LEAST FAVORITE THINGS.......SPECIAL "SUCK IT UP, PUERTO RICO!" EDITION

Baby Orange tweetstorms the Mayor of San Juan......Not that it's any great comfort in the current situation.....but she should consider this the equivalent of the Congressional Medal Of Honor and the Nobel Prize.......to be vilified by a huuuuuuge piece of excrement that walks on two legs.....

Baby Orange slams suffering Puerto Ricans......"They want everything done for them!".......much like Baby Orange when it comes to trying to conducting Presidential business or trying to pass Trumpcare.......

 Baby Orange calls Tom Price "a good man" before firing him.....English translation of Baby Orange-Speak...."good man"...in English, "sorry-ass sucker got caught"

Jared and Ivanka's private e-mails in the White House......watch for the remake of  "Convict Babes In Chains", starring Crooked Hilary and Princess Baby Orange as cellmates......all hell breaks loose when Jared "I'm In Charge Of The World At Large" Kushner busts out of the neighboring men's prison, looking for a conjugal visit.......

Baby Orange confounded by the ocean......it's a really big ocean, an unbelievable amount of water.....not to worry, help is on the way.....Spain has dispatched the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria......arriving late February.....

Baby Orange's Orange-ettes fly like Saudi Princes on U.S. taxpayer money.....Memo to all MAGA redhats......hear that sucking sound?  It's you......sinking into the swamp that your GruppenFuhrer promised he'd drain for you.......the only thing he knows how to drain is your wallet...

Baby Orange gives himself a tax break......and Congress can't pass it fast enough.....those blackmail notes from Putin and the Moscow Whores Consortium are piling up like crazy......believe me.

'A KISS BEFORE DYING' (1956 & 1991).......STILL KNOCKIN 'EM DEAD......

 A Kiss Before Dying (1956) & A Kiss Before Dying (1991)    Novelist Ira Levin's 1953 thriller works like a clockwork mousetrap in its tale of an ambitious, lower class sociopath who tries to murder his way into a wealthy family.......

              Therefore any film adaptation wouldn't really need high caliber acting........with the director only needing to move the characters around like chess pieces to manipulate the audience......(Hitchcock was one of the few directors who recognized the importance of using the finest actors to better engage us in all the murderous goings-on....)

               Neither the first film adaptation of Levin's book in 1956, nor the 1991 remake boasts any memorable performances. The first film at least received service
able work from Robert Wagner as evil smoothie Bud Corliss and Joanne Woodward as one of his targets.

                 35 years later, the remake suffered from embarrassingly dead-eyed, wooden work from Matt Dillon and Sean Young. (Dillon and Young announce their dialogue at one another as if they're still sitting around at the initial script table read....)

                The principal enjoyment in the 1956 film comes from watching the malignant Corliss carefully engineer his first murder while oh so carefully (or so he thinks) covering his tracks.  Further fun comes from seeing all his machinations begin to fray and come undone, despite his bumping off of additional people who might expose him.......

                 Wagner doesn't have to exert himself much here, just behave like the pleasant, callow young guys he usually played in studio films.........with the added attraction of killing people. Woodward gives it her all as a pathetic heiress infatuated with him......but as we pointed out, this is no showcase for actors. The only star on display here is Levin's storyline....

                 The remake arrived with much higher aspirations.......a wanna-be, pseudo-Hitchcock romance, complete with a lumbering, pervasive imitation Herrmann score by Howard Shore. Director James Dearden must have dreamed of channeling "Vertigo" and "Marnie" into this mess, but he's ruinously thwarted by Dillon and Young, who play their scenes like they're reading passages from the phone book to each other.  The only real actor on hand is Diane Ladd, portraying Dillon's decent, clueless mom.....

                 The murders, naturally, are nastier and prolonged in the remake and the cinematography sometimes aspires to the studied, deliberate studio phoniness of "Marnie".....but even with Ira Levin's whip smart plot twists still in play, the woeful, indifferent acting is the only thing that makes an impression. When a scene includes a TV playing "Vertigo", all you can think of is "now there's a movie we'd rather watch than this one..."

                 If there's another remake in the works......we can only hope they get it right this time.....for the 1956 version, 2 stars (**), for the 1991 remake...1 star (*).......paging Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone......

             

'RAISING CAIN'.......DEPALMA'S GREATEST HITS ALBUM......

Raising Cain (1992)    Alfred Hitchcock, whenever enjoying himself as a cinema raconteur, loved detailing elaborate set-pieces he dreamed up......but for which he could never find a script or a film to logically insert these bravura scenes......

            One of his favorites involved the camera tracking the piecing together of a car on a Detroit assembly line, from steel skeleton to finished automobile.....

             As the completed car rolls off the assembly belt, one of its doors is opened......and out falls a dead body.....ba-da-bum-bum....

             Brilliantly perverse, senseless and loads of fun to imagine.  But even Hitchcock, who laboriously worked with his writers in crafting scripts, couldn't fit that one in.....

             No such adherence to logic ever afflicted Brian De Palma when cobbling together his various Hitchcock tributes and homages......

               His 'Raising Cain' plays out like an entire collection of crazy, discarded Hitchcock ideas......it's a whole movie made up of 'dead-body-falls-out-of-the-Assembly-Line-car' sequences, barely glued together with a slapdash, completely bonkers storyline.........like blinking, colorful Christmas lights strung together with the thinnest of electrical wire......

               It's basically 96 zippy minutes of De Palma pressing a joy buzzer inserted under your seat (much like shlockmeister William Castle did to people during "The Tingler"), while he screams out, "Howdja like that one? Wasn't that creepy and clever?........like a funhouse ride on the State Fair carnival midway, where you want to make sure the safety bar is all the way down while scary stuff pops out at you......

               Not one to waste time with a slow "Psycho" build-up, De Palma allows premium ham John Lithgow to come tearing out of the gate, playing a touchy-feely child psychologist bedeviled by his evil Dad and equally nasty twin brother......(all played by Lithgow...making the film's Big Twist blatantly obvious, not that it matters.....)

                While the Loony Lithgow triumvirate go about murdering moms and abducting their toddlers for weird behavioral experimentation, the relatively sane Lithgow's oncologist wife (Lolita Davidovich) carries on a heated affair with the widower of a cancer victim she treated.......(this leads to a spectacularly scary/funny hospital flashback that's beyond priceless....)

                And De Palma's greatest hits just keep on comin'........he doubles down on the 'car-sinking-into-the-swamp' sequence from 'Psycho', (along with many other plunderings from that film, as well as Michael Powell's legendary 'Peeping Tom')......and finishes everything off with his patented slow motion Grand Opera finale in which heroes, villains and victims ever so elegantly collide......

              Absurd? To the max. Entertaining? Oh, hell yes......a breathless parade of nonsense meant primarily by De Palma to rescue himself from the career-poisoning trainwreck of "Bonfire Of The Vanities".

               And the BQ still had a juicy old time with it......so we'll raise 3 stars for "Raising Cain" (***).......a movie we place in one of our customized categories....Still Crazy After All These Years.....


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'HOW TO FIND LOVE IN A BOOKSHOP'.............BOOKS 'N LOVE.....ACTUALLY.

How To Find Love In A Bookshop by Veronica Henry (2017)  High time we renewed our credentials as a blogger who'll review anything........even if it's ridiculously outside our pigeon-holed demographic......

            Truth here: (and not a well kept secret).....to quote Burt Lancaster from "The Professionals"...'I'm a sucker for love.'.....and fair warning to all you younger visitors, this is what happens when you age......unabashed sentiment tends to grow right alongside the gray hairs and aching joints.......

            Which explains why we threw this one into the BQ's well worn canvas book bag on our last plundering of the our little library's new release section, along with the usual blood-soaked thrillers.

             At this point, we didn't even feel the need to look sheepish and give our wonderful librarians the predictable...."Oh, this one's for my great Aunt Bertie..."   We know they'd only give each other a "yeh, sure it is" glance after we left.....

