'IF LOOKS COULD KILL'..........21 BOND ST........

If Looks Could Kill (1991)   Here's a choice little morsel we unearthed from the l990's.......a decade that nobody's much in a hurry to remember, except maybe CNN and few radio stations.......

            Blending a teen slacker comedy with a James Bond spoof wasn't a bad idea........and if director William Dear had only found a young comedic actor for the lead role, the movie might have really taken flight......(someone along the lines of Anthony Michael Hall in rubber-limbed '16 Candles' mode, or the aggressively strange DJ Qualls )

             But the film went with Richard Grieco, the perfectly sculpted male mannequin from the "21 Jump Street" TV series, who already resembled a Junior Varsity Bond, complete with school jacket....

              Before you even get to the film's wild secret agent shenannigans, you'll have to swallow the initial premise......that genial high school failure Michael Corben (Grieco), can make up the missing credit (in French class)  he needs for his diploma by going on the a class trip to France.  Yeah, sure. His apoplectic Dad can't believe it either.....

              Off he goes anyway........and we'll make no attempt to rationally explain how, at the airport, High School Michael Corben gets mistaken for a top secret agent, also named Michael Corben....

               Once in France, our would be hero is relentlessly pursued by assassins in the employ of evil mastermind Augustus Sterenko (Roger Rees) and his loathsome little minion Ilsa Grunt (Linda Hunt, having the best time of anyone in the movie, channeling both Ilse Steppat and Lotte Lenya from the Bond films)

              Also on Michael's trail.....his outraged French teacher whom the befuddled, confused heads of American and British secret services mistake for a rogue agent, simply dubbing her, 'The French Teacher'......

              Whether you enjoy any of the imitation Bondian hijinks that follow strictly depends on your tolerance level for all the homage spoofery on display......
you wonderful BQ visitors already know how much of  a Bond fanboy we are.......so we freely admit we enjoyed the hell out of it.....

              Favorite moments......Grieco struggling to open a vacuum sealed condom, not realizing that the twitching femme fatale awaiting him is gyrating not from anticipation, but  from a scorpion stuck in her nightie.....(even better, she sports the Austin Powers-worthy name Aureola Canasta).....Linda Hunt whipping around a lethal gold necklace.....Grieco and a metal-handed goon slugging it out atop a cauldron of boiling gold that's temporarily sealed with a cracking layer of frozen nitrogen.....and Grieco and babe du jour Gabrielle Anwar fleeing the blades of an upended helicopter.....

            A trifle,  a timewaster.....but loads of fun and the pace never flags.  If the filmmakers had taken the trouble to find a gifted actor instead of settling for generic studmuffin Grieco, we would have rated this one higher........but it's still a fast 90 minutes of a good time.....3 stars (***)......and beware The French Teacher......

'THE VALLEY OF GWANGI'............YIPPEE-KI-YAAY,.... ALLOSAURUS!

The Valley Of Gwangi (1969)  It's impossible to calculate the influence that special effects stop-motion animation master Ray Harryhausen exerted over an entire generation of filmmakers who create sci-fi/fantasy movies......Spielberg, Lucas, Cameron among others.....even the nameless, faceless young CGI artists....

              Unlike the vast armies of today's special effects companies who make the credit crawls of superhero movies stretch longer than 'Gone With The Wind', Harryhausen created his unforgettable creatures and wondrous sequences by himself........long gone, old school Renaissance artistry....

               But like many fantasy/sci-fi filmmakers at the peak of their creative powers (in the 50's and 60's), Harryhausen's  brilliant efforts were largely ignored, dismissed or made the butt of condescending jokes by movie reviewers and assorted culture vultures.....

                'Gwangi', unfortunately suffered the dreaded fate of a movie that becomes trapped between changing regimes of the studio that  produced it.......taking over a year to make, by the time the film was ready for release in the summer of 1969, the Seven Arts company that took control of Warner Brothers had little or no interest in it.   After a quick dump into grindhouses and drive-ins, it disappeared.

                These days, however, it' has taken its place among the rest of the celebrated Harryhausen classics and studied intently by the digital artists who craft the 'Jurassic Park' series.....

                Taken from an old script by 'King Kong' special effects pioneer (and Harryhausen mentor) Willis O' Brien, the story fancifully throws together Wild West Show cowboys with a raging, jaw-snapping Allosaurus, one of the denizens of a lost prehistoric valley in the Mexican desert.

                 This leads to the film's signature, spectacular sequence, a thrilling, Jurassic rodeo round-up in which the cowboys try roping the beast as if it were a wild Mustang.  As always, Harryhausen's meticulous visuals had audiences shaking their heads in amazement at the seamless blending of live actors and animated monsters......an astounding cinematic magic trick executed by a single master magician....

                 As a great lover of movie scores, we'd drop the ball if we didn't mention 'Gwangi's memorable music by Jerome Moross.  And yes, we know Moross basically just altered a few notes here and there and delivered a variation of his classic 'The Big Country' score.......but it's still damn fun to listen to.......

                  Until his major, splashy farewell effort, "Clash Of The Titans", Harryhausen persevered through modest budgets and critical indifference.......but his work, the stuff of dreams and nightmares, lives on forever.....in the films themselves and in all the subsequent people he inspired......No film of his would earn anything less than 5 stars from us (*****), a FIND OF FINDS.....always a joy to saddle up and go Allosaurus ropin'.......


               

LEAST FAVORITE THINGS.......SPECIAL"JOE'S PINK UNDERWEAR" EDITION.....

Baby Orange planned Moscow Trump Tower..... "I don't have anything to do with Russia! It's all a ruse! Fake news!"........the original plans called for a personal gold-plated elevator to take Putin to the Penthouse suite.......he would get the elevator, America already got the shaft......

Baby Orange institutes Transgender military ban.....so let's make sure we understand this.....people who have it within them to summon up extraordinary courage, love of country and strength of character to serve in the U.S. armed forces are now banned by a vagina-grabbing, draft dodging coward who thinks POW's aren't heroes.....

Baby Orange grudgingly continues the Afghanistan war  Memo to Baby Orange and his Generals.....Baby Orange's good friends, the Russians, threw everything they had into their Afghan war....(they didn't have to worry about how much money it cost them or how many Russian soldiers they tossed into the meat grinder...)....and they still got their asses kicked......after 16 years, what would make you think this is going to end any better for us??

Sheriff Joe pardoned......There's a perfect symmetry here.....in that Baby Orange found his twin, his Doppelganger, his long lost brother from another mother.......another soulless, fascist thug with utter contempt for the rule of law.......two GruppenFuhrers bonding in their hatred of anyone who doesn't look like them......satanically perfect.

Baby Orange fires his rally organizer...... Poor guy, he couldn't fill the Phoenix hall with enough brain-dead Redhats who still haven't figured out that they're paying for the wall.......

Dr. Gorka kicked out of the White House......no doubt immediately moving on to his next gig, playing the new head of SPECTRE in the next Bond movie......type-cast again......

Taylor Swift & Katy Perry......Girls, girls....please stop fighting. You've so much in common.....you're like Siamese twins, joined at the ego......we appreciate how much you've taken self-absorption and congratulatory self-adulation to stratospheric levels.......now kiss and make up and jump in the hot tub with any random Kardashian.....

Reminder to Baby Orange on his trip to Texas.......please don't forget to check out those floating islands of colorful, red insects......stick your hand in one of 'em for a bigly photo op......

'THE LOST ONES' & 'GIRL LAST SEEN'.......VICTIMS TURNED HUNTERS......

The Lost Ones by Sheena Kamal (2017) / Girl Last Seen by Nina Laurin (2017)   

            Spending a wonderful, leisurely day at our local library, we stumbled upon something we don't often encounter in the New Release section.......two recent thrillers almost identical in their basic plot structure and their deeply damaged, flawed  young female protagonists......

            You can easily think of both these broken but tough women as soul sisters of  "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo"s Lisabeth Salander......survivors of unspeakably horrific childhoods who find themselves thrust into the role of avenging angels, at long last confronting their evil tormentors.......

             And the same dark quest consumes both Nora Watts of "The Lost Ones" and Ella Santos of "Girl Last Seen".......they take up a desperate hunt for the daughters they gave up for adoption, daughters brutally snatched away from the families who raised them.....children who were the result of Nora and Ella being abducted and raped by their captors.

