Perfect as a Psychopath

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.

Bank robbers, Dexter, dinosaurs, and martial arts.

THE LAST STOP IN YUMA COUNTY (2023)

Writer/director Francis Galluppi made his feature debut with this crime thriller, which gathers a group of people together in a remote desert gas station diner, lets tensions simmer for a while, then erupts into violence – and follows that up with some more bumbling acts of violence. Galluppi was clearly drawing inspiration from the likes of Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers when crafting this film – and it’s clear to see why Sam Raimi has since hired him to write and direct a new entry in the Evil Dead franchise, because his first movie is fun, stylish, and very well made.

The Last Stop in Yuma County stars Jim Cummings as an unnamed knife salesman, Richard Brake and Nicholas Logan as bank-robbers-on-the-run Beau and Travis, Gene Jones and Robin Bartlett as elderly couple Robert and Earline, and Ryan Masson and Sierra McCormick as aspiring outlaws Miles and Sybil. All of these characters have stopped by a gas station in the Arizona desert hoping to fill up their cars, and are told they’ll have to wait in the diner on the property because the tanks are empty and the delivery truck is taking a while to show up. (Viewers already know it’s not going to show up; the title sequence plays over images of the truck, which has gone off the road and flipped over.) There are only two employees working: Vernon (Faizon Love) sits in the gas station office with his elderly dog and waitress Charlotte (Jocelin Donahue) is working in the diner, which gives guests no break from the heat because the air conditioner is busted. Characters played by Jon Proudstar, Sam Huntington, and Alex Essoe also stop by as the story plays out.

It doesn’t take long for Charlotte and the knife salesman to realize that Beau and Travis are the bank robbers they’ve been hearing about, and the robbers don’t take long to confirm their suspicions by threatening them. Now, everyone is stuck in the diner with potentially violent criminals – and even though Charlotte happens to be married to local sheriff Charlie (Michael Abbott Jr.), who has a bumbling deputy (Connor Paolo) and a secretary played by horror icon Barbara Crampton, the robbers are watching her so closely, she might not be able to let her husband know what’s going on until it’s too late.

This isn’t a horror movie, but Galluppi’s horror fandom is clear in his casting choices, and he did a great job of wringing every bit of tension and thrills out of the set-up. Most of the characters are not great people, but that doesn’t make it any less fun to watch them interact and try to find their way out of a dangerous situation. Things do eventually get violent, but Galluppi still has some twists and turns for the story after blood has been shed.

I had a really good time watching The Last Stop in Yuma County, and I’m looking forward to seeing what Galluppi is going to do in the Evil Dead world.

DEXTER SEASON EIGHT (2013)

The Showtime series Dexter stars Michael C. Hall as Dexter Morgan, a blood spatter analyst for the Miami Metro Police Department who also happens to be a serial killer in his spare time. Dexter follows a strict code, though – and it’s one that sort of, at times, makes him come off as more of a vigilante than a serial killer: he doesn’t kill the innocent, he only kills people who have murdered others. This code was taught to him by his adoptive father, a detective named Harry Morgan (James Remar), who appears to him as his inner voice throughout the show. Harry realized that Dexter had violent urges when he was young, so he taught him how to channel those urges – and it always seemed questionable that he would teach Dexter to be a killer of any sort rather than getting the kid some serious therapeutic help. But season 8, the final season of the show’s initial run, reveals that Harry did seek the help of a therapist... and he just happened to get advice from the worst psychiatric in the world, psychopath expert Evelyn Vogel (Charlotte Rampling). It was Vogel who encouraged Harry to shape Dexter into a killer with a code. And now she’s in trouble. There’s a new serial killer striking in the Miami area, someone called “the Brain Surgeon” because they slice open their victims’ skulls and scoop out a piece of brain. Which they then send to Vogel.

Dexter spends the season bonding with Vogel, who is basically his “co-creator,” while trying to figure out who the Brain Surgeon is and why they seem to be obsessed with Vogel. At the same time, Dexter is also trying to patch things up with his adoptive sister Debra (Jennifer Carpenter), who used to be a rising star in the homicide department of Miami Metro... but then she discovered Dexter’s homicidal secrets and, instead of arresting him, let him go on with his life. A decision that ruined her life when she had to kill an innocent person to protect her brother. Now, she has quit the police force and gotten a job at a private investigation company run by Jacob Elway (Sean Patrick Flannery), and she has been spiraling out of control.

Dexter fell in love with a fellow killer, Yvonne Strahovski as Hannah McKay, in season 7. Things didn’t go well between them, and while Hannah spends half of the season flying under the radar, she does come back into the lives of Dexter, Debra, and Dexter’s young son Harrison – whose mother was murdered by a different serial killer a few seasons ago – in the second half. And her presence helps send things even further out of control. She, Dexter, and the Brain Surgeon(s) aren’t even the only killers going around in this season, because Dexter and Vogel take note that a young man named Zach Hamilton (Sam Underwood) seems to be a potential murderer – and while Dexter’s first instinct is to kill the little creep, Vogel wants him to take the kid under his wing.

For most of the episodes, Dexter season 8 is really good. Which is almost surprising, because this season, like season 6 and 7, had showrunner Scott Buck calling the shots. The first four seasons had Clyde Phillips as showrunner, and they were great. Season 5 had Chip Johannessen as showrunner, and it was good, too. Then Buck took over... and started making a lot of questionable decisions. Decisions that sometimes caused Dexter to act out of character. Then season 8 comes along and seems to be Buck’s best season yet. But, he was just saving his worst decisions for the series finale.