              Now to the book itself.......easy to describe. Imagine everyone's favorite Christmas movie "Love, Actually"....only this time centered around a quaint little bookshop in a quaint little British village.....populated by multiple lovestruck, potential soulmates who haven't quite connected with each other yet. 

               Will all these adorable people, of varying ages and stations in life, finally realize the love of their life has been right next to them all along?

               Is the Pope Catholic? Are global warming deniers idiots? Does Trump dye himself orange?

               Yes, it's formulaic.....yes, it's as predictable as sunrise and sunset,.....don't ask us why, but we didn't mind a damn bit. At the risk of disagreeing with the wisdom of Forrest Gump, this book was a box of chocolates where we knew exactly what we were gonna get..... and still gobbled down the whole thing......

              So then, Memo to all you bookshop 'n romance fans (and we know you're out there, even if you don't admit it...)....by all means, zero in on this one, save it for those rainy Autumn afternoons and evenings when a comfy book provides the best of comforts......4 stars (****)......and if you're lucky enough to live in the vicinity of an independent bookstore like the one in this book, buy stuff and keep 'em in business.....

           

'THE BAD BATCH'...........ROCK BOTTOM IN DYSTOPIANA...........

The Bad Batch (2016)   If this movie could be cut down to 6 or 7 minutes instead of its tortuous 2 hours. it could have made one hell of a hilarious entry at the "Funny Or Die" website or the new season of 'Saturday Night Live'..........

            In its full uncut version......we've never seen a movie that so fervently begs for ridicule from the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" gang......

            This is Independent filmmaking at its most ghastly.......deliriously pretentious, humiliating beyond belief for the unlucky actors trapped in it........unwatchable and repulsive on every possible level, both in content and visual style.

             The kind of movie that makes you wish for the return of the 2 precious hours of your life that you wasted on it.......

              We enter the sheer hell of this movie in future apocalyptic Texas, where 'bad batches' of undesirables have their scalps tattooed before they're kicked out of the state into the bleak, dystopian desert wilderness........(Trump and Sheriff Joe might have an orgasm watching this part....).

              The latest refugee, blonde hottie Arlen (Suki Waterhouse) wanders around until captured by a group of fellow outcasts who've turned to cannibalism for food.  Tough luck for Arlen, cause mealtime for the clan costs her an arm and a leg......literally.

               Uncomfortable with providing all-you-can-eat barbecue for this bunch, our plucky gal escapes across the desert, dragging her cute, mutilated little self on a skateboard.....(and no, we're not making any of this up.....)

                She winds up in a kinder, gentler bad batch enclave appropriately named 'Comfort'....(conveniently dropped off out a shopping cart by a grizzled,  mute Hermit played by an unrecognizable Jim Carrey).....'Comfort', colorfully decorated with a giant-sized Boom Box, is presided over by a post-apocalyptic Hugh Hefner who has dubbed himself 'The Dream'.......(fair warning to you all: this lunacy isn't anywhere near as much fun to watch as it is too write about....)

                  'The Dream' (played by The Keanu Reeves) busies himself impregnating a whole bunch of 'The Dream' mansion house bunnies and proudly boasts of his singular achievement.......indoor plumbing to pump everyone's shit safely out of Dreamville........(hugely ironic, considering Reeves delivers this earnest dialogue in a colossal shitstorm of a movie).

                   Somewhere in the abyss of the storyline, Arlen's back in the desert, where she bonds with cannibal hunk Miami Man (Jason Momoa). We know the prettiest girls gravitate toward the bad boys, but falling for a guy who previously snacked on her hacked off limbs?  No wonder all the nice guys feel lonely and frustrated......

                  We realize in describing this that it all sounds a demented spoof. If only. They're dead serious here......and visually, the film moves like a series of still photographs, each one held in front of you ten minutes too long.  You can feel yourself growing older as this atrocity grinds on......

                  Enough. We can say no more.  Don't merely avoid it......run screaming from this movie....we give this  Zero Stars...(0)......or more to the point, Minus Infinity.......

'LOGAN'............REBEL WITHOUT HIS CLAWS......

Logan (2017)    Now here's something we thought we'd never see........finality and closure amidst a superhero franchise......

              Normally big studios prefer to milk their superheroes like worshiped cash cows, squeezing the teats til the very last dollar squishes out.......(but then again, there's always the promise of prequels....and right now as we speak, there are probably two million young actors practicing their snarls in front of mirrors, dreaming of their eventual casting as Wolver-Teen....)
.

              But for now, let us bid a fond farewell to Hugh Jackman's Wolverine and Patrick Stewart's Professor X.......as they take their leave of us, awash in a sea of gore.....

               As is our custom, we won't bother with plot points of a movie that's already been reviewed and blogged about 8 million times.........we'll just skip to the cool stuff.....

               R-Rated Carnage  Unfettered and unimpeded by a PG-13,  Hugh can finally let us see what really happens when his Adamantine claws tear through human beings........and wow, it's even better than what a set of Ginsu knives does to carrots and tomatoes in those infomercials......

               Speaking of Adamantine......As usual, the FDA was way too late in issuing its warning about having unbreakable steel blended into your DNA.......the stuff's killing Hugh faster than a carton of Marlboro's and a year's worth of McRibs......but he doesn't have the time or the temperament to make a public service announcement like Yul Brynner did......

                Little Wolverina.....Dafne Keen, unquestionably the movie's MVP.........and the definitive answer to any studio executive's demand....."get me a younger Chloe Grace Moretz!"  Raised across the border by a Mexican nurse, this makes Wolverina Donald Trump's worst nightmare.....an undocumented Dreamer who can behead people who piss her off.....(one can only hope she finds her way to the White House in the sequel.....)

                Villains, Villains, Villains.....The usual Evil Scientist From Equally Evil Hi-Tech Corporation.....played by Richard E Grant, looking very Richard E. Gaunt.....also some snarky young creep with a robotic hand who, like all the other varied "X-Men" movie villains, stupidly manhandles X-kids who can spit tornadoes out of their nostrils or whatever the hell else they do.....

                 Also thrown into the mix.....a bunch of pickup truck thugs who harass and menace a black family who've befriended our fugitive trio of the Prof. X, Wolverine and Little Wolverina. These guys seem dropped in from one of those 1970's "I ain't takin' it anymore'" Drive-In revenge actioners......for those of you not familiar with this genre, pickup truck thugs exist only to exit their pickup trucks and get their asses roundly kicked......usually by Tom "Billy Jack" Laughlin (whose nutty work we'll cover in future posts....)   Rest assured, Wolverine has to seriously Billy Jack these guys.....

               Further Proof (as if we needed any) Of Bette Davis's Warning, "Aging Isn't For Wussies".....Poor 90 year old Prof. X suffers from brain farts that cause untold physical and mental damage to everyone and everything in his vicinity........sort of like Trump's tweets but with a shorter range of destruction.........and we thought our middle-of-the-night farts were bad.....

               We'll put our mocking overview aside for a moment to honestly praise Hugh Jackman, who elevates this film with his genuinely moving conception of a tragic hero undone by his own flaws......or in this case, claws. It would constitute an award-worthy performance.....if it didn't take place inside a movie whose main agenda involves racking up a record R-rated body count......

               Not particularly fun to sit through.....and we doubt we'd ever re-visit it, but for Hugh Jackman and Dafne Keen's exemplary performances that manage to rise above all the carnage, we'll claw out 2 & 1/2 stars (** 1/2)........(and please, please, we hope to never again read or hear about some comic book movie actor discussing his character as if he's in a Tennessee Williams play ("Yeh, sure the guy can shoot laser beams out of his eyes...but he's....uh....conflicted..")



               

LEAST FAVORITE THINGS........SPECIAL 'DOTARD VS. SONS OF BITCHES' EDITION!!.......

            Another week gone by.......another week tumbling down the endless pit into the horror of
Baby Orange-World.........