             Sheena Kamal's "The Lost Ones" is a far more ambitious version of this tale, its action spread across the back alleys of Vancouver to the expansive, snowy landscapes of the Canadian wilderness. And in Nora Watts, Kama fashions a memorable creation.....part indigenous Native, a recovering alcoholic, who's scraping together a living as a private eye.   Her two unique gifts: an ingrained ability to detect liars and oddly enough, a beautiful, powerful singing voice....(she favors the Blues)....before Nora arrives at her long expected blood drenched showdown with overpowering evil, she gets to use both talents to confuse and confound her enemies.....

               While Kama's novel busily throws in a variety of issues, (racial discrimination, stem cell research, unscrupulous corporate mining in Canada and the Congo), Nina Laurin's "Girl Last Seen" keeps the story stripped down to its essentials.......the PTSD suffered by Ella Santos, from a childhood kept in captivity by a pedophile, has left her a hopeless drug addict, barely able to hold down a job. Impregnated by her still at large rapist captor, Nora let a wealthy family adopt the child.....a child who's  now been possibly taken by the same unidentified monster who vicitmized Ella.  

              (And this is the point where we stop talking,lest we give away any revelations and twists)

              Two vividly drawn heroines......each with heartbreaking backstories and harrowing ordeals yet to come as they struggle through insurmountable odds to rescue
their children. For late summer beach reads ( or any old time), BQ says snag 'em both. 4 stars for each book....(****)

'PASSENGERS'.......J-LAW & DISORDER.....IN OUTER SPACE.....

Passengers (2016)    A jumbo budget stuffed with sci-fi CGI and two of the most in-demand charismatic young movie stars couldn't save this one from flatlining.....

          How come?

           Hard lesson learned:  You can't have it every which way in a Butter Popcorn Gobbler designed to fill up the largest auditorium at the Multi-Plex.  You want to go dark and weird with your premise? Then you have to grow a pair and see your premise through to whatever dark end it takes you......

          But not the crew who made this film......no way they're heading for the dark side when Sony has weaponized them with 110 million bucks, Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt......

           In order to explain what we mean here, we're forced to discuss the premise, already laboriously detailed in 2000 other reviews.....but swiftly....

            Big Ass Spaceship.....5000 hibernating colonists heading for a new planet, cause the Earth sucks...... trip takes 150 years, like the running time of a Transformers movie........oops, meteor shower......Chris Pratt accidentally un-hibernated, 90 years too soon......not good......Chris, lonely and horny as hell, deliberately un-hibernates Jennifer.....effectively dooming her to  a life with Chris....and nobody else.....and nowhere else except Big Ass Spaceship....

             You see the problem here. Chris Pratt, a poor lovable lug in the film's first act, makes the monumental, creepy decision to enslave Lawrence.....sort of like Adam picking out his own Eve, who didn't volunteer for the gig.

              Take away all the galactic hardware, spacewalks and chatty Robot bartender (an annoying, poke-in-the-ribs homage to "The Shining")......and what you have is a just another stalker-and-his-captive-babe story, no different than "The Collector" or the most recent "Berlin Syndrome" (covered in an earlier post....)

              Lawrence, once fully realizing her fate, uses all her considerable gifts as as actress to break your heart......she accuses Pratt, rightly so, of committing a form of murder.  Pratt, the Millennial Burt Reynolds who stumbled into stardom, isn't anywhere close to Lawrence's league as an actor......he can only mumble polite contrition throughout the film's second half......

              Unsettling stuff, no?  But having painted themselves into this ominous corner, the filmmakers must have stopped and muttered....."hey, wait a minute. This isn't what the studio signed on for.......holy shit, we've got the two most lovable kids in cinema today!  We gotta get these two back together....somehow....."

             So Pratt needs an immediate maximum-strength Redemption......and we bring on the 30,000 CGI artists to orchestrate a plethora of calamities on the Big Ass Spaceship, to help Chris man up and prove his worth to Jennifer......so she'll come to realize, "hey, ya know, even if he took my whole life away from me.....he's not such a bad guy after all....."

             It's noisy, exhausting and the whole thing reeks of last minute desperation.

             Maybe another director working on a modest budget would have taken this story down the nasty rabbit hole it opened up once Pratt plucked Lawrence out of hibernation, but then that's another movie altogether......

             We'll float out 2 begrudging
stars (**) for "Passengers".....and the only reason we're giving it any stars at all is for the luminous presence of Jennifer Lawrence......enduring the tribulation of every big movie star.....trapped in a misbegotten piece of studio sludge....


             

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO MOVIE MUSIC? A EULOGY.........

              Hey there, visitors.......if you read any of that "About Me" stuff, then you know about the BQ's overwhelming  passion for orchestral movie soundtrack music.......'

               While most of our Baby Boomer peers grew up with the pop music of the 50's and 60's, we became enraptured by the can't-get-out-your-head movie themes of Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, Miklos Rosza, Bernard Herrmann, Dimitri Tiomkin, Franz Waxman......and as we moved into adolescence and adulthood, Ennio Morricone, Maurice Jarre, John Williams and other gifted composers......

                The music of these composers indelibly weaved its way into a film's DNA to the point where you couldn't ever imagine the movie without its score...........and listening to these scores brought the movie back into your head like a welcome daydream......

              Nowadays?  Whole different story.

              It's hard to pinpoint what specifically led to the downfall and current miserable state of film music......and there's a depressing irony to what's going on.......in that there's more huge symphonic scores being written than ever before (for all those mega-budget CGI atrocities), but the music stinks of mediocrity, lacking any creative thought or memorable themes....

               What we have now are scores that sound like elevator music written for 150 piece orchestras.......heaving around with no identity of their own and for the most part drowned out by the sound effects mix.......somewhere underneath the explosions, gunshots and rocketship blasts, you can barely hear the score rumbling around........not that there's anything worth hearing in it.

               Tragically, this seems like intentional policy from studios.......reducing film scores to shapeless walls of background noise instead of bolstering the movie with a unique musical signature. For those of us who've spent a lifetime listening to classic film scores......it's a sad, sad state of affairs.....just compare the music of "The Magnificent Seven", "Vertigo", "Ben Hur", "The Wind And The Lion" to the generic muck that's applied to films today......

                We hold out this glimmer of optimism........perhaps a director-composer collaboration will come along in which they return to the idea of using a boldly thematic score that irrevocably welds itself to the film and stands out as much any of the characters in the film.  Since studios love imitating success......maybe it could start a trend.....and composers could regain their place as key creative partners in the filmmaking process.....right now, movie composers are like the saloon piano players in old Westerns.....aimlessly pounding away until the gunfights start.....

              Anything can happen out there in La La land.....so here's hoping.
                       

'POINT BLANK'.........KISS ME, DEAD LEE....

Point Blank (1967)     Yet another reminder of our mortality as one of our many 1967 faves hits its 50th anniversary.....

              Along with Arthur Penn's "Bonnie And Clyde", this movie shook up mainstream, American filmmaking, introducing cutting edge, New Wave European cinema into traditional U.S. genres.....

               Violent, totally amoral, visually striking, and defiantly unlinear in its storytelling, this was film conceived as a purely sensory experience.......astounding audiences used to a three-act structure in every studio film and confounding movie critics at the time.....

               Old school New York Times critic Bosley Crowther, whose clueless pan of "Bonnie And Clyde" eventually finished his career, approached "Point Black" like a swooning little old lady perched on top of a chair, screaming at the sight of mouse.....

               John Boorman, part of the tidal wave of Brit directors who stormed Hollywood in the 60's, makes "Point Black" look like a bullet-ridden fashion shoot, placing most of the high gloss action in Los Angeles. Though rendered in brilliantly sharp Metrocolor,  Boorman's sun-drenched L.A. becomes as much of a noirish, dangerous landscape as any dark alley in a black-and-white 1940's movie......

                Starting off on deserted Alcatraz island, a gangsters-heisting-gangsters caper goes awry, with a hood named Walker (Lee Marvin) shot and left for dead, betrayed by his partner (John Vernon) and Walker's wife (Sharon Acker).....

                In true noir fashion, the bullet perforated Walker manages to float across the choppy, freezing waters of San Francisco bay, thirsting for revenge and 93,000 dollars, his cut of the stolen haul......back from the dead and ready to rumble, Walker has an ally in a shadowy operative (Keenan Wynn) who seeks to dismantle 'The Organization', the corporate mob that Walker's double crossing partner rejoined.

               From this point on , the taciturn Walker, given to expressing his rage by shooting empty beds and phones,  works his way through the 'Organization's upper echelon, who can't fathom his demand for the 93,000 that wasn't even his to begin with. (Marvin's Walker reminded us of the relentless paperboy in the John Cusack comedy "Better Off Dead", screaming "I want my two dollars!")

