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Movies I Have Watched Recently

Previously: Movies I Seen Lately

Late last year I started watching movies on Fandango At Home, partly just to get away from the Big Tech Companies a bit. They have an extensive catalog and now I feel like I have re-discovered the old Netflix DVD service: I can just browse endless movies or search one up and have a good time for a few bucks. Here’s some movies I have watched since October.

Cat City

This is from October so I don’t remember too well. The cats and the rats have teamed up against the mice. There’s a lot of incompetent mafia action told in the style of a cheap 1980s Hanna-Barbera cartoon in Hungarian.

My Beautiful Laundrette

Uncle Explains the Situation

Young people. Pakistani Brits, the children of immigrants. London in the 80s. Hustle Culture. The Tube constantly trundling past the flat. Racist Thugs. The sickly father who, like Charlie Bucket’s grandparents, won’t get out of bed, played by Roshan Seth, feels comfortably familiar, because you recognize him from half a dozen other movies. The protagonist starts working for a successful Uncle and takes over running a funky little laundromat, which he fixes up nice. Hijinx ensue as secrets are revealed. A fun movie.

I swear there’s a sound effect in common with “The Toxic Avenger.”

The Fugitive

Holds up. We watched this with the boys and it really is a perfect action movie, well acted. Plus it is set in and around Chicago.

Burden of Dreams

This is a “making of” a movie I’ll now need to see, called “Fitzcarraldo” which tells the story of a man named Fitzgerald who in olden days sought to corner the rubber market in part by hauling a steam ship through the jungle to connect from the Amazonian to the Peruvian river basin. But “Burden of Dreams” is about a stubborn film director, Werner Herzog, making this film in the hardest way possible.

A badly pronounced and half-finished sentence out of a cheap, stupid suburban novel.

Part of the story is camping out in the deep Peruvian jungle for several months to film, with a large camp of Native people. Part of the story is getting chased off his first film location. Part of the story is having to re-shoot half the film with a new actor when the first star contracts amoebic dysentery and is forbidden by his Doctor from returning to Peru. The film is re-shot with Klaus Kinski, who irritates the film crew and the Natives enough that I read somewhere the latter offered to kill Kinski on Herzog’s behalf, but Herzog declined because that would have further delayed his filming.

I learned of this movie from a YouTube clip of Herzog condemning the jungle as obscene.

Americana

The information screen for “Americana” taken from the “Fandango at Home” app.

A bunch of fun characters. I liked seeing Zahn McClarnon, the sheriff from “Dark Winds” playing a Native American revolutionary. Ghost Eye at one point explains that his nom de guerre is an homage to “Ghost Dog,” a film, I guess we both like, where Forrest Whitaker plays a New York mafia hit man who lives by the code of the Samurai. We’re all just playing a role, might as well have a cool name, right?  With the violence, the non-linear storyline, and the compelling characters it felt a lot like “Pulp Fiction.”

Baurnya Salu

A kid is growing up in a village with his grandmother. He doesn’t know his birth parents beyond an old photo. He takes on extra jobs around the village to save some money to visit them. The filming is beautiful. Grandma goes to the city for a checkup and passes away. After the funeral, a bus ride brings him back to his birth family. Back with Mom and Dad and a little brother who understands how the farm works, and can ride a horse. Integrating back into the family is hard because the first born son is a stranger. It is very emotional and the story is really well told. A lot more showing than telling.

The Blues Brothers

The Wife had never seen it. It’s pretty good. A Chicago classic, like poppyseeds on a steamed bun.

The Bodyguard From Beijing

An older kung Fu Cop movie. Fun.