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.
Trouble from space, supernatural horror, and suburban thrills.
STARGATE (1994)
I might have missed a couple along the way, but as I was growing up, nearly every movie Kurt Russell made got screen time in my household (and in my maternal grandmother’s home), with some of them – like Big Trouble in Little China, Overboard, and Tango & Cash – getting played over and over. So, of course, when the sci-fi action adventure film Stargate, which has Russell in a prominent role, came along in 1994, my action-loving father caught the movie during its theatrical run (while he was out on the road; he was a truck driver) and then made sure we rented it as soon as it reached VHS in 1995. At the time, Stargate was a bit of a big deal because it had been a surprise hit. Writer/director Roland Emmerich and co-writer/producer Dean Devlin hadn’t been able to get any Hollywood studios interested in it when they were pitching it. It didn’t fit into easily describable slots; it wasn’t as action-packed as the executives were hoping it would be. So Emmerich and Devlin had to secured the $50 million budget from a French production company... and then, when MGM came on board to distribute and sent it out into the world, it made almost $200 million at the box office.
Even in retrospect, it’s surprising that Stargate was so successful, especially when you take into account that Kurt Russell classics like Used Cars, The Thing, and Big Trouble in Little China had been box office disappointments – although he was coming directly off the hit Backdraft and the highly regarded Tombstone at this time. Still, Stargate deals heavily with ancient Egyptian culture, which you might not expect to be a big box office draw, and is an adventure movie that takes a long time getting to the action. In fact, the villain isn’t even introduced until an hour into the two hour running time!
The story tells us that alien beings were visiting Egypt thousands of years ago; an expedition from a dying world, led by an alien being whose species was going extinct. He was searching for a way to cheat death, and found it by possessing the body of a young Egyptian. He appointed himself ruler and enslaved the locals. To transport people and things back and forth between Earth and his home world of Abydos, he set up a device called the stargate, sending slaves to Abydos to mine the mineral that’s the building block of his technology. The technology that allows him to achieve eternal life. But there was an uprising on Earth; the Egyptians tore down the stargate and buried it. The aliens never returned – but they left their mark on Egyptian culture. The lead alien is what we know as the sun god Ra. Anubis and Horus were his personal guards, who look like the drawings of the ancient Egyptian gods due to the hi-tech helmets they wear.
In 1928, an archaeologist unearthed the stargate. But it’s not until present day – that’s 1994 – that an Egyptologist named Daniel Jackson (James Spader), who was brought in to be part of a research team that includes the archaeologist’s daughter, played by Viveca Lindfors from Creepshow, manages to decode the writing on the stargate and figure out how to reactivate it. The U.S. Air Force sends a team led by Colonel Jack O’Neil (Kurt Russell) through the stargate wormhole on a recon mission, and Daniel joins them so he can decipher the writing on the stargate at the other end and dial it so they can return home. It’s kept a secret that O’Neil has taken a nuclear bomb with them and has been ordered to set it off to destroy the gate on the other side if there’s any side of trouble.
Of course, there is trouble. Not only does the recon team cross paths with the descendants of the Egyptians who were taken to Abydos long ago, they also find that Ra (Jaye Davidson) is still ruling over them. And he wants to send that nuke – enhanced with the alien mineral – right back to Earth.
The journey through the stargate doesn't happen until 40 minutes in, and even when the action does kick much later, it’s not exactly the most thrilling action you could hope to see... and yet, somehow Stargate manages to be fascinating throughout. It’s thoroughly watchable, even in moments when you might be wishing it would get on with it and get some action on the screen. Spader had issues with the script and there were times when he felt embarrassed to be working on the movie, but he does a fine job as Daniel, who adjusts to life in a different, Egypt-based world quite well, and Russell is as cool as ever as Jack, who agrees to go on his nuclear suicide mission because he’s mourning the accidental death of his young son.