               Brutal beatings and shootings ensue, all of the mayhem staged by Boorman for maximum photogenic style. Like many independent films to come, the movie comes to no satisfying conclusion......it simply stops.  It leaves you free to contemplate an "Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge" ending for Walker, which many have theorized.....or to come up with your own climax.

               Ice cold and suitable for framing, Boorman's work here pre-dates the coming of big-budget visualists like Michael Mann and Ridley Scott......and in its embracing of flash and color over logic and sense, you can see a sneak preview of the beginnings of the our modern day blockbusters.

              What we find ironic (and more than a little sad).....while as hip and modern as any current film, .it's the postcard-bright color cinematography that gives it away as belonging to another era....we'd love some of today's directors and cameramen to give up their usual muddy, dark, brownish visuals and go for the Technicolor gusto......just sayin'....

              Final note: accept no lame misguided remakes of "Point Blank"....including "Payback" with Mel Gibson and "Parker" with Jason Statham......Lee's the man here, even if that 93,000 remains forever elusive.......4 stars for "Point Blank" (****), still as bracing and thrilling as swimming in San Francisco Bay while bleeding heavily from gunshot wounds.....

'TONI ERDMANN'.........THE GOOD, THE DAD AND THE UGLY......

Toni Erdmann (2016)   Took us a while to get to this one......just reading the reviews gave us a massive headache......people either judging it a brilliant masterpiece or a self indulgent, unwatchable slog through improvisation hell........

              As a doting loving dad who has more than once embarrassed his brilliant young daughter, we finally steeled ourselves and submitted to the German-subtitled 2 hours and 42 minutes of "Toni Erdmann"......about a loving dad who makes a second career out of embarrassing his brilliant young daughter.......

              But surprise, surprise.... the daughter, a driven, mirthless executive in the high powered corporate world, turns out to possess some of Daddy's freewheeling DNA after all.... .and the goofy old Pop, a retired joking prankster who favors Halloween Shop accessories and playing idiotic alter egos as he crashes his daughter's business meetings, knows his kid all too well.

               The leisurely running time and the make-it-up-as-we-go-along scene structure insure that no awkward silence and no joke-gone-wrong goes unobserved..........at close to three hours, you quickly tire of the film's relentless attempts to make both you and characters uncomfortable.

               By the time the movie resorted to a lengthy display of full frontal, we were already sighing and checking our watch.  Poignant heartfelt moments?  Yes there are.......they arrive like colorful billboards that pop up while you're driving across an arid desert landscape....

               Supposedly in the works is an Americanized version of this with Jack Nicholson as the dad and Kristin Wiig as the daughter.........whether they'll impose discipline and structure on the shapeless, formless source material.....anyone's guess.

                We can't place ourselves in either critical camp regarding "Toni Erdmann"......it's no groundbreaking, earth-shattering masterpiece.......and unlike the other end of that spectrum we didn't feel like labeling the film as an Emperor with no clothes....(even though there's any number of people in the movie who end up with no clothes).  But we laughed more than few times.....and the father-daughter dynamic choked us up a little too.

                For the individual memorable moments we cherry-picked out of the film....2 & 1/2 stars
(** 1.2).....somewhere under the jerky hand held camerawork and slapdash filmmaking, there's a great story struggling to crawl out.......who knows, maybe Nicholson and Wiig can bring it out.....

BABY ORANGE TRIUMPHANTLY (OR TRUMPINGLY) TWEETS AGAIN.....

        Exclusive to the BQ......Baby Orange tweets right after his Nuremberg....er....Arizona rally.....

Donald J. Trump
@GruppenFuhrer Trumpf
Spent great weekend with Sheriff Joe. Helicopter, high powered rifles...
.....Immigrant hunting! #now-that-Dreamer's-really-dreaming

Donald J. Trump
@GruppenFuhrer Trumpf
Gonna shut down Gov if they don't cough up for the Wall. Idiot redhats
don't even remember Mexico supposed to pay. Cool. #pathetic suckers

Donald J. Trump
@GruppenFuhrer Trumpf
Healing nation? That's for losers. Can't you hear my crowds?
You want healing? Sig heal! #some-Nazis-good-people

Donald J.Trump
@GrumppenFuhrer Trumpf
Fake News did it again.  Fakers keep checking every single lie
I tell. Won't work! My people swallow all my shit! #Fifth Avenue shooting

Donald J. Trump
@GruppenFuhrer Trumpf
John who? McWhats-his=face?  If the cancer eats half his brain, it'll knock
him down to my level at last. #serves-you-right-for-getting-captured

Donald J. Trump
@GruppenFuhrer Trumpf
Fake Americans think I'm unhinged. Wrong. I'm so hinged, I can be hinged
as Lincoln, I'm awsomely hinged. Wanna see Korea glow in the dark? #crazy-for-the
-nuclear-codes

Donald J. Trump
@GruppenFuhrer Trumpf
Hilary claims I breathed down her neck in debate. Had no choice. Her
pussy's too withered to grab. #can-believe-I'm-President

'THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE'........IS IT GETTING HOT OUT HERE OR IS IT JUST ME?

The Day The Earth Caught Fire (1961)    We know, we know........we should have posted this on Total Eclipse day yesterday......but the death of Jerry Lewis seemed more immediate to us.......and besides, the entire world's in a perpetual total eclipse until Baby Orange is swept out of office and the White House thoroughly fumigated......

             Us poor suckers on planet Earth don't need special glasses to view the sun in this film......cause we've been knocked off our axis by simultaneous Russian and U.S. H-Bomb blasts at the two Poles......putting us up close and personal with Big Sol itself and on putting Earth on the cosmic griddle like a sunny side up egg.......

             So much to love about this movie......its depiction of the the world's end as seen through the blisteringly fast, chaotic world of a major London newspaper.....(this is one of cinema's all time great journalism movies, featuring a real life executive editor giving the reporters their marching orders).....the expert use, by co-writer and director Val Guest, of black-and-white and widescreen, giving the film both the scope of a spectacle and a
newsreel documentary feel....

              On top of all that, the brilliant British treasure Leo McKern, spewing out a steady stream of rapid fire sardonic one liners, his delivery rivaled only by James Cagney in Billy Wilder's "One, Two, Three" (which we promise to cover in an upcoming post.  And we almost tear up every time we watch a film with the achingly adorable, gone too soon Janet Munro......(not to mention, if you don't blink, a very young Michael Caine as a policeman...)

              Befitting a apocalyptic movie, Val Guest pumps up the dread (and catastrophic climate change) as the story moves from disbelieving naysayers to street riots to the world hunkering down as we all wait for doom or salvation......(in the form of two more Polar H-Bombs, set off to try to get our axis in gear, so to speak.....)

               Top notch all the way, an easy rating for the BQ, with 5 white-hot, broiling stars (*****), a FIND OF FINDS........and you won't even have to wait in line at your local library for special glasses to watch the sun.......

             

'THE NUTTY PROFESSOR'...... PROF. KELP OR BUDDY....'WHAT'LL IT BEEE-EEE-EEEEE...."

The Nutty Professor (1963)  ''When first released, some facile film nabobs, skimming the surface of the movie, saw it as Jerry Lewis's rueful meditation on Dean Martin.....supposedly caricatured as the boozing, skirt chasing narcissist Buddy Love....

           Hogwash. Bullshit, say we. The two grotesques on display in "The Nutty Professor" are clearly the public personas of the late Lewis himself........the spindly, nasal buck toothed nerd Professor Kelp and Buddy, his very own, slick-haired, tuxedo'd, chemically induced Id Monster...........

            It's no wonder that the film's reputation grew over the years......considered as Lewis's "Citizen Kane", his "Vertigo", his most personal statement and the epitome of his art.......

             In the film's final scenes, the gentle hearted , clownish Kelp and the odious Buddy battle for control of the body they both inhabit, a bravura piece of acting from Lewis. ...

              But away from the movie, you could watch a punishing marathon version of the same battle during Labor Day weekend's Muscular Dystrophy telethon. While hosting this event, Lewis tirelessly veered back and forth from his two alter egos, the rubbery, preening joker and the smug, supremely self-satisfied show biz hipster, barely repressing his hard shelled contempt......as this personality struggle dragged on for close to 72 hours, it began to look like a psychiatric version of "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?", a uniquely American spectacle.....

             Ultimately, the slings, arrows and outrageous fortune that Lewis endured throughout his long career helped Buddy Love triumph as Lewis's public personality and owner of his soul.  The collapse of his legendary, unseen "The Day The Clown Cried" became a permanent open wound.........and his subsequent films that did see the light of day were judged unwatchable....

