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Animal Crackers (1930)
More Presentation Than Movie
The Marx Brothers ANIMAL CRACKERS is basically their hangout movie, seeming like a grand Broadway showcase with elaborate sets, mostly of a giant mansion interior celebrating Groucho as a famous big game hunter, introduced by his assistant played by straight-man brother Zeppo...
What's ironic is there's a kind of standard-handsome young actor named Hal Thompson whose relationship with beautiful Lilian Roth would have fit Zeppo instead of the few scenes as Groucho's note-scribbling gopher...
Meanwhile Harpo and Chico get to show off their incredible musical talent with harp and piano solos... making this feature an introductory presentation to the talents on board, despite being their second feature...
But once again it's regular Margaret Dumont, here as the fancy rich lady throwing the party who, while once again is the thankless brunt of Groucho's hit-and-miss one-liners, does the most work overall...
Not only soaking the barbs but progressing the expository plot-line about a stolen paintings... that mean very little compared to all the running around.
Monkey Business (1931)
Zeppo Plays Along
One of the first five Marx Brothers films featuring youngest brother Zeppo, usually cast as a romantic sidebar being more handsome and move star-looking than tough-type Chico, physical-comic/brilliant musician Harpo and one-liner leader Groucho, here in MONKEY BUSINESS aboard a ship and, while romancing semi-regular blonde ingenue Thelma Todd (along with brunette Ruth Hall), the boys are up to a lot of...
Well the title says it all... as this isn't one of the better Marx flicks, with Zeppo actually taking part in the physical hijinkx with his comedic siblings instead of playing the straight man... the latter position where he fits best, needed far more for the guys to play off or against than along with, wherein four's kind of an unnecessary crowd.
Horse Feathers (1932)
Cramming Vignettes
While THE MARX BROTHERS are all great performers, Chico Marx is the character-actor of the bunch, moving the exposition and far more grouchy than Grouchy, the one-line-spouting leader...
And while they're all funny, Harpo Marx is the token zany physical comic while Zeppo, appearing in their first five films and here playing the college student son of new campus president Groucho, is the young handsome straight man...
Which is something needed to counterbalance all the incessant running around that, in the case of HORSE FEATHERS, gets a bit tiring as the initial plot... of a big collegiate football game scam... gets lost in the mix...
Leaving perhaps the best sequence to Harpo Marx's insanely-amazing harp-playing in a Zepppo-era Marx Brothers feature where the piecemeal detours distract from the connected main course.
Crazy People (1990)
Less Is Moore
What's basically Dudley Moore's final leading role in a mainstream (live-action) comedy, CRAZY PEOPLE is better than its reputation, which is hardly anything at all...
A shame since this parody of not just the advertising industry but of one man who decided to be brutally forthright with his ads (basically parodying his own job), including taglines about fat people, scary movies, plane crashes, boxy cars, sexy cars and having sex at luxury resorts...
Mostly taking place in a mental institution with an endearingly semi-humorous ensemble of troubled patients liken to THE DREAM TEAM, the biggest problem is that CRAZY PEOPLE takes too many detours away from the ads (that his loony friends help him with) and into Moore's romance with older-man's-fantasy Daryl Hannah, always a good actress but their relationship is contrived and horribly unrealistic...
From classics 10 to ARTHUR a decade earlier, Dudley Moore passed as an anti-sex-symbol sex-symbol... however, at this point he could be her uncle or father and yet, when CRAZY works it works pretty well, overall an enjoyable time-passing flick you can watch again and again... if only the director (Moore's buddy Tony Bill) stuck closer to the actual theme linking borderline insanity with complete and total honesty.
Stir Crazy (1980)
Best Pryor/Wilder Classic
The Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor collaboration was supposed to have begun a few years before the Alfred Hitchcock-style train adventure comedy SILVER STREAK, that really only featured Pryor, mostly during the second half...
Pryor co-wrote and was a sort of "race relations" consultant for BLAZING SADDLES, but Cleavon Little was cast since studio heads balked at such a risque standup comedian in the lead...
It all worked for the best since Little was more clean cut, using a "token-black" persona as a sublime fit for the parody of Wild West racism -- had Pryor been the new Sheriff in Town, it'd seem odd he didn't fly off the handle after one single person throws the "N" word his way...
And while his STREAK performance was good, it wasn't something he was "born to play," which would happen a few years later, the black and white duo of Pryor and Wilder being of equal importance, and really kickstarting as a team in STIR CRAZY, a prison flick that begins as a (like STREAK) road movie only in a dilapidated van...