             Baby Orange Declares War On The NFL.....and rest easy, America, our draft-dodging Commander-In-Chief will never let those knee-bending, colored sons-of-bitches get their hands on nuclear weapons........and he'll make Concussions great again, so all those miserable padded-shoulder pussies stop whining about getting their brains scrambled.....

              Melania crusades against cyberbullying.....do we really have to say anything else? Isn't that headline hilarious enough?

               Baby Orange and Baby Nuke 'Em trade insults......we haven't seen global diplomacy like this since we had a spitball war with Bobby Leffenheim in our third grade classroom....

               Baby Nuke'Em calls Baby Orange a "Dotard".....which sent Baby Orange's tiny fingers to frantically sign on to Dictionary.Com, where he also looked up only the bestest words...,,,,,,,.believe me....

                Baby Orange rouses the Trumpanzees to chant "Lock her up!".  This is too much like "Groundhog Day"......where you wake up every morning and it's still October 2016.......and you realize Baby Orange doesn't actually want to be President.....he just wants to run for the job and soak up the rally zombies' unconditional love........the only adult who uses rallies like a two year old uses thumb-sucking........Memo to Baby Orange:  You have a job, dummy.....not that you're any good at it........


             



             

'GOOD MORNING, MISS DOVE'.......GOODBYE, MISS CHIPS....AND DON'T LET THE BACK DOOR BUMP YOUR ASS ON THE WAY OUT.....

Good Morning, Miss Dove (1955)  Every so often, the Facebook pals we grew up with post old photos of our not-so-beloved Junior High School......(where they found this ancient crap is beyond us.....maybe they found the box of photos sitting behind the Ark Of The Covenant in that 'Raiders Of The Lost Ark' warehouse.......)

              That's when we usually leave a message on that Facebook post along the lines of...."nothing wrong with this place a well aimed Tomahawk missile couldn't cure...". You will never hear us waxing nostalgic about our Junior High School......a stinkhole rampant with bullying and the worst, creepiest collection of teachers equaled only by the ballet school staff in "Suspiria"......

               These monotone drones with delusions of adequacy mostly sat at their desks reciting textbook passages aloud.......not so much to illuminate the students, but more to keep themselves awake until their weekly paychecks cleared......

               Let's put it this way.......nobody in our junior high would stand up, as in "Dead Poets Society" and shout out 'Oh Captain, My Captain!' to any of these soulless lumps passing themselves off as educators.....

               Which brings us to "Good Morning Miss Dove", 20th Century Fox's aggressively schmaltzy entry in that time-tested genre, the Inspirational Teacher Who Dedicates His/Her Life To Decades Of Students At The Cost Of His/Her Own Personal Life.......

                 This genre never ages and you can bet the studios will always return to it, reconfigured for a new generation.......but the lumbering, static "Miss Dove" is like a woolly Mammoth trapped in a glacier, frozen in both technique and execution by the rigidity of its typically 1950's Fox moviemaking.....

                 Assigned to the studio's stalwart house director, Henry Koster, the film was naturally shot in Fox's spankin' new ultra-wide Cinemascope.......(with a 2:55 aspect ratio....for you non-techies like me, it's frickin' wide.......unless you're watching it on a big-ass flatscreen, it's like peeking at the movie through venetian blinds.....).  1950's movie directors at first didn't know what to do with Cinemascope.......except treat it like a theater proscenium arch and position their actors in a row in front of the camera, as if they're about to take a curtain call. 

                 Koster, having directed "The Robe", the very first Cinemascope movie, shot almost all of "Miss Dove" in medium shots, allowing himself few close-ups. This may have worked for the pageantry and spectacle of  "The Robe", but it's a deadly visual style for a drama that's sweating so profusely to pull on your heartstrings......

                Before we go on.......we want to loudly state that we adore Jennifer Jones.......she and Gene Tierney are hands down our two favorite classic Movie Goddesses........but poor Jen,as the title character,  spends almost all of this movie trapped in 1950's Hollywood old age makeup (which consists of dusting baby powder into her bunned-up hair)......she looks like Norman Bates' mom before she started decomposing.....

                 Even worse, the script and Koster's direction sentences her to play elementary school teacher Miss Dove as a monotone-voiced, repressed sourpuss, spewing out scolding criticism to both children and adults who cross her path. The movie never attempts to dig deeper into the stern, stoic nature of Miss Dove's character, other than the flashback to her youth, in which she rejects her one and only suitor to pursue a teaching career......in order to pay off the cash embezzled by her Bank president father.

                 You just have to take it on faith that Miss Dove's decades of tough love (including, we kid you not, a punishment stool for kids with poor posture) have made her a beloved figure in the picture-postcard backlot small town she lives in.......

                This may sound like a no brainer.....but Inspirational Teacher movies require.......an Inspirational Teacher.....otherwise forget it. Jennifer Jones' Miss Dove, about as inspiring as a traffic light,  glumly anchored to her chair reading out of textbooks, instantly reminded us of those worthless Junior High teachers we mentioned at the beginning of this post.

                And not in this universe or anywhere else does anyone ever recall such a teacher with the glowing warmth and sentiment that Miss Dove's former students lavish upon her.   In the real world, if you give those kinds of teachers any thought at all.......it's to cheer yourself up by thinking they must be dead and buried by now.....

                 But in order to swallow the populace's great love for Miss Dove, you'll need about the same amount of unbending faith as the oppressed Christians in "The Robe".......but we'll admit to loving the film's signature opening sequence......Miss Dove, paralyzed by a tumor at the base of her spine, carried to the hospital by her pastor and doctor......like Cleopatra entering Rome.....

                 We know many folks might fondly remember this movie.....but sorry, we know a great teacher when we were lucky enough to encounter one, (we did have a few in High School...)......and Miss Dove simply isn't one of them......even if we grade her on a curve.  2 stars (**).....and only that many for the presence of our dear, dear Miss Jones.....

                 

'DON'T CLOSE YOUR EYES'........UNHAPPY FAMILIES, UNHAPPY IN THEIR OWN WAY.....

Don't Close Your Eyes by Holly Seddon (2017)   Our close personal friend, Leo Tolstoy graciously gave us his permission to borrow his immortal "Anna Karenina" phrase for this post........if Leo only knew how much his quote inspires thriller novelists who detail the woes of psychotically damaged families......he'd crawl out of his grave and start charging them hefty inspiration fees......

            This one blends two Brit families, the Marshalls and the Grangers into a swirling maelstrom of dysfunction that could fuel at least ten years worth of daytime soap opera episodes......

            The two young Marshall sisters, twins Sarah and Robin emerge from the emotional wreckage (too impossibly convoluted to discuss here....trust us, it's a trainwreck) as broken adults. These twins are far from identical, opposites in both physicality and temperament......

            Robin, a fiery, diminutive rock guitarist, has secluded herself, a terrified hermit who dabbles in "Rear Window" voyeurism of her neighbors while cringing at the persistent, scary attempts of some unknown individual to get into her house......

            Her sister Sarah desperately seeks her out, having been banished from her own home by her husband and denied access to her beloved Violet, her four year old daughter.....

             Author Seddon takes her time in alternating the plot developments between the two sisters, taking them through their fractured, upended childhood and adolescence, finally arriving at a traumatic reunion in which any number of long held family secrets crawl out of the woodwork.......but not quite all of them......

            It may seem that the book has brought a measure of closure before the last few chapters......but then Seddon detonates her BIG TWIST.......and we'll tip our hat to this particular Big Twist......it's a genuine, pull-the-rug-out-from-under-you whopper.....you'll tear through the final pages so fast, you may burn your fingers.....

            Not a fast paced read by any means......but for thriller fans, the payoffs are terrific and deeply satisfying.   "Don't Close Your Eyes" kept the BQ's eyes wide open.......4 stars (****)..................
.....and Leo, baby, thanks for letting us paraphrase the quote for this post.....let's do lunch.....
'
         

'EVERYTHING EVERYTHING'............YOUNG LOVERS......IMMUNE-STRUCK......

