1980's Watch: Starman (1984)

Watched:  07/24/2024

Format:  Alamo

Viewing:  First

Director:  John Carpenter

I'd not previously seen Starman (1984).  When I was a kid, I think my folks decided it would have hanky-panky in it when it started and we didn't make it past literally the first scene.  There was a briefly lived TV show based on the movie starring Robert Hays of Airplane! fame, and I caught that a few times.

When I was renting movies on my own, I just tagged it as "romance E.T." and took a pass.  

Anyway, here in 2024, Simon suggested we pay tribute to John Carpenter, who wrote and directed the film, so - with Jamie included, we took in a screening.

I don't take it as a knock that Starman is pretty much exactly what I expected out of the premise as I understood it from 40 years of occasionally stumbling across discussion of the movie, but if you watched 1980's media, it's pretty much what you'd expecting, and that's "romance E.T."  

So if that's true, we have to ponder the execution - and that's where I think the movie does okay.  

Karen Allen plays a Wisconsinite who has been recently widowed when her husband died suddenly in an accident.  Aliens from a distant planet have intercepted Voyager 2, and taken the messages of welcome at their word, sending a craft to Earth.

The ship crashes near Karen Allen's home, and an alien enters, taking on the form of her deceased husband.  The alien forces Allen into taking him to Arizona, where he is set to rendezvous with his people in a few days.  

Along the way, she sees he's benevolent and an okay alien.  But they're pursued by a military detail supported by Charles Martin Smith.  

As I say, all of this is pretty boilerplate stuff.  So what's asked of the film is that the actors - who mostly are just two people acting together in cars, motels, diners, etc...  sell the relationship which starts at uncanny terror and evolves into romance in a short time.  The vibe is a sort of romantic poem wherein an outsider sees us for what we are, and falls for an Earth woman and an Earth woman has reason to fall for an awkward alien wearing her dead husband's face.

And, for the most part, I think the movie works because of those performances.  Jeff Bridges earned an academy award nod for the part, to which he brings a charm and warmth instead of a hammy performance that would have turned this into slapstick or schlock.  Karen Allen gets the most screentime and dialog of any picture in which I've seen her, and she's really, really good.  There's so many things to play, both as an avatar for the audience dealing with an actual alien, and as a character who is still dealing with grief and trauma who now has this experience, and I can't think of how you improve on what she did.  

The movie kind of works on those performances, vibes and the occasional bit of wonder in acts performed by the alien.  

Anyway, yeah.  Like I say, in 2024 and having seen many movies, I don't know that the plot held many surprises, but as a movie it still works.  And would be a swell date movie some time.  

By the way spoiler here - but the alien doesn't just magically become Jeff Bridges as a full adult.  There's a pretty remarkable FX sequence that was made by a combo of work by Dick Smith, Rick Baker and Stan Winston - all on one brief sequence.  But it also is the only time I've seen a movie - where there's a clone or copy of someone - start as a baby, which, to me, is the logical thing to happen.  I'll accept it doesn't usually, but was impressed that's what they did.

Kid Movie Watch: Despicable Me 4 (2024)

Watched:  07/23/2024

Format:  Regal Cinema

Viewing:  First

Director:  Oh, who knows...?

It has been a long time since I sat and watched entertainment built directly for kids.  I don't mean Disney's all-ages cartoons where they want the story and everything to work for the parents, too.  I mean - this is for kids, and if adults like it, fine.  

I kept thinking I'd seen the original Despicable Me, but when the movie started, I realized - I think I watched a few minutes of it on cable 10 years ago and that's my familiarity with the actual movies.  So, yeah, here on movie 6 or 7 or something of this franchise is when I decided to check in.

Why?  you are currently asking.  Why would you do this?

Well, I have a niece, nephew and sister-in-law whom I get along with pretty darn well.  And all summer we were planning to go see a movie, but camps, fate and other factors kept inserting themselves.  So I missed Garfield, which I was planning to go see, because Hannah Waddingham has a supporting part, and I think it's a good idea to throw money at Ms. Waddingham.  Anyway, with Garfield now streaming, this is what the kids wanted to see in the theater, so when Amy had a day off and was looking to entertain the kids and my brother was working, she asked "Despicable Me 4?", and I was, like:  sure.  Whatevs.  

It's not that I was *lost*, exactly, for large stretches.  But without the now well-established lore of Despicable Me at my fingertips, it is fair to say I was *guessing* at what was happening and why and to whom and if that was good or bad for long stretches of the movie.  It had some genuinely funny moments.  Whatever.

What struck me was the experience of watching a movie with two kids - one of whom was all but vibrating in his chair, he was having such a good time, and my niece, who locks in with laser focus when she's enjoying something and just gets real still.  Like, you-want-to-put-a-mirror-under-her-nose still.  Also, I think I owe the niece a bag of Sour Patch Kids.

So, success there, Dreamworks.  

Look, my cartoons are Quick Draw McGraw, Looney Tunes and Disney.  I have my comedy animation, and my graphic-tees are a pretty good representation of what I like.  And while this stuff is not in that school, it is the stuff the kids will know and love, and that's a cool thing.  

