We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
CARRY-ON (2024)
There have been many great action movies and thrillers that take place at Christmastime – and Netflix brought some fresh thrills to the holiday last month by dropping the action thriller Carry-On onto their streaming service on Friday, December 13th. The film was directed by Jaume Collet-Serra from a script by T.J. Fixman... and given that it involves an airport and airplanes, it made me think of the works of author T.J. Newman, who has written two air travel-themed thrillers (Falling and Drowning). It has also drawn comparisons to Die Hard simply because of its genre and the Christmas setting... but this leans more into thriller territory than action. The lead is not a John McClane-style hero who has to take on a bunch of bad guys. Instead, he’s a TSA agent who has a really bad day thanks to just a couple of people.
Taron Egerton stars as Ethan Kopek, a guy who joined the TSA at LAX simply because his pregnant girlfriend Nora (Sofia Carson) works at the airport as an airline manager. Aiming for a promotion, Ethan gets himself assigned to a baggage-scanning lane on Christmas Eve... and this was the wrong time to get ambitious, because he’s given an earbud that puts him in contact with a mysterious fellow known only as the Traveler (Jason Bateman), a mercenary who wants Ethan to let a chemical weapon pass through in the carry-on luggage. Of course, the Traveler and his associates are quickly able to figure out that threatening Nora’s life is the best way to get Ethan to comply with their demands – but Ethan is also a good enough guy that he’s not going to just let these people set off a chemical weapon on a flight full of innocent people.
Other people are mixed up in the situation – there’s Danielle Deadwyler as an LAPD detective, Theo Rossi as Traveler’s right hand man, Logan Marshall-Green as a government agent (maybe), Dean Norris as Ethan’s superior, Tonatiuh as a guy who’s also being forced to work for Traveler, and more – but for the most part we’re following Ethan and know he’s the only person who’s going to be able to resolve this situation. Egerton did a fine job playing the character, and Collet-Serra and Fixman take us viewers on an interesting ride for the film’s 119 minutes. There are some logic leaps to be taken, sure, but it’s all for the sake of good entertainment.
Sometimes you just want to kick back, relax, and spend some time with a good, old fashioned thriller, and that’s exactly what Carry-On delivers.
WHILE SHE WAS OUT (2008)
Back in 1993, author Edward Bryant’s short story While She Was Out was adapted for television as an episode of the half-hour anthology series The Hidden Room – and while I haven’t seen that episode, it does seem like a 30 to 45 minute TV episode adaptation would be the ideal way to bring While She Was Out to the screen. Still, writer/director Susan Montford decided to turn the story into a feature film, and she actually did a good job of stretching the story out so it could sustain an 88 minute running time... when you take into account that the opening title sequence and end credits take up about 10 minutes of that time.
Kim Basinger stars as Della, a suburban housewife with an abusive husband (played by Craig Sheffer) who has waited until Christmas Eve to go out to the local mall to buy some wrapping paper. Making her way through the packed parking lot, she notices a junky old car has taken up two parking spots. And she makes the bad decision to leave a note on the car’s windshield, questioning the driver’s selfishness. When Della finishes shopping and returns to her vehicle, she finds that the junker belongs to a gang of four youths – and since the lead is a blonde white woman, Montford and her collaborators (including executive producer Guillermo del Toro) made sure the movie couldn’t be accused of racism by making the gang quite diverse. The leader is a white kid, Lukas Haas as Chuckie, who introduces himself by saying he has a gun and asking if he should aim it at Della’s privates. He’s join by an African American character named Huey (Jamie Starr), a Latin character named Tomás (Luis Chávez), and an Asian character named Vingh (Leonard Wu). Despite this diversity, when the action really kicks in, the movie still falls into the trap of having the Black character die first.
Things start off with a car chase, as Chuckie, Huey, Tomás, and Vingh pursue Della into a housing development that’s under construction. Both vehicles run into trouble, so Della has to try to escape into the surrounding wilderness – but she takes her husband’s toolbox out of the car when she goes. With the four homicidal youths on her trail, Della has to use the items she finds in the toolbox to defend herself. A set-up that allows for a couple cool moments. This all builds up to just the sort of ending you would expect from a short story / anthology series episode.
Montford stretched Bryant’s story to its limits and there is an occasional moment where it feels like she’s stretching things out a little too much, but While She Was Out works very well for the most part. I mostly wrote the movie off after my first viewing of it, but blog contributor Priscilla is a fan and convinced me to watch it again, since she has watched it multiple times herself. I liked it better the second time around... and the third time around... and now I hold the movie up as a solid thriller that deserves more attention than it has gotten over the years. It didn’t get much of a theatrical release - it only played in 5 theatres, and only in Texas, two years after it was filmed. It was basically sent directly into obscurity, but if you can dig it up, it’s worth watching.
DEAR SANTA (2024)
With his brother Peter, director Bobby Farrelly has made comedy classics like Dumb and Dumber, There’s Something About Mary, and more. The Farrelly brothers went their separate ways a few years ago, but they circled back to each other for the holiday comedy Dear Santa, which Bobby directed from a screenplay Peter crafted with Ricky Blitt and star Jack Black, and the brothers also produced the movie together.
Dear Santa may not be a new comedy classic, but it does have a set-up that I found to be quite appealing: a young kid with “learning differences” tries to send a letter to Santa, but makes a mistake when writing out the name and accidentally sends his letter to Satan – who appears to the kid with the offer of helping him out with the same things Santa would.
Robert Timothy Smith stars as Liam Turner, the dyslexic sixth grader who tries to send a letter to Santa – and I instantly found Smith’s performance as this polite kid to be quite endearing. It helped that, in appearance, he kind of reminded me of myself at his age. Jack Black enters Liam’s life as this helpful version of Satan, who says he can grant three wishes for the kid. Of course, the downside of this deal is that Satan will claim Liam’s soul once the third wish has been granted.
The movie wasn’t as funny as I hoped it would be, I didn’t do a whole lot of laughing, but I had fun watching it anyway, as I enjoyed watching Smith and Black interact. There are also some fun supporting characters, most notably Jaden Carson Baker as Liam’s best friend Gibby. A lot of the 103 minute running time deals with the crush Liam has on his classmate Emma (Kai Cech), but there are deeper emotional aspects to the story as well... leading to an ending that I’m not sure about, but it wasn’t a deal breaker.
I had a good time watching Dear Santa. It could have been better and funnier, but I found it to be a decent watch.
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