SANCTUARY (2023) *** ½

Hal (Christopher Abbott) is a rich dude who regularly sees a sexy dominatrix named Rebecca (Margaret Qualley) to help get his rocks off.  When he learns he’s going to take over his father’s company, he tries to break off their arrangement.  Not one to be brushed aside, Rebecca comes back at him with both barrels.  Thus begins a cat and mouse battle of wits, submission, and dominance. 

Qualley is smoking hot in this.  My favorite scene comes when she makes Abbott get down on his hands and knees and clean the bathroom floor.  While she remains fully clothed at all times, the stimulation she creates is more mental than physical, and seeing her assert herself over the weak-willed Abbott is a lot of fun.  This is easily one of her best performances.  While I haven’t been impressed by Abbott in the past (he made for a wimpy Wolf Man), his blank expression and nominal screen presence really helps to sell his sad sack submissive character. 

Sanctuary is a chamber piece with two characters in one location.  When you have Qualley playing a dominatrix that’s all you really need.  What’s interesting is how the power dynamic shifts throughout the movie.  The first act is essentially their (no contact) sex game.  Afterwards, Abbott tries to buy her off with a fancy watch and tells her not to contact him again.  Knowing her worth, Qualley begins to negotiate a sum that reflects her true value.  It’s like the dude is okay with being submissive in the bedroom, but when it comes to the real world, he tries to alpha her using his wealth and position and she isn’t having any of it.  Ultimately, it’s a metaphor for equal gender pay. 

However, the third act is when things really sizzle as it’s here where the film begins to dig deeper and finds what’s really at the center of Abbott’s troubles.  Most S & M dramas are content to deal with the superficial allure of the lifestyle and be done with it.  Because Sanctuary has the heart to explore the characters’ psychological underpinnings, it makes it much more complex and compelling.  

OCEAN’S EIGHT (2018) *** ½

It seems like Sandra Bullock doesn’t make as many movies as she used to, but it’s nice to know that when they do come around, the films actually take advantage of her talents.  In Ocean’s Eight she gets to play a hot, tough, fast-talking grifter, the sister of George Clooney’s character from Ocean’s Eleven.   Fresh out of prison, she gets seven women with various different skills together to pull off a heist at the ritzy Met Gala.  Helping Bullock is her right-hand woman (Cate Blanchett), a down on her luck fashion designer (Helena Bonham Carter), a ditzy movie star (Anne Hathaway), a forger (Mindy Kaling), a hacker (Rhianna), a pickpocket (Awkwafina), and a fence (Sarah Paulson). 

Director Gary Ross keeps things zipping along at a crackling pace.  He also imbues the film with its own sense of style while very much feeling like an honest to goodness continuation of the franchise, and not just… you know… the same shit, but with women.  The heist is exciting and entertaining too and contains at least more than one genuine surprise. 

The movie gets a lot of mileage from the chemistry between the stars too.  (Bullock’s scenes with Blanchett are particularly fun.)  Even though it’s primarily a Bullock vehicle, the other actresses all have their moments to shine, and it’s fun just seeing them bouncing off one another.  The Met Gala finale also serves as a good opportunity to shoehorn a lot of cameos in there as well. 

Speaking of cameos, there are at least two notable cameos by previous members of the Ocean’s Eleven franchise, although they don’t manage to stick around for very long.  Apparently, other members of the series were supposed to show up too, but their scenes were cut.  Not that the movie really needed them anyway.  It does just fine on its own merits. 

Ocean’s Eleven’s director Steven Soderbergh also served as a producer and surprisingly enough, was the second unit director for Ross’s The Hunger Games. 

BODY COUNT (1998) **

An art heist goes wrong, leaving a member of the crew dead.  Since none of the thieves trust each other, they all take a long road trip to Florida to fence the stolen loot.  If they don’t wind up killing each other first, that is. 