Everything Everything (2017)   As usual, we delved into the overheated world of Young Adult books and films at the request of Beloved Daughter....(she whom we can deny nothing).....

          But first, an explanation as to why this film exists at all.........

          Big studios salivated at the success of the film version of John Green's "The Fault In Our Stars"......and why not? YA doomed-lovers romances don't require 200 million dollar budgets and CGI monsters......they don't have to cost much they already have a primed pre-sold audience who read the book and can't wait to sit in the dark and cry into their popcorn.......a sure bet.....what could go possibly wrong?

            That's the game plan, anyway.......but like all Hollywood studio game plans, it's littered with movies ignored by their target audience......destined to open, close and head for the Wal-Mart bargain bin in less than a year......

             "Everything Everything" maintains its sweet, innocuous storyline through two thirds of its running time......adorable 17 year old Maddy (Amandla Sternbert) falls in love with Boy Next Door Olly (Nick Robinson).....

              Woe is them. Maddy, afflicted with a faulty immune system that renders the outside world and all its germs lethal to her, has lived her entire life in her movie-spacious, antiseptically sealed home, watched over by her physician mother (Anika Noni Rose).  Mom isn't merely a helicopter mom......she's closer to a perpetually low-flying drone Mom......

               Maddy and Olly start off their romance safely with texts and window notes, but it isn't long before Maddy's sympathetic nurse (Ana de la Reguera) sneaks Olly for some chaste meet 'n greets......which quickly escalate to....oh dear God, the germs, the germs.....full scale kissing......

              The young lovers escape to the fresh air of Hawaii........which sets off the story's Act III Big Twist......a plot development so outrageous and poisonous, that this flimsy little movie couldn't ever recover from it......and it's painfully clear that the book's author Nicola Yoon and the filmmakers didn't think out the ramifications too much, preferring to skate over it and get back to main business of reuniting the two young cuties.......

              If you stop and ponder this twist for a moment (which we can assure you, nobody involved with the film ever did) what you have here are the makings of a monumentally sick horror film or at the very least, a dark psychological drama.........but that would require a level of thought and introspection way, way beyond the folks who put this movie together........

               The studio and the filmmakers evidently hoped the expected teen audience would switch off their brains for the third act bombshell and just continue to roll with the romance........sorry, no can do......at our age, the BQ thinks about everything.......which is why "Everything Everything" has no immunity from a 1 star rating (*)......

TRAILER TRASHIN'.........CG-EYESORE EDITION......

          In almost 10 months of blogging, we've successfully avoided talking about trailers, most of which either annoy or mildly amuse us with their overwhelming sameness.........ah, what the hell....time for the BQ to lose our trailer review virginity.....

            We're sure the American Medical Association would agree with us that for the sake of your health and sanity, all trailers should be viewed individually, one at a  time.....safely at home on the internet.....

             Nobody in their right mind should subject themselves to the marathon displays of trailers perpetrated on suffering multi-plex audiences.........the effect of watching six or seven of these things in a row could be worse than staring up at the sun during a total eclipse.....not to mention the risk of permanent brain damage.  Really, the only element missing from a multiplex trailer presentation.....having the ushers strap you to the armrests and Clockwork Orange your eyes wide with clamps........

           First up, Jumanji:Wecome To The Jungle.......pardon us while we yawn.....another reboot with delusions of franchise grandeur.....more stampeding CGI Rhinos......(which means we'll lose the will to live during the 15 minute credit crawl of digital animators).......The Rock in one more movie that will live on to haunt him if he decides to run for President......and the whole cast spitting out rapid-fire, self depreciating gags as they're menaced by computer animals........Please, make it all go away.....

           Tomb Raider.....now this one's a hoot, since it features a hilariously miscast Alicia Vikander as video game amazon Lara Croft......(we're no great fans of Angelina Jolie, but her Lara Croft casting was perfect, with her big eyes and ripe lips, she already looked like a fantasy character...).....Vikander looks like a slim little art-house movie actress who's been kidnapped and forced to act out deranged virtual reality scenarios by fanboys with too much time on their hands.......we pity poor Alicia for the amount of punishing gym time she must have put in.....in preparation for all those weeks  jumping around in a warehouse draped with green screens (waves, mountains,creatures and whatever to be added later).......by the end of the trailer, she looks like she needs a nap........so did we.....

          1 star apiece for each trailer (*), since in editing style, they're tediously the same.....(today's trailers are as rigidly structured as Haiku poems....).....we long for days of that voice-over guy who intoned....."In a world....where love is a crime......In a world... (feel free to fill in the rest....)

'THE CHILD FINDER'............A LITTLE GIRL WHO'S OREGON MISSING......

The Child Finder by Rene Denfeld (2017)   The very last thing we wanted to crack open this month was yet another in the "former child abductee searches for an abducted child" genre.....these books are starting to pile up like planes in a snowbound airport.......to the point where we took to reviewing them two at a time (see our post on "The Lost Ones" and "Girl Last Seen"....)

            But we'd heard all about author Rene Denfeld's unique approach to this rapidly exhausting storyline........by fashioning it as a strangely gossamer, almost otherworldly fable, the darkest of fairy tales told in lilting, gracefully poetic prose.......

             Denfeld doesn't disappoint......she spins her story with equal touches of creepiness, sadness, suspense and deeply felt warmth and sentiment.....(those last two qualities rarely found amidst the misery and violence of other abducted child thrillers......)

             Unlike the heroines of similar books, "The Child Finder"s Naomi doesn't wallow in alcohol, drugs or the PTSD of her horrific childhood.  Empowering herself, she's become a P.I. who specializes in rescuing kidnapped children from their pedophile abductors.....

              As Naomi methodically scours the cold forbidding backwoods of Oregon for a long missing little girl, Denfeld crosscuts heartbreaking scenes of the child's imprisonment and abuse at the hands of a monstrous hermit with his own pathetic, tragic backstory.......

               Denfeld's lighter-than-air, lyrical style may first seem at odds with the subject matter.....but it's sort of a neat literary magic trick she pulls off.........telling a modern day Grimm's Fairy Tale, complete with deep, dark woods setting, a little princess in harrowing danger.....and in Naomi, a brave Knight on a rescue quest.

               Unusual, haunting, exquisitely written......the BQ has no trouble finding 4 stars (****) for "The Child Finder"......we strongly suggest you go on the hunt and find a copy......

'THE COLDEST NIGHT'............A YOUNG LOVER WALKS THROUGH HELL.....

The Coldest Night by Robert Olmstead (2012)    A BQ confession.......since we gravitate to thrillers, we don't delve into as much literary fiction as do other avid readers......(yes, we're aware we might miss out on tons of great writing, but we've endured so many bad experiences plowing through called 'celebrated' contemporary novels.......where you could flip the pages 12 at time and not miss a thing.....)

            Normally, we'd especially shy away from a book like "The Coldest Night"..... with.beautifully crafted prose, so elegantly polished and studied, that it reads like a classic, mythic fable being read to us on chilly Autumn night, sitting by a fireplace......

            Damn if it didn't suck us into its spell.......we tore through it in a day, lost in the dreamlike visions of its romance......and awestruck at its depictions of the bottomless horror of warfare....

             A primal tale in three simple sections unfolds, taking place in the early 1950's.........Henry Childs, a raw-boned West Virginian 17 year old ranch hand falls into the white hot passion of first love with Mercy, a girl of wealth and privilege. The romance predictably
outrages Mercy's father and older brother, so the young lovers escape to New Orleans........

             Mercy's brother Randall catches up with them, beating Henry senseless and spiriting Mercy back home. When Henry recovers, he automatically follows the path of all the men in his family......enlisting in the Marines as the Korean war rages.....