Starting in New York where both affable losers are canned from their already nowhere jobs, headed to California and only able to reach the "Sun Belt" before the inevitable fate occurs...
This first act is more than a setup: What could have been a rushed intro to get the boys to their plot-relevant/titular locale is an amusing short story all it's own...
Leading to the game-changing lockup in a maximum security prison for robbing a bank we know they didn't rob: After having done an act wearing chicken suits to amuse customers waiting in the bank line, which adorns every poster and VHS or DVD cover, two faceless crooks don the suits during a lunch break and, that's that, case closed...
Yet the funniest sequence takes place at a jail before the big prison -- Pryor teaching Wilder how to "walk black" as the duo head into a cell/tank surrounded by twenty or so dregs, including the big Tony Burton and then a guy who makes Burton look like Pryor -- who reacts to this giant's observation, "Short son of a b-tch, aren't you?" by desperately pleading, "My father was a short son of a b-tch... My mother was short, too, and my brother was so short we couldn't even see him."
Pryor's given the smooth sidekick role making perfect use of his standup routine spontaneity and edgy acting abilities, reacting with neurotic fervor whenever there's something-else to stress about, leading to an Ax-Murdering Lifer the size of two Sherman Tanks, who Gene (with Richard) winds up, mysteriously and miraculously, bonding with...
Wilder, here, is made of cartoon teflon -- resilient as Popeye sleepwalking along a construction site, each foot landing on every girder and always moving forward. In turn, Pryor's lucky enough to be glued within the protected aura of his buddy, and yet they're still in prison for something they didn't do...
So the sporadic tantrums against Wilder's perpetual optimism make STIR CRAZY, directed by Sidney Poitier during his twenty year break from acting, a fantastic unity...
And they're not alone, surrounded by a string of capable side-characters, from fellow cons (including nice ones like Georg Stafford Brown to baddies like Jonathan Banks) to guards (led by Craig T. Nelson) and a good old boy warden that yearns to beat his rival in an annual prison rodeo in which, again, miraculously and without explanation, Wilder is a sudden pro at: first riding a mechanical bull and then the real deal...
As the climax, practically taking up the entire third act, gets a bit long, the same TV-style "pulling off a caper" music playing on an annoying loop, and yet there's always something to keep the audience, and the characters, guessing, even when the Fish Outta water hilarity is long past.
Remembering Gene Wilder (2023)
Gene Wilder Propaganda, But That's Okay
The fact that Gene Wilder narrated this documentary about himself... after his death... taken from his autobiography's audiobook... is both really good and sometimes, not so perfect...
However the first outvotes the latter since Gene's journey from the stage to screen... from Willy Wonka to his movies with Mel Brooks to his partnership with Richard Pryor and then his marriage to Gilda Radner... is as optimistic and kindhearted as the characters he portrayed, and how he obviously was in real life: A life of making people (first his sickly mother) laugh...
The downside is that the timeless hits like Blazing Saddles and Stir Crazy and Young Frankenstein and flawed misses like Hanky Panky and The World's Greatest Lover and outright turkeys like Haunted Honeymoon and Another You are either treated equally with the classics, or not mentioned at all...
So we never really get to experience whatever roadblocks he had along the way (Gilda's death aside), which can often be more interesting than the nice stuff (and it makes any comeback actually matter)... especially in a documentary about an actor with such a long and varied career full of so many ups and downs...
But for a bright sunny glimpse into a man of pure cinematic genius, Remembering Gene Wilder is a neat way to spend 90-minutes.
Psycho: The Lost Tapes of Ed Gein (2023)
Three Podcast Idiots
First off, the three podcasters in this are really, really annoying, laughing and joking around about Ed Gein's murders and laughing about the victims...
Let's just all admit that podcasting is not a genuine form of media when clowns like this are included in a documentary that has actual experts, from people in the town to the author of what's the quintessential Ed Gein biography...
Why these podcaster clowns are included is a mystery, but it's probably because the filmmakers felt that most young people can relate to young jokers, or something...
As for the titular interview tapes: they take about ten lines from Gein and try making a four-part doc with them, and that's a tall order...
With horror-movie music and a few shots making Gein look formidable, it's really the case of taking who's more a backwoods Barney Fife type than a Norman Bates or Buffalo Bill and making a contrived terrorizing study, which doesn't gel here at all...
