Three Films Make A Post: If you can't smoke it, drink it, spend it or love it… forget it.

Payday (1973): Sleazy country star Maury Dann (Rip Torn) is on the road, lying, bullying and sliming his way across the USA while growing increasingly deranged.

I’m a big fan of 70s grimdark, but this nearly plotless portrait of a horrible man doing horrible things, horribly, by Daryl Duke actually beats me. It’s not that I can’t appreciate its skewering of the 70s country star, Duke’s version of hyperrealist style, or the great, though somewhat one-note performances, it’s just that I miss some moments of genuine humanity to measure Maury’s horridness against. Or, come to think of it, Maury showing one or two not redeeming but not horrible character traits to put some shading into the black and black of the movie at hand. Hell, the guy can’t even sing.

Tiger Zinda Hai (2017): This Bollywood piece of action-heavy super spy cinema sequel certainly charms with its series of overblown, wonderfully unrealistic action sequences, its treatment of BIG EMOTIONS that makes its predecessor look downright restrained, and its larger than life (in the best way) star performances by Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif.

Director Ali Abbas Zafar (who also co-wrote) also puts a lot of effort into fulfilling the increasingly mandatory quota of Indian jingoism while at the same time doing subtle and not so subtle things that complicate and humanize this jingoism, in ways I’m not at all sure I’m interpreting in the way they are meant to be understood. It’s a fun big damn action blockbuster in any case.

Girl in the Case (1944): A lawyer (Edmund Lowe) who is also an expert on safecracking and lockpicking (it’s a hobby) and his wife (Janis Carter) are sucked into an increasingly complicated case, concerning Nazi spies, a locked trunk, and a particularly stupid police force.

Tonally, William Berke’s B-movie marries mystery and screwball comedy, probably in an attempt to reach the same tone as the later of the Thin Man films. Lowe and Carter are no Powell and Loy – and really should acquire a dog – and Berke no W.S. Van Dyke, but there’s a breezy quality to the film, and a likeability to its basic silliness that makes it pretty difficult to dislike it. If one is at all interested in this era’s mystery comedies, obviously. I’m always happy about movies concerning mismatched couples solving crimes while cracking jokes.

Three Films Make A Post: Winning was just the beginning.

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (2021): If the first Escape Room didn’t feel random and contrived enough to you, Adam Robitel’s sequel has you covered. The characters are even thinner than in the first movie – and what good is a diverse cast when none of the diverse characters is even the least bit interesting? – the plot is non-existent, and the film’s attempt at a big reveal in the final act is so stupid, it’s laughable.

The escape rooms themselves manage to be at once implausible, random and just ever so faintly stupid, showing as much imagination as the rest of the film, which is to say, none. That its idea of excitement mostly seems to consist of random editing tics and screeching actresses is only par for the course for this one.

Ek Tha Tiger aka Once There Was a Tiger (2012): Despite not being much of a fan of its lead couple Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif as far as I know their bodies of work, I had quite a bit of fun with this Bollywood spy romance by Kabir Khan. The film puts heavy emphasis on the romance, so much so, the handful of action sequences and the rest of the spy business sometimes feel as if they’ve slipped in from another movie. Since the action is still good fun, and the romance actually works pretty well, that’s not really a problem, though – one does not venture into an early 2010s Bollywood hit expecting the same ideas about tonal consistency you’d find in Hollywood at the same time, and blaming a film for not following rules it doesn’t actually set out to follow seems pointless, and a bit boring, like complaining about the lack of veggies in your ice cream.

Plus, there’s something deeply likeable about a Hindi movie that uses the enmity between India and Pakistan without ever becoming jingoistic (because love beats politics, here, obviously), and whose romance actually affords its female lead some agency.

Street View aka Reikai no tobira Street View (2011): A curious figure in street view seems connected to the disappearance of our protagonist’s sister. A lot of only mildly changed beats from old Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Hideo Nakata movies follow. Alas, director Soichiro Koga doesn’t really manage to turn his cobbled together bits of great movies into a decent one of its own.

From time to time, there’s a scene or a moment here that manages to create something of a frisson, a suggestion of something truly ghastly lurking on the other side of one’s monitor, but more often than not, this looks and feels like a cheap rip-off of much better things, without the thought that could have turned it into something special, or even just interesting.