             And here, in the book's lengthy middle section, is where author Olmstead makes his story truly unforgettable......in which Henry and his Marine division, overwhelmed by thousands of Korean and Red Chinese soldiers, find themselves  in Hell on earth.......an inferno of agonizing death and mutilated, destroyed human bodies.  Olmstead unerringly piles on the horrors of warfare to the point where you may even want to close the book and look away........

             With Henry miraculously surviving his time in Korea, the book moves on to its hauntingly sad final chapters, detailing Henry's return home......(and this is where we'll say no more......you simply have to go right out and grab a copy right now....)

            It's been some time since we handed a rating like this to a book, but we're thrilled to do it.........5 stars (*****), a FIND OF FINDS.....and even more rare, a definite re-read for us some time in the future. It's that good.

LEAST FAVORITE THINGS.......SPECIAL "ROCKET MAN" EDITION!

Baby Orange tweets himself hitting Hilary with a golf ball......how very Presidential......Baby Orange thought it was hilarious.........you know what's funnier than Hilary slammed in the back with a golf ball?.......the sight of Baby Orange in golf togs, when not wearing his dark suit and red tie draped down to his crotch.....revealing him as the the fat slob poster boy for the horrors of fast food...(those arteries can't clog fast enough....)....we guess the tail end of the tie serves to point the way for his tiny hands to find his penis when it's time to urinate......

Trumpanzees burn their MAGA hats......Pity the woebegone Trumpaholics......so dense that they only are just now finding out that Baby Orange is literally a hollow man to his very core....that the only thing Baby Orange truly believes in.......is Baby Orange.

Sean Spicer wows 'em at the Emmys......This lumbering asshole who sold his soul to become America's Spokes-Liar.....now basks in his fifteen minutes of fame, soaking up the media attention like Baby Orange soaking in the pee cascading out of Russian prostitutes.......

Speaking of The Emmys...."In Memorium".......The awards show honors the memory of that creepy toxic slug Roger Ailes.....Jabba The News Exec.....but leaves out Harry Dean Stanton, Dick Gregory and host of other worthies who passed away.........Glenn Campbell in his final moments had a better memory than the people who plan "In Memorium" segments on awards shows.........

Baby Orange calls Korea's Kim 'Rocket Man'.......Aha, this must be the elementary school playground diplomatic solution........we can't wait for Kim to respond with "I know you are, but what am I?"........

           Let us now once again weep for America and the entire world........but we promise we'll be back tomorrow with great stuff to take your mind off things..........Peace, Love and Boneless Rib Combination Platters at China Delight.....the BQ.....

'IT' (THE MINISERIES)............AND WHY A MOVIE REMAKE WAS INEVITABLE.......

It (1990)    Like lot of folks who first watched it, we barely remember drips and drabs of this ABC
 4 hour miniseries.....(take out the commercials and you've got 3 actual hours of show.......that's a lot of commerce to swim through just give yourself a few jump scares.....)

            A few morsels worth remembering......or not......

            Tim Curry as Pennywise the monstrous clown....Dr. Frank-N-Furter surely commits fully, making himself a forever Halloween icon.......but after freshly slogging through the series' three long hours....after a while, Tim starts to remind us of an embittered old Vaudevillian, pissed off at the empty theaters he's playing.......

              Surprise, surprise.....is that who I think it is?  BQ broke into big smiles at the sight of a few folks who pop up in small roles......the ever lovely Olivia Hussey (the first Juliet we ever fell for in the 1968 Franco Zefferelli "Romeo And Juliet")....and playing town bully turned homicidal mental patient Henry Bowers, none other than one-third of "The Mod Squad", Michael Cole.....

            Fortune Cookie Apocalypse.....this still holds up well, for the simple reason that the effects were done live on the set, with puppeteers hiding under the dinner table.......a lesson the filmmakers forgot when it came time for the big finale......

            The Climactic "It"   Stephen King once wrote about the moment of truth that all purveyors of horror must face (novelists or filmmakers)......you can artfully play hide and seek with your monster, but sooner or later, you have to rip off the mask and go, "Booga! Booga!".......in this regard, movie makers efforts rise and fall by the level of their inventiveness with technology.....

             King's 'It', when not in the guise of Pennywise, is some indescribably horrifying, Lovecraftian thing who crashed through another dimension or galaxy to land on earth zillions of years ago. (I'll leave it to the rest of you to debate why such a towering, odious creature's greatest ambition is to peek out of sewer drains and dismember toddlers...)

              Using the power of the written word, King brings this slobbering demon to life as only he can......the makers of the mini-series, out of time and low on budget, resorted to sub-par stop-motion animation........earning themselves the eternal scorn of anyone who made it to the end of the show, only to scream out, not in
terror, but in aggravated frustration, "That's ....it??"

             As Duke Ellington could have told director Tommy Lee Wallace......."It" don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing....."

             Hence the new movie.....Despite the TV show's sprawling three hours, King's mighty epic had no real chance to properly unfold and flourish enough to grip an audience........not with constraints of network censors and the whole 'get-it-in-the-can-and-ready-to-show-on-Tuesday' vibe of TV mini-series back in the day.........this tale begged for the talents of a feature film director with some visual imagination.....(in these days of franchising, they've easily solved the problem of fully adapting the book by simply making another movie.......)

              Still, the TV show, for all its many faults, supplied a few entertaining moments.....and stood as a limited but respectable TV try at the daunting source material.  And for Tim Curry's tirelessly malignant Pennywise, we'll give 2 & 1/2 beep-beep red nose honks.....(**1/2)

'THE STRAWBERRY STATEMENT'...........WHEN CAMPUS LIFE WAS A RIOT.......

The Strawberry Statement (1970)  As we mentioned in our previous posts about 1970's WUSA and Getting Straight, it took a few years for Hollywood studios to finally crank out some films that addressed America's churning social and political turmoil......an overflowing boiling pot of violence and tragedy fueled by assassinations, riots in cities and colleges and the ongoing horror of Vietnam......

             This movie arrived around the same time as "Getting Straight", which was a film mostly constructed around the Broadway Showstopper performance of 1970's rebel-du-jour Elliot Gould....

              Dated as "Getting Straight" might be, it's still watchable due to Gould's chew-up-the-scenery acting and director Richard Rush's relentless, shifting-focus visuals....

              "The Strawberry Statement" has none of those benefits, with its storyline and actors sabotaged and undone by Stuart Hagmann's up-the-minute (for l970), ultra hip, cross-cutting from hell direction.....

               In case anyone forgot about this woeful filmmaking style (which forever doomed many
1970's movies to remain blessedly forgotten).....it involved a lot of random, pointless jump cuts in the middle of scenes......oooh boy, did it ever seem cool at the time.

                 Over a decade later, music video directors would adopt this visual tossed salad as a vital part of their vocabulary.......where it still flourishes today......(and the popstars are more than welcome to it....

               But in a movie that aspires to chronicle a college boy's transformation from crew rowing, skirt-chasing jock to committed revolutionary, Hagmann's chopped up, oh-so-clever rapid fire visuals provide nothing more than an annoying distraction.........and dates the movie so severely, it makes the film a virtual museum piece.

             Crew guy Simon (Bruce Davison) ends up in a dean's office sit in only to pursue a cutie (Kim Darby) who caught his eye........after a slew of Hagmann's TV commercial montages, layered over with the latest rock songs, he's fully converted to protesting Vietnam and racist campus policies.....(he only wavers slightly into dejected nihilism after a black thug crushes his little Kodak movie camera....)

             The student rebels come across as feckless, naive and self-absorbed.....(very similar to the way they're depicted in "Getting Straight".)   Hagmann stages their first go-round with the cops like a comic, deleted scene from "A Hard Day's Night".......cops get pantsed and tossed around like toddlers......oh, those naughty kids.....

            But he's only warming up for the film's whole reason for existence.......a sustained tear gas,  billy-club bloodbath as the cops and National Guardsman lay waste to Davison, Darby and assembled rebels amidst their endless rendition of "Give Peace A Chance".....(ending, naturally, with that distinctive 1970's trope.......the freeze frame......)