However it's not a terrible documentary as you do learn some things about Gein... but learning/educating audiences isn't what passes for documentaries anymore...
For True Crime, books are always the best bet because there aren't any repetitive facts, opinions, speculations or photos, and best yet, no annoyingly childish podcasters.
Crossing Delancey (1988)
Hail Peter Riegert
Peter Riegert is a brilliantly subtle actor; so much so you can't even notice anything brilliant at all... as in, there's no performance in his roles ranging from Tim Matheson's sidekick in ANIMAL HOUSE, or Burt Lancaster's Scotland-bound employee in LOCAL HERO... he simply IS the character...
Which means something two-fold since, as a perfectly normal, hard-working owner of a Manhattan pickle store, he's the last person that gorgeous Jewish single girl Amy Irving wants to date... especially because her own doting mother (and mom's doting friend) really, almost desperately wants the relationship to happen...
And, in-between this somewhat buried mainline, CROSSING DELANCEY gets a bit too progressive for its own good, particularly involving Irving's job as a book publisher's assistant having affairs (or near-affairs) with a pretentiously published author and an unhappily married man...
Then again, all these distractions (also including a handful of girl-friends that often seem like three characters in one) make the relatively few sequences with Riegert that much more important and effective, and even romantic... in a perfectly suited anti-romantic-comedy fashion, neatly towing the line of mainstream and art-house.
Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Superwolf & The Secret Queen
The Wachowskis deserve credit for, like their first MATRIX, coming up with a pulpy yarn not based on an established franchise or comic book or a teenager's favorite dystopian-future novel...
And with a super-heroine name like Jupiter Jones, it's surprising that Mila Kunis' character has such a mundane life, cleaning toilets and desperate enough to sell her eggs (yes, those eggs) for an eBay telescope: Something inside must yearn for the stars and, as they say, be careful what you wish for...
Tatum
But when it includes a dashing, handsome, solidly built half-wolf with Vulcan ears and roller-skate thrusters instead of shoes, perhaps that price isn't so bad. Soon enough she's blindly smitten by his looks alone, deleting any reluctance and awe for being catapulted into this extremely bizarre circumstance.
In the resilient protector role is Channing Tatum. His Caine Wise is a cross between Clint Eastwood's Spaghetti Western loner and Superman, which makes Jupiter an ideal Lois Lane. They even fly around together when he's not getting her out of close calls: Which is all JUPITER ASCENDING amounts to...
With a barrage of rambling exposition explaining the complicated star world run by an interstellar royal family pulling Jupiter... who happens to be their Queen... like a political wishbone, the action scenes are what you'll remember in this potentially epic science-fantasy that winds up merely filling time and space.
Malibu Express (1985)
Sad Cinematic Farewell to Robyn Hilton
The last movie featuring the gum-chewing blonde girlfriend of Mel Brooks' governor character in BLAZING SADDLES, the Noir detective spoof MALIBU EXPRESS has tons of Playboy Playmates, vanilla mustached leading man Darby Hinton, and the kind of light hump wannabe-porn that didn't quite need a curtain in the video rental store...
Yet even for a bad movie, is downright awful, lacking the homage-driven tongue-in-cheek humor, interesting locations, and sporadic gunplay usually given to Bogart-like throwbacks: comedy or otherwise...
Besides Hilton's five scenes as the mischievous maid, Marion... Maid Marion... Sybil Danning, in her usual comfortable b-movie groove, provides the only decent performance despite the fact there's no rhyme or rhythm here at all...
C'mon already, bad cult films are supposed to be fun. But this EXPRESS was made about ten years too late... not the sound of a genuine party, but someone playing their music too loud.
Class of 1999 (1990)
More Robocop Than 1984
Bradley Gregg was a pretty good young character-actor, and really stood out as a bad kid in STAND BY ME while in NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS he played the sleeplessly troubled hospital patient into puppets with enough melodramatic rebellion for his inevitable doom to really matter...
But in Mark L. Lester's sequel to CLASS OF 1984 titled CLASS OF 1999... where instead of teachers fighting against lethal gang-member students the gangs are fighting against three human/android teachers... Gregg is trying so hard to be stiffly cool (in a kind of Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Western style) he has almost no personality at all...
Instead of being a cutup who learns about how strong those bionic teachers (led by mad scientist Stacy Keach and played by John P. Ryan, Pam Grier and Patrick KilPatrick) really are, he's already done with drugs and fighting by the opening credits, making his transition not matter since it never actually happens at all...