Disney spends it's time and money trying to crack and re-crack the ineffable factors of art, story and comedy.  This movie seems far more formulated to pack a gag per second into the runtime, and make sure things fall down, things explode, etc... and the story is just a vehicle for that to happen.  It's not wrong, it's just very different.

All of that is to say, no, this was not my favorite movie, and there were parts that just made me feel tired (I may not be the target audience for Minions as a concept).  But I also know I am 49, not 9.  So, go nuts, kids.

Western Watch: The Far Country (1954)

Watched:  07/23/2024

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Anthony Mann

I have a few beliefs I will drop on people that seem to get a puzzled look, but one of those is that Jimmy Stewart was one of the 20th Century's best actors.  After playing "nice guys" (and a casual murdered in After The Thin Man) as a young actor, post WWII, he sought out more challenging roles, and showed he could also play a real SOB.  Never a villain that I've seen, but reluctant heroes.   The Far Country (1954) is one of those films in which he is an ambivalent dick until, oh, the last few minutes of the movie.  

Directed by Anthony Mann, the movie takes place during the Yukon Goldrush, which I know about almost exclusively via how it shows up in comic books (hello, Uncle Scrooge) and movies.  And, frankly, this movie left me wondering if Don Rosa's take on Glittering Goldie was influenced by Ruth Roman from this movie.*  And, yes, I'd put this in queue in part because it co-stars Roman.    

The movie is full of familiar faces from Westerns - Walter Brennan, Jay C. Flippen, Jack Elam, Royal Dano, etc...  and some others like Harry Morgan and Kathleen Freeman who I relate more to the modern era (Ie: They were still in new things while I was coming up).  It also has someone I'd never seen before, French actor Corinne Calvet, who plays an unrequited love interest to Stewart, more or less trying to follow him around The Yukon.  

I'd seen John McIntire in other things, but he's kind of great as the devious lawman, Gannon, playing Sheriff, judge and executioner in Skagway - the waypoint for people entering the Yukon territory before they cross into Canada and reach Dawson.  He's more or less taking advantage of the relative lawlessness of the area to seize whatever he can, throwing anyone who complains into jail - or into a noose.

Meanwhile, Roman plays Ronda Castle, who runs a saloon in Skagway, where she also pays out for gold, while finding ways to skim from and screw over the miners in order to make a healthy profit.  

After a brief legal skirmish that puts Stewart in a bad spot, Roman hires him out to lead her ride up to Dawson.  Along the way we learn that Stewart is dedicated to covering his own ass above all else, and - this matches pretty well with Roman's worldview.  But along the way and in Dawson, they begin to see people trying to build a town out of the seasonal camp.

Gannon, the shady lawman shows up, and we get a pretty rote Western where some bad dudes push around a bunch of seemingly helpless people.  He may be a bad guy, but you kind of like him, anyway.  He's such a heel, but honest about being a heel.

A few things make this an A picture over a bit of Saturday afternoon B programming.  

In 1954, Stewart was a box office draw, and Ruth Roman was doing well enough that she gets second billing, despite limited screentime.  It may be folks you know from Westerns, but this is a collection of some of the greatest-hits-type supporting actors.  No one is dialing it in, even if they're playing to type.  And Stewart and Roman's mutual arcs toward realizing you really can't live out your libertarian fantasy on the back of a saddle if you want a civilization - or any human connection - is well written if not particularly moving/ telegraphed.

I quite liked Corinna Calvert, and am surprised I don't know her from other things.  

The movie is shot in part in Canada, on location.  And, holy cats, is it beautiful.  That's a part of the world that's on my bucket list, and now maybe even more so.  It's actually shot in Alberta at Athabasca Glacier,  Jasper National Park and other locales.  So while you do get some scenes clearly shot on sets, others are out there in the wild, and it adds considerably to the movie.  

The look is enhanced by careful lenswork of William H. Daniels, who knows how to get that sweeping vista you're looking for.  

But, yeah, if you only really know Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey, this is a good one to see his range (not that you don't see a bit of everything in It's a Wonderful Life).  And a chance to see a Western that's pretty darn far west and muddier than it is dusty.  

*I'll have Stuart ask next time he haunts Mr. Rosa's signing table.  

Doc Watch: The Ashley Madison Affair (2023)

Watched:  07/22/2024

Format:  Hulu

Viewing:  First

Director:  ABC News?

Uh.  Yeah.  If I was ABC News (this doc lives on Hulu), I'd be looking into whether suing Netflix were a possibility.  This series interviews a stunning number of the same subjects, and even pulls the same quotes as the Netflix doc, but is from several months to a year before.

But this is "news" or "documentary", so a legal case can't probably be made.  

Anyway - of the two docs, this one is the less juicy way to deliver exactly the same information.  It does seem they interviewed real users of the site, male and female, and then had actors re-create the transcript so as not to expose the users - and while it's a bit clunky and has an "I'm ACTING!" vibe from time to time at least you're not stuck with morons.  

There's also interviews with real users like a journalist who started doing a story on Ashley Madison and then found himself about to fulfill the site's promise.  And a bit about a near-miss of a case that would have exposed Ashley Madison's fake profiles well before the data hack - which I can't sort why Netflix didn't get into that.

