MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE (1985)

A young man, Omar (Gordon Warnecke), lives in London with his depressed father. His father is so bummed out that he just sits in bed all day and drinks. Omar is offered a job by his uncle in his uncle’s parking garage. Soon he is promoted to driving around drug trafficker Salim. One evening, while Omar is driving Salim around, the car is approached by a small group of goofballs. While the dorks are literally licking the car’s windows, Omar looks over to the side of the road and there is sexy badboi Johnny (Daniel Day-Lewis) leaning up against a light pole. They used to be schoolboy chums and begin talking again. Eventually other family stuff happens and Omar is given a broken down laundromat to run. He hires Johnny to help.

MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE is a watchable film (and I’m sure back in the mid-1980’s it was a fresher idea), but overall, it left me flat. Maybe if I knew more about Thatcher-era London I would have enjoyed it more but based on the Criterion Collection disc cover and the various things I’d heard about the film over the years, I was expecting the romantic relationship between Omar and Johnny to be the main focus of the film. Instead, to me, it felt like Omar’s family was the main focus, the tension between the street punks and well, everybody to be second and finally, Omar and Johnny’s relationship third. Also, I didn’t get any sexual chemistry between the two main actors.

Solid acting, a television set behind a sofa, meddling pace, unimpressive sets and locations that kinda gave off a made-for-TV vibe, too small of a cast, multiple scenes out on the street but without any feel of it being a real street with random citizens walking around, multiple unsympathetic characters (including our two heroes, I especially felt bad for the little girl they terrorized while they were stealing her family's electronics), 1980's fashions, a SOME LIKE IT HOT poster, another poster for a movie that looks like it is called LAILA (which there is a movie from 1984 with that name), a very odd placement of a traffic light, a character with a face tattoo (not sure what the historic timeline is on cinematic face tattoos, although we all know that King Vidiot had one in 1983), non-threatening street punks, a woman in jeans and a purple shirt playing a video arcade machine but then when a fight breaks out it's a different woman in jeans and a purple shirt, a weird water(?) sound effect that was annoying, a "turf accountant" which I had to Google. It's the same as a betting hall, like for horse races. Also, how was Salim so naive as to not expect some kind of reprisal for what he did to the punks foot?

MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE is historically interesting and I’m glad it was made (and I'm glad I watched it), but the entire thing felt undercooked to me. I would like to see a remake.

MY IMMORTAL THE MOVIE (2015)

Full disclosure: the audio on this movie isn’t the best, so my apologizes if I got anything in the story incorrect.

A young vampire by the name of Ebony goes to college but seems to fill 100% of her time hanging out with her two boyfriends(?) instead of going to class. One evening she and bf #1 go to a shit rock concert in a deserted basement. Afterward they fuck in the woods. Later on, bf #1 is kidnapped by somebody whose name sounded like Lord Moldyhorse. So, Ebony shoots a vampire guard in the head and watches two guys fuck in the hallway outside her bedroom. Later on, there is some lightning and Horsemold rolls down a hill. Fin.

I literally have zero info about this movie. I should probably do some research, but I don’t care and nobody reads this shit anyway. That said, MY IMMORTAL THE MOVIE seems to just be a student film and with that in mind, I enjoyed it. The 45-minute runtime (that includes both opening and closing credits) didn’t overstay its welcome, the pace was brisk, the story was wacky and seems to be based on Harry Potter. I think? I swear to Satan I heard somebody yell something like “you Muggle fuck” at one point. As far as the acting goes, it’s definitely more middle school-level than college, but still, it worked out fine with a story of this nature and the actors seemed to be having fun.

Why this movie was released on DVD, I’m not really sure, but I’m glad it was and will probably watch it again with friends at some point. As far as the negatives go, I straight-up had no idea what the fuck was going on, the crappy music was too loud in the mix, the use of the r-word was uncalled for, I don’t think there was any consideration for lighting and despite seeing boom mic reflections in various windows…I’m not sure that the mic was turned on. The audio on AX ‘EM was better. And that ain’t a joke.

Shitty lighting, shitty audio, whatever. MY IMMORTAL THE MOVIE was a fun watch and definitely better than some of the crap I've seen in the movie theater this year. THE WATCHERS, I'm talking about you, mugglefucker!