Instead he just frowns and grimaces, even while dating principal Malcolm McDowell's sexy yet scholastic daughter Traci Lind and, more liken to the ironical police-state-future of ROBOCOP than Lester's gritty teen-angst original, CLASS OF 1999 plays like a straight-to-video title that's surprisingly decent for a day off work, school, or whatever you happen to be breaking from.
A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014)
Decent Sick Day Movie
When Seth MacFarlane's cowardly sheepherder, Albert, confesses that he's more like the guy in the crowd who pokes fun at the hero's shirt than he is the hero, it's a clever line... But as the actual in-the-flesh star of his first fully live action motion picture, we're gonna have to judge the man's shirt ourselves...
Seth gives great voice-overs but his on-screen acting style is more Jerry Seinfeld mellow than Woody Allen neurotic... Although, he tries his very best for the latter, rambling on and on about everything that bugs the living hell out of him...
Meanwhile the side-characters, including Anna, played by Charlize Theron, and Liam Neeson's dastardly outlaw Clinch, don't seem convinced they're in a comedy...
Which isn't so bad since the performances in A MILLION WAYS TO DIE are laidback and natural, and Albert's plight is involving: When his girlfriend dumps him for another guy, he prepares for a showdown but finds himself pitted against a much more lethal adversary, that being Neeson, the husband of his budding new love interest, Theron...
While the title supports all the action-driven gags in the first half, mostly seen in the trailers... including a guy getting his head crushed by a block of ice... the most clever lines are observations about the 1800's: like how no one smiles in photographs and examples of old school racism... stuff like that...
These probably won't evoke belly laughter like the sporadic bouts of "toilet humor" attempt to do, but each subtle quip provides McFarland a chance to philosophize in his own bold fashion, not letting any minority group or religious sect off the hook...
With gun fights, gorgeous exterior shots, an intentionally melodramatic soundtrack and a bevy of expository montage sequences, the movie plays out like a bonafide Cowboy picture with jokes on the side...
And if you paid to see an actual story unfold, that's fine enough. But if you're expecting TED or something drop dead hilarious like BLAZING SADDLES... best look somewhere else, pilgrim.
The Trollenberg Terror (1958)
Janet Munro & Jennifer Jayne Make Perfect Sisters
The case of the originally-titled British horror THE TROLLENBERG TERROR changing into THE CRAWLING EYE is a matter of b-movie peer pressure, morphing a genuinely effective, deliberately slow-paced and mostly character-driven thriller into the kind of campy fare that never really had a chance...
The central character is imported American actor Forrest Tucker, who had just come off another British-made snowbound venture (by Hammer Studios) THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN... and TERROR is equally smart and cerebral, featuring scream-queen Janet Munro as a young lady with telepathic powers, who... before honing in on the impending danger at hand... was a kind of novelty act with perfectly-cast older sister Jennifer Jayne, both brunettes with full lips and looking very much related...
The movie cuts from several locations: the hotel where all the characters... including token scientist Warren Mitchell and handsome British co-lead journalist Laurence Payne curbed by possessed human-antagonist Andrew Faulds... busily inhabit; an adjoined observatory where much of gooey eyeball creature battles take place; and various detours into the snowy mountainous region as the body-count builds in a spooky, intense manner...
Overall TROLLENBERG belongs to Munro, whose intense vulnerability makes her a sublime starlet while Tucker's performance is surprisingly subdued while Jayne looks lovely and emotional: learning along with the audience exactly what they're up against, equally balancing expository scientific dialogue and effective bursts of intense action.
Gojira -1.0 (2023)
Toho Does Spielberg
Japanese cinema (Toho Studios in particular) have made a popular Godzilla vehicle in GODZILLA MINUS ONE, which makes sense since the creature was literally born there: only it pays more homage to American auteur Steven Spielberg's JURASSIC PARK... as the roaring T-Rex-style monster first appears where a failed (hence living) kamikaze pilot takes a military-island breather... and JAWS, after the same central character gets a job on a tattered yet dependable fishing boat, where they drop and shoot floating land-mines instead of barrels (and the approaching dorsal fin's replaced by the creatures' spiked-back resembling immense reindeer horns)...
