Further proof that life is cruel and unfair......Dolly Parton and Tim Curry are gone....but he is with us still....
Trumpanzees: Make plans to visit Lake 'America' real soon. Consider taking a nice long swim across the length of the lake.....without life jackets.....
Deceived (1991)
We've previously spoken of our lingering affection for the psychological thrillers that enjoyed their heyday throughout the 1990's.
Many of them laboriously stuck to the template set by "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" (Innocent family terrorized by someone posing as normal, but really nutso....nanny from hell, cop from hell, neighbor from hell, doctor from hell, etc, etc.)
Others fell into that heavy breathing, hot 'n bothered erotic psychosis pioneered by 'Basic Instinct' (and beaten into the ground by hundreds of direct-to-video cheap knockoffs.)
But there were others that chose to forge their own paths to rev up the chills 'n thrills.....some good, some not so good.....some godawful.
'Deceived' fell into the area between 'not so good and godawful.....
Commanding attention immediately is the unique casting of normally bubby, effervescent Goldie Hawn as a woman distressed and threatened. Hawn goes out of her way to prove she's got the serious dramatic chops to perform this role, but her studied low key grimness doesn't make her or the film very interesting to watch.
Neither does the skimpy script, filled with plot holes and senseless unbelievable incidents and behavior.
No great spoilers or outrageous twists to reveal here either. A simple premise......Goldie discovers her meet cute husband (John Heard) is literally nothing and no one that he appears to be. Over the course of the film, she discovers he's an identity shifting, sociopathic thief and murderer, stealing names and ending lives with equal fervor. Basically, he's a less charismatic version of Patricia Highsmith's iconic slime, Tom Ripley.
The film does work up a measure of oncoming dread as the increasingly alarmed Hawn peels off Heard's many deceptions like layers off a rotted onion.
But then this all leads, as we feared it would, to Hawn and Heard's final extended mano-e-Goldie showdown. Of course it takes place in a large abandoned building, the usual psycho-thriller funhouse loaded up with locked fire door exits, corridors that go nowhere and lots of hidden corners for Heard to pop out of and go booga-booga.
Pardon us while we suppress a deep yawn.
The pivotal moment is dumb as is, come to think of it, all of Heard's machinations and motives. Screenwriters Mary Agnes Donoghue and Bruce Joel Rubin either had whole chunks of their script cut out or maybe wrote it that way not giving a damn if it made any sense to an audience.
We'll at lease credit director Damian Harris (son of Richard) with giving individual scenes the appropriate aura of unease and danger and even at low gear, Hawn can't help but make you protectively fear for her.
But overall the film's a raggedy, hard to swallow mess and not among our favorites in the 90's thriller line-up.
Huge fans of Hawn may want to check it out. Everyone else can easily skip it. 1& 1/2 stars (*1/2)
Shelter (2026)
We don't want to spend any more time writing a review of this usual Jason Statham movie than was spent on writing its screenplay.....
We're guessing 20 minutes tops.....maybe 30 if the writer stopped to pee or have a cup of coffee.
This one follows the template....."grizzled, monosyllabic ex-black ops commando comes across feisty child and whole bunches of black ops commandos out to kill him....he protects the child while wiping out commandos who regularly show up like pop-up video game villains...."
And there you have your standard Statham product, fresh off the assembly line that pushes out these Statham sausages at the rate of one every 2 months or so.
Do we need to say any more? Do you really need to read detailed descriptions of the Jason-ator shooting, stabbing, punching and kicking combat clad minions......you can almost hear the director shouting out like a Broadway choreographer.... 'One...two...three...kick! One...two...three...kick!'
Somewhere in this sludge, you can spot a cadaverous looking Bill Nighy as the government mastermind who's sending out all the kill squads. Not that he does anything special while he's waiting his turn to get Statham-ized.
As for our star, it's like he turned into Rick Ford, the exaggerated lampoon of himself he played in the Melissa McCarthy comedy "Spy".....("Nothing kills me. I'm immune to 179 different types of poison. I know because I ingested them all at once when I was deep undercover in an underground poison ingesting crime ring.")
