2023 Genre Movie Calendar (Part 3 of 4)
Need help in finding movies to check out? The 2023 Genre Movie Calendar provides titles that fit with that particular month. They may be new to you or familiar gems, but they are all worth watching.
If you missed Part 1, covering January through March, then be sure to catch up here.
Part 2, covering April through June, can be found here.
JULY
THE POOL
There's no better way to beat the heat in the depths of summer than by heading out to the water. Unless you want to stay in with the a/c and catch up on more movies. Should that be the case, then Ping Lumpraploeng's Thai horror comedy of errors THE POOL is for sure your one-stop shop for unending terror and someone facing the worst day of their life.
For a movie that's about a man trapped in an Olympic-sized swimming pool, surviving against an alligator, a lot is going on in THE POOL’s corner. It's an almost audacious stupid film. Where the "hero," Day (Theeradej Wongpaupan), makes every vac decision he could in his life. Falling asleep while the pool is draining. Keeping his phone just out of reach. Having his dog tied up to a ladder at the end of the pool.
For all seemingly idiotic bits, THE POOL still manages to chill and thrill. Any positive moves that Day manages to make mean that 15 other things go wrong. Seeing if he can merely survive is reason enough to make it to the next scene. Save for the truly masochistic viewers who wonder just how bad things can get. That's the secret up the film's sleeve. It can have a weird pro-choice (feels a bit like "this is what the government says") plot thread, and strange product placement from Pizza Hut, all while keeping viewers glued to the screen. Just remember to suspend disbelief whenever the monster in THE POOL turns into CGI—Ping Lumpraploeng did not have access to Weta or ILM.
ALTERNATE PICK: ALLIGATOR
When surveying the vast subgenre that is monster mayhem movies, ALLIGATOR doesn't get brought up nearly enough as it should. A glaring oversight for sure, considering the movie has a 4K UHD release. That's a crime, seeing as how countless imitators wish they had one-tenth the boundless energy of the Lewis Teague-helmed and John Sayles-penned film.
Besides featuring a giant prehistoric creature roaming the sewers (Chicago, not New York), ALLIGATOR also features the animal magnetism of a young(er) Robert Forster. When dead bodies start to pile up alongside mutated animals, detective David Madison (Foster) enlists the help of a herpetologist (Robin Riker) to figure out what is going on. Once face-to-face with the giant beast it's an all-out assault to see who can outlast who, as no one becomes safe.
The reason a film like ALLIGATOR still exists freshly cleaned on home video today is that it understands what people want to see. They want to see monster movies that pump out a ridiculous amount of death, while not making every person to walk into the frame seem like an idiot. You can call that a Sayles special, as the screenwriter had a way of bringing gravitas to the various B-films in which he found himself involved (PIRANHA, MIMIC, THE HOWLING). Should you be the kind of person not swayed by fine writing then you'll be pleased to know that the film also is home to one of filmdom's meanest kid murders.
AUGUST
JALLIKATTU
Without a doubt, the biggest foreign release of 2022 was RRR. Its mainstream appeal and box office success was the culmination of a big journey that Indian cinema had been on for the better part of a decade. Just a few years earlier though there was another Indian film that took festival audiences by storm, thanks to straightforward storytelling and classic fits of destruction. That film was Lijo Jose Pellissery's JALLIKATTU
No other film on this list can be sold quite the way a single sentence can sell JALLIKATTU. Imagine that Robert Altman directed JAWS, on land. On its face, it's a bold and almost foolish claim. In actuality, it encapsulates the movie perfectly. One morning a butcher's assistant goes to tie up a water buffalo but messes up and the giant beast makes his way across the countryside. This one tiny oversight leads to the destruction of not only homes, businesses, and an entire ecosystem, but the very way of life the people of this remote town hold dear.
It's no hyperbole to call this film a masterpiece. The water buffalo running for survival is almost secondary to the nearly 30 quasi-main characters that enter and exit the frame. From several businessmen, the film's version of Quint (aka the only person in town with a gun), religious figures, a bride-to-be and her family, Quint's sworn rival, and a few dozen police officers. All of them have their own story and how they interact with the wild animal who upends all their lives. There's a small throwaway character whose field is trampled, who is continually checked in on, as the only character willing to take the correct bureaucratic steps to be reimbursed for his ruin. All this without divulging that it may have one of the single most earth-shattering finales of any movie in the last 20 years.
