On 8/7/24 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
What did you watch?
Getting to the end of summer session (today/Wed is effectively my last "workday"), so I was able to get through a couple of movies, as well as
soaps yesterday:
soaps: DOOL - How the Hell did Crazy Cat Lady get a *standee* of Li
Shin?!! (This storyline is so stupid, and not in a "good way"!) CCL
crows her successes over with Hallucination Li/Li's standee!...
Meanwhile, Stephanie and Alex commiserate over their
personal(/professional) disasters. (I know these two are going to end up
back together!!) Paulina tries to comfort Jada over the whole "Bobby
Stein" affair.
GH - So bad... :/ They kill off the baby, and not Kristina (I
really wish they had done the reverse!!). The Doctor tells Kristina the
baby died, and then NuKristina tells NuNuNuMolly. NuNuNuMolly then
righteously tears into Sonny and bars him from seeing Kristina - later,
is Sonny considering roof-jumping?!... The rest of this ep was just
fallout from Kristina's fall, with Ava getting raked over by the cops. Meanwhile, Josslyn cries on Dex's shoulder about the ordeal, and gets a
boffing session out of it!!
Y&R - Faith quickly figures out Lucy was drinking alcohol, and yanks
her out of the concert dragging her back to Sharon's and then calling
Daniel to come pick her up. Sharon continues to hallucinate Linden
Ashby(!). Daniel gets a frosty reception from Lily, after Lily
confronted Victor; later, Lily declares that Billy is *out*! at
Chancellor. (Good luck with that!) Sally cries on Billy's shoulder on
the one-year anniversary of her (miscarriage? still-birth?) that I
didn't even know about.
Desperation Road (Tubi) - Categorized as "Southern noir", a sub-genre I
wasn't even aware existed!
This was actually pretty decent.
It's set in Mississippi, except the production massively cheats and
was filmed in Kentucky! (that's not really near Mississippi!!).
Willa Fitzgerald (looking appropriately bad and too skinny (i.e. not
in a good way!)) stars in this as a dirt-poor single mom, "Maben" (who
names their kid "Maben"?!!) who is trying to make it back to her
original(?) home in Mississippi. But Maben's out of money and makes the
mistake of trying to hook at truck stop for quick cash, where she gets
fingered by a dirty local cop who "takes her into custody" and
ultimately coerces rape out of her. Maben responds by shooting the
a**h*** dead with two bullets from his own gun. She is smart enough to
pick up the shell casings and take the gun with her.
Meanwhile, we meet Russell (Garrett Hedlund), a guy just released
back into the same local community after a 7 year stint in Mississippi
prison (we only find out later exactly for what crime). He meets up with
his Pops (it's Mel Gibson!) - Pops conveniently has a whole other
property for Russell to live on (I guess land is cheap in Miss.!?!). The
issue is that two local brothers, esp. the meaner one (Ryan Hurst), have
it out for just-released-from-jail Russell.
Eventually (though it takes a little too long to happen), Russell's
and Maben's paths will intersect, and this whole thing will start to
make a lot more sense. But can Russell really help Maben out of her
(righteous) cop-killing predicament?!
Anyway, overall, I liked this. It's a little slow, and probably a
little over-long, but it kept my interest, and the performances were
good, and the story decent (if coincidentally contrived).
Abigail (Tubi) - No, not the 2024 big-budget vampire horror flick! This
is the 2023 low-budget independent... "thriller"(? it's called "horror"
but it's really not!) film!
Another production cheat!! - Set in Alabama, but filmed in Oakdale, California (the "Cowboy Capital of the World"!!).
This is a film that seemed to promise a lot more mayhem than it
actually delivered.
It stars Ava Cantrell - who apparently is a former child actress,
and she's still tiny even as an adult, which probably explains why her
career as an adult seems stilted, aside from this leading role - as Abigail.
Abigail and her mom (Hermione Lynch) have recently moved to Alabama
from California, apparently due to some "trouble" involving Abigail.
They soon meet their neighbors, the local floozy (Karimah Westbrook) and
her troubled teen son (Tren Reed-Brown), whom Abigail chipperly and enthusiastically tries to strike up a friendship up with.
It turns out the teen is being bullied. Abigail doesn't like this at
all, and soon starts "defending" the lad, *with force*!
But is Abigail actually "all right", or is she dangerous?!
The set-up, and this first two-thirds of this film (esp. the First
Act) are decent (though maybe taking a little too long to set up, and
with not as much "mayhem" as implied/promised...).
However, I thought this film basically fell apart for me in the
Third Act. I really, really did not like where this film ended up, or
the really, really disappointing "twist" at the end, which basically
undid most of what we though we knew about the film's Second Act.
So, ultimately, I thought this one was a misfire. I liked Cantrell's
(and Reed-Brown's, and most everybody else's) performances. And this
film is competently shot and looks good. But the script really, really
let the proceedings down.
What did you watch?
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