He's still playing Rick Ford, only without the quips recollecting his prowess. Maybe if his writers and directors threw some of those zingers in, we'd start to like these movies more.....
1 star (*) Same old, same old......
Okay, the review's done. And we didn't even stop to pee or take a coffee break.
Bad Intentions by Iliana Xander (2026)
Michael (2026)
We're surprised as anybody else to end up reviewing this.
Honestly we had no intention of bothering to see this film, even for the purpose of covering it for this blog. We were content to forget all about the strange, weird and sordid life of pop star Michael Jackson.
And we were already well aware that the film covered only the glory years of his young career, with beautifully rendered recreations of the concerts and an uncanny rendition of Jackson by one of his nephews, Jaafar Jackson.
Then last week, it became available to BQ through a free streaming sampling of movies on STARZ.
So we watched it. Entertained? Sure thing... for the good stuff we just mentioned. Yes, the concert sequences rocked (taking up the bulk of the film's running time) and we doubt any actor could have duplicated Michael Jackson with such precision and fierce dedication as his nephew accomplished. Let's put it this way.....he's far better than AI, 'cause you know he's real......
The rest of it? Actually kind of antiquated in its construction. Director Antoine Fuqua and screenwriter John Logan assemble the film much like a glowing 1940's movie biography. It's filled with the innocent naif Michael rising to the top as he confounds corporate execs and delights thousands with his electrified singing and dancing. There's "....and then he wrote.." montages and scenes of Michael articulating his gentle, benevolent dreams of spreading joy, love and peace to the world. The filmmaking, in its worship of its subject, resembles how old Hollywood handled biographies of famous beloved celebrities.
But there is a wild card running loose through the film.....Coleman Domingo's terrifying, nightmare inducing portrayal of the infamous, abusive Jackson patriarch, Joe. Physically and verbally intimidating, Joe's scarier than any of the zombies in Jackson's "Thriller" video or even Inde Navarrette in "Obsession". Like a quaking young Michael, you flinch right alongside him when Joe gets in his son's face, enraged at the boy's effort to forge his own separate career.
Coleman's Joe, who's like a pop music Bond villain, clearly functions as the engine that keeps the film going somewhere other than just showing you a Vegas-style variety show. (And the film only ends when he's finally and publicly thwarted by the son whose gifts he chose to exploit rather than cherish.)
The one amusing moment we remember......an almost unrecognizable Mike Myers as CBS music executive Walter Yetnikoff, ripping into MTV for not considering to play Jackson's videos. (Gen Xers may watch this scene muttering...."What? Did MTV play actual music way back then?"
Now let's get down to the problematic question.....is it okay for fans of Jackson's iconic music and performances to enjoy this movie purely for its ability to accurately reproduce them?
Of course it is and in no way do we begrudge anyone who spent a couple hours with this film, clapping, dancing and toe-tapping along. Much in the same way that Roman Polanski's vile sexual assault of a child doesn't stop us from sometimes re-watching "Chinatown" and "Rosemary's Baby". They still remain superb films and Jackson's music still remains as catchy and beloved as ever.
Yes, the art can be separated from the artist but then the millions of moviegoers who made "Michael" a huge box office hit already proved that.
But let's keep in mind that doesn't improve our overall opinion of Jackson and Polanski as human beings. Which is why "Michael" ends its storytelling well before Jackson's slide into freakish behavior, ruinous surgeries and and charges of pedophilia.
As far as the artistry of its filmmaking (but not the barely there script), "Michael" earns at least 3 stars (***). But for those coming to it solely for the music and Jaafar Jackson's remarkable work, well then it's a 4 star feast. (****). For those who under no circumstance will divorce the art from the artist.....you shouldn't have even wasted time reading this review.
To Trumpanzees: You do know that he would have stuck you on the decoy plane as well, leaving you to take an Iranian missile enema while he stayed safe and sound with Natalie, his Secretary of Diapers. You've never been anything to him but under-the-bus squashed refuse.....losers and suckers, targets for his never ending grift. Having fun yet?