And while attempting a searing human story in-between the monstrous ocean-to-city attacks... including our much too vulnerable hero meeting a pretty girl raising an orphaned baby in the ruins of their hometown... the action and downtime feels awkwardly imbalanced as the titular GODZILLA, looking fitfully menacing and formidably ferocious, seems like a special guest star crashing an otherwise slow-burn postwar-melodrama.
Big Eyes (2014)
Bland Burton Film With Hyperactive Lead
What BIG EYES has in common with another Tim Burton film, BIG FISH, is that both are based on liars, but only one is a filthy, stinking liar...
The 1950's is never really shown in a positive light, and hasn't been since... well... the 1950's, and, here we're reminded that men are the only people who had it good during that era... Especially if they marry well... The man, that is...
For in the case of fast-talking Walter Keane, played by fast-talking two-time Oscar-winning Christoph Waltz, a strategic partnership earned him a career as a famous artist, "his" work going from galleries to posters to postcards...
And those Gothic looking waifs with huge sad eyes are about the only Tim Burton element of a film that, based on a true story, lives up to the chauvinistic time it's based...
The woman, Margaret Keane, played by Amy Adams, not only lacks important pivotal screen-time but hardly gets a word in edgewise... Which is intentional since she's stuck with a con artist charlatan using her talent for his fame, and their money. The biggest downside is he's a plagiarizing jerk and ultimately becomes borderline psychotic...
And since Christoph Waltz's performance is so outrageously over-the-top right off the bat, there's no progressive arc: Instead of going from A to B he starts on a frantic C and never slows down, waxing so much poetic there's hardly a character visible at all...
At least not a realistic one. Just another chance for Waltz to steal a movie that, unlike those paintings, is completely his to have and to hold, and never let go of but, without Quentin Tarantino writing a motormouth script befitting Waltz's style, he just doesn't seem to fit all that well anywhere else.
The Godfather Part III (1990)
Does Everything Need To Be A Trilogy?
It seems that everything has to become a trilogy, and for about twenty-years THE GODFATHER and THE GODFATHER PART II proved this theory wrong... which actually began a few years later with STAR WARS as a good example and just about everything else after that...
As in the first two classic GODFATHER films are the perfect double-feature, made practically back-to-back to where the second film is truly, literally the second part rather than a cash grab followup, both timelines taken from the original novel by Mario Puzo...
So, many years later, Francis Ford Coppola, 1970's auteur/maverick turned into the kind of hack who would throw this load of rubbish onto the screen, turned Al Pacino's once dark and brooding Michael Corleone and his deliberately unsuited wife Diane Keaton seem like a couple from a romantic comedy...
Of course the elephant in the room is the casting of the director's daughter Sofia as Michael Corleone's daughter Mary, and her cousin played by Andy Garcia, the bastard son of James Caan's Sonny and trying desperately to bring back that kind of spunk into the dismally slow proceedings: their lack of romantic chemistry is even worse than the sluggish crime aspect (featuring Joe Mantega as one of the most cliche mafia chiefs ever brought onto the screen): all that is over-stylized (with bright colors ruining the original film's classic shadowy darkness) and like everything else, horribly melodramatic...
Funny that this infamous catastrophe wound up being nominated for an Oscar... it was probably nominated the minute it went into pre-production... but that year, ironically, two now iconic, truly miraculous mob flicks, GOODFELLAS and MILLER'S CROSSING, deserved (and eventually received) far more attention...
THE GODFATHER III is not only a bad sequel, it's not really a sequel at all: the story ended with Al Pacino's Michael alone, not surrounded by these idiotic filler characters, all dressed up with absolutely nowhere to go... slowly.
The Exorcist: Believer (2023)
Beginning Of A Now Dead Trilogy
Ellen Burstyn's Chris MacNeil complaining that she wasn't allowed to actually witness the exorcism of her daughter Regan, played by Linda Blair, would be like the mother of a kidnapped child being bitter and angry that she wasn't present when her child was saved in a houseful of armed, dangerous felons (who wind up killing the men saving her) and, get this... she BLAMES the Catholic church for basically being chauvinistic...
Underlining the fact that the original EXORCIST, although originally deemed demonic itself to Christians and Catholics, can now be considered Faith-based being that without God, there is no Satan at all...
That said, BELIEVER sluggishly plays-out like a cheap, too-darkly-shot, CGI-filled straight-to-streaming throwaway that is simply no fun at all...