            Interesting peer at.....(like a replica of a butter churn at a museum).....but this film needs to go back into the deep, deep archives from whence it came..... 1 & 1/2 stars (* 1/2)....we're always willing to give peace a chance, but not this movie.......this 'Strawberry' is 47 years past its expiration date.....

           

'99 AND 44/100% DEAD'...........POW! ZAP! ZOWIE! URRGHHH!

99 And 44/100% Dead (1974).....was screenwriter Robert Dillon's second unsuccessful attempt, after 1972's Prime Cut to bend and warp a standard gangster movie into some kind of snarky, tongue-in-cheek, ultra-dry spoof......

               We pity poor Dillon......since the movie director best suited for his exaggerated comic book goulash of gallows yocks and cool violence, Quentin Tarantino, was still only 11 years old at the time....

               For "Prime Cut", he got social satirist Michael Ritchie, who maintained an efficiently deadpan style throughout (covered by the BQ in a previous post)......Ritchie skirted the outer edges of comic book hyperbole without ever truly embracing it......(but we dearly loved his heartland/barnyard shootouts....)

               In case anyone didn't understand his intentions, Dillon went for the full Pop Art gusto with "99 and 44/100% Dead"......it's pure, dopey, unadulterated fantasy.....you can think of it as an early, primitive version of the "Sin City" movies, only with real cars, buildings and backgrounds in front of the actors......

               This time Dillon's funhouse-mirror gangster tropes fell into the hands of director John Frankenheimer, who could never figure out how to balance the cartoonish humor with the piles of dead bodies. (In later interviews, the director bitterly disowned the movie, claiming he knew it wasn't working after a few weeks into production....)

                At least a few of the creative participants definitely saw it as a farce.......composer Henry Mancini supplied
a jaunty, jokey underscore for film's remarkable 'bookend' scenes.......a gangland underwater cemetery featuring men and women of varying ages, depending on their state of decomposition, anchored to the bottom of the bay with traditional cement blocks around their feet,,,,,,the sequences deftly display what the film was trying for......the blending of the comic and the wildly gruesome......

                Most of the cast plays it too cool for school, including Richard Harris as the film's hitman hero Harry Crown.  Harris indicates he's about to start blasting away with his twin automatics by whipping off and collapsing his plus-sized Aviator glasses.......(he does this about 180 times before the film's done, kind of like Clark Kent tearing off his dress shirt to reveal the big red 'S'.....)

                But there's a few jokers in the deck........Bradford Dillman, as twitchy gangster chief Big Eddie, carries on as if he's Jerry Lewis pretending to be Al Capone.  Big Eddie's chief minion ups the crazy even more......Claw Zuckerman (a pop-eyed Chuck Connors), whose metal hand accepts a variety of attachments, including knives, guns, a wine bottle opener and artificial flowers.....

                Sounds like fun, huh?  Not so much. Frankenheimer labors to find the right tone and frequently lets the pace lag......which is deadly for a movie as nutty as this.......you don't want to give an audience any time to think too much about what's unfolding in front of them....

                Looking at big studio fare today (multimillion-budgeted comic book movies), makes the failures of Dillon's two scripts brutally ironic....."99 And 44/100% Dead" sank lower than the film's cement shoe'd, aquatically buried gangsters and molls......but Robert Dillon's skewed vision of larger-than-life hoods perforating each other with lead certainly lives on.   2 stars (**).....with one star for that talented collection of glub glub corpses at the start and finish.......boy, can those people hold their breath or what........

               

'BARBARELLA'.........ZERO GRAVITY, ZERO CLOTHES, .....ZERO WHATEVER.......

Barbarella (1968).......is a prime example of the BQ's special category.....Movies That Are Fun To Vaguely Remember But Excruciating To Sit Down And Watch......

             Director Roger Vadim possessed one and only one significant talent, which he managed to stretch into a career.......his  great appreciation for the hot women he married, translated into visually slobbering over them in his movies.....

              As an actual filmmaker, this guy was hopelessly slack and inept. He probably thought elves came out at night and punched the sprocket holes in 35 millimeter film stock.

              But he knew enough to let the camera linger on the exposed flesh of his various actress-wives, including Brigitte Bardot and Jane Fonda.......

               As we said at the beginning of this post, just the idea of this movie is enough to make you salivate......a comic book space opera with a scantily clad Jane Fonda, armed with a ray gun and an overpowering sexual appetite.......yowza.......

              Well.....we all need to calm down.   All of what passes for Vadim's creative energy gets entirely used up in the film's legendary opening sequence (the only thing that most people remember about this movie).......once we've ogled Fonda's spectacular legs during her zero gravity striptease, the movie becomes its own Black Hole, sucking the life out of itself......and just plain sucking......

               The rest of the film, scripted by Terry Southern and a stuffed clown car of seven  other writers, has delusions of being a slyly satiric, sci-fi action-adventure.   This tricky genre is so far beyond Roger Vadim's limited skill set,  that he and the movie stand literally galaxies apart.

                The movie lies there inert, like a barely animated, bizarre fashion magazine photo shoot......decorated with what looks like leftover props from Fellini films and unsold, gunky crap from a Pier I Imports dumpster......

                 Vadim only wakes up for scenes where he can further strip and humiliate Fonda.......having her clothes chewed off by horror-movie, snapping-teeth dolls and hordes of parakeets......he takes an especially long nap during an endless, unfunny scene between Fonda and David Hemmings as numbskull space rebel (you'll swear this sequence consumes half the film's running time)

                 As for the rest of it, you only need to keep one eye open for the crazy odds 'n ends that float past you in the film's slow-moving wreckage........Mick Jagger's one time girl-toy Anita Pallenberg as the evil Galactic Queen, with her voice replaced with the instantly familiar throaty purr of British treasure Joan Greenwood.......the generic, vanilla pop music slathered on to the soundtrack, destined to sound out-of-date one week after the movie's release........Fonda toking up from a giant bong filled with a swimming beach boy..("essence of man")........and John Phillip Law as a much-abused blind Angel.......(prompting the film's one immortal line from Fonda, "De-crucify the Angel or I'll melt your face!")

                  And it's pointless to belabor the film's ludicrous stab at special effects........Vadim confined his special effects expertise  to his wife cleavage and taut belly.....beyond that, the effects appear below the level of a typical "Land Of The Lost" episode......

                  You can chuckle all you want bringing up fond memories of "Barbarella"......but watching it?  We strongly advise.....don't do the time warp again......1 star (*)...(and that's strictly for Jane's weightless Gypsy Rose Lee routine....)

               

             

'LIFE'...........ED WOOD SMILES DOWN FROM HEAVEN.......

Life (2017)   Watching this reminded us of all our favorite stories about shlockmeister supreme Ed Wood Jr. making his mighty epic "Plan 9 From Outer Space".....

          For his flying saucers, Ed hurled aluminum pie plates across his lawn......overall, he spent about $60,000 dollars in 1959 money for his movie.....

           For their space station and squiggly, squishy CGI space monster, the filmmakers of "Life" spent about 58 million dollars......

             Even with 58 years and almost as many millions of dollars separating them, there's fundamentally no difference between "Plan 9" and "Life"..........shlock is shlock, whether it has the luxurious sheen of studio big bucks.....or it's from a guy throwing pie plates on his lawn.....

             If there's a wing in heaven for purveyors of rock-bottom, brazenly ridiculous sci-fi sludge, then Ed Wood surely must have nodded his head and grinned as he gazed down upon "Life",,,,,,

            Another wonderful thing we noticed.......in all these decades gone by, monsters from outer space haven't changed at all. Only the technology.  We fondly recall "It! The Terror From Beyond Space".....the monster was a big guy in a Halloween  costume. He sneaks around the space ship, kills a bunch of crew members and is generally pissed off.