I didn’t watch Dexter as it aired. I had never seen the show before I started making my way through it last year, and I’m thankful that I ended up watching it in a time when I knew there had been a revival season, with a prequel series and a sequel series on the way, because if I had watched the season 8 finale when I thought that was actually the end of the show, I would have been deeply disappointed. This has one of the worst, most unsatisfying finales I have ever seen. I have always known that fans were very unhappy with how Dexter wrapped up, and now I understand why. The finale sucks. I’m very glad that it didn’t actually end this way, and that new chapters of Dexter’s story are still being told.

65 (2023)

The sci-fi adventure film 65 was produced by Sam Raimi, the filmmaker who has gifted us with the likes of the Evil Dead franchise, the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies, and Darkman, among many other things – but it has a set-up that would have been right at home in a drive-in classic produced by the legendary Roger Corman. The story, crafted by the writing and directing duo of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, centers on a spaceship pilot who crash-lands on an uncharted planet... and discovers that it’s inhabited by dinosaurs. It’s a B-movie plot given the glossy treatment and a $45 million budget.

When the basics of the 65 set-up made their way online, many assumed that the lead character, Adam Driver as pilot Mills, was a space explorer in the future who would somehow get sent back in time to the age of the dinosaurs. Either that, or he just happens to land on a different planet that has dinosaurs like our planet used to. But neither of those were the approach that Beck and Woods took. Instead, they tell us that Mills is from a super-advanced, space-exploring planet called Somaris, which was already more tech savvy than we are now sixty-five million years ago. Of all options, this was the oddest choice. They also try to justify the glossiness and higher budget by giving Mills a deeper, more emotional back story than the average B-movie would have had. While he was on this two year space exploration mission, his young daughter Nevine (Chloe Coleman) fell ill and died.

Mills’ ship is damaged in an asteroid shower, and when it crash-lands on the dinosaur-inhabited Earth, there’s only one other survivor: a young girl named Koa (Ariana Greenblatt). Of course, the fact that Mills has lost a daughter makes him even more protective of this kid as they try to find their way out of this dangerous situation. There are shades of James Cameron’s Aliens and the Ripley / Newt relationship in there. Given that Mills and Koa speak different languages – somehow, apparently, English existed on Somaris way back when – there are also elements that are reminiscent of the Logan / Laura relationship in Logan.

To get off of Earth, Mills and Koa have to get to the escape craft that landed 12 kilometers from their section of the crashing ship, and they have to deal with all sorts of flesh-hungry dinosaurs along the way. As if that weren’t enough, the asteroid that brought the age of the dinosaurs to an end is also swiftly approaching Earth, so Mills and Koa have to be able to blast off before that extinction event occurs.

65 does manage to have a bit too much dead space between its exciting moments despite having a running time of just 93 minutes, but I found it to be an entertaining watch overall.

SCI-FIGHTER (2004)

Directed by Art Camacho from a screenplay by Thomas Callicoat, Sci-Fighter is one of those movies that lets you know you’re in for something fun right up front by not only listing the names of its cast members in the opening title sequence, but also mentioning what some of them have accomplished in the world of martial arts. North American Karate Champion! NHB World Champion! Forms & Weapons World Champion! King of Kata! Monkey Kung Fu Master! Kickboxing World Champion! K.O. T.C. Icon! Karate World Champion! 2nd Degree Black Belt! There’s more, and I don’t even know what some of those things are, but I’m hyped to see these people in action nonetheless.

Aki Aleong plays Doctor Tanaka, who creates VR simulations for FBI agents to make their way through in training exercises (we get to see a character played by Lorenzo Lamas try it out) and is trying to hook his co-worker Sally (Cynthia Rothrock) up with his professional fighter son Jack (Don “The Dragon” Wilson). Jack lost his wife and isn’t ready to meet someone new yet – especially since his teenage son Brad (Dan Mayid) is going through a rebellious phase, which has Jack feeling and acting very high-strung. For Brad’s birthday, Doctor Tanaka gives his grandson a VR video game he has created called Sci-Fighter, “where modern science meets the ancient art of self-defense,” hand-to-hand combat training simulator that pits its players against martial arts-skilled AI characters that can adapt and adjust themselves to their opponents strengths and weaknesses, providing maximum challenge.

Problem is, there’s a virus in the game that causes Brad’s mind to be trapped in the levels. Jack has to join the game as a second player to try to help his son fight his way through the levels in hopes that, if they beat the game, it will let Brad exit.

And that’s pretty much all there is to the movie. Don “The Dragon” Wilson and Dan Mayid fighting their way through a variety of opponents with a variety of different martial arts skills in levels like a garden, a forest, a parking garage, the beach, etc. Of course, Cynthia Rothrock gets mixed up in the action along the way as well, because you don’t cast her in a martial arts movie and then just have her hang out in a lab.

I’m not saying that Sci-Fighter (which is also known as X-Treme Fighter, because lots of things were X-Treme in the early 2000s) is a good movie. It’s actually pretty dopey and laughable – but that’s exactly why it’s worth checking out. This is a so-bad-it’s-good flick, and I had a fun time watching the actors fight their way through its cringey silliness.