2026 - THE LAST HOUSE, is B movie stuff

The B movie genre lives on particularly on these streaming sites.  The Last House has a reasonably decent idea for a story.  A family has to survive inside their suburban home.  The film sets up this situation but unsurprisingly can't really find a way to resolve it satisfactorily.

In brief, because the movie sure isn't.  A family starts their day by getting ready to leave their home.  The trouble is they can't get out of the house.  The doors won't open and windows won't open.  Even attempts to break the windows and doors down fail.  The family is trapped inside of their home without an explanation.  Not that I want to point it out but this is the same situation that arose in Luis Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel.  However Bunuel's film was a satire of the upper class.  The Last House is strictly a science fiction film with horror moments stuck in it and yes there are monsters involved in the plot.

At first the idea of being permanently trapped in your house is kind of a clever one.  How do you survive when you start to run out of food.  How do you communicate with your neighbors?  How does this family keep from driving each other crazy?  More importantly what will they do when they lose access to the internet  Well you have close to two long hours to find out.

I  really don't have a problem with B-movies like this.  The premise can make for a fairly entertaining time killer of a movie.  What I do have a problem with is the drawing out of the premise.  In the good old days a director like Roger Corman could have taken an idea like this and knocked it out in 72 minutes.  The Last House just goes on and on until it finally has to find a contrived explanation of what is causing this phenomenon and then figure out a resolution for it.  I'm fully aware that with a high concept like this there will inevitably be a let down with the explanation of the story.  It's just the way these kinds of movies go.

The cast kind of does what it can in the acting department.  In films like this the dialog isn't exactly Shakespearean, we are in the B-movie tradition of very lame dialog. There's lots of talk about what it means to be a family and how this situation bonds them together even closer.  The Last House's family situation kind of reminds me of the Space Family Robinson from Lost in Space who only had each other to count on when they were trapped on an alien plane also loaded with strange monsters.

Is this film worth viewing?  Well probably not. As usual this is just another made for streaming movie that will end up in the abyss of all the other streaming films that are viewed once and never heard of again.

The film was written by Mathew Robinson the writer of Love and Monsters who in this case is really just reworking the same plot as that film.  The running time is 112 minutes. 

2023 - FAST X , "This is the song that never ends."

Number 10 in the gearhead action espionage series.  Fast X isn't good and it isn't bad, if just unfolds with the same old stuff as usual.  Our hero Dominic Toretto ( Vin Diesel pushing 56 years old) is the leader of our team of good guys for hire.  By now the cast in the series has completely swollen with so many characters from the various films that it's difficult to remember who was introduced in what film not that it really matters anymore. Characters who die come back to life, new family characters are introduced in this case Rita Moreno as great grandmother Toretto for no apparent reason.

Charlize Theron is "Cyper" the super bad gal that the Toretto gang has been doing battle  with in several films. For the flimsiest of plot points she becomes an ally in their fight against a real bad guy Dante Reyes played by Jason Momoa.  Jason Momoa is even worse than Charlize Theron and Momoa plays him like some kind of weird cross dressing or bisexual or gay super villain, who can tell.  Momoa is seeking revenge for the death of his father which occurred in Fast Five, (2011 release), which was 12 years ago, talk about holding a grudge.

 

Anyway we are off almost immediately with the now typical over the top car stunts and action pieces as the gang rushes around the globe tying to save Dominic's son who first showed up in The Fate of the Furious, (2017 release).  You might as well throw into the cast mix Brie Larson, Helen Mirren, Jason Statham, Scott Eastwood, Jordana Brewster, Gal Gadot, John Cena  Dwayne Johnson, Pete Davidson the late Paul Walker's daughter and in the typically thankless role as Dominic Toretto's wife Michelle Rodriguez.  All of these cameos and short parts only add length to a film that is already incredibly overlong.

 

The film ends in the great tradition of 1930's cliffhanger serials. However the producers of Fast X certainly didn't learn any lessons from those old serials because each chapter in those old films ran about 30 minutes.  The film has a whopper of a 141 minute running time.  It will be interesting to see if Universal Studios films Fast XI or whatever they are going to call it, this film was not the financial blockbuster the studio was hoping for.

The film was written by Dan Mazeau and Justin Lin.  Lin was the original director of this film but he walked off the set a week into production.

2013 - NOW YOU SEE ME, seen it.

 The first in the Now You See Me series followed by the sequel Now You See Me 2.

 

It's got a good cast, Michael Caine, Mark Ruffalo, Ilsa Fischer,Woody Harrelson to name just a few

Since I saw Now You See Me 2 ,  before I saw this film I can report these two films are the exact same picture.

115 minutes, written by Ed Solomon, Boaz Yakin, and Edward Ricourt.