Bounces R Way
Registered User
To Wong Foo(1995) - 5.5/10
Girlfriend is real into the Ru Paul stuff so we landed on this one last weekend. Swayze, Snipes, and Leguizamo play drag queens traveling across the country to California to compete in America's Top Drag Queen. On the way their car breaks down in Oklahoma or Northern Texas or some such place and there is a brief confrontation with a bigoted sheriff. They manage to escape after knocking the sheriff unconscious and hide out in a small town while their car is being fixed. Basically we spend most of the movie yassifying the grubby town and it's humble townsfolk.
There's a love triangle, lots of throwaway jokes, some decent drag drama with the queens. They do a decent job empowering the women of the town glamming them up and taking a stand against some of the town's abusers. I didn't mind it, honestly didn't know Swayze had the range he displayed in this movie, he was quite good. As far as the actual being a movie stuff however, just not a lot of commitment to plot and the plot was fairly uninteresting anyway. There is a final showdown with the sheriff who surprise surprise is in the closet but wasn't much of a climax. The draw here is the 3 big name actors being silly in drag changing minds and shifting perspectives in bumpkin town USA and that you get in full.
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare(2024) - 8/10
As a sucker both for WW2 spy period pieces and for Guy Ritchie this one was right up my alley. I thought it was well done, based on a truish story of Churchill's plan to stop the Nazi U-boat's dominance of the Atlantic. Much like Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds this involved assembling a crew of less desirable soldiers, each with their own specialty, that could work off the books. Henry Cavill plays the lead and seemed to work well with a Ritchie script and characterization, I know they worked together before in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. but I thought he was better used leading a wide ensemble.
The plan is to sail down to a small island off the coast of West Africa where the U-boats are being resupplied and blow up the main cargo ship carrying these supplies. Things predictably go awry and our crew has to improvise. Also included are a plot with a female agent(Eiza Gonzalez) inserted on the island to seduce the Nazi commander and the British Navy command trying to put a stop to the operation as they feel surrender to Hitler to be the more wise course of action. Film moves along well, Guy's movies always seem expertly paced to me. Lots of Nazi killing, explosions, stylish sets and quippy dialogue. Action was put together smartly but I dunno if I'd call it the main attraction. A good self contained story worth telling and is done so with the playful flourish Ritchie infuses in his work.