Lady Bloodfight (2016)

I'm not sure how this movie made it's way on to my Netflix queue but it had been sitting there for a while when I finally decided to watch it this weekend. I wasn't dying to watch it. It was more of a case of me deciding to give it a try and then sticking with it.

Jane is from Pittsburgh where she waits on tables. After getting into a fight with some patrons of the diner where she work she is fired. She then leaves Pittsburgh and travels to Hong Kong to fight in a women's martial arts competition and search for her father. In Hong Kong she meets Shu who fought in the same competition the year before. Shu trains Jane for the competition. Wai, Shu's rival, trains Ling to win the same competition.

The first half was a bit of a slog to get through. The acting in this movie is pretty bad but there are a few emotional moments in the second half of the movie that got to me a little bit. I did like the music and how they used it, especially towards the end. The fight scenes within the competition and outside of it were decent. I'm not sure what I really expected to get out of this movie. Most of it felt forced. I shouldn't have been moved by it, even though I was. There were lots of short cuts taken, lots of things left unexplained.

UnReal 3.01

Oath

Rachel returns to Everlasting after a 6-month hiatus. She has spent the time on a farm, taking care of animals and working on telling the truth. Quinn talks her in to coming back to work on the reality TV show. Rachel talks Quinn into accepting Chet's idea: have a female (instead of male bachelor at the center of the show. Serena, the female bachelor, is loaded and makes her money investing in tech companies. She hasn't had much experience dating, or at least that's the impression I get.

Atlanta 1.10

The Jacket

Earn wakes up the morning after a party in a stranger's house. He is missing his jacket. He needs to find it. He tries retracing his steps. He goes to a strip club where he, Alfred, and Darius hung out the night before. He talks to a bouncer and a stripper, but doesn't have any luck finding his jacket. Eventually he finds out the Uber driver from the night before has it. Alfred gives him a ride over to the driver's place. Darius is in the back seat. The driver doesn't show. Alfred senses that something is wrong but when he tries moving his car several police vehicles swoop in and block their way.

Cowboy Bebop 1.11

Toys in the Attic

Something is aboard the Bebop, something more than just the usual five. Jet is the first one to get bit by it. He was investigating what looked like a fridge of unknown origin in the cargo hold at the time. It gets him in the back of the neck. Spike takes a blood sample and tries crosschecking it against the ship's database of known diseases without any luck. Faye thinks that Jet and Spike are being overly dramatic. She is the second victim.

The Phil Silvers Show 1.01

New Recruits

Sgt Bilko needs money. He lost all the money he had in a poker game, which included money he had borrowed from Corporal Barbella and Corporal Henshaw. The rest of men are very reluctant to fork over any money.

Things start to look up after the Col. Hall puts Bilko in charge of a squad of recruits who are very green and have plenty of cash. Bilko's conscience gets in the way of his vices when they trust him to look after their money

I think I saw an episode or two of this show way back when, probably in the late seventies or early eighties. The show originally aired in the mid-to-late fifties.

GLOW 2.03

Concerned Women of America

Ruth and Debbie work on a public service announcement (PSA) to be aired during the show. They are pushed to do it in response to a complaint from the faceless Concerned Women of America who feel that the show is setting the wrong example for young women. Ruth and Debbie develop a PSA about teenage pregnancy. Most of the women of GLOW are in the PSA. Justine plays the teen in the PSA who is being pressured by her boyfriend (played by Bash) to have sex. Carmen plays the role of the baby.

Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)

This is basically a very loose remake of The Seven Samurai that is set in space. The premise is that an evil warlord threatens Akir, a peaceful planet. A young man from Akir goes seeking help. He returns with a motley group of heroes who pledge to help defend the planet.

There are a number of familiar faces in this movie, well, familiar to me. George Peppard (whom I know best from the A-Team), John Saxon (who was also in Enter the Dragon, which starred Bruce Lee) and Robert Vaughn (who was also in The Magnificent Seven, an earlier remake of the Seven Samurai) are the three actors I know best. There are a couple others that I recognize: Richard Thomas (whom I associate mostly with The Americans) and Sybil Danning (I heard her recently on an episode of the Double Page Spread podcast talking about her career including about 5-10 minutes about this movie).

Luke Cage 2.01

Soul Brother #1

All sorts of things are set in motion in this episode. Most of the players are back from last season including the ones who also showed up in Defenders.

James Lucas, Cage's father becomes part of the story in this episode. He is played by Reg E. Cathey, who died before the season dropped. Looking ahead I can see that he appears in about half the episodes in this season. I've got no idea if that is the first half or every other episode or what. There is one scene with him early in the episode. He is a preacher and in that scene he is preaching about Luke, but not before an audience. Later in the episode he meets up with Luke, whom he insists on calling Carl, the name Luke was given at birth. It is not a pleasant reunion.

Atlanta 1.09

Juneteenth

Van drags Earn to a party thrown by Monique, Van's friend, and Craig, her white husband. It is a Juneteenth party Earn doesn't want to be there. He deals with it in a number of ways. At first he won't play along, then he does, then Van starts losing interest in being there.

Cowboy Bebop 1.10

Ganymede Elegy

The Bebop stops on Ganymede, Jet's home planet. They are there to turn in a bounty whom they caught between this episode and the last one. Edward is still with them but doesn't play a very big role in this episode. The same can be said about Faye. She catches some rays in a bikini while Spike turns in the bounty and Jet visits an old friend, an old girlfriend, Alisa.

GLOW 2.02

Candy of the Year

The first show of the season doesn't go very well or at least not well enough. Sam decides to make all the wrestlers audition for time on the show. Debbie tries to get Sam and Bash to listen to her. Behind her back they are very dismissive. She invites them both over for dinner but they don't show. Instead Tammé shows up for dinner and the two talk one-on-one for probably the first time. Something that Tammé says gives Debbie an idea for how to yet the crowd more excited, candy. She buys a few cases of Nerds, the candy of the year to hand out at the match.

Atlanta 1.08

The Club

Earn, Paper Boi, and Darius hang out at Primal. Paper Boi is there to make an appearance. He is getting paid for it or at least that's how it is supposed to work. Earn spends most of the episode trying to get the club's manager to pay up. He doesn't like to drink but has a few anyway, which isn't to his benefit. Paper Boi is grumpy because he gets upstaged by another performer who is more popular than him. He hangs with a woman who seems very friendly but when the night ends he finds out that she already has a boyfriend.

Not bad but also not my favorite episode. There is one moment that was so surreal it made me laugh.

L.A. Confidential (1997)

I saw this movie at the Uptown on Connecticut Avenue when it was first released. I recall being very impressed.

There are lots of characters in this movie but there are three that are highlighted early in the movie: Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), Bud White (Russell Crowe), and Ed Exley (Guy Pearce). They are all police officers but they each seem to be at different points in their career. Vincennes is the oldest of the three. He spends most of his time as a consultant on Badge of Honor, a TV show. White is a detective who gets suspended early in the movie because he won't testify against several other officers including his partner. Exley is the youngest of the three. He is pushing for a promotion. He wants to become a detective but his supervisor nixes it. An incident on Christmas Eve provides him the opportunity to jump the chain of command and get a promotion in return for testifying against several other officers.

GLOW 2.01

Viking Funeral

Pre-production starts for the first season of GLOW. Sam is feeling the pressure although he doesn't frame it like that. Ruth has ideas but Sam doesn't want to hear them. Sam oversees the construction of the set while Ruth take the ladies to the mall. They take a camera man with them and he shoot lots of footage of them goofing off at the mall. They edit it all together into a montage and show it to Sam, who loses his cool after seeing what they produced.