And yes, the original classic has many moments of the audience not only reacting to terrifying possession scenes with Linda Blair, but getting to know the other two main characters with both intensity and sarcasm, in particular Burstyn and younger priest Jason Miller as Karras... who, in the William Friedkin classic, wound up the 11th-hour sacrificing hero...
The absence of the latter (ie a solid central protagonist) takes away from this movie's expository structure even beyond having two girls possessed instead of one... because you never get to know either girl enough to base an entire 2-hour movie on...
Starting out with the girls lost in the woods, involving a cult of homeless freaks, there's a rudimentary glimpse of intrigue, and perhaps they could have centered more perspective on the pair and their own spooky pre-possessed plight: but all that's quickly abandoned, replaced with what's basically a replica of the original yet without any real suspense or, with a stressed-out single father in charge, no logical reason or any purpose...
And news just came out that they're abandoning a sequel to this sequel and starting over with a NEW reboot instead... which is important information lacking in any review written before May 30th, 2024... So whatever did POSSESS this film's creation has thankfully been exorcised, forever.
Best Worst Movie (2009)
I'm In This Documentary
A film in which I appear, as one of many fan/fanatics of the 1990 so-bad-it's-good horror flick TROLL2... having written an unofficial sequel script, and present it the two former cast members... this documentary glosses over yesteryear's making of this amazingly terrible but hilariously engrossing gem while centering primarily on today's George Hardy, who played the patriarch of the "Waits" family who, swapping homes with a local "Nilbog" clan, battles the town's residents: a horde of goblins, not trolls...
Hardy, a successful dentist in Alabama, got the role while practicing in Utah... the rest is history. The documentary, helmed by a mostly camera-obscured Michael Stephenson... who played "Joshua", the child actor who starred in the film... follows George at home: then as he greets fans at screenings across America, including an unsuccessful attempt at an autograph show overseas...
While it's fun seeing (most of the) fellow cast members laughing about their past, it's Italian director Claudio Fragasso who steals the show as the essential antagonist... he's not sure why his movie's considered so bad, while Hardy and Stephenson embrace this phenomenon, using this documentary as an outlet: with captivating results...
ALSO: When my part was shot, I was told to act like I never previously spoke with George (which never made the cut) after having spoken with him for hours on the phone (for a piece on my website cult film freaks dot com)...
Having told him about the fact I wrote a 134-page script called Monstrous Beings (which I actually made into a serious horror/action film so that the acting would be the punchline... again), Mr. Hardy told me I had to drive from OC to LA to be filmed with he and Michael...
The only thing that's somewhat unreal (and ALL docs have to be) is that George's reaction makes it seem like he's kind of making fun of me (in an astounded fashion), particuarly for having written an epic script, completely in vain, when in reality he's the kind of guy who, as they mention early-on in this doc, is truly the nicest, most positive human being ever (what they left out was Michael staring down at my script saying, "You wrote this? ALL of this? 134-pages for no money? Wowwwwwww!" which I think is actually funnier)...
And the 11th hour portion featuring George at an autograph show being overly critical towards Dukes of Hazzard actor John Schneider... or when he was poking fun at his movie-wife Margo Prey behind her back... that aspect was probably coached by Michael, who's an extremely sharp, creative kid, but is glib and caustic (in a cool fashion) unlike George, who seems to... now and again... force negativity to make the doc more edgy...
But, overall, this is a wonderful piece that has its very own cult following... and I'm extremely proud to have had a small but memorable part in it.
-- sincerely James M. Tate (15-seconds of fame)
The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980)
Peter's Final Final
What Peter Sellers' final motion picture, THE FIENDISH PLOT OF DR. FU MANCHU, has in common with his most popular franchise, THE PINK PANTHER, is that both parody James Bond...
Especially 1976's PINK PANTHER STRIKES AGAIN, so over-the-top similar to the Roger Moore outings that MANCHU feels like a homage of a homage. But there's also the Christopher Lee MANCHU b-flicks and before that, Boris Karloff...
Sellers was obviously a fan of both as this was he and trophy wife Lynne Frederick's labor-of-love going through several directors, which shows since many overlong scenes lack any direction at all wherein, as usual, Sellers plays several roles, particularly pulp author Sax Rohmer's Tong-lord supervillain and his dogged Scotland Yard investigator Nayland Smith...
In both parts, Sellers, who died not long after production wrapped, seems too old and tired to not only pull off genuinely humorous performances but to move along an already convoluted and sometimes downright confusing story (one particular scheme involving an obese guard of a British diamond is a time-wasting mess)...