             So what's changed? Nothing. The "Life" monster, some kind of surly squid-starfish combo, sneaks around the spaceship, kills a bunch crew members and is generally pissed off.

             By the time the thing's fully grown, it's got teeth and a permanently angry expression......just like the guy in the Halloween costume........the more things change....you know the rest......

             Countless reviewers wailed and moaned about this movie's faulty science and the numerous idiotic choices made by the characters.  Seriously, guys? What the hell did you think you were reviewing......episodes of Cosmos? 

              They failed to understand that "Life", for all its gloss and 700 computer animators, is nothing more than "Plan 9" and "Teenagers From Outer Space" with a bigger budget and higher tech.....

             Ah yes, the ending.....for which this movie's makers duly congratulated themselves for their cleverness.  Bullshit. The film's conclusion in nothing but a stupid ancient practical joke.......like someone squirting water at you out of the flower in their lapel, or pulling your chair out from under you before you sit down.  Old, old.....and lame.

               Ed Wood Jr. would probably give this movie 4 stars.......and God bless 'im, we understand. Down here in the real world, though, we'll blast off  1 & 1/2 (*1/2).......Hope you loved it, Ed......

'THE FINAL OPTION'.........THE S.A.S. PUTS ON A PUNCHIN' JUDY SHOW........

The Final Option (a.k.a. Who Dares Wins) 1982    First of all.....a declaration. We stand with Ronald Reagan and Stanley Kubrick, both of whom got a kick out of this movie......

           So did we. Barely released in the United States, liberal, overly sensitive film critics sneered at its point of view, as staunchly pro-government and right-wing as any John Wayne movie.....

            Let 'em sneer all they want......."The Final Option" is one brutally efficient thriller, peppered with the ugliest of terrorist violence and a stunner of a finale action sequence. Slickly put together and showcasing a can't-take-your-eyes-off-her performance by world class actress Judy Davis, we can easily understand why Reagan and Kubrick admired it so.......Reagan, for its politics....and Kubrick for its single-minded craft.....

             Who knows.....in this modern era of global terrorism, a revival of this movie could turn it into a cult classic.......today's even-handed, watch-from-a-distance filmmakers would never dare to make a movie that so shamelessly begs for an audience to cheer........as they watch Britain's elite Special Air Service troopers take on a bunch of homegrown Brit terrorists and kick their asses six ways to Sunday......

              The terrorists,funded by a mysterious young Arab and  led by the fiery and flame-haired Frankie Leith (Davis) have been hiding in plain sight amidst legitimate anti-nuke peace groups.  While plotting an imminent attack on an Embassy dinner, the group is infiltrated by an undercover SAS stud, Peter Skellen (Lewis Collins)....

             Now here comes one of our favorite parts of the plot.......Skellen, who adores and dotes on his sweet wife and adorable baby daughter, wastes no time in charming Frankie into the sack.......the movie makes nothing of this, so we suppose it's considered another terrible sacrifice that an SAS officer must make for Queen and country in the line of duty......to tap Judy's booty.....

             The rest of Frankie's gang smells a double-agent in Skellen, especially the monstrous Helga (Ingrid Pitt, as frightening and worthy as any James Bond villainess.) To insure Skellen's cooperation during Judy's Embassy siege, Helga invades Skellen's home, seizing his wife and infant as hostages.....

            But not to worry, folks........SAS commandos start closing in on both the Skellen home and the Embassy, where Frankie, fetchingly outfitted in evening gown and Uzi, engages in hot debate with the American Secretary Of State (Richard Widmark) and an enraged army General. (Robert Webber).

             Judy Davis really gets to strut her stuff in these scenes.........Frankie, a deranged,  unhinged True Believer, demands, in return for the hostages' lives, a nuking of a Scottish submarine base......to prove to the world how nasty nuclear bombs are, as if we hadn't figured that out already.  Slaughtering innocents or irradiating Scotland gives her no qualms whatsoever......as long as it serves her agenda, what's a few thousand fried Scots here or there.........

              Widmark manages to score a few debate points with Davis, confusing her a bit with sanity.....but no matter......in a spectacular finish, with real SAS guys doing the stuntwork, Skellen and his brothers-in-arms put a difinitive finish to all political arguments with machine guns blazing. 

              And on the way to the big showdown......so many loopy sequences to savor.......Frankie's demented, anti-American nightclub act, in which she plays a guided missile surrounded by backup dancers...(honest, we didn't make that up).......a peace rally deliberately turned into a blood soaked riot by skinheads hired by the Arab bankroller.......and our personal favorite, a satisfying, no holds barred, living room floor smackdown between Skellen's wife and madwoman Helga......

               Rousing, suspenseful and exacting in the level of its violence, we still think, 35 years later, that the "The Final Option" is a bloody good show........only its depiction of 'committed to world peace' terrorists dates it.......(in reality, terrorists have no such benevolent thoughts of humanity, since they've allowed their beliefs to transform them into something closer to insects than humans).......so we'll repel down on ropes and fire off 3 stars (***).....to paraphrase the SAS slogan used as the film's alternate title......they dare....and they win.

'TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE' & 'THE CREEPING TERROR'.........EARTH VS. LOBSTERS AND CARPETS.....

         






















                   We've been spending so much time recently with relatively well-crafted films and books ( more or less...)......we missed taking another plunge into the churning pool of total Movie Madness.......movies that warm our hearts, tickle us into hysterical laughter and force us to scream out loud...."What the hell were they thinking????".........

            So here goes.......

             Teenagers From Outer Space (1959)   First, let's give writer-director Tom Graeff credit for the lunatic idea of shooting an entire feature film like a music video.....with the soundtrack, including all of the dialogue, pre-recorded in advance....

               With his embarrassing cast of  community-theater actors forced to lip-synch their lines, Graeff managed to make the first American movie that sounds like a foreign film.......(but even this dubious low-tech feat would be trumped five years later by the other film we cover in this post....)

                Pity our poor, sensitive outer space teen Derek, part of an alien landing party who plan to use earth as a big breeding ranch for their version of cattle.....Gargans. The Gargans look suspiciously like they were just plucked out of the tank in the waiting area of Red Lobster........okay, they are lobsters........and when the earth's atmosphere turns them into giants.....prepare yourself, they become dark shadows of lobsters.....you can trust that every expense was spared for these special effects...

                Young Derek escapes his cruel intergalactic cohorts and heads for Small Town, USA.....but wait....hot on his heels, with a nasty temper and a twitchy ray gun finger, comes Thor (no doubt named that because you can tell he's a Thor loser....). 

                One blast of Thor's five-and-dime store toy gun turns humans into instant skeletons. And just like the Wicked Witch of The West, he zaps a little dog, too.  Meanwhile, those pesky Gargans, now depicted by what looks like black cardboard cut into lobster shapes by first graders,  rampage around the outskirts of town.

               For we lovers of lower-than low-budget sci fi,.....pure Nirvana. And the wonderful thing about movies like this.......if you think there couldn't possibly exist a more ridiculous film than the one you're watching........you ain't see nothin' yet......

              And nothin' arrives with The Creeping Terror (1964), a film so legendary in its total ineptitude that it still holds a beloved place in everyone's hearts as the very abyss of Sci-Fi/Horror cheese.....

               The stretch limo-sized monster that comes lumbering out of a spaceship resembles a parade float camouflaged with all the remnants of a going-out-business carpet warehouse.  It also features an upright head of sorts, festooned with vacuum cleaner hoses.....

               This voracious alien, moving along at about a quarter-mile an hour, has no trouble at all sneaking up on horrified earthlings, most of whom obligingly crawl into the monster's maw head first for ease of devouring......

               As hilarious as this is to watch, the film's backstory far eclipses it.  The so called 'director', Vic Savage created his own Kickstarter scam, hoodwinking his large, starry-eyed cast of local townspeople-suckers to invest in the movie......(as we write this, they're probably still checking their mailboxes for their profit-participation checks....)