There's also a name named for who was a suspect, until that trail reaches a literal dead end.  And a suggestion that maybe the guy's online pals may have been behind this.  

Of the two, I don't really have an opinion which one I'd recommend.  This feels like - had they worried more about a complete picture - getting more former employees on camera, etc...  it would feel more complete.   But this one also feels marginally more interested in trying to look like the product of a news organization and I suspect that has a lot to do with how it's managed.  But at the same time, feels maybe more... naive?

I dunno.  Neither of these are great.  

Christmas in July Watch: Rescuing Christmas (2023)

when the marketing team needs a poster, and they needed it yesterday

Watched:  07/19/2024

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Emily Moss Wilson

"Oh, Rachael Leigh Cook!  I haven't seen her in a minute!" I said to myself when I saw that - for unknown reasons - my YouTube TV started just playing this movie at me from the beginning when I went to go to the menu.

You may recall that last Christmas I was discussing that the Hallmark Christmas movie formula has mutated a great deal, and, really, aside from the idea that "Christmas is good" and a lack of violence and sex, I'm not really sure what constitutes a Hallmark Christmas movie anymore.  What I didn't think I'd be saying is "hey, this one maybe could have been a regular 'ol movie at the theater", but here we are.

Yes, the budget doesn't make you think this is anything more than a Hallmark film, but the ideas in it could have gotten a bit more budget, and I assume you'd cast more known actors in a few parts.  But the overall concept is... good?

This one kind of takes a leap off of the tried-and-true Hallmark sub-formula of making a Christmas wish and sees what their life would be like if, say, they chased that corporate job or married that other guy.*  Instead, this one shows a woman (Cook) who had a bad Christmas the year prior, and is feeling overwhelmed at Christmas again.

Meanwhile, some elves in the North Pole are going to try to boost Christmas cheer with a "Grant a Wish" program, where they give some lucky person 3 wishes.  

After blowing her first two wishes - in a moment of frustration with the holidays - Cook wishes there was no such thing as Christmas.  Which causes alarms at the North Pole (and Santa - played by a jolly, funny T. Mychael Rambo - takes as his cue to take a vacation.

The most recognizable other player is Sam Page, who you may know from Mad Men or a handful of other Hallmark movies.  

It's not that the world is worse without Christmas - they don't go full Pottersville on anyone.  And, in fact, the main character doesn't even really hate Christmas - it's more about "oh, @#$%!  The wish was real!  What did I do?"   

Cook tries to fix her problem and remind people of Christmas, and, so, pitching the holiday as an "art installation about a forgotten, ancient holiday", Cook gets her family and Sam involved.  Thus, the gag of the majority of the movie is "how do you explain what Christmas is to people who have no context?" ex:  we're cutting down a perfectly healthy tree and putting it in the living room for 3 weeks before we throw it out.  We're also hanging arts and crafts on the tree.  And how insane Christmas sounds if you've never seen it before.

Meanwhile, the elves come to try help her along without her really knowing what's what.

It's a simple premise.  And it's remarkable how it manages to not fall into some easy pitfalls, or make things harder than they have to be.    

Look, the bar is so low for Christmas movies, it's buried.  And I include studio films in this statement.  To teach the inevitable lesson of "learning the true meaning of Christmas", our leads usually begin as misanthropes.  This movie never goes there, really.  No one is miserable and has to learn the meaning of Christmas - which is usually, on Hallmark, the promise of a single, dry kiss more than anything.

Instead, this movie takes the more relatable notion that: sometimes Christmas can be a lot of work, and people get stressed in the middle of it.  But that doesn't mean you wish harm on others.

It's.... fine.  Of the forgettable and goofy movies, this one actually had... jokes.  And funny bits.  And leads who didn't sound out of breath with every line.

*I suspect this comes from the notion of "I wish I'd never been born" from It's a Wonderful Life, but keeps the star from running from the cops

Remake Watch: Road House (2024)

Watched:  07/19/2024

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Doug Liman

What an odd movie.  And it's not bad as far as these things go.   

Yes, Road House (2024) is a remake of the OG Road House, but in only the loosest sense.  It certainly carried enough of the original concept that calling it something else was just going to draw knowing comparisons.

For my dollar, this is the more self-aware, but more fun version of this same concept.  With this latest version, you spend less time wondering "why hasn't anyone ever just shot the villain?" and "were are the cops?", and, certainly "are they kidding?  I can't tell"   But as the plot is essentially that a Miami Vice villains wants the land a shitty Gulf Coast bar sits on, you may wonder why the solution for the villains isn't a can of gasoline and a match at 4:00 AM instead of all the effort and violence.

This is a movie about Jessica Williams coming to hire you and somehow not being the romantic interest - which I suspect is for plot reasons in the third act.  It's mostly about Elwood P Dalton* (Jake Gyllenhaal in ropey muscular form), as a former MMA fighter who is basically a vagabond.  Jessica Williams' character, Frankie, owns a bar in the Keys, and she's been having some trouble.  

Yadda-yadda, see my notes above.

There's also some local color in the form of a precocious bookstore dwelling kid, an alligator, and... not much else.  Glass Key, the fictional location of the film**, is oddly sparsely populated.  We're told there's civilization there, schools, parks... but you'll never see anything but about four locations, and those feel oddly deserted, too.  In fact, The Road House bar, on its busiest nights, looks 2/3rds empty.  Which may be a COVID thing.  But it never feels like the bar is bumpin'.

