Author: tiki god

Zola: Directed by Janicza Bravo. With Taylour Paige, Riley Keough, Nelcie Souffrant, Nasir Rahim. A stripper named Zola embarks on a wild road trip to Florida. I swear I didn’t mean to watch two A24 movies back to back, but after “Hot Summer Night” this was up next on my watch list, partially there because I thought my wife would enjoy it, and partly because I had read the tweets that the movie was based from, then the reddit drama that occurred afterward. I don’t think I knew Taylour Paige or Riley Keough, but their IMDB page suggests that Taylour...

Hot Summer Nights: Directed by Elijah Bynum. With Timothée Chalamet, Maika Monroe, Alex Roe, Emory Cohen. In the summer of 1991, a sheltered teenage boy comes of age during a wild summer he spends on Cape Cod getting rich from selling pot to gangsters, falling in love for the first time, partying and eventually realizing that he is in over his head. Set in Cape Cod during the 1991 pop culture enlightenment, this is the first movie that I think I’ve seen Timothée Chalamet in other than his somewhat confused performance in Dune, and his acting and presence is much...

Secret of the Incas: Directed by Jerry Hopper. With Charlton Heston, Robert Young, Nicole Maurey, Thomas Mitchell. An adventurer searchers for hidden treasure in the Peruvian jungles. A film mentioned in a book I read recently, “California Tiki”, “Secret of the Incas” features the singing of Yma Sumac, well known for her “Exotica” album work. As a happy coincidence, one of my favorite silver screen actresses is here too, Glenda Farrell is here, but to be honest I didn’t even catch on to that fact until after the movie was over, some super sleuth I’d be! More apparent though is...

War of the Worlds: Directed by Steven Spielberg. With Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Miranda Otto, Justin Chatwin. An alien invasion threatens the future of humanity. The catastrophic nightmare is depicted through the eyes of one American family fighting for survival. After getting home from seeing the latest “Top Gun” film, Netflix suggested that I watch “War of the Worlds”, which I remember as being a fine movie, but that there’s been a couple better made adaptations of the story in recent memory from 2019 period piece mini series to the 2019 ongoing modern series. I also remember that I had...

Club Paradise: Directed by Harold Ramis. With Robin Williams, Peter O’Toole, Rick Moranis, Jimmy Cliff. A retired Chicago firefighter partners with a reggae singer to turn a seedy Caribbean nightclub into a resort for affluent tourists. Another movie from early in Robin William’s career, this is much better than the last couple I checked out. Weird thing about this one is that I don’t think there was a single brassiere in the entire film. It’s only rated pg-13, but if brassiere-less women is your thing, this is the place to be. As a PS, a few hours after I wrote...

Top Gun: Maverick: Directed by Joseph Kosinski. With Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly. After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, Pete Mitchell is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him. The most shocking part of this film isn’t that Tom Cruise came back for it, nor that it’s doing exceptionally well, but that the story is a heartfelt look into the life of a guy that knows were he belongs and does everything he can do...

I Am Curious (Blue): Directed by Vilgot Sjöman. With Maj Hultén, Vilgot Sjöman, Lena Nyman, Börje Ahlstedt. Told in a quasi-documentary style, this companion piece to Jag är nyfiken – en film i gult (1967) deals with topics such as class society, religion, sex, contraceptives, and the Swedish prison Kumla. Still a controversial film to anyone that would care about it, this is the other side of the coin to the “I Am Curious: Yellow” version of the film, which I’m somewhat uncomfortable calling “versions” because they’re completely different and are unique and separate films. They’re more like companion pieces...

Firestarter: Directed by Keith Thomas. With Zac Efron, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Sydney Lemmon, Michael Greyeyes. A young girl tries to understand how she mysteriously gained the power to set things on fire with her mind. I’ve still not seen the original film with Drew Barrymore, and I had only just barely been made aware of the basics of the story, so I was somewhat shocked to learn this is straight up a super hero film with pyrokinetics, telepathy, and telekensis. It’s a perfectly watchable film and I had a good time watching it, but there’s something flat about the film...