High praise? Yes. Does JALLIKATTU deliver the goods? And then some!
JALLIKATTU is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
ALTERNATE PICK: BAASHA
Where JALLIKATTU is a taut tale of a small city undone by a beast, then Suresh Krissna's BAASHA is an exuberant and decadent tale of a city man undone by the beast within him.
A gentle and kind rickshaw driver (Indian superstar Rajinikanth) tries to avoid violence wherever he goes. If someone is in trouble, he helps them. Can't pay your bills? It's okay, your sweetly neighborhood brother has you covered. The only thing that he cares about more than the average individual is his close-knit family. When their daily dealings put them in the crosshairs of some nogoodniks, the genial lead must face his dark past before things get out of control.
Much like the aforementioned RRR, BAASHA’s long runtime (150 minutes) is largely compounded by flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks. As well as flashbacks interrupted by musical numbers. The louder and crazier it gets, the more you fall under its spell. Part of that is Rajinikanth's raw energy, which stands in direct opposition to your first impression of him. An element that just grows once the layers of his psyche are laid bare. This is a movie that uses the TERMINATOR theme sting as entrance music. Multiple times. THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY’s theme gets borrowed, once Baasha arrives on the scene. If that sounds off-putting…you're wrong; it's one of BAASHA's endless qualities that make it an action film like no other.
SEPTEMBER
UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING (UNRATED CUT)
Action films are often the forgotten side of the genre groupings. More than almost any other subset out there, they can co-exist peacefully with another genre, often morphing into something special and unique. Those two words also fit well when describing John Hyams’ (son of Peter) unhinged, unapologetic, and 10 kinds of face-melting film, UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING. You read that right, the 4th film in the UNIVERSAL SOLDIER franchise—the second to go Direct To Video—is a movie most certainly worth your time.
Unlike other entries on this list, saying little about the details of DAY OF RECKONING isn't a plus, it's a necessity. Taking it in good faith that the film is worth the journey. Suffice it to say though, if you need the carrot dangled about, it stars Scott Adkins as a man who loses his wife and kid and goes in search of Luc Deveraux (Jean-Claude Van Damme) for answers. Along the way, shotguns tear people asunder, a sporting goods store packs a serious punch, and anywhere a fight could break out, it does. It's about as unrelenting as this kind of actioner can get, meanwhile managing to look better than films that cost three times its budget.
The only thing that keeps DAY OF RECKONING from being the biggest title on this list, is one of access. While the film can be rented from almost every streaming service, it's just the R-cut. Aficionados or collectors might want to spy on the Canadian or German Blu-rays, which include the unrated cut. Besides having a few different character beats, all the gore in all its glory is there to behold. It is, no hyperbole, the only way to view the film.
UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING Canadian Blu-ray is available for purchase here.
ALTERNATE PICK: THE KUNG FU CULT MASTER
Shakespeare famously wrote, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Obviously, he was talking about THE KUNG FU CULT MASTER, aka EVIL CULT, aka LORD OF THE WU-TANG. Whatever you call it, Wong Jing's 1993 wuxia extravagance finds a way to mix the surreal, the insane, and fantasy together into a stew that, while technically incomplete, is a wild ride all the same.
Stop me if you've heard this one before: A young boy and his parents are going to visit grandpa for his 100th birthday. Evil people accost them, asking where great grandpa is when in an act of defiance mom and dad kill themselves and the little boy is stricken with "Buddha's palm" poisoning him instantly. Nothing so far? Well how about grandpa saves him, but the kid can never learn martial arts or special powers until as a teenager (Jet Li) he gets knocked off a cliff and meets a guy who is fused to a bolder and his vines shoot out to heal the kid? Still not ringing any bells?
THE KUNG FU CULT MASTER is a bizarre movie to behold. Based on a book, the director planned to make multiple films, which would have saved the cliffhanger ending tacked on here. Knowing that helps brush over the threads that appear to be setting something up. It never dilutes the experience, partially because the action continually evolves in ways that seem illogical and the coolest things ever. Fans of Sammo Hung, Wong Jing, and Jet Li owe it to themselves to seek this one out.