The movie does have a sense of humor, which certainly helps things along.  The henchmen are a bit wacky, and dispatched in occasionally humorous ways.  The mid-film addition of Irish-born MMA champ Conor McGregor adds a certain escalation to the narrative while also adding a madman to the proceedings, and he happens to be pretty funny from time to time.  He makes a good baddie you want to keep on screen.

The love interest is once again a doctor, played by Daniela Melchior - and she fulfills the spot admirably if thanklessly.  But there's also a bartender who has her moments, played by BK Cannon.

The fight choreography is something else, and its possible/ likely it was assisted not just by dynamic cinematography, but some CGI.  I dunno.  I don't see very fast, so this kind of chaotic stuff just blows past me sometimes as my brain tries to process the information.  But it did seem impressive!  Gyllenhaal is buyable as a guy who can take down a few dudes at once.  

Anyhow - it's silly to spend too much time on this.  It's a good way to spend a Friday night, and thus achieved it's goal, but it's unlikely you'll spend a lot of time pondering the meaning of life through the lens of a Road House remake.  I was just surprised by how self-aware it is (they actually have scenes talking about where they are in the comparable plot of a Western movie) and appreciate its lean approach.  They know you're not here to see Dalton ponder philosophy, and stare into sunsets.  You want to see face punching, and it delivers.

Maybe it lacks some of the "wtf were they thinking here?" charm of the original, and every movie is better with Sam Elliot, but its not a bad actioner.

*the name here itself is a joke that goes nowhere.  "Elwood P Dowd" is the name of Jimmy Stewart's character in the play and film Harvey, which is about a polite drunk who happens to pal around with a 6' white rabbit that most other people can't see.  If that sounds like the greatest film that ever was, it IS.

**The Glass Key is a terrific Dashiell Hammett book and film, and you should check it out.  I suspect this was an Easter Egg, but I have no idea why.  

Doc Watch: Ashley Madison - Sex, Lies and Scandal (2024)

Watched: 07/18/2024

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  Toby Paton, Zoe Hutton, Gagan Rehill

I didn't notice til I went to do this write-up that Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies and Scandal (2024) is the second docuseries on the topic of the very real hook-up site for married people seeking discreet extramarital affairs, AND the 2015 security breach/ data dump that filled headlines for a few days.  

This docseries is on Netflix (more on that in a minute), but there's one on Hulu that I suppose I'll watch, the same way I watched all the Fyre Fest documentary stuff.

This docuseries breaks into three parts 

• setting up Ashely Madison, who might be interested and why they'd be into, and how the company achieved success
• operating as a success, the initial media reaction, and then... realizing they've been hacked
• impact of the hack on the company, users, revelations and fallout

(Everything below is going to be "spoilers" I guess, for something you can Google if you don't remember it happening)

Fellini Watch: La Dolce Vita (1960)

Watched:  07/17/2024

Format:  Disc from Library

Viewing:  First

Director:  Federico Fellini

Continuing on my "let's watch some famed directors we've missed" kick, I've returned to Fellini.

With La Dolce Vita (1960), we're about as far as one gets from the world of La Strada's post-war desolation - diving headfirst into the mid-century Italian party scene, mixing the wealthy, the famous, the would-be famous and the hangers-on.  It's a film with a certain malaise I now realize has been borrowed by innumerable other movies, usually by kid who finds himself introduced into high society and finds out, gee, things are complicated here, too.  

But our POV character here is not naive, and he's been at this a while.  Instead, we find our protagonist (Marcello Mastroianni - I'll refrain from calling him a hero) at a tipping point.  And the movie follows him as he considers all the ways he can slip and fall from what seems a charmed position.  He's a successful ladies man, bedding upper-class women (Anouk Aimee), but with a fiancee at home, whom he's growing to despise.  He could be a journalist for some time, but he has a desire to write literature.  He seems to be seeking some truth or revelation through the women he falls for, but once he has them, he rejects them.

Western Watch: Colt. 45 (1950)

Watched:  07/13/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Edwin L. Marin

I'm not a proud man, and so I will cop to watching this movie to catch Ruth Roman in another flick - especially something like a fairly short western action film.  Plus, I get a kick out of both Randolph Scott and Austin's own Zachary Scott (no relation to Randolph), who plays the villain in this movie.  

The basic set-up is that Randolph Scott is a war veteran and salesman for the new Colt .45, which he used in the Mexican-American War to great effect.  He's now selling them to law enforcement on the frontier, which has not previously seen a repeating, multi-shot handgun - ie: a revolver.  The tactical advantage of 6 shots over 1 is pretty obvious, I hope.    

While showing off his wares, the idiot sheriff (who doesn't get the value) picks a handfight with his prisoner, Zach Scott, who handily wins the fight, grabs the .45s and kills the Sheriff before running off, leaving Randolph - who the townsfolk decide is an accomplice.  Zach Scott goes on a rampage, founding the .45's gang, and raiding wagons carrying gold from a mining town.