                Whether by design or botched post-production, the film has very little
synchronized sound.......an off-screen narrator laboriously drones on, explaining huge chunks of exposition while the actors mouth words at each other.....so the movie sounds like the 16 millimeter educational films our elementary school used to torment us Baby Boomers with.....(as in "How to brush your teeth propery", "How To Survive An Atomic Bomb".....)

                  But it's all about that wondrously funny Creeping Terror......and after 75 minutes of watching the thing digest the cast members faster than Vic Savage stripped them of their cash, we knew this movie would live forever in our hearts.......

                 For both these.....uh.....unique achievements.......the BQ fires off the ray-gun for 3 skeletal stars (***).......and please know that rating is not meant for anyone who would take these movies seriously.......it's for the pure, unfettered joy of watching films that approach their own special state of grace......with lobsters and plenty of carpeting......

               

'CARRIE PILBY'...........A REAL GENIUS LOOKS FOR LOVE.....

Carrie Pilby (2016)   It's a tribute to the winning cast of this movie that it so enchants you, you don't even notice what a standard, connect-the-dots rom-com it is........as rigidly structured as a child playing scales on the piano with methodical determination......

            In the playbook of rom-com variations, this belongs to the "lovable eccentric overcomes his/her oddball quirks and somehow stumbles upon his/her soulmate and true love" category.....

             How much you enjoy this storyline depends strictly on the lead actor's ability to navigate the tricky path between the character's bizarre quirks and their fundamental lovability.......not as easy as it looks....

              "Carrie Pilby" is blessed to have Bel Powley in the title role,  a painfully lonely, intellectually brilliant 19 year old who enrolled at Harvard at 14 and graduated at 18. Now living alone in New York City, her years as a freakish social outcast have give her a hardened shell of fast-talking, witty cynicism. 

               But underneath her ongoing snarky commentary about the world at large, you can sense her aching vulnerability and feel her emotional wounds. Powley's work here captured us from the film's first minutes.......saucer-eyed in her withering put-downs of everyone around her, when someone finally makes her smile (a rare event indeed), she's luminous.  We predict this actress has Academy Awards in her future......

               The filmmakers were smart enough to surround Powley with a
supporting cast more than equal to her as they play foils for her to bounce off of......Nathan Lane as Carrie's world-weary therapist, a superb Jason Ritter as a fellow High I.Q. nerd she meets through a personals ad and Vanessa Bayer, who manages to spin comic gold out of that hoary rom-com stereotype, the dopey best friend.....(a character previously owned completely by actress Judy Greer)

               Yes, cornball, old-hat stuff.......but when it's done as smartly as this, with a cast as good as this, the whole thing goes down like a sweet, frothy milkshake.  3 & 1.2 stars (*** 1/2).....with most of those stars for Bel Powley, a true up-and-coming star.......BQ recommends seeking it out.

               

'PATCHWORK'..........WE LEFT HER IN STITCHES.......

Patchwork (2015)   Not many fledgling filmmakers attempt what we call Outlaw Horror.......horror movies so off-the-charts insane, they defy rational description......and dare an audience to sit through them.......

              There's a reason for this.....Outlaw Horror demands total commitment from its creators, or to put it in the more genteel, British manner, "in for a penny, in for a pound".  You either throw sanity and caution to the winds.......or forget about it, just make another 'campers go into the woods and meet psycho hillbillies' movie......

               The people who made "Patchwork" simply aren't wacky enough to go completely down the rabbit hole with their way out premise. They're slumming......they have higher aspirations (you can tell by the clever faux Elfman/Herrmann music over the cartoonish main titles)......and they probably consider themselves too skillful and clever to make an all-out nutso splatterfest that would only unspool after midnight at film festivals.

                But in this film, they at least have themselves a calling card when it comes time to scrape together financing for a better movie.....

                 The premise sounds like a joke you'd read in an old issue of 'Playboy'......three babes walk into a bar. Shortly afterwards, (without revealing any plot details), they're all dead, but awaken anyway......on an autopsy slab, with their various body parts stitched together Frankenstein-style and their three minds stuck in the same crudely cobbled head.....

                  Naturally, this movie doesn't want to give you the time to contemplate that the mad young doctor who accomplished this feat would need the surgical skill and genius of a 1000 Nobel prize winners.  You have take the movie's word for it.......this looney-tune somehow pulled it off.

                  At this point, the film becomes a dazzling showcase for actress Tory Stolper, who inherits the role of the three-in-one Patchwork girl......a funny, physical tour de force of a twitching, convulsing body housing three warring personalities........(the movie accomplishes the creature's busy internal monologues by cross-cutting scenes that feature all three intact actresses arguing with each other.....clever as that may seem, it's still not as strikingly funny as Stolper's demented-marionette slapstick....)

                Gore gushes freely as a rightly vengeful  Stolper pounds any number of people into pulpy jello, but by that time, the filmmakers run out of ideas and the movie runs out of gas. Like we said.....you either jump off the cliff when you make a movie like this......or don't make it all....

               We'll stitch together 2 & 1/2 stars for Patchwork (**1/2)......the half-star comes from the story's rather neat twist as to who actually instigated all the mayhem......but overall it's a horror film that comes out a little less than the sum of its surgically welded parts.......

'BONNIE AND CLYDE'...........STILL SLAYIN' US AT 50......

Bonnie And Clyde (1967)   We've posted a number of 50th Anniversary look-backs already.......some films come off fresher than ever, some have shown their age (very much a part the era in which they were made)......and some are downright unwatchable and deserve permanent archiving deep in the 1967 warehouse........(hello and goodbye, "Casino Royale"....)

          "Bonnie And Clyde", without question, falls into the frresher-than-ever category......50 years ago, it astounded audiences, confounded and flummoxed old school movie critics and earned nothing but contempt from its studio's mogul, Jack Warner......

             50 years later, it's still an iconic landmark in American cinema........and it's still more finely put together than a whole slew of recently acclaimed films we've sat through....

              As they often yell at the start of concerts.....put your hands together for a few of movie's MVPs......

               Faye Dunaway  Take a glance at her when she's silent in scenes that showcase the other cast members......you can spot Bonnie Parker's seething anger and restless impatience.....an unsettled, unhappy soul.....(and not just from Clyde's impotence either).....A brilliant, electric performance.....

              Dede Allen  The film's masterful film editor.......whose signature dynamic assembly of images was as recognizable a style as any lauded movie director's..... (decades later, Allen would perform the amazing feat of taking countless hours of director John Hughes footage and turning it into "The Breakfast Club")

               Burnett Guffey   The film's veteran Director of Photography/////amd yes, certainly an unlikely creative participant in a movie so defiantly un-Hollywood. Guffey and director Arthur Penn famously clashed throughout the making of the film.......(Guffey favored sharp, bright Technicolor, Penn wanted darker, moodier imagery)   Guffey's visuals prevailed, with the one exception of  Bonnie's  family reunion sequence, deliberately shot in a gauzy, nostalgic haze.  The overall slickness and sheen of Guffey's camerawork may have led, in the BQ's humble opinion, to the ability of film to take everyone by surprise........it looked like standard, high gloss Warner Brothers product.....until you started watching it and realized it was something far more....

              "We rob banks...."..  We couldn't help but shake our head and smile at the continued, immediate timelessness of this sequence.......50 years later, we're as much a nation fiercely divided between the Haves and Have-Nots as the wounded, Depression era America depicted in the film. In 2017, we live in a society where Wells Fargo's criminality far exceeds the Barrows gang's........

                Arthur Penn  Producer-star Warren Beatty first courted French New Wave directors to take the reigns of "Bonnie And Clyde"......but in Penn, he got the best of both worlds......the nervous, edgy energy of the new European filmmaking married to the high theatrics and precision craft of American studio cinema......

               This film's excellence makes its anniversary date superfluous to us........in any decade, it remains forever and alwaysa 5 star (*****) FIND OF FINDS......