             And so Lewis aged into Buddy Love for real......coated with the emotional scar tissue of a hard scrabble show business life and yet possessed of a fragile, easily damaged ego and a thin skin rivaled only by Donald Trump's.  Lewis frequently used this persona to terrorize and humiliate would-be interviewers.....and he and Martin Scorsese employed it to great effect in "The King Of Comedy"

              The community of culture mavens mocked and reviled the French for celebrating Lewis as a film auteur. But in truth, the French film community was perfectly justified in their assessment......as a director, Lewis exerted total creative control of his movies,.....regardless of what you thought of the work, he crafted his films with as much artistic micro-management as Truffaut, Godard or Hitchcock......(technically, he broke new ground, the first director to employ video playback on his sets....you now have an entire generation of directors who never look up from their video monitors while they're shooting.......whether that's a good thing is a subject for another post....)

               If Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman always had Paris......then we'll always have "The Nutty Professor" as Jerry Lewis's shining achievement.  When Buddy Love bullies a bartender into behaving courteously ("Repeat after me......say, 'What'll it beeeeeeee?") you can hear Jerry Lewis asking us the same  'What'll it beeeeee'......and choose between Kelp and Buddy. For the film's 1963 dictated happy ending, he chose the sweet Prof. Kelp....for that, we'll always give 4 stars (****)....in life, for better or worse......he chose Buddy.

'OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY'........VESTRON REVIVED......

Office Christmas Party (2016)......took us back to our innocently entertaining days laboring in the video stores of the l980's......

             Taking home a VHS movie to watch in your own living room was an amazing, novel thing to do.....such a novelty, that if the store was all out of copies of the hot new Hollywood release, customers would opt for "Night Of The Bloodsucking Barbarian Gladiators of 2099" and still go home happy.....

              Little video stores flourished and thrived, customers flocked to them (weekend nights resembled Times Square on New Years Eve) and everyone was happy.....(well, not everyone. Studios loathed and despised video stores as the store owners accumulated rental revenues from the one-time wholesale purchase of the tapes.....with none of that rental money shared with the studios....)

               And into this burgeoning marketplace came video companies like Vestron, grinding out cheapo knockoffs of Hollywood studio films to fill up the video store shelves.....

              Featuring rock bottom budgets, casts and production values (some of them looked like they were shot with 8mm Kodak Brownies), Vestron pumped out an ocean of direct-to-VHS sludge.....incredible as it may seem, they even started a 'lower-budget' label, Lightning Video, with even worse movies for stores to stock up on.....(joining this avalanche of trash came the 'Go Go Boys', Golan and Globus with Cannon Films, but they're a story for another post......)

              A favorite genre for Vestron and the Go Go Boys to duplicate was the 'gross-out party animal' comedy, made famous by 'Animal House' and Tom Hanks' "Bachelor Party"......this involved wild 'n crazy anti-establishment slackers sticking it to stuffy, stuck-up villains by throwing an all night booze-and-sex bash.......

              That's why nostalgia overtook us watching "Office Christmas Party", which really functions as nothing more than a bigger budgeted, better acted version of a Vestron VHS party animal movie.....

               This genre, whether it comes from studio filmmakers or fly-by-night shlockmeisters, works on a simple theory......spew out of hundreds of one liners and visual gags rapid fire....and some of them are bound to get a laugh. ...this equation hasn't changed or altered in decades....

                "Office Christmas Party", in true desperate VHS fashion, flings everything it has at you....even a cloud of cocaine. If you didn't laugh at one particular bit, don't worry........another five or six yocks will be along in a minute.

                 Did we find any of it funny?  By the law of averages, with the sheer amount of gags hurled......or course we did.  But it's an exhausting, formulaic thing to sit through......and keep in mind, as a former video store movie buyer, we dutifully sat through all of these Vestron party animal movies.......watching "Office Christmas Party" was something akin to a tour through a roadside 'Museum Of 1980's Pop Culture Video"......after ten minutes, we looked for the 'exit through the Gift Shop' signs.......

                  For its few amusing moments, we toast 2 stars (**) to this party......we smiled....but only because of those kinder, gentler 80's memories, when everyone enjoyed their VHS machines......

'RULES DON'T APPLY'.......LOVERS SWOON....AND A LOONY TYCOON....

Rules Don't Apply (2016)  Finally got around to satisfying our curiosity as to why Warren Beatty's long, long, long in the works comedy-drama-whatever featuring Beatty as Howard Hughes arrived stillborn and ignored by audiences......

           Yes, it's a textbook example of a "What in the hell did I just watch?" movie......comprised of many brilliant bits and pieces that never coalesce into an actual compelling movie.....

          Sad, because Beatty's legendary reputation as a meticulous, painstaking micro-manager of a director dilutes his movie instead of empowering it.

           It's a beautifully rendered nostalgic trip through late 1950's, early 1960's Hollywood......and nobody knows that era or personifies it as well as Beatty. But it's also a shapeless, wandering tour through the director's memories......maddeningly, it never quite comes into focus.

            In structure, the storyline vaguely reminded us of the more standard, boilerplate romantic comedy "I.Q" (1994) in which Albert Einstein (a puckish Walter Matthau) meddles in the love lives of Meg Ryan and Tim Robbins.....

            Beatty's darker take on this material has a pair of naive, virginal young lovers (Lily Collins, Alden Ehrenreich)  caught up in the orbit of Howard Hughes.......whose well documented mania Beatty portrays alternately for pathos or laughs, depending on the scene involved.

            It's clear that Beatty lavished much time and attention on the individual sequences but failed to make any effort to shape it all into a strong narrative.  And maybe that was his intention......just as Beatty and Arthur Penn's groundbreaking "Bonnie And Clyde" was hailed as an American version of a French New Wave film, "Rules Don't Apply" defiantly defies categorization.....it simply exists in its vivid little individual scenes, wittily observing its characters without bothering to hold you with their stories.....

            Worth watching?   Sure. We wouldn't have missed it.....because Beatty attends to the craft of filmmaking like a watchmaker, and there's not many directors with that kind of patience.  Just don't expect to be bowled over in any way.....2 & 1/2 stars (** 1/2)

BYE BYE STEVIE....LEAST FAVORITE TWEETS FROM GRUPPENFUHRER BANNON......

........managed to capture these tweets......evidently delivered in emotional turbulence....before they were deleted. The BQ is delighted to share them with you.....

Steve Bannon
@GruppenFuhrer Bannon
Did not appreciate stories about millions of Americans bursting into song..."Ding Dong, The Bitch is Dead..."  #hurt-my-feelings #that,is, if I had any feelings

Steve Bannon
@GruppenFuhrer Bannon
Go ahead and gloat.....but don't forget I fixed your asses good. No climate change agreement.....in a few years, you'll burn in hell right at your front door! You're welcome! #watch-that-iceberg-float-into-Miami

Steven Bannon
@GruppenFuhrer Bannon
POTUS has no vision. Wouldn't sign off on my idea to replace the American Eagle with Pepe The Frog.....maybe talked out of it by Jewboy son-in-law? Sad.  #non-Aryan bastards

Steve Bannon
@GruppenFuhrer Bannon
So sorry to leave WH, so much left undone.  Even after all my best efforts, still haven't torn USA completely apart. But not for lack of trying. #better-white-than-right

Steve Bannon
@GruppenFuhrer Bannon
Who needs POTUS?  Scored new gig-will play villain the new James Bond film, neo-Nazi Ernst Stravro Blowjob....who can suck his own-you know the rest. #007-Versus-Dickhead

Steve Bannon
@GruppenFuhrer Bannon
Just heard. David Duke in tears. Don't blame him. To hell with healing the nation. Heil-ing is much more fun  #miss-me-yet?

.........a silent prayer for the White House maintenance staff......tasked with scrubbing and cleaning a trail of grey-ish, slug-like slime leading out of the building.....

'THE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN'......AMERICAN SOLDIERS BATTLE TRUMP'S BEST BUDS......

The Bridge At Remagen (1969)    We simply had to satisfy our burning desire to watch American G.I.'s deliver an old-fashioned,  tank-and-machine-gun ass wuppin' to our President's favorite 'good' people.....Nazis.....

            This one's a brutally efficient re-enactment of a pitched battle in the closing days of World War 2......Allied and German forces, their strategies constantly shifting, sought to either seize control of or destroy the last remaining bridge across the Rhine river. At stake was the bridge's prize position as a pathway for the advancing Allies into the heart of Germany........cue the firepower.....