Ruth Roman plays the wife to an early-career Lloyd Bridges, and the two are essentially hostages to Zach Scott's gang - except, Lloyd has realized farming doesn't pay as well as stealing gold, so he teams up with Zach Scott while tell his wife that they're biding their time and playing it safe.

Silent Watch: Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)

Watched:  07/12/2024

Format:  Kino Lorber BluRay

Viewing:  First

Director:  Georg Wilhelm Pabst

I'd been meaning to see this movie since about 1999, so no time like the present.  

This was the follow up to Pandora's Box for the actor/ director duo of Louise Brooks and GW Pabst.

There are certainly parallels to the two movies as a seeming innocent is manhandled by fate, society, bad-actors and is beset by innumerable misfortunes.  There's a sort of Tess of the D'Urbervilles-like series of horrendous people doing bad things to our hero, and her enduring as best she can as currents carry her along.

I don't know what people assume about film before their own era - that discussion seems out of scope for this post.  But the silent era was far from squeaky clean in the US, and in Germany, they were certainly pushing boundaries visually, figuring out how to expand the language of cinema and telling stories that were dealing in mature themes.  

Texas Watch: Dallas (1950)

Watched:  07/09/2024

Format:  Amazon 

Viewing:  First

Director:  Stuart Heisler

Full disclosure, I was just looking to see what else Ruth Roman was in, and this came up.  And, as a long-time Texan, I was curious how a movie about Dallas, the most Dallasy city in Texas, was going to work.  Plus, Gary Cooper.  And Steve Cochran in facial hair!

Dallas (1950) takes place shortly after the Civil War, so Dallas is a small, growing western town (it was founded in the early 1840's).  Gary Cooper plays a former Confederate colonel who is sought by the law.  A young Bostonian of means has become a US Marshall to impress his fiance, and come west to prove he's no shrinking violet.  He stumbles across Cooper - a fugitive, and after finding out the situation is not so clear as his orders suggested, he and Cooper ride to Dallas together.  Cooper hears three brothers are there, and he'd like to help take them down.  

There's some frankly unnecessary identity switching as the two enter town, and we learn that the Bostonian is engaged to the daughter of a local Don, which, yes, means Ruth Roman is playing a Mexican-American.   Which...  there's a lot of Hollywood history why this was probably true.  Is Roman, of Jewish-Lithuanian heritage, a good candidate for a Latina?  Uhhhhhhhh...  man, that's a loaded question I asked myself.  

On the flip side, I don't remember too many movies from this era that include Hispanic characters quite like this, shown to be very successful ranchers (or even more so, if these criminals weren't so busy being criminals at them and taking their cattle).

In a lot of ways, this is a pretty typical Western, where some shady dudes are going to take advantage of the lawless nature of the new town/ land and exploit that weakness to steal property and land from others, and the promise of civilization coming is welcomed.  It's also likely an early of an example of the mastermind bad-guy with the loose-canon sibling he's trying to wrangle (Cochran!).  

In the course of events, Roman's character falls for Cooper, who looks old enough to be her father (she's 27-28 and he's probably 49 here).  And, man, Hollywood.  They couldn't stop pairing Cooper with women who look way too young.

There's not much to actually report about this one - other than that the terrain and town look nothing like Dallas or North Texas, which IRL is hilariously flat and so visually uninteresting that Dallas architecture has been weird since the 1970s in an effort to combat this problem.  But this movie is shot in typical ranchland outside of LA, so... behold!  The rolling hill country of Ft. Worth!  The deep valleys outside of Dallas!

If you're looking for more Ruth Roman:  good news.  She's in this.  But I'm not sure this movie is terribly ground-breaking.  It is, however, fairly entertaining and a reminder how cool vaqueros looked in their jackets and on Mexican-style saddles.

Horsey Watch: National Velvet (1944)

Watched:  07/08/2024

Format:  Max

Viewing:  First

Director:  Clarence Brown

Selection:  Jamie

It's unlikely I would have picked National Velvet (1944) for myself.  It's a movie about a 12 year old girl who loves horses.  But, Jamie mentioned it a while back, and she's sick right now, and when you're sick in our house, you get to pick the movie/ show/ etc...  Plus, it *is* a bonafide classic, and I had not seen any of Elizabeth Taylor's work from when she was a kid.*

It's good!  This is a solid, fun, sweet movie.  The cast is terrific, the sets and matte paintings and locations all very pretty.  We get Angela Lansbury as a teen, Liz as a pre-teen, Mickey Rooney in his 20's, Juanita Quigley (one of the Our Gang kids), Donald Crisp as the father and Anne Revere is phenomenal as Liz's mother.

Liz plays a girl, one Velvet Brown, in that horse-crazy phase who stumbles upon two things at the same time - a hard-travelling Mickey Rooney and a lovely new horse one of her neighbors has purchased, but can't tame.  She loves the horse immediately.  

Her family definitely has echoes of the Smiths in Meet Me In St. Louis, which has to be a coincidence given their production schedules and years of release, but one also can guess the studios were providing scenes of domesticity during pre-war years to give their war-time audiences something to remind them of normalcy.   Velvet's elder sister is boy-crazy, her younger sister a bit of a scold, her baby brother, an absolute weirdo.  And mom understands and dad does not.  