But he's not alone since Disney staple David Tomlinson, comic icon Sid Caesar and Peter's THE PARTY co-star Steve Franken are all along for a very crowded venture, consisting of Smith and company following several heists led by the 168-year-old kingpin, who, while lecturing his Chinese underlings, needs eclectic ingredients of an elixir to keep him both youthful and living...
Meanwhile, Helen Mirren, starting out with the good guys and winding up Fu's mistress, looks sexy and voluptuous (at first impersonating The Queen of England, ironically) and tries hard to inject some sincere class into the proceedings...
But by the time Smith's country cottage becomes a hot air balloon there's a feeling that mainstream laughter wasn't the intention to all the frantic, zany bedlam, more channeling the surrealistic Monty Python troupe (originally inspired by Sellers' The Goon Show), including bizarre gags like Smith being inseparable to a lawnmower...
Instead, FU MANCHU is an insanely busy spectacle that perhaps audiences were supposed to just go with and enjoy the nonsensical ride, which can be both horribly torturous and guiltily infectious - sometimes simultaneously...
As for the multi-talented, legendary, fan-beloved Mr. Sellers, this Swan Song is more of an Ugly Duckling Lullaby.
Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes (2022)
Better Than The Fictional Series
Right up front to point out all the flaws of this Netflix documentary: the constant reenactments look fake (although they do use askew angles) and are repeated too much, as are particular photos of Jeffrey Dahmer, ranging from childhood to before he was caught to after his capture... it's as if the filmmakers could only afford a few images you could find on Google and had to stretch them out for...
Well that's the other problem... Three episodes is one episode too long... This would have worked better in two parts... And by doing the skipping-all-over-the-place non-linear approach, it's confusing knowing exactly where we are in his life...
That aside, this is actually more effective than the Evan Peters Netflix miniseries because hearing from the actual infamous killer is more interesting (and yes, more creepy) than an actor who studied the same recordings (including the Stone Philips interview, which isn't shown here) and was basically doing a lethargic imitation...
While Jeffrey Dahmer was very mellow, that was after he was arrested... He had enough charm to talk his way away from cops (not only because he was white) and to charm handsome, intelligent men into going to his apartment...
So CONVERSATIONS provides a far broader picture of not only his stalking and killing methods, both from him and various reporters and lawyers... his female lawyer being the centerpiece throughout... but provides a glimpse into the twisted mind far more effectively than the movie, so loaded with a race agenda it stops being an interest true crime story... for true crime buffs.
Victim Five (1964)
Shaken & Stirred
With a title that sounds more like the final score of a computer corporation's soccer match than a spy movie, CODE 7, VICTIM 5 takes the then-Sean Connery/James Bond blueprint into b-movie territory under flowing direction from Robert Lynn but more importantly with creatively maneuvered and vibrantly colored cinematography by future legendary auteur Nicolas Roeg, providing former Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller's replacement) actor Lex Barker on a case to discover who murdered a millionaire's servant at a bizarre South African parade...
But Barker's character Steve Martin (also Raymond Burr's name in GODZILLA before THE JERK comic became famous) is more busy with two lovely dames, equally alluring in their own right while following neo-noir cinema tropes...
As in, there's a good girl and bad (ie naughty/flirtatious)... with the millionaire boss's professionally-pretty assistant Ann Smyrner, who our handsome hero instantly takes-to like they've been in a five-year relationship, and scene-stealing cherub-faced Véronique Vendell, who previously appeared with Peter O'Toole in BECKETT...
The latter is the big man's extremely progressive niece... and while it's predictable that Barker (partnered with quirky woman-loving British cop Ronald Fraser) was hired by a not-so-honest client, what's truly entertaining are the creative ways he gets in and out of trouble in the African and British locations... from almost driving off a cliff to dodging bullets in an ancient cavern to dangerously snorkeling in a blue-green reef to avoiding an ostrich stampede... proving that the action/espionage genre's neglected vehicles can sometimes equal (or exceed) the blockbusters they're emulating.
La vie d'Adèle (2013)
French Girls Kissing
Celebrated French teenage-lesbian romantic-drama stars now famous Léa Seydoux and still unknown Adèle Exarchopoulos... while the latter is the true lead as we go through her daily high school routine ranging from teachers teaching, a would-be boyfriend flirting to her gal friends gossiping... soon enough about how she's been seen with Seydoux (who she kind of accidentally met at a girl-gay bar) as the titular blue-haired artist Emma...