             Leading our guys: two battle weary, world weary American soldiers, (George Segal and Ben Gazzara, both subdued and superb). Holding the bridge for the Nazis: a conflicted Major (Robert Vaughn), who's desperate to delay blowing the bridge up for as long as possible, hoping to provide an escape route for thousands of German troops trapped behind Allied lines.  (A risky idea, since the panicked Nazis have taken to shooting their own officers for defying orders or deserting......no doubt Trump, the great lover and enabler of Neo-Nazis, would love these scenes of disloyal minions facing a firing squad....)

               Not the greatest of war movies by any stretch, but it gets the job done......and benefits enormously from Segal's performance as a hardened warrior who's exhausted and disgusted by the carnage around him.

               Interesting to note: while filming in Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1968, the movie's cast and crew had to flee from the invading wrath of Trump's other Best Friends Forever, the Russians.....

               Also a huge plus.....in the pre-CGI era, when you went see a war movie with loads of stuff blown to smithereens.......you got to see real stuff, (buildings, tanks, jeeps, bridges) blown to smithereens......instead of pixels....real rubble......

               Unlike the fantasy larking of "Where Eagles Dare" and "Kelly's Heroes", "The Bridge At Remagen" casts a gritty, grim, almost semi-documentary eye on warfare.....and you'll probably never see this level of real physicality in modern filmmaking ever again. So we'll salute 4 stars (****)....and
spoiler alert for our so-called 'President'.....sorry, Baby Orange, but your very fine folks, the Nazis don't fare too well in this one........
               

BABY ORANGE TWEETS THE BQ!! EXCLUSIVE TWEETS FROM GRUPPENFUHRER TRUMPF!!

Since we no longer have a human being as a sitting President.....but something closer to the Id Monster from "Forbidden Planet".......imagine how thrilled we were when we read these tweets....

Donald J.Trump
@GruppenFuhrer Trumpf
          Plenty of good people among Neo-Nazis.....sure hope they don't mind my grandkids are Jews......#change-the-kids-names, #plastic-surgery-if-they-don't-look-like-Ivanka

 Donald J.Trump
@GruppenFurher Trumpf
           Bad people on many sides, on many sides.....bad young woman didn't have enough sense to get out of the way of traffic....bet she's sorry now.....#alt-left girl deserves to be a hood ornament

Donald J.Trump
@GruppenFuhrer Trumpf
           All those dumb guys getting shot on the beaches at Normandy,violence on both sides....Nazis had permits to be on the beach......#I wait for all the facts

Donald J. Trump
@GruppenFurher Trumpf
           Wonderful congratulatory message from David Duke, very complimentary, loved my press conference. Right back at ya, Grand Wizard!..... #Sig Heil, Davey

Donald J.Trump
@GruppenFurher Trumpf
            Love all you black and Jewish folks who voted for me........suckers!   #conned 'em again

Donald J. Trump
@GruppenFuher Trumpf
           So happy all of America got to see the real me......light up the Tiki Torches, you guys! #blood-on-the-streets

Donald J. Trump
@GruppenFuhrer Trumpf
           Believe me, Adolf H. wasn't as bad you fake news people paint him.....very loving boyfriend to Eva, even agreed to marry her in the bunker......#just a guy in love #misunderstood

Donald J. Trump
@GruppenFuhrer Trumpf
            Sending a free bottle of Trump wine to Heather Heyer's mom. Enjoy!  Hope she realizes the stuff's damned expensive.....#huge winery, #discount for KKK and Alt-Right

             pardon us, while we weep for our country.....

'NEVER DREAM OF DYING'.........MAYBE THE NEXT BOND MOVIE???

Never Dream Of Dying by Raymond Benson  (2001)   We had the paperback of this James Bond book lying around in our 'cheapo library sale' pile for almost 10 years........and finally picked it up for a read when we heard the swirling rumors that the screenwriters of the upcoming Bond film might make use of it for source material......

              We think it's entirely possible that the movie scribes could cherry pick random sequences and characters out of Benson's book.....(the Timothy Dalton "License To Kill" included a healthy chunk of out of Ian Fleming's original "Live And Let Die" novel....)......but we doubt they're adapting the entire storyline.......the films have always maintained a healthy distance from the many Bond books commissioned by the Ian Fleming estate

              Not that we didn't enjoy it.......it's a fast, slick caper that plunges Bond into the glamour and craziness of international filmmaking and celebrity, with the mayhem spread across the sunny, gorgeous locales of Monte Carlo, Nice and Cannes.......

              It's way lighter and breezier than what we're used to seeing in the last few Bond films.....and if any of it filters into the movie script , it might give Daniel Craig the much longed for chance to lighten the hell up.......and simply carry the fate of the world on his shoulders instead of the weight of the world.......

              Everything's included that you'd demand in a Bond adventure (starting with its title, which sounds like a spoof on the names of the Pierce Brosnan Bond films...).......an impossibly stunning babe, a creepy villain and a host of thuggish minions......(the blind bad guy here is imbued with paranormal powers, which I don't the filmmakers will go anywhere near)........and Benson tops it off with a few plot twists and turns involving characters dredged up from the Fleming novels.......

              If the Bond movie bunch should decide to extract anything out of this book, the BQ highly recommends our favorite sequence from it......Bond battling for his life as he winds up in the middle of an aquatic action-movie scene being made, a Michael Bay-type atrocity with exploding futuristic pirate boats......(futuristic pirate boats??    Well...we did reference Michael Bay, didn't we?)

               A fun read for Bond fans.......and if they really use the character of the volcanically voluptuous French starlet/fashion model.......we can't wait to hear who gets cast......so we'll serve up
3 shaken but not stirred stars (***).....even if none of it ends up in the movie.....

             

               

'THE COBWEB'..........MINNELLI'S DRAPES OF WRATH......

The Cobweb (1955)    Hollywood usually approached the issue of mental illness like an 8 year old boy approaches an active wasp nest.......poke it with stick and see what comes out.....

              The woes of unbalanced people ended up as high class drama with a smidge of horror ("The Snake Pit") or more likely as thriller fodder (Hitchcock's "Spellbound")......cause nothing signified the entrance of a wacky person better than the electronic woo-wooing of a theramin....

              But leave it to MGM, home of high gloss, to turn life in the loony bin into a grand romantic soap opera........where schemers, adulterers, and schizos do battle over......drapes.

               Yes, you heard that right. The forward thinking shrink in charge (Richard Widmark) decides to sort of let the inmates run the asylum......and pick out new drapes for library. 

               This does not sit well with business manager Miss Inch (Lillian Gish) who's the J.Edgar Hoover of the place. She's been there forever, knows the skeletons in everybody's closet and protects her domain and influence with the fierceness of a medieval Baron in a walled fortress.......

               The various docs fool around with the wrong women while the political tug of war over the drape selection further damages an already high strung patient (John Kerr) while he tentatively woos a sweet neurotic (Susan Strasberg)....

                You may think this is the stuff of comedy, but MGM and director Vincente Minnelli aren't kidding here......it's a Cinemascope, Technicolor "Days Of Our Lives" with occupational therapy thrown in.  And befitting a top of the line MGM production, the mental hospital looks like an Ivy League sorority house.........the only thing missing is Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor dancing down the stairs.....

               One of the BQ's great guilty pleasures, not to be missed.........we recommend a 2 hour check in to this sanitarium if you should run across it......3 therapeutic stars (***).......we can only sigh at how healthier all the characters would turn out if  they'd just installed Venetian blinds in the library...

'FAT MAN AND LITTLE BOY'..........DESTROYER OF WORLDS.......

Fat Man And Little Boy (1989)    What better time to post about this one......while Baby Orange casually flirts with nuclear Armageddon in between gold games........

            And yes, we've heard the spot-on gags about the title of this film perfectly describing the two main opponents of the U.S.-Korea showdown.........like everybody else, we slapped our heads, wishing we'd thought of it first......

              This particular chunk of history has always fascinated us, , so we've pounced on any book or film that dealt with the events leading up to the creating and dropping of the first atomic bombs.......

              "Fat Man And Little Boy" makes an interesting companion piece to MGM's 1947 flag waving, deeply reverent and patriotic version "The Beginning Or The End", which we covered in a previous post.  "Fat Man", was crafted by director Roland Joffe and writer Bruce Robinson, both riding on the acclaim of "The Killing Fields."

               With their egos sufficiently engorged, Joffe and Robinson's take on 1945 Los Alamos reeks of self-satisfied, hip revisionism........history as viewed through a warped, distanced sensibility.....you can easily detect the creative smugness behind it.  Though the movie sits up on its hind legs and begs for adoration and awards, critics and audiences sniffed out the pretentious phoniness of it.