Also, it turns out that Mom once swum the English Channel for a cash prize (which was not accomplished til 1926, about when this movie occurs.  However, the film Million Dollar Mermaid is about Annette Kellerman, who tried in 1905).  

Through a series of hi-jinks, the horse, named The Pie or Pie comes into Velvet's possession, and she and Mickey Rooney work to get the horse into England's premier horse race, the Grand National Sweepstakes, which is five miles of obstacles/ jumps.  

Along the way, Mickey Rooney must determine what sort of fellow he is, the family has to come to believe in Velvet's dream and Velvet embraces what it means to take that one big shot in life.

By the time this movie was shot, Mickey Rooney was a very established star and about to ship out for war.  And Taylor was becoming established as a young star - and it's clear to see how very good she was going to be, even here.  Her role could have been saccharine or twee, but somehow she manages to make it sympathetic - helped along by the ensemble.  And, yes, Angela Lansbury is terrific, too.

I dunno.  I liked it.  There's few surprises.  And it's funny to see Rooney play another former jockey in 1979's Black Stallion (I genuinely looked up if that movie is an unofficial sequel and I just missed something.  It's not.).   But the movie is sweet, hits all the right notes for a wartime family melodrama, and takes the feelings of the young characters seriously (except for bug-collecting Donald).  

If you've got kids, I think they'd dig it.  But I'm a 49 year old dude, and I was a fan.

*I know!  You'd think I'd have watched some Lassie movies.

Christmas in July Watch: Miracle in Bethlehem, PA (2023)

Watched:  07/07/2024

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jeff Beesly

So, someone in our house is sick, so I was trying to make her fall asleep by putting on the soothing screen-saver that is a Hallmark movie (no, really, this works like a damn charm).  It's currently the annual "Christmas in July" deal Hallmark does where they say "ah, we know what you really want", put the Golden Girls reruns on pause, and roll out their Christmas line up for a while (I have no idea if it's a couple of weeks or all month).  

But, yeah, along with Canada Dry, saltines and grilled cheese, when you're not feeling great, I can't recommend these movies enough.

I'd actually meant to watch Miracle in Bethlehem, PA (2023) last year. One of my criteria for actually putting one of these Hallmark holiday films on is if it stars anyone related to Superman media, and - lo and behold - this one stars former Smallville actress, Laura Vandervoort.  

One must bust out a very specific rubric to discuss a Hallmark movie, and among these movies, this one was not a complete trainwreck.  It has some things it keeps harping on that make it... creepy?  But our lead is charming enough and is a better actor than the material probably called for, that she basically papers over some faults.

Oh, to kick off the movie, our male hero is getting yelled at by the girlfriend who breaks up with him because he seems happy sitting on the couch with his large yellow dog (Donkey), playing video games instead of whatever nonsense she thinks he should be doing.  He picks the dog.  And they finally made a Hallmark male lead I could find buyable.

80's-Sequel Watch: Beverly Hills Cop - Axel F (2024)

Watched:  07/07/2024

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  Mark Molloy

Back in 1984, my mom - KareBear, a world-renowned loose-canon - took my brother and me at ages 11 and 9 to see Beverly Hills Cop in the theater.  There's probably a whole separate post on what Rated-R movies were like in the 1980's and how the culture of suburban latchkey kids and HBO meant we were all watching those movies without anyone's permission, so it was not my first Rated-R film by a long shot.

But, yeah!  That was my first parental-sanctioned Rated-R flick, seen because my mom heard you got to see Detroit in a movie, and we'd lived there for a bit in the 1970's.  I believe her takeaway was "that Eddie Murphy is a stitch" and that's all she cared about.

I did see Beverly Hills Cop 2, but aside from Brigitte Nielsen in haute couture, I don't really remember anything else about it.  Bananas likely found their way into tailpipes.

The only reason Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024) exists is because Netflix has the data to prove that people alive in the 1980's will give a modern sequel a whirl, whether it's a Star War or a Top Gun.  Countdown to us all sitting through a Goonies reunion.*

This movie follows the now proven formula of 

JLC Neo-Noir Watch: Blue Steel (1990)

Watched:  07/06/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Kathryn Bigelow

Criterion Channel is showcasing Neo-Noir films this month, and I absolutely remember this coming out and not understanding what it was at the time, and then never hearing from anyone who ever saw it.

But here at The Signal Watch, JLC is one of our patron saints, and I was curious.

The movie is a curious mix of genres - certainly an homme fatale noir, but 100% a thriller.  And sets itself in the New York of the late 1980's where finance-dudes were of interest to audiences, as were blue-collar types.

Jamie Lee Curtis plays a young woman literally right out of the police academy who, on day 1, stumbles onto a hold-up occurring at a grocery, where she's forced to shoot the gunman.  Which she does in 1980's style, emptying her gun and sending the guy reeling through the front window.

Unfortunately for her, the gun the guy had goes missing, and no witnesses say they saw a gun.  And there's no tape?  In 1990 in New York?  But ok.  

She's on administrative leave when she meets a commodities exchange fellow who woos her.

But, uh-oh, he was at the scene of the crime, took the gun, and is now murdering people with the gun after carving her full name into the casings, that he leaves behind after killing innocent people.

