother from the side. His mother knows that he murders women and brings them back to life.

As a kid he killed rabbits, girls, his mother couldn’t live with creating a monster, so killed herself but he brought her back.  Finally, she set herself on fire so she would be institutionalized aware from her son.

Then ending is really something special.  The movie itself os fine, but the ending is shocking and original.

Post-Post:

  • It bugged me that Josh said he was a croupier, rhyming with soupier.  But that seems to be the preferred pronunciation.
  • Favorite Quote:  “I’d hold your hair back but I’m a sympathetic vomiter.”

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Percentage (S3E14)

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OK, I’m just not understanding anything about this one. Alfred Hitchcock Presents has been my refuge from the frequent non-stories of Ray Bradbury Theater, the often hokey mess of Night Gallery, the uneven tone Tales From the Crypt, and frankly the 60 minutes of Outer Limits (which is usually pretty good, but it’s still an hour of my life). AHP has a great track record for being interesting, logical and pretty leanly written.

Gangsta Eddie Slovak has called a TV repairman (a guy who used to actually come to your house and fix your TV).  His wife is baffled that Slovak intentionally sabotaged the set, then called a repair shop in far away Queens.

Repairman Pete Williams rings the bell, so the appointment must have been three hours earlier.  Eddie opens the door and both men are all smiles as they recognize each other as old army buddies.

ahppercentage09Slovak’s wife Faye rats him out for purposely busting the TV so he could call Pete to take a look at it.  After she leaves, Slovak tears into Pete. He wants Williams to call him a coward for his actions in Korea. Williams seems like a nice guy and says he hasn’t thought about that incident in years.  Slovak says he hasn’t forgotten for one day that he “went chicken one day” and Pete covered for him at risk to his own career.

The titular percentage is the edge that Slovak thinks Pete has on him by keeping this little secret of his cowardice.  He offers Pete big money, even a house to make them even in his mind.  The more Slovak offers, the more Eddie insists he doesn’t want anything except what he can earn on his own.  He is perfectly happy with his modest life.

Slovak is baffled by that and wants to know how much it would cost to keep quiet about him being chicken.  “I gotta pay you back!” he yells at Pete.

They agree to go out to dinner with their wives and he tells Pete’s wife he wants to put some big money in Pete’s pocket.  His wife tries to talk Pete into taking the money, but he just won’t accept anything he hasn’t earned.  When Slovak goes to see Pete’s wife to see how it went, she is all over him.

ahppercentage15When Pete gets home, Slovak berates him for his cheap home, car and furniture, but Pete seems perfectly happy with his life.

A few days later, Pete’s wife invites Slovak over to talk about how to get Pete to take the money, and also to fool around.  Slovak is really only interested in evening up the percentage.  When Louise says she has not really talked to Pete about accepting the money, Eddie kills her.

Slovak is caught red-handed by Pete.  Slovak says to Pete that they are even now. “She made a play for me and I did the best thing I knew.  For your sake, Pete.  All for you. She was no good.”  Slovak implores Pete to make up a story to protect them both just like he did in Korea.  So he thinks he did Pete a favor by killing his wife who he clearly adored?  Pete rats him out to the police immediately.

ahppercentage16Pete goes straight to Slovak’s house. He tells Mrs. Slovak that her husband killed Louise and then they kiss. Hunh?  There was no foreshadowing of this at all.

Everyone did their job, but maybe they should have saved this one for the hour-long season of AHP.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  The two wives are still alive.  Don Keefer (Pete Williams) just died last year at 98.
  • Slovak was possibly named for Eddie Slovik, the only American to be executed for desertion since the Civil War.
  • Nice guy Eddie could have been named for Nice Guy Eddie, except Eddie was a dick here — Pete was the nice guy.  And Nice Guy Eddie came along 30 years later.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Night of the Execution (S3E13)

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ahpnightexecution01Prosecuting Attorney Warren Selvy is being chewed out by his boss as he throws file after file on his desk of cases in which Selvy has failed to get a conviction.  Whether any of these defendants were actually innocent seems to be irrelevant.  To make matters worse, his boss is also his father-in-law.

Selvy would like to be District Attorney, but his father thinks that this losing streak is going to be a problem.  Not only that, his father-in-law says he believes his daughter Doreen is getting impatient with Selvy’s slow rise to the middle.  He tells Selvy that the jury doesn’t just want logic.  In the current Rodman case, he needs to show some passion, put on a show.  So the old man is a visionary, foreseeing the OJ trial 30 years down the road where evidence doesn’t mean shit.

His father-in-law tells him that if he can send Rector — er Rodman — to the chair, his political future will be secure.  Unfortunately he has an adversary in the courtroom named Vance who is a master of self-promotion.

ahpnightexecution02All charged up, he returns to the courtroom and demands a guilty verdict from the jury, and also that they send Rodman to the electric chair.

Selvy calls his wife — who is way out of his league, by the way — down to a local bar to await the announce-ment of the verdict.  In a surprisingly quick decision, Selvy finally wins a big one.

That night, he receives a visit from an old man who says that he is actually guilty of the murder that Rodman was convicted of.  Selvy is torn — he doesn’t want an innocent man to be electrocuted, but he also wants to win the trial and not have to marry some other woman who is in his league.  When the old man realizes that he will get the chair for committing the murder, he recants his confession.

The old man comes back later, a few minutes before the scheduled execution, and threatens to go public with his guilt, Selvy is worried about the effect on his marriage and political career so clocks him with . . . . er, a clock, killing him.

ahpnightexecution03His wife and father-in-law return home just in time to see the dead man on the floor.  The father-in-law recognizes the old man as a crank who confesses to crimes all the time. As Selvy stands there in shock at having killed an innocent man, the clock he used to kill the old man rings for midnight and the execution of Rodman.

KInd of a strange episode. Normally, the clock striking midnight in Selvy’s hands, signifying the death of Rodman would have been a gut-punch.  Here it is just a reminder that the real criminal was put to death.  Big deal — as Ernie Banks said, “Let’s fry two!”

On the other hand, I expected that Rodman was going to ultimately die and be found innocent, so the episode faked me out.  Which is a good thing.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  Georgann Johnson, last seen in One for the Road, still hanging in there.
  • Selvy (Pat Hingle) was Commissioner Gordon in the 1980s Batmans.
  • Edward Schaff gets only a few seconds on screen, and I’m not sure he had any dialogue.  He got more exposure as Hitler in Russ Myer’s Up!.  But not as much as Kitten Natividad.  Or Raven De La Croix.  Or Candy Samples.  Etc.