                In Robinson's script, General Groves (Paul Newman) and Robert Oppenheimer (Dwight Shultz)  are nothing more than artificial screenwriter chess pieces.....Groves reconfigured as a growly-voiced Patton and Oppenheimer as a wobbling neurotic........it's history rewritten as a fuzzy daydream somewhere inside Robinson's head and Joffe directs it all with ponderous solemnity, as if it delivering holy scripture......

              Interestingly, both this film and "The Beginning Or The End" inaccurately shoehorn in the fatal nuclear accident that befell a Los Alamos scientist (it didn't occur until after the bomb was constructed and dropped). In the older film, the poor fellow politely expires by fainting away. "Fat Man", to its credit, is at least unflinching in portraying John Cusack's agonizing death from a massive dose of radiation......functioning as a preview of horrifying events to come......

               Some fine acting and a few lively scenes here and there, but considering the powerful subject matter, an artsty-fartsy botch of a movie.....like a coffee table book waiting for someone to flip through its pages and admire it...... 2 stars (**).....not quite da bomb.....

LEAST FAVORITE INSTANT MESSAGE FROM BABY ORANGE HIMSELF.....DIRECT TO THE BQ!

Just received e-mail from Baby Orange.....

              Listen, BQ, I know you posted only a couple of hours ago that those....uh....uh....those ...uh...those overly boisterous people in Virginia were a side effect of me being President.....

              As you well know, there's overly boisterous people on both sides.......the overly boisterous fellow who ran over people probably just got his foot stuck on the gas pedal......happens all the time......let's all calm down here......after all, if it wasn't for some of these overly boisterous people, I wouldn't be President today.......

              .....so I certainly wouldn't want to offend them by calling them by calling them Neo-Nazi slime who slithered out of the sewers right after my fabulously attended Inauguration.....I mean, give me a break,  if I haven't been thrown in the slam, I'm gonna need their votes in 2020, God Bless 'em....

                  Yours Sincerely.......Believe me....let me tell you.........Baby Orange

             

LEAST FAVORITE THINGS: SPECIAL "WHOOPEE, WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" EDITION......

          So we've arrived at the moment that gave everyone sweat-drenched nightmares last year.....
......Baby Orange in control of the nuclear codes.......

Memo To MAGA red hat rally attendees......Google photos of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors....

Rex Tillerson  "Everybody can sleep well tonight......"    Breaking news, Rexie....nobody in their right mind has slept well since last November......

Baby Orange's "Fire And Fury"   Cause when the fate of millions of innocent civilians rests in your hands.....you want to make up stuff as you go along.......

Baby Orange Tells the Guam President that tourism will boom   We don't know about the rest of you, but our idea of a dream vacation is not going to place where the government warns you against blinding yourself by looking directly into the nuclear fireball........not even if the Trivago guy says we can have the hotel room for 2 bucks a day and a free mini-bar......

White Nationalists marching in Virginia    Consider this as a Baby Orange side effect.....just like those ominous laundry lists of terrible things that will happen to you in the ads for medications....."Election of Baby Orange may lead to severe breakouts of racist cockroaches crawling out of the woodwork.....also hives, night sweats, unusual disturbing dreams...and nuclear annihilation...."

Baby Orange contemplates intervening in Venezuela......Memo to Baby Orange:.....even if you invade Brazil, Chile and the Bahamas.......Bob Mueller and the Grand Jury will still be at work......

Baby Orange attacks Yertle The Turtle, unleashes the Enquirer on Manafort....brilliant, brilliant strategy......first piss off the guy who's in charge of pushing your agenda......then have your favorite rag run a sex expose on the guy who can potentially serve you up to the Grand Jury like a Christmas turkey.......good thinkin'........

Jeffrey Lord & Sebastian Gorka   Memo To James Bond Movie Producers......don't waste time casting actors as loathsome SPECTRE minions, not when these guys are available......Lord especially has loads of free time now...

             Enough.....we can't go on. Pray for America.....pray for mankind and the world......

'REMEMBER ME LIKE THIS'.........A GULF COAST FAMILY ENGULFED.......

Remember Me Like This by Bret Anthony Johnston (2014)    We really, really wish we had better things to say about this one......

            If we describe the compelling story told here, it might sound like something you'd want to rush out to the bookstore or library to find.......a Texas family torn asunder when one of their two young sons, an 11 year old, is kidnapped and held captive for five years by a pedophile living in a neighboring town.

             Found, rescued and returned to his family as a brutalized, damaged 16 year old, the boy, his parents and younger brother each struggle to re-assemble themselves as a family.......while each of them are consumed with guilt, anger and overwhelmed by the seemingly impossible task of healing themselves....

             A tale to keep you riveted to every page?  Sadly, no.  Author Johnston buries this gut-wrenching plot under an avalanche of internal psychological probing.  Though we appreciate his skilled attempts to delve deeply into his characters' emotional agonies.........the prose of the internal musings becomes endless, monotonous and constantly brings the novel to a grinding halt.....

              As if he's rewarding us for eating our spinach and plowing through countless, impenetrable pages of this stuff, Johnston occasionally offers nuggets of dialogue and plot developments.....

              But don't get your hopes up, because the book goes right back to its indigestible chunks of internal monologues.  After crawling around in the characters' heads for hundreds of pages, Johnston finally arrives at a conclusion that normally should have wielded enormous emotional power for a reader........but to be honest, if left us only with a sigh of relief that the damn thing was at long last over......

             Sorry, but as much as we hoped to love this book, we found it a missed opportunity.......an studied exercise in creative writing that forgets the key mission of engaging its readers.  1 & 1/2 disappointed stars....(* 1/2)

'EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!!'........ TWO ANIMAL HOUSES...TWO EXCLAMATION POINTS.....FEW LAUGHS.....

Everybody Wants Some!!  (2016)    We're as guilty as anyone when it comes to waxing nostalgic over our youthful days.......it comes with aging, along with stiff joints. clogged arteries and an inability to remember where you last left your glasses and car keys.....

             So we don't begrudge writer-director Richard Linklater for softening and romanticizing a bunch of 1980 college baseball jocks, carousing and bonding in the week leading up to their first day of classes at a Florida university.......

             In the glow of Linklater's memory, the boys are fundamentally benevolent, even in their rambunctiousness and predatory misogyny. One or two of them even spouts loquacious, clever observations from time to time.

             We'll credit Linklater for decidedly breaking away from the jock stereotypes seen in countless teen/college comedies over the decades......where the athletes were usually depicted as dolts and bullies. But in their own way, Linklater's kinder, gentler crew of rollicking party animals are no less a screenwriter's unreal constructs then the old cardboard jerks of farces gone by......

             After the boys are installed in two residential homes due to a dorm shortage, the shapeless, formless narrative wanders around with them as they randomly shmooze and party. Linklater evokes the entire decade by sending them through three definitive parties as if they're touring the separate parts of Disney World......Disco Land, Country Music Land, Punk Rock Land.....

            Don't expect "Animal House"....no giant gross-out yocks.........Linklater's goal here is mostly distanced, observed behavior......he rations out a few laughs sporadically.....

           We began to lose our patience with the movie when it introduced a sweet, shy budding romance between one of the boys and a theater major girl.......that might have made a cute little film all by itself, but it's used only as a springboard for Linklater's final unrealistic set-piece.....our bemused baseball crew attending a bizarre costume party held by the drama majors....

            As someone who spent a lot of time in college sharing classes, conversation and socializing with theater majors, we found Linklater's stereotypes lazy and thoughtless....and for this film, a rare ploy for cheap laughs.....

            A few bright moments perk up "Everybody Wants Some!!".....but by the time it finally grinds to a halt with its ironic final shot, you'll wonder why you bothered with it at all. No exclamation points.....and only 1 & 1/2 stars....(* 1/2).....

TRUMP PHONES KIM! LEAKED CALL BREAKING NEWS, ONLY FROM THE BQ!

           Forget CNN, The New York Times, Huffington Post, USA Today......only we at the BQ can bring you this exclusive leaked phone call between The Nuclear Powered Leader and Chubby Lunatic....(you can decide for yourself which is which.....)

             A digital copy of this phone call was left on the BQ's porch sometime late last night, along with a new phone book and lawn care flyer......

             We present you the (largely) unedited transcript of the call.....

TRUMP:    Kim?   Kim, is that you, you little misfortune cookie.....

KIM:          Is this who I think it is? I feel like Charlie Brown.....I finally met the Great Pumpkin....

TRUMP:    You should talk.....who does your hair anyway? The Muppets?

KIM:          Let's see how funny you are when you start glowing in the dark......oh, wait a minute....you do that already......
.                   .
TRUMP:    Believe me, I'm gonna hit you with such fire and fury......it's gonna be more fire and fury  than I unleashed in the toilet after my last Taco Bell takeout.....

