Month: September 2021

These are some of my most recent acquisitions on Blu-Ray:
The Forever Purge
The Forbidden Kingdom
Wrath of Man
F9: The Fast Saga
Maximum Overdrive

If you want to know more about these purchases, check out my podcast:

Released: July 2021

Director: Everardo Gout

Rated R

Run Time: 104 Minutes

Distributor: Universal Studios

Genre: Action/Horror

Cast:
Ana de la Reguera: Adela
Tinoch Huerta: Juan
Josh Lucas: Dylan Tucker
Leven Rambin: Harper Tucker
Cassidy Freeman: Cassidy Tucker
Alejandro Edda: T.T.
Will Patton: Caleb Tucker

When you’re tackling a subject that involves political and social issues and messaging, you have to be very careful about not hammering it home with a sledgehammer.  People really don’t like it when they have political and ideas shoved in their, especially if they have strong feelings to the opposite.  Yeah, you’re going to connect with a certain part of the audience, but you risk alienating the rest.  It’s one thing to weave these ideas throughout a narrative, provided they aren’t front and center, but it’s entirely different when you’re using a bulldozer to get your message across.  You end up with collateral damage that you didn’t intend.  Personally, I don’t have any issues with movies like that, but there are times when even I have to say, “really?”  There are tons of movies out there that tackle hard issues like politics and religion, but there was a film back in 2013 that really hammered it home about the idea of class warfare: The Purge.  Basically, the idea was that an ultra-conservative right-wing political party came to power in the United States, and instituted a once a year, 12-hour event in which all crime would be legal, even murder.  It’s a fantastic concept that was squandered with the original film, which was nothing more than a glorified home-invasion thriller.  It had its moments, but it didn’t deliver on the ideas that it promised.  Thankfully, Purge Anarchy and Election Year rectified that, by taking the action out on to the streets.  The franchise was all the better for it.  Even the prequel, The First Purge delivered on the chaos that was absent in the original film.  That brings us to the fifth entry in the series: The Forever Purge.

In the events following The Purge: Election Year, in which the Purge was abolished, the New Founding Fathers of America have retaken power and reinstituted the Purge.  Two immigrants, Adela and her husband Juan, prepare for their first Purge by heading to a local church, while Juan’s employers, Caleb Tucker and his son Dylan hunker down for the night.  The 12 hours pass and people begin to reemerge.  Unfortunately, an underground movement of lawless maniacs have continued to “purge” people in what they refer to as the Purge Forever After.  Realizing that this group of deviants is also a bunch of white supremacists, Adela and Juan team up with Dylan Tucker and his family as they’re forced to head south to cross the Mexican border as more Ever After purges start popping up across the country.  Canada and Mexico are opening their borders for 6 hours for as many people to escape as possible, before the borders are shut permanently.  This new Purge film is interesting in a lot of ways.

First of all, the story is told from the perspective of immigrants who left their home country because of turmoil, only to find that they country they wanted to call home was on the verge of collapse.  There aren’t a ton of movies out there that show things from that kind of perspective and I found it to be pretty unique, even if it wasn’t fully explored.  The problem here, is that you didn’t need to make the villains white supremacists.  Racism was always fairly obvious in the use of the Purge, but to actually spell it out like this turns it into a bit of a farce.  You didn’t need to tack on that extra idea.  All you really needed was a group of renegade anarchists who felt that the system that they had depended on to expel these “negative” tendencies in the most violent way possible had failed them.  The film also shows what might happen when a system collapses in on itself.  It gets pretty heavy-handed, which is par for the course for these movies.

One of the interesting things that The Forever Purge does, is set the film during the day.  Yeah, you’ve got some stuff that happens at night, but most of the action hits during the day, whilst the previous films took place entirely at night.  The film is also set in a smaller town in Texas, which changes up the scenery quite a bit.  We’ve seen the chaos that takes place in city streets, but never in the suburbs and smaller towns.  Not only is not safe at night, it’s not even safe during the day, and NOWHERE is safe, which adds to the chaos of the situation.  That makes the film a bit unpredictable to an extent.  Like the previous movies, this new one allows you to see what’s going on without resorting to that crap shaky-cam nonsense that some directors like to use.  The cinematography is fantastic with some outstanding desert shots and wide vistas.  It makes the film feel more expensive than it actually is.  The violence is pretty visceral, but it’s no less violent than the previous films.  It’s still a very violent movie, but it never really goes totally over-the-top with the blood and gore.  There’s enough there to satiate some of the bloodhounds, but it’s still relatively tame when compared to movies like Deadpool.

The acting is pretty decent here.  Ana de la Reguera and Tenoch Huerta play our heroes, Adela and Juan.  They’re pretty decent.  They seem like an easygoing couple, but are incredibly tough when they need to be.  Josh Lucas plays Dylan Tucker, a ranch-hand who initially has issues with Mexicans, but comes to actually respect Juan and his wife over the course of the movie as they help each other out.  Will Patton was pretty good as Caleb Tucker, but not given a whole lot to do.  Levan Rambin plays Harper, Dylan’s baby sister, who more than holds her own throughout the movie.  This gal can kick some serious ass.  Cassidy Freeman plays, Cassidy Tucker, Dylan’s pregnant wife, because, you know, the whole “pregnant wife cliché #354.”  As for the villain of the film, there has always been a tangible antagonist for our heroes to deal with, but the real villain of The Purge films is the system that allowed the Purge to be enacted in the first place.  But again, the film-makers decided that there needed to be a face for our heroes to punch or shoot, and that would be our White Supremacist Villain #4,025: Dalton Levay, played by Joshua Dov.  It’s a superficial addition to an already problematic system, and they didn’t need to specify that our film’s antagonist was a white supremacist.  It’s painfully obvious, and it detracts from the movie.

It’s obvious to anybody with half a brain that this particular movie was informed by a lot of crap that’s been happening over the last couple of years with the Trump Administration.  There’s definitely a lot of parallels to what’s actually been happening, and the January 6th Insurrection was a result of that.  While the 1/6 incident didn’t actually inspire this film, as it was written two years ago, you can’t help but notice the similarities in the situations.  Granted, The Purge movies were meant to be over-the-top satires of racist political bullshit, but there are certain elements of the film that will hit pretty close to home for some people.  Ultimately, though, despite some of the film’s missteps, I found The Forever Purge to be an exciting thrill-ride from beginning to end.  I daresay that it’s actually one of the better entries in the franchise.  They ARE going to be making another one, and actor Frank Grillo will be returning for the 6th entry, but it’ll probably be another year before we see it.  I do recommend this movie if you can get past the obvious political and social messages that are pretty front and center.

What I’ve got for you today is a preview of what’s coming in the next few months.  So take a listen, and see what movies interest you.

Released: July 1986

Director: Stephen King

Rated R

Run Time: 98 Minutes

Distributor: Lionsgate Studios

Genre: Horror

Cast:
Emilio Estevez: Bill Robinson
Pat Hingle: Hendershot
Laura Harrington: Brett
Yeardley Smith: Connie
John Short: Curt

Plot Summary: When Earth passes through the tail of Rea-M rogue comet, the machines come to life and start to kill mankind. A group of survivors is under siege from fierce trucks at the Dixie Boy truck stop gas station and they have to fight to survive.