Body Count is another one of those post-Tarantino crime movies filled with flashbacks and scenes of tough guys talking tough and pushing each other around.  These kinds of flicks can be worthwhile if the cast is great, and the writing is sharp.  Well, the cast is great at least. 

The problem is the characters they play are walking cliches.  David Caruso is the no nonsense wheelman who gets angry whenever someone is being less than professional.  Ving Rhames is the cool-as-a-cucumber leader.  John Leguizamo is the hotheaded loudmouth street hood whose itchy trigger finger gets them in a jam.  Donnie Wahlberg plays the stoner who just wants everyone to get along.  Forest Whitaker is the man who set up the heist.  All these guys do fine work with what they were given, it’s just that they weren’t given very much to work with.  

It was nice to see Jade stars Caruso and Linda Fiorentino reunited, albeit briefly.  Despite her prominent billing and placement on the video box, Fiorentino doesn’t show up until the picture is halfway over.  Sadly, she doesn’t generate any sparks with Caruso, or with anyone else in the cast for that matter. 

It also doesn’t help that the narrative is repetitive.  The thieves travel by car to a bus depot and/or train station.  They wind up getting into an altercation with one another, causing them to miss their ride.  They then hop back into the car and drive to the next station.  Rinse and repeat. 

These Tarantino wannabes also suffer from some cringe-inducing dialogue.  This one is no different as the thieves mostly talk about “pussy” in their downtime.  The editing towards the end gets a little janky too, and the quick voiceover that wraps things up suggests either last minute reshoots and/or rewrites.  Because of that, Body Count doesn’t add up to much. 

BLUE VELVET (1986) ****

After Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, and Dune, we knew David Lynch could bring on the weirdness like few others in the business.  It wasn’t until Blue Velvet that we learned he was also one kinky son of a gun.  With this film, he peeled back the veneer of smalltown Americana and apple pie and discovered it was rotten to the core.  Sure, this isn’t exactly a shocking revelation, but it’s the distinctly Lynchian way he pulls it off that makes it a classic. 

Small town boy Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) returns home and discovers a severed ear in a field.  Before you can say Vincent Van Gogh, he’s playing junior detective with the pretty Sandy (Laura Dern) who also happens to be the daughter of the local police lieutenant (George Dickerson).  Jeffrey eventually uncovers a sinister plot involving a battered night club singer named Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini) who is held in sadomasochistic torment by the maniacal Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper in a performance for the ages).  Jeffrey tries to play the white knight but soon gets sucked into Frank’s bizarro world of crime, malice, and suffering. 

Lynch deals with such adult themes as voyeurism and sadomasochism with a childlike innocence, which is what gives the movie its power.  The way he contrasts the smalltown exterior with its seedy underbelly (a theme he’d later expand upon with Twin Peaks) is sometimes shocking, as is the way he dekes and dives into various subgenres.  It goes from a Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mystery to neo-noir to straight-up Playboy Channel on a dime.  Lynch keeps you in the palm of his hand for every twist and turn along the way. 

The performances are all great.  MacLachlan and Dern have a lot of chemistry together and his scenes with Rossellini are rife with tension too.  Hopper (the same year as Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2!) is a real force of nature in this as his foul-mouthed soliloquies are equal parts frightening and hilarious.  (“Heineken? Fuck that shit!  Pabst Blue Ribbon!”)  It’s Dean Stockwell who threatens to steal the movie as Frank’s buddy Ben, who in the film’s dreamiest scene, lip synchs to Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams”.

LITTLE GIRL BIG TEASE (1976) ***

A trio of kidnappers lure a rich teenage ballerina named Virginia (Jody Ray) to a remote mansion where they hold her for ransom.  She teases muscleman Dakota (Phil Bendone) with her innocent charms, and he repays her by raping her.  She then seeks solace in the arms of the ringleader, Mrs. Coward (Mary Mendum, a veteran of many Joe Sarno movies), who also happens to be Virginia’s Home Ec. teacher!  Soon after, she’s teaching Virginia about the birds and the bees, if you catch my drift.  Before you can say “Stockholm Syndrome”, Virginia is seducing the whole gang.  The problem is, after so many sexual misadventures, will she even want to go back home? 