One good cop (Clancy Brown) believes her while everyone else just wants to fire her or make her go away, but Eugene (Ron Silver) ups the ante, and eventually she figures it out just pre-coitus.  And then things get really nuts as she fights for anyone to believe her and he lawyers up while also murdering her friend (Elizabeth Pena, RIP) in front of her.  

On the whole - my take is this: 

Doc Watch: Burden of Dreams (1982)

Watched:  07/03/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Les Blank

As I mentioned when discussing Fitzcarraldo, as good as the movie is, it's probably more famous for the impossible conditions around the production of the movie - which was shot on location in the Amazon with a crew and cast comprised of indigenous locals and Klaus Kinski, famously one of the least agreeable actors to have ever walked the face of the Earth.

Burden of Dreams (1982) documents the production.  

I won't say the documentary fails to convey the catastrophe that was the production, but if you also saw Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse, a documentary chronicling the epically horrendous filming of Apocalypse Now, everything else is going to suffer by comparison.

Hearts of Darkness was originally captured by Coppola's wife, Eleanor Coppola, and so there's an intimacy to the conversations and scenes shown that Burden of Dreams is unable to achieve.   Burden of Dreams seems shot like a respectful third-party observing with the good-graces of Herzog and crew, and while it's a catalog of many of the miseries of the set - and there were innumerable setbacks and problems - it's not a camera rolling during conversations that feel private or raw, until maybe the end, where Herzog is clearly at his breaking point.

And while the emotional intensity and feeling of creeping dread is not there while watching Burden of Dreams, it's still an absolute ride watching events unfold, and the very obvious problems baked into what Herzog seemed hellbent on doing, against reason and logic.  And I wish the movie had been willing to be less dispassionate about how Herzog's weird hubris fucked with the lives of thousands of people, and got people injured and killed and disrupted multiple native tribes and the massive impact he had during his relatively short stay.  

Part of the problem is that a lot of what happened seems to have happened when the filmmakers weren't around, and so it's being reported to them when there's spats with or amongst the locals.  We never really see the rainy season, and they missed the whole part where Jason Robards shot weeks of film before taking ill and quitting the movie - meaning the movie also lost Mick Jagger.

Equally odd about the doc is that only Herzog and a few locals get real interviews.  We don't hear from Kinski, co-star Claudia Cardinale (I would love her version of events) or Miguel Angel Fuentes, who seems like he'd have plenty to say as a young actor.  

But what is abundantly clear is the recklessness and naivete with which the film was mounted, and the trust and hope the locals put in Herzog that doesn't seem to really pay off.  They're not dumb, and they know that, for example, if the boat's pulley system breaks and people are hurt of killed, it will not be Herzog who gets hurt - and they seem very unsure why they're supposed to be taking this risk.

Managing the long shoot - which has full stretches where nothing is shot - is insane, and it seems like a lot of trouble could have been managed with a better producer or production manager to ensure boats were where they needed to be, people were where they needed to be - but it's also clear if anyone tried to control this chaos, they'd have gone crazy while failing.  This is a movie that went up against the jungle and - much like Fitzcarraldo - maybe barely got what it wanted out of all the trouble it went through.

But, yeah, when you see Herzog sort of shrugging off his discomfort about hiring a prostitute for his film set to keep the peace - on the advice of a priest - you've gone through a rabbit hole.

Further - you may have seen memes or clips of Herzog's meditation on the jungle and what it represents, but it is - by far - the most powerful moment in the film, and by that time, you're inclined to agree with Herzog's take.

Anyway - I do feel like Fitzcarraldo is a richer experience for having had seen the doc and having some "how did they do that?" questions answered in this film.  I just wish they'd been able to get some better access.  

Herzog Watch: Fitzcarraldo (1982)

Watched:  07/02/2024

Format:  Peacock

Viewing:  First

Director:  Werner Herzog

Fitzcarraldo (1982) is not necessarily famous for being a great movie, although some certainly have considered it to be so.  Instead, it's mostly famous for being the most notoriously difficult movie to ever make, including having to start over well into production because the original star fell ill and they had to find a new star and then start over.  Also, they really did move a massively heavy metal boat over the top of a hill.

I'd been wanting to watch this movie for a while, then whilst writing up 8 1/2, I figured out Claudia Cardinale is in this movie, and that was, apparently the item that tipped me over.  

As a story, this movie will remind you of a few other things from the era.  Perhaps Mosquito Coast.  For me it was The Mission.  But it's the general idea that someone is going to go into the wild to go do something that seems foolhardy on paper, and, indeed, it turns out to be super hard.  And in the jungle.*

There's a poetry to the mad man with a vision disappearing into the jungle to try and achieve that crazy goal, witnessed by only a few from home, and surrounded by indigenous people.  And, because this is a post-1970/ pre-1990 movie, we're fine with showing them totally failing.  Because they challenged the world and the world pushed back.

Set in the early 20th century, our movie is about an Irishman in Peru, Fitzgerald (who goes by Fitzcarraldo) played by the very not-Irish Klaus Kinski.  Fitzcarraldo sees himself as a man of culture as he loves opera, and he wishes to bring that to the town he's watching grow.  We know he's delusional as he describes his small town as a growing city on par with the finest in Peru (it is not) - and he wants to bring opera to his town.  But to do that, he needs money.  