This is a unique movie, and it’s nice that audiences were so receptive to it in ‘94. I was never blown away by it, but always liked it. It was successful enough to launch a franchise... but not in the way Emmerich and Devlin were hoping it would. They wanted to make a trilogy of films, with the stargate taking the characters to a different location in each movie. But they didn’t get the chance to make those movies. Instead, MGM decided to take the concept to television, where a few different shows got multiple seasons out of the idea. I tuned in and enjoyed the first season of the first show, Stargate SG-1, but then drifted away after that. I need to catch up on those TV shows one of these days.
SMILE 2 (2024)
Back in 2022, writer/director Parker Finn brought the world Smile, a story of “communicable horror”, where a supernatural curse is passed from victim to victim. In this case, some kind of evil force causes people to see visions of creepy, smiling figures who proceed to scare the hell out of them. After tormenting its victims for a while, this evil force then makes the people commit suicide in front of someone else – and then the curse passes on to the person who witnessed the suicide. There is more to the curse than that, but I had forgotten about it by the time I watched the sequel, Smile 2, more than a year after I watched the first movie. Apparently, the characters in Smile had figured out that there’s a way to pass on the curse without committing suicide: as the evil entity feeds on trauma, the cursed person can also murder someone else in front of a witness to traumatize them, passing the curse to the witness. Smile 2 begins with surviving, cursed character Joel (Kyle Gallner) attempting to pass on the curse in that way – and since I had forgotten about that method, I had to pause the movie after the opening sequence and check Wikipedia for a refresher.
Anyway, Joel accidentally passes the curse to drug dealer Lewis (Lukas Gage), who happens to provide Vicodin to a major pop star named Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), a character who’s like a fictional, blended version of Lady Gaga and Britney Spears. Newly sober, aside from the illegally acquired Vicodin, and building herself back up one year after a car accident that killed her boyfriend and left her with scars and a lingering back pain, Skye is preparing to go on a major tour... but she visits Lewis on the wrong day and gets the curse passed to her.
At 127 minutes, Smile 2 is a bit longer than it needed to be, and there are times in the first hour where it seems like Finn was more interested in making a drama about the life of a troubled pop star than he was in making another horror movie... but then the horror element shifts into overdrive in the second half of the film and things get completely insane. So insane, I was disappointed that some parts of the story turned out to be hallucinations, because things go in some interesting directions before the entity pulls the rug out from under both Skye and the audience.
What Smile 2 is more than anything is a great showcase for the skills of Naomi Scott, who does an incredible job handling the intense horrific and dramatic scenes and also has scenes where she sings and does choreographed dances. Working on this movie was probably physically and emotionally exhausting for her – I can’t imagine what it must have been like to have to do so much intense acting day in and day out for the entire production schedule. But Scott handled it all and proved to be quite an impressive movie star in the process.
MOTHERS’ INSTINCT (2024)
I haven’t read Belgian author Barbara Abel’s 2012 novel Derrière la haine (Behind the Hatred), or the 2018 French film adaptation, which was directed by Olivier Masset-Depasse and called Duelles (Duels), so I don’t know how they handled the story told in the 2024 English film adaptation Mothers’ Instinct, but I do know that the English-language film told the story in an intriguing and disturbing way.
Masset-Depasse was originally attached to direct this version of the story as well, working from a screenplay by Sarah Conradt, but had to drop out due to a "family commitment" and was replaced by French cinematographer Benoît Delhomme, making his feature directorial debut. Now, I don’t think the resulting film handles the story in the best way, as it’s a bit dry and slowly paced. It could have been livelier and more effective. But it still works well as it is.
Set in 1960s America, Mothers’ Instinct centers on friends and neighbors Alice Bradford (Jessica Chastain) and Céline Jennings (Anne Hathaway), who are married to Simon (Anders Danielsen Lie) and Damian (Josh Charles), respectively, and have sons who are around the same age: Max (Baylen D. Bielitz) and Theo (Eamon O’Connell). We’re not too far into the movie before Max is killed in a tragic accident, falling from a balcony while he’s at home – and it’s an accident that Alice largely witnesses, as she sees the kid in a precarious situation and tries to get over to the Jennings home and alert Céline before it’s too late... but she’s not able to.