KIM:          You can't scare me......everyone knows you use "Believe me" just before you tell a big fib.......just like the Asian boy said in "16 Candles"....'You big teaser'

TRUMP:    Don't quote movies to me, you unrefridgerated six day old eggroll.........you don't want to mess with a guy who's got a nuclear arsenal and a Twitter account.........

KIM:          Oh, big talker......how come you wear that stupid red tie draped all the way down to your balls?

TRUMP:    Says the guy who looks like Blofeld if they remade "You Only Live Twice" with the Oz munchkins.....
.
KIM:          I'm warning you, Donnie Darko......I've got a nuclear warhead with your name on it....and one extra I can ship to Melania, since she probably needs a vibrator like nobody's business.....I offer free shipping....like Amazon Prime...
                  .
TRUMP:    That does it.....this means war.....with a hey nonny nonny and a hot cha cha.....

KIM:          Ha! You stole that from "Duck Soup"....you can't fool me, my Daddy was a big movie fan.... ..hey, how's the Great Wall Of Trump going?  Get the check from Mexico yet?   I heard they said it's in the mail......
               
TRUMP:    Listen, you poisonous little pot-sticker.......when I get done with you, I'll wipe out more North Koreans with nukes than Americans I was gonna kill with Trumpcare.....and that's a shitload, let me tell ya....
             
KIM:          How about I lob a nuke into that big white dump?

TRUMP     You mean Steve Bannon?

KIM:          No, dummy.....I meant that big white dump where you park your fat ass in between golf games.....the one in Washington.....
..
TRUMP:    You got a point there, the place does suck.....but we're renovating......they're putting in a McDonald's and KFC adjoining the oval office....

KIM:           Cool! Something to look forward to when we go all "Red Dawn" on your ass and parachute in.....

TRUMP:     If you were at one of my rallies, I would have already had 6 guys beat the crap out of you and pay their lawyer fees........I'm hanging up.....

KIM:           One last question...

TRUMP:     What?

KIM:           How do you keep the phone from slipping out of your hands?  Those tiny little fingers can't grip it all the way around, can they?

TRUMP:     That does it.....I'm hitting the big red Nuke button now.....nobody can say I didn't try diplomacy first.....wait...wait.....who pulled the wires out of the button.....General Kelly?.....Pence?.....what is that guy holding up?......a straight-jacket?......
                    .

           (CALL CUTS OFF)

                    Stay tuned for more breaking news......if we're all still alive.........

               

'INDIGNATION'........PHILIP ROTH'S NOT SO NIFTY FIFTIES.......

Indignation (2016)   Fair warning......writer-director James Schamus's adaptation of the Philip Roth novel can test your patience in its meticulous, studied and stately pacing.......it doesn't move, it cautiously proceeds, only after each individual scene makes its point....

             Schamus, the prolific independent film producer and University professor, has indeed made an Academic's  version of Roth's book...... about a quiet but fiercely liberal, free thinking Jewish scholarship student (Logan Lerman) who clashes with the repressive attitudes and cultural mores of 1951 America.  Most of the film plays as if meant to be studied, not watched........but when it catches fire, it's like nothing we've seen in the pure brilliance of its acting, writing and direction.......

             Lerman's Marcus Messner, whose college draft deferment protects him from service in the Korean War, finds himself a stranger in a strange land when he enrolls in a staunchly Christian university in Ohio.  Forced to attend the university's compulsory chapel services and generally chafing against the campus's 1950's conformity and anti-Semitism. Messner finds a ray of light in a romance with fellow student Olivia Hutton (Sarah Gadon).....a blonde, wealthy WASP  goddess, to be sure, .but a a deeply damaged soul, bearing the telltale scar of a slashed wrist..  She recognizes a fellow iconoclast in Marcus, but her own failed rebellions have unhinged her, leaving her adrift,finding only a small measure of solace first in liquor, and then, to Marcus's stunned confusion,in fellatio,,,,,,.

              A round peg who won't fit into a square hole, Marcus comes to the attention of the university's Dean (playwright-actor Tracy Letts)......and here we arrive at what makes this movie a must-watch, a bravura, sustained 15 minute verbal duel between Marcus and the Dean.....a spectacular clash of values, beliefs, opinions and worldviews that resonates today more than ever. The sequence functions as a kind of stunning one-act play built into the movie......the two actors spar, jab and parry at each other like duelists fighting to the death........and in this test of wills, you can see the harbingers of strife that will rip apart American society in the decades to come.....

               With no cinematic flourishes whatsoever, Schamus depends completely on his actors to tell this melancholic story and they put it across with a controlled force that holds you to the film even when it slows to a crawl. Anyone who values the kind of  the top-of-the-line acting and writing that can only be found these days in independent film should not pass this one up. 4 stars (****).

         

'TARAS BULBA'........DON'T CRY FOR YUL, ARGENTINA.....

Taras Bulba (1962)    A long time ago, in a filmmaking galaxy far far away, Hollywood didn't have 3000 people sitting at keyboards, their fingers dancing across the keys as they animated warriors, horses, kingdoms and teeming crowds........

               If you wanted 500 guys on horseback, you had to shlep your cast and crew out to whatever country was willing to cough up 500 guys on horseback........

               .....which explains why "Taras Bulba", a bustling, bloody, muscular epic set in the Ukraine Steppes of the l6th century was filmed in Argentina......

                 Hey, we're not complaining......the scenery's stunning and looks authentic enough, with the possible exception of the matte-painted bottomless gorge that the film's Cossacks like to jump their horses across when they get into manly pissing contests.....(whichever guy and horse go ass over teakettle down the gorge have clearly lost the bet.....)

                 When not engaged in Extreme Gorge Jumping, our Cossack horde, led by sword-swingin', limb-lopping Taras Bulba (a fully committed, enthusiastic Yul Brynner), does furious battle with the invading Poles, who wear spiffier uniforms and live in walled cities......

                 Crafty Yul, hoping to soak up Polish knowledge to better kick their asses, packs his two sons (Tony Curtis, Perry Lopez) off to school in Kiev...(the Poles, for their part, consider the boys' enrollment as an experiment in taming and civilizing Cossacks)......this, understandably,  does not go well for anybody.....

                Even while suffering through numerous hazings and floggings from the Polish student body and the sadistic monks running the place, Tony finds time to fall head over heels for an unattainable classy cutie (Christine Kaufmann, who enraptured Curtis is real life as well).......

                  This star-crossed romance figures majorly in the film's thunderous third act, in which Yul and his fur-lined army lay siege the Poles' fortress city Dubno. This presents quite a quandary for Tony, because his Polish sweetie is stuck inside the city and the place is racked with plague, not to mention a populace eager to burn Christine at the stake for felonious Cossack-snuggling.....

                 Mass quantities of dead Poles and Cossacks pile up, tragic melodrama ensues.......and all of it's put to Franz Waxman's monumental, pounding score, music that blares out for a better movie than this to accompany it......

                 The film was supposedly designed as a 3 hour Ukrainian 'Lawrence Of Arabia' and the decision to truncate it into a run-of-the-mill action time-waster forever soured Yul Brynner from ever again hurling himself into a role......like some bored, jaded stars of the 60's, Brynner fell back to coasting on his formidable charisma.  You could even call him the first meta actor, ironically playing a robotic version of his "Magnificent Seven" character in "Westworld".......

                Maybe the final cut disappointed Yul, but there was enough here to entertain the young BQ back in '62.....and today as well.  You'll never see any major studio film employ flesh and blood men and real live horses for battle scenes like the ones depicted here........and most sadly, you may never again hear such a thematically brilliant score like Waxman's......since studios now commission colorless, themeless, Hans Zimmer-like orchestral wallpaper to play underneath their CGI circuses.....

                 With its furious battles, primal emotions and 'Star Wars' worthy music,  we might even categorize "Taras Bulba" as a pre-Digital popcorn blockbuster........an analog epic with not a single pixel in sight......so we'll take three giant Steppes and give it 3 stars (***)........(next time you want to jack up the burned calories on your treadmill or lifecycle, put Franz Waxman's "Ride To Dubno" on your Ipod....)

               

'HERE AND GONE'.......BEST SUMMER WEEKEND BOOK BLAST......

Here And Gone by Haylen Back (2017)    Nothing, but nothing beats a lazy summer weekend with a juicy, can't-stop-reading thriller.......and this one kept us zipping through the pages at supersonic speed.....

