Air Strike (2003) – As hard as it may be to remember, there was an era right after 9/11 when dumb direct-to-video action and military thrillers had a distinctly patriotic flavor. That didn’t make them any better, but…
In this case, a bunch of Army Rangers and their pilots are tasked with taking out a weapons dealer in Madeupistan; when one pilot gets fried, the commanding officer goes and persuades his now-civilian older brother to re-up and lead the effort to take the dealer down.
There’s plenty of chopper action here, combining live footage from Fire Birds (1990) plus four other movies, really bad CG helicopters, and the creative workaround to the paucity of funds: actual military footage which was lacking in quality and resolution, so they said it was from “drones” that accompany all of the choppers. (They show it on TV monitors in HQ, just to make the poor original quality more invisible.)
It’s dumb and it’s cheap, but at least a lot of things blow up real good when our hero goes all Commando on the bad guy’s home base.
The Vikings (1958) – Ah, just like I remembered it: Florid, overblown, and historically inaccurate, but still loads of fun. Beardless-but-evil Kirk Douglas is impressive as the Viking heavy, and impressive in that, with a movie produced by his own company, he chose to play the bad guy; no stranger to taking chances, Mr. Douglas. Never has a life of rapine or indiscriminate violence seemed so robust and wholesome!
Dybbuk: The Curse is Real (2021) – I don’t present myself as an expert on Bollywood, but in my experience plot is never the strong point of a Bollywood movie, and when it does come to the fore, there’s usually a “Wait, what?” in the machinations.
In this, a young Indian Christian man and his wife move for work to the island of Mauritius, where the last elderly Jew of the community had just died, leaving a mysterious Jewish-looking box that ends up in the antique store where the wife goes for interior decorating materials. It turns out to be a Dybbuk box, which actually isn’t a real thing (a Dybbuk is a possessing spirit in Jewish folklore, but Dybbuk boxes containing trapped, malevolent demons were entirely the creation of someone selling a craft project on eBay). But it’s real in the movie, and the wife accidentally lets the spirit out, and the house starts to be haunted, and the husband consults some of the most Hindi-looking rabbis to help rid him of the evil spirit.
On top of an eleventh-hour twist that really strains suspension of disbelief, we also have the rabbi finding a book that contains all of the necessary backstory to this particular Dybbuk box, including scenes and events that no one was around to record. Good times.
I missed “The Vikings” movie but I did watch the tv series “Tales of the Vikings” when I was eleven or twelve. Brought back memories.
Wait, Nathan–you mean the movie’s plot is that the Dybbuk isn’t a real thing, but the creation of some Etsier? Or do you mean the idea that it’s trapped in an inanimate object?
H
No, I mean that in what we refer to by convention as the “real world,” there is historically nothing in Jewish folklore like a “Dybbuk box”; the whole story was created by an eBay seller, who took the legends of the Dybbuk and used them as a way to sell his wine chest.
Yes, I realized–after I pushed PUBLISH, of course, because I’m an idjit–that you meant the Se7en “What’s in the BOX!?” item. Du-uh. Yes, the Dybbuk has a long history–so to speak–but the DITB, not so much. Clever Ebayer, though. I mean, “an evil spirit in a box?” CUTE.
Hitch