When both first see each other crossing the street, it's intense intrigue at first sight, which is how the director grabs the audience, albeit sometimes dragging out their relationship through mundane family dinners to backyard parties while the lesbian bedroom scenes become far too graphic, paling to the rudimentary budding-relationship aspects featuring Adèle with full lips kissing Seydoux, comparably more sexy than anything taken further...
Ultimately making BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR far too long, often overreaching the more simple mainline of two young opposites in love, which, when centered only on them, is right on target.
Gia (1998)
Jolie as Jolie as Gia
Angelina Jolie playing Gia Carangi would be like, musically, if Jeff Beck played a concert celebrating Eric Clapton... while both Jolie and Carangi are knockouts, they're completely different kind of knockouts...
Gia was subtle, more cute-gorgeous while Angelia's... well... Angelina Jolie and, acting-wise, is quite good here, wielding the kind of energy that steals her own movie... yet it often feels more like a biopic set during the 1990's than the 1970's/1980's...
The director's partially to blame, making GIA seem a bit too much of exactly what it is: a risque cable movie (or one of those Don't Do Drugs Specials without any specific reasons behind her using) that sporadically almost-reaches big-screen potential (the documentary-style interview/interludes mirroring another doomed beauty flick, STAR 80)...
Meanwhile the lesbian scenes with Kim Dickens needed to evolve past cliche lipstick chic... although they did both have terrific chemistry in their build-up...
Overall, Jolie's almost too good here, not seeming like she's portraying an actual former niche-celebrity but embracing the fact she's on the verge of becoming a revered beauty-icon herself: Or like she's rebooting Gia's life rather than factually reliving it... which isn't too shabby, either way.
Red River (1948)
Cliche & Predictable Classic
Jeanne Dru plays the toughest gal who ever appeared in a John Wayne Western vehicle since she feels absolutely no pain with an arrow being shot (and then sticking) straight through her shoulder... AND she provides the most contrived and downright unnecessary romantic element in the history of Hollywood's Golden Age... despite the fact that these films, especially right after the war, were practically FORCED to hit all the right cliches for everyone in the audience to get their money's worth...
For the men there's Wayne himself, in a hybrid of world-weary, overly-experienced, cattle-driving roughneck and domineering patriarch... specifically to adopted son Matt played by Montgomery Clift (who eventually hooks up with Dru), there for teen audiences to either relate with or lust after... and is really the only person worth rooting for, having a relatable purpose from beginning to end...
Meanwhile John Ireland uses arched eyebrows so convincingly you'll think he's gonna turn really nasty while Walter Brennan does the same old old-coot persona... as Noah Beery Jr just kinda stands around in-between...
Overall, what RED RIVER provided to cinema was a far more enjoyable intentional-homage in CITY SLICKERS, right down to mentioning and imitating the movie itself (and including a noise to create a stampede along with a veteran trail-leader leaving the story sooner than expected)...
At least in the Billy Crystal comedy, THOSE CHARACTERS were worthwhile the whole way through... without all the hackneyed distractions.
Sneaky Pete: 11 Million Reasons You Can't Go Home (2018)
Nutty Psychic Trivia Section
The Trivia Section for this and the previous episode... or basically every episode since Maggie played by Jane Adams entered the show, has been invaded by some insane spiritualist acting as if psychics are actually 100% proven to be real, which would mean these people could allow the world to know whenever any terrible catastrophe would happen beforehand...
It's a BELIEF, and NOT a fact...
The thing is, Jane Adams, while a great actress in Happiness and Wonder Boys, when she was young and artsy, quirky-cute, is totally miscast here... she's supposed to be older, sure, but she's also supposed to be a woman that men are smitten with, and... she doesn't have that going on, sorry...
On the opposite end of the spectrum is the female detective, Roby, very gorgeous and very strong as an actress... here and Taylor's scenes are wonderful...
The best characters this season other than the leads are the two thugs, especially Frank... even though the over-the-top Serbian guy is the replacement for producer Bryan Cranston's Vince, it's Frank (with the partner resembling a young Tom Courtenay) who did a Vince-like thing in the first episode to really show how bad these guys are, and to be feared, setting the whole first half of the second season in good motion where it slows down here in this episode, deliberately, but ain't too shabby...
Except for that kook trolling on the Trivia. My Lord.