            "Here And Gone"  starts with a premise beloved by both thriller and romance writers......a desperate young mother and her two children on the run from a physically abusive huband/father.......

           Near a town we might as well refer to as The-Middle-Of-Friggin'-Nowhere, Arizona, mom and kids get pulled over by a Sheriff for having the car overloaded......and thus begins a non-stop rollercoaster Hitchcockian ride of paranoia, profound evil, cringing suspense and the long expected explosive violence.....

            We won't spoil any of the plot details in this post......just dive into the book and see if we're not kidding about its ability to nail you down to your favorite reading nook until you're  finished it....

           Our "Author Who Kept Us Up All Night" award goes without question to Haylen Beck, a pen name for celebrated crime novelist Stuart Neville. Well.....whatever the hell his name is at any given moment, he crafted one of our best lazy summer weekend reads......we already can't wait for the movie.....

            BQ didn't require any brow-furrowing to arrive at a suitable rating for 'Here And Gone'......unquestionably 5 stars (*****), a FIND OF FINDS......sieze a copy ASAP, strap yourself in and enjoy......

         

LEAST FAVORITE THINGS: BREAKING NEWS FROM HELL......

.............pardon us while we wistfully recall the bygone days when we didn't have to question the sanity of the President.....

Baby Orange And The Boy Scout Phone Call     That must have come in from that special phone ....you know the one, where you stick out your thumb and pinky while pressing your other fingers against your cheek.....so your hand looks like a receiver....

Baby Orange And The President Of Mexico    "Listen, you gotta stop saying you won't pay for the wall......for the last 2 years, I've told those morons at my rallies that you're paying for it.....you can't say you won't pay for it....you're makin' me look dumb and weak......what'd ya say?  I am dumb and weak?  Yeh, I know.....but ya still gotta stop sayin' it....."

Steven Miller   Like Pennywise The Clown from "It".....Baby Orange's Jack-In-The-Box Fascist, popping out at you when you lease expect it.......

New Immigration Policy....Please have the following ready when your number is called, your Master's Degree in English Literature, B.S. in Electrical Engineering and prepared Shakespeare sonnet to recite aloud to the Immigration Officer......with feeling.

Fox News Host Sends Penis Pictures.....You mean...a Fox guy is literally a dickhead? Not exactly breaking news here......

Baby Orange At His Rally...."Do you see any Russians here?"   Memo to Baby Orange:  When you face the Grand Jury, none of them will be wearing MAGA baseball caps........

'THE VIKINGS'.........AND A BOY'S LIFE IN THE SUMMER OF '58........

The Vikings (1958)      We always run the risk of saddened disappointment when revisiting the movies of our childhood......

                .........the risk that the movie that wowed us as a kid, that became a touchstone of our growing up, will look diminished when viewed with the wiser, cold maturity of an adult's eye.....

                      We've had enough of those experiences for sure.......but sometimes, the movie holds up just fine after the passage of decades......and for two hours transports us back to a happier, simpler time in our lives......

                     In the summer of 1958, our parents, along with two neighbor families, leased a ramshackle three story house in Ventnor, New Jersey......just a half hour or so boardwalk stroll from Atlantic City......the one and only summer we spent entirely at the seashore......

                     During the week, it was three Moms and their kids, the future BQ, an only child,  and two sets of squabbling older-younger brothers....(the olders were 11 years old, the youngers, 8 years old, with Yours Truly in the middle at age 9) The three Dads, working 9 to 5 in Philly, would arrive only for the weekends......

                   We spent those golden summer days riding in the waves and gleefully demolishing our sand castles........come sundown, after dinner, we'd take that long but worthwhile hike down the boardwalk to Atlantic City and the brightly lit miniature golf course and the fabulous Steel Pier, where variety shows still lived, as well the amazing diving horse.......

                 Rainy days meant only one thing......the movies. And no movie we five boys piled into that summer gripped our imaginations like "The Vikings"........for the remainder of the summer, we transformed ourselves into mighty Norse warriors, screaming (like the movie Vikings) "Odin!" as we took flying leaps at one another.......we could even hum out the main theme from Mario Nascimbene's  unforgettable, brilliant score......

                 To say the movie impressed the hell out of us would be an understatement.........practically mythic in its plotting, stunning in its photography (by Jack Cardiff, later to helm his very own rip-roarin' Viking saga, "The Long Ships")......and spectacularly brutal in its violence...(before it's even half over, Kirk Douglas has an eye torn out and Tony Curtis has his hand lopped off)  And the Vikings?  The coolest, toughest guys ever.......like Medieval Navy Seals........when they weren't out hacking and plundering, it was back to the coastal village for marathon ale binges and hurling axes at their wives' long blonde pigtails........

                   /Does "The Vikings" still stand tall,  59 years later?

                    Oh, you betcha. Still robust and muscular, still beautifully filmed, staged and scored. And here's what sets it apart from today's so-called epic fantasies.........the skilled scriptwriting dictates the placement and justification of the action sequences........as opposed to our usual, current CGI monstrosities, where the storytelling consists of spitball sound bites jammed in between the mindless, endless digital goulash.........

                     A week after we kids saw "The Vikings" in '58......it rained again. And off we went again to the same theater......to hear the actors yell out "Odinnnnnnnn!" before hurling themselves on top of three or four opponents.  Forever a 4 star movie (****), it takes The Beached Quill back to the beach again.......watching it made us  a kid again, riding in the waves and playing at conqueror of empires.......

'THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH' & 'CURSE OF THE LIVING CORPSE'.......DEL TENNEY'S DRIVE-IN DEMENTIA.....

The Horror Of Party Beach & Curse Of The Living Corpse (1964)   At the very least, the BQ has to posthumously applaud shlockmeister writer-director Del Tenney for his unique achievement in trash cinema.......not only producing and directing a complete drive-in ready double feature of abysmal horror movies.......but having them distributed by 20th Century Fox....(big studios never minded much about slapping their logos on low grade sludge if they smelled hot box office....)

           And what a duo......with a combined budget probably less than the Evian water bill for Tom Cruise while he made "The Mummy".  Unlike some double features where the two movies shared equal weight and billing, this one was more of a Main Event & Sideshow pairing, with "Horror Of Party Beach" as the topliner and "Curse Of The Living Corpse" the added attraction bringing up the rear.......

            Del Tenney took something of a daring creative risk with 'Horror Of Party Beach" and put two disparate genres in a blender......the monster movie and teen beach romp.   Why didn't anyone think of this sooner..........cute bikini babes dancing on the beach......just before rubber-suited monsters come waddling up from the surf to rip them apart....

              We're not sure exactly what impulses drive these creatures.......certainly not food, since their mouths appear jammed to capacity with appendages resembling hot dogs........they decimate a slumber party, carrying off a few of the girls for who-knows-what....(for further details on  who-knows-what, you'd have to watch Roger Corman's "Humanoids From The Deep") :

               Though unashamedly awful and amateurish, Tenney's monster mash features a still topical origin sequence:  radioactive waste from leaking barrels tossed into the sea settle over the skeletons of shipwreck victims....voila....instant mutants with a hunger for young girls and no patience to attend college mixers to find them........

              Oddly enough, for the bottom half of this double bill, Tenney wildly overreaches way past his limited abilities, attempting a period piece in "Curse Of The Living Corpse"....

               Yes, he actually sets this in 1962 New England, with his actors all gussied up in those clothes they give you to wear at the 'Old Timey' photo booths at the State Fair.......the cast plays a collection of greedy, obnoxious relatives waiting to pounce on the fortune of a recently deceased, really rich dead guy.

               Really Rich Recently Deceased Dead Guy has other ideas, rising from his coffin and lurking around the sumptuous estate, bumping off the relatives in all the ways they feared the most. At almost an hour and a half, it plays like an endless live-action 19th century version of the 'Clue' board game...as written and performed by elementary school students.

                But there is a wonderful bonus in the middle of this mess......oh my God,,,is it? Isn't that? Doesn't he look like....?   Playing the snarky, booze guzzling wastrel of the bunch.....yes, Chief Brody himself, Roy Scheider, showing us how even the greatest of actors had to start somewhere......and he acquits himself far better here than....say, George Clooney in "Return Of The Killer Tomatoes"

               If you do ever have an unnatural urge to recreate a hot summer night at the Drive In (and we sometimes do).....nothing could fill that need more than Del Tenney's demented double feature....deranged artifacts of a long gone moviegoing era. We salute you, Del.....for the experience of watching the two movies together, we'll puncture 2 & 1/2 barrels of nuclear waste(** 1/2).....(that rating applies strictly for hardcore horror buffs......everyone else, proceed only if you dare.....)