Little Girl Big Tease was released by Cannon Films (a few years before Golan and Globus bought them out) and it’s kind of typical for a drive-in softcore sexploitation flick.  It’s more of a straight-up crime movie than the Lolita knockoff it’s advertised to be, but there’s still enough of that to satisfy the audience so that nobody would’ve thought to ask for their money back.  Fans of Mendum will definitely want to give it a look as she has several spicy nude scenes.  The scene where she seduces Ray (who is very good in her only credited performance) is a real winner, as is the finale where she gets it on with all of the kidnappers. 

A lot of this is on the cheap side.  The story takes place in mostly one location and there are noticeable boom shadows on the wall.  Director Roberto Mitrotti (who mostly worked on documentaries after this) also goes a little overboard with the dissolves during some of the love scenes.  That doesn’t get in the way of the fun though.  They don’t make them like this anymore (for obvious reasons), but when they did, they sure knew how to make them.  Because of that, Little Girl Big Tease is a big winner for fans of ‘70s softcore smut. 

AKA:  Satisfaction Love.  AKA:  Captive Pleasures.  AKA:  Snatched.

THE TOP 10 FILMS OF 2024

 Now that I've finally had some time to reflect on the matter, here's my Top Ten Films of 2024:

1.       The Substance

2.      The First Omen

3.      Speak No Evil

4.      The Beekeeper

5.      Smile 2

6.      Godzilla x Kong:  The New Empire

7.      The Fall Guy

8.     Anora

9.     Terrifier 3

10.  Gladiator II

Runner-Up:  A Quiet Place:  Day One

SUBSERVIENCE (2024) *** ½

Matt once again had me on as a guest for his DTC Connoisseur Podcast this week.  It was an honor to appear on this special 200th episode and talk about Subservience.  It’s a fun listen, and if you want to hear our in-depth discussion, check it out here:  https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Nwkshc42ekeFQRBgwSMlA

Megan Fox stars in the surprisingly entertaining sci-fi flick from Millennium Films.  When Maggie (Madeline Zima) is sick in the hospital, her husband Nick (Michele Morrone) needs help around the house.  He does what any man would do in a situation like that:  Purchase a sexy lifelike AI robot maid named Alice (Fox).  Before long, Alice even takes to comforting the man of the house, if you know what I mean.  Trouble brews when Maggie comes home from the hospital and Alice decides nothing is going to stand in the way of her and her new sugar daddy. 

Fox is quite good in this.  It would be an easy jab to say that she is perfectly cast as a sexy and emotionless human robot.  However, if you look closer, she’s actually doing some interesting work here.  She has no prosthetics (that I could tell) and uses her blank stare and a monotone, yet friendly voice.  Her body language and mannerisms feel synthetic too.  Like she’s almost human.  Most of the time in these kinds of movies, the robots look too human.  Fox makes you feel like she’s totally a robot, except that she’s just real enough looking that you could absentmindedly find yourself telling all your troubles to her. 

Subservience is one of those movies that wind up being just a little better than they should be as the actors all commit to their roles better than you might expect.  S.K. Dale directed the hell out of this thing.  Whether he’s giving us a Fifty Shades of Sexbot sequence or delivering a Terminator-inspired action scene, Dale manages to breathe enough life into some of the standard cliches to make them feel fresh.  I also liked the way everyone just casually accepts robots in their everyday life (the robot maid store looks just like your average IKEA) and how their banal appearance sort of even makes them look even more threatening.  Dale also directed Fox in Till Death, which based on the strength of this, I just may have to check out. 

Essentially, this feels like a SyFy Channel and Lifetime had a baby.  Think The Wrong AI Nanny.  However, it hits all the right notes and delivers what you’d want from a Megan Fox robot movie.  And more. 

AKA:  Alice.