Movies Seen Recently: Temple, The Cheap Detective, Triple Frontier

Temple (2017) – I enjoy a slow burn, and this movie has it in spades: A young woman doing a thesis on religion vs. mythology, her boyfriend, and her guyfriend (that she’s known since kindergarten and totally doesn’t have a thing for her) travel to Japan, find out about an obscure abandoned temple connected to stories of missing children, travel into the rural hinterlands, and encounter some progressively spooky stuff.  The movie is mostly the performances of the three stars, and I’ve got no complaints there; the female protag especially nails the “Oblivious Gorgeous Girl Syndrome” dead on.

The final act is a bit of a letdown; it gets vague, and not in a good way.  (I love me some well-done ambiguity, but this wasn’t it.) But it was made with competence and professionalism, and the guyfriend’s Japanese (and most natives’ responses to it) were simple enough that I could follow along.

The Cheap Detective (1978) – Peter Falk does his best Humphrey Bogart (i.e., same old Peter Falk, but wider lapels on his trenchcoat) in a Neil Simon-scripted farce that follows the template of The Maltese Falcon with a huge chunk of Casablanca in the middle. Almost every line is a gag; it almost gets tiring.

And check out this cast: Ann-Margret! Sid Caesar! Stockard Channing! Dom DeLuise! Louise Fletcher! Madeline Kahn! Phil Silvers! Abe Vigoda! Paul Williams! James Cromwell! Scatman Crothers! David Ogden Stiers! Vic Tayback! And those are just the ones I recognized.

Triple Frontier (2019) – It’s a military-flavored heist movie: A team of former special forces operatives are brought together by one who still works as a “consultant” in Colombia, for a double mission. 1) Take out a major drug lord that the government has never been able to touch. 2) Take his money for their own.  Things go poorly, exacerbated by the fact that the drug lord has a lot more cash on hand than they expected, and they try to steal it all.

It’s a well-funded movie (a Netflix Original, but looks appropriate for the big screen), the performances are solid, and the screenplay adroitly steps around predictability pitfalls.  If you like this kind of movie, you’ll like this movie.

Abandoned movies:

Once Upon a Time in Deadwood (2019) – I lasted through the interminable and poorly staged (and dialogue-free) shootout, featuring the sheriff who’s the spitting image of Charles Bronson. Then when the next scene introduced all-new characters and had them open their mouths and speak the lines that had been written for them… I just couldn’t.

Rollerball (1975) – Maybe if I were more of a sports guy…

Biohazard (1985) – I don’t have a problem with Fred Olen Ray, who makes movies because he loves to make movies… but man, this one is bad.  Terrible script, excessive padding, don’t-give-a-crap acting… I finally turned it off during the Chemistry-Free Love Scene.

New Crime City (1994) – There’s some promise to this Escape From New York ripoff — Stacy Keach doing an Eastern European accent, Rick Dean as the scenery-chewing urban gang lord — but the action is so poorly staged and filmed that it causes pain to watch.

Higher Ground (1988) – John Denver is an FBI agent who gets fed up with bureau incompetence, quits, and joins his friend Martin Kove as a pilot in Alaska, where the plot turns to drugs and murder… Tell me where exactly your suspension of disbelief gave out.