He stumbles upon a plan, which is financed by his friend and lover played by Claudia Cardinale, a local madame.  He's going to exploit a whole new part of the Amazon jungle for rubber - it's a section that even the biggest rubber concerns haven't hit yet as there are troublesome rapids on the river connecting that area to the port town.  

His plan, as you will have guessed, is to pull a boat over the hill separating the traversable parallel river and connect with the other river upstream of the rapids.  It's what we in the plan-evaluating business called a "hare-brained scheme" but, also "so crazy, it just might work".

The staff he brings on his boat is irksome, and the crew is initially threatened by locals, but the locals discover what he's up to (charmed by his playing of Caruso opera tracks) and assist him in his plan to move the boat.

Watching the film, it is absolutely an unbelievable spectacle by 2024 standards.  Herzog famously did go into the jungle, he did recruit locals to act in the film and work on the set.  And there's enough drama there to have spun off a whole two documentaries, The Burden of Dreams and My Best Fiend (neither of which I've yet seen).  But the results are there on film.  You can see a movie in which a 350+-ton boat is moved up a hill, bit by bit, with an army of extras.

Kinski as Fitzcarraldo is manic and absolutely believable as someone who thinks building a jungle opera house is a phenomenal idea.  His character isn't stupid - and Kinski manages to thread the needle of his character's obsessions and when he gets overclocked, and his awareness of the real danger he's in from time to time.  It's an ecstatic performance.

Anyway - at this point I'm mostly looking to watching Burden of Dreams to see how this thing was put together.

Do I rank it as highly as, say Roger Ebert, who placed this in his Great Movies list?  I'm going to sit with it a while.  It is certainly one that will stick with me, and I see myself thinking on it in the future.  We'll see.  For now, I'll say it was well worth the watch, and I would give it another spin.  And I think it has almost mythological components that make it worth seeing as a cultural touchpoint.

*It reminds me of the placard I saw that says "We do not do these things because they are easy, but because we thought they would be easy."

Shhhhhh Watch: A Quiet Place - Day One

Watched:  06/27/2024

Format:  Alamo

Viewing:  First

Director:  Michael Sarnoski

Selection:  SimonUK

I had not seen the two prior installments in the John Krasinski-led A Quiet Place franchise.  From the trailers, it had real "I get it, I'm good" energy.  But I was aware that this one is a prequel to those two prior films, with an all new cast, including the radiant Lupita Nyong'o.  Left to my own devices, I would have maybe seen this in 10 years on streaming.  But I hadn't seen Simon in *forever* and he suggested A Quiet Place: Day One (2024), and, thus, I was like "yeah, sure".

It can be a good experience to do something you're mostly ambivalent about.  And this was a good experience.

Finally seeing one of these movies did confirm my feeling, when seeing the trailers for the two prior films, that the movie is a sort of cinematic parlor game to be played with the audience..  I imagine Krasinski came up with it after trying to play The Quiet Game with his children.  

RiffTrax Watch: Suburban Sasquatch (2004)

"it'll look great on camera"

Watched:  06/21/2024

Format:  YouTube

Viewing:  First

Director:  Dave Wascavage

I watched this over 4 days, finishing just moments before putting on Ember Days, and could not muster the energy to discuss both movies too close to each other.  It was too much for any one man.  But here we are.

What stirs the visions of would-be writer/ directors?   Is it the story they must tell that drives them so?  The need to express themselves?  A dream of becoming part of the Hollywood establishment?  A dream to work as an outsider?

What keeps them going through the long days and nights of pre-production, shooting and then editing?  What is the motivator to make a film when it requires expensive FX they simply cannot afford?  What convinces the actors to show up every day of that shoot, put on their "costume" and read clunky dialog?

Simply, I cannot imagine.  This is, like, time and money out of someone's life.  It's a real "maximum effort for minimum return" proposition.

And yet, every day there's someone out there who has convinced people in their lives that: what we all need to do is make a movie.  How hard could it be?  

Spite Watch: Babette's Feast (1987)

Watched:  06/24/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Gabriel Axel

People lash out at their circumstances in a variety of ways, and your blogger is no different.  I am acting out by choosing to watch a staple of arthouse from the 1980's and 90's, Babette's Feast (1987).  

While I wait for La Dolce Vita to make it's way to my local library branch, I've been filling the time with what has turned out to be absolutely terrible movies.  And, so, I needed a palette cleanser.  So, one part of this spite-watch was to get hostile to the idea of bad movies and watch something so utterly different from, say, Shazam 2 and Ember Days, that it doesn't feel like the same art form.  And, maybe that's a real discussion to be had.

The second part of my spite stems from a dinner conversation which occurred about four years ago, when an art-film minded pal (who shall remain anonymous) was comparing something to Babette's Feast, and I admitted I'd not seen it.  He stated that Babette's Feast was not the type of thing I watch.  And so, just to spite him, I planned to watch the movie.  And here we are.  

See, I DID WATCH YOUR DUMB MOVIE,* anonymous friend!  HA HA.  Who's the Godzilla-watching dope NOW?**

So, Babette's Feast.