The movie has a heavy tone from that point on, of course, as Céline and Damian are in mourning and Alice, Simon, and Theo remain in their lives, trying their best to navigate through their friends’ grief. But there’s something else going on here. Céline’s behavior becomes increasingly strange. Suspicious events keep happening around the family. And Alice starts to suspect that Céline may be plotting against her. Does she blame Alice for Max’s death?
I won’t say what happens, but I will say that the story goes in quite a troubling direction. Things get darker and more thrilling... and it wraps up in a way that some viewers are going to absolutely hate. Love the ending, hate it, or just be chilled by it, but Mothers’ Instinct is a solid thriller.
THE PINK CHIQUITAS (1986)
Frank Stallone is best known for his work in music, but he has also made a strong attempt to have an acting career, racking up many credits in films and TV shows – and, surprisingly, most of those credits did not involve his brother, Sylvester Stallone, at all. Still, chances are high that most viewers are familiar with Frank from his appearances in Sylvester’s Rocky movies. It doesn’t help that the film that legendary drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs once described as having “Frank Stallone’s greatest starring role” seems to have completely slipped into obscurity. That film is the sci-fi comedy The Pink Chiquitas – and if you happen to dig it up and watch it, you won’t be surprised that it has become so obscure.
Written and directed by Anthony Currie, who crafted the story with Nick Rotundo, The Pink Chiquitas exists in the area where “oddball” and “goofball” overlap. You have to have a very specific sense of humor to be able to tolerate its goofiness – and also have to be in a very specific mood to be able to sit through it. I don’t really have that sense of humor and am rarely in that mood, so I found the movie difficult to sit through. My attention kept wandering... but I have to admit, as I had to rewind parts over and over again because I hadn’t been focusing on the movie, it started to grow on me. The movie does have a charm, and the more time I spent with it, the more I was charmed by it.
Stallone stars as private investigator Tony Mareda Jr., who has some relentless, bloodthirsty people on his trail. He seeks some peace in a small, backwater town called Beamsville – and happens to be at the local drive-in with a pink meteor goes streaking overhead (after we hear a news report about “startling data concerning the rings around Uranus”) and crashes into the nearby wilderness. Meteorologist Clip Bacardi (Bruce Pirrie) is able to locate the pink meteorite, but isn’t aware that the sound this space rock is emitting will turn any woman who hears it into a meteorite-worshipping nymphomaniac.
Soon, the women of the town, led by Clip’s girlfriend, librarian Mary Ann Kowalski (Elizabeth Edwards), have taken over the town, eliminating male threats by sexing them into catatonic states and getting around in a pink tank. It might be up to Mareda, Bacardi, Mayor Ernie Bodine (John Hemphill), and a local lawman to bring this reign of meteorite-loving nymphos to an end. The lawman is one of the best things about the movie, as the character is very clearly based on Barney Fife from The Andy Griffith Show – and while playing this guy, Deputy Barney Drum, Don Lake delivers a fun Don Knotts impression.
Even though the sexuality of the mind-controlled women is a prominent part of the plot, with them short circuiting men’s brains with their seductions, this is not a sex-filled “Skinemax” type of flick. In fact, it’s PG-13, so there’s not even any nudity... which was an unexpected choice, because this kind of low budget oddity would usually be filled with bare breasts.
The Pink Chiquitas might be Frank Stallone’s greatest starring role, but it’s still not a very good movie. But, if you cross paths with it, it’s not the worst way to waste 83 minutes (possibly longer, if you have to keep rewinding it like I did). As Joe Bob said, "It's interesting for about 10, 15 minutes."
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