'THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI'........THE FEEL-BAD MOVIE OF THE YEAR....

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing,Missouri (2017)   Critics and audiences latched on to  the occasional eruptions of humanity in this movie as they'd been thrown life preservers while bobbing up and down in a turbulent ocean.....

              Understandable......since most of the film is an unforgiving, cruel display of rage, pain and violence, sometimes spiced up with the darkest humor.....

              Writer-director Martin McDonagh's Oscar-bait movie seems to hop, skip and jump through all the usual clever tropes already given a thorough workout in Tarantino and Coen brothers films.......the twisted, dysfunctional characters, the explosive bursts of violence designed to make you cringe and snicker at the same time.

              But unlike Tarantino and the Coens, McDonagh's    purpose and mission is not to dazzle you with his technique. His characters and the actors who bring them to life are the real showstoppers here......not any nonstop rat-a-tat dialogue or swooping camerawork.

              While the film offers vivid supporting roles for Woody Harrelson, Abbie Cornish and Peter Dinklage,  it ultimately comes down to a spectacular master class in acting from Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell.

              We'll just simply state, without going through plot descriptions (which you can easily read in 3,000 other reviews)......the high-wire-without-a-net performances by McDormand and Rockwell virtually guarantee them Academy Awards.  And we realize you didn't hear that here first.......

              The movie overall.........well, we admire its determination to avoid any crowd-pleasing. Like its characters, it swings wildly in unexpected directions. Filled to the brim with both repressed and fully expressed anger, it's mostly an ugly, unpleasant, uncomfortable thing to watch......

              But damned if you'll be able to look away.

               You might feel slightly better at the end of it than you did at the beginning. But not much. And in that regard, it generated for us a fond remembrance of all the cutting edge, uncompromising little dramas that new young directors put out in the 1970's.

               Except that this film now includes all the unleashed nastiness, cruelty and division that marks our current uncivil, graceless era.  This is a movie ruled by characters driven to the brink by the boiling wrath within them.......and forced to deal with consequences.

                4 stars (****)......with or without any accumulated awards, "Three Billboards"  has the power to hurt and haunt anyone who encounters it. For the BQ, that's some great filmmaking.

           

LEAST FAVORITE THINGS: THE COWARDLY LION ROARS AGAIN.......

              We started this blog out of a lifelong romance with books and films......

               Political punditry was the last thing on our mind.......

               But that was before the U.S. and the world were plunged into the evil maelstrom of Baby Orange, a literally bottomless pit of stupidity, racism and depravity.

                So we think of this post as just another movie or book review.......of an ongoing series that mixes equal parts of satirical low comedy and bone chilling horror.

                More horror than comedy. 'Cause at the end of the day, you realize you can't walk out of the theater to escape the fear and loathing.  It's all too real.

                Baby Orange, that bubbling fountain of courage, bravery and fortitude, claimed he would have run into the Parkland Florida school and confronted the AR-15 armed shooter with his own tiny bare hands......

                Yes, the same Baby Orange who used five draft deferments to avoid military service, the same Baby Orange who engaged in twitter fights with Gold Star mothers and war widows......the same Baby Orange who declared John McCain wasn't much of a war hero because he got captured.

               The same Baby Orange who let some 80 year old victim of a fall bleed all over the Mar-A-Lago marble floor cause Baby Orange couldn't stand the sight of blood......

                After we got done laughing hysterically, we thought how much Baby Orange reminds us of the Sheriff Of Nottingham in the Errol Flynn "Adventures Of Robin Hood".   While Flynn's Robin Hood battles umpteen castle guards, the chubby Sheriff hangs back.....muttering "If I could only reach him!"

                 Yeah, right.

                 It's a wonder that weather forecasters around the country didn't report sudden strong breezes........the updraft from millions of people shaking their heads in disbelief.......

'NARROW MARGIN'......GENE HACKMAN, WELL-TRAINED.......

Narrow Margin (1990)     Like  all movie lovers, we deeply miss Gene Hackman's comforting presence since his retirement from acting.......

               We doubt, however, if anybody misses or even remembers writer-director-cameraman Peter Hyams, who pumped out some moderately diverting movies through the 80's and 90's......

              But the BQ never forgets.......(except where we laid our car keys last....)

               In earlier, more forgiving decades, a mid-range, mid-level journeyman like Hyams might have enjoyed a prolific career cranking out B-movie fodder for the bottom half of double features.....he could have ended up with hundreds of movies on his resume.........

              Since his last film came out in 2013, we're assuming he's retired too.

               He had a modest talent for glib, sarcastic dialogue (which shows up in spurts throughout his films) and an entertainer's instinct for crafting audience-pleasing scenes. Also functioning as his own cinematographer, he bounced through every genre imaginable........action, suspense, sci-fi, horror, comedy, romance........never fully mastering any of them.

               To use baseball analogy, Hyams could hit singles, doubles, maybe even slide into third base every so often.........but a home run was beyond him.

                You might have had a good time watching some of his films.........but you always left knowing they fell short somehow, that they lacked that extra effort, that extra spark of talent to make them better. (We'd credit him with one exception here, "2010", his straight ahead sequel to Kubrick's "2001".....his most emotionally and structurally satisfying film.)

                "Narrow Margin", his remake-update of Richard Fleischer's classic 1952 trainbound noir, is typical of Hyams' other thrillers like "Capricorn One" and "The Star Chamber".......overloaded with ludicrous plot holes and ridiculous twists.....

                But it barrels along swiftly, energized and gifted with Gene Hackman, playing an assistant District Attorney facing off against a team of hit-people determined to bump off his star witness (Anne Archer).  Stuck in the wrong time and place, she saw a mob boss kill her blind date for the evening. The mobster, apparently with more infrastructure than Ernst Stavro Blofeld, deploys both helicopter machine gunners and ground troops to wipe her out.

                Hackman and Archer take refuge on a train zipping through the Canadian wilderness......hence no jumping off.  And since it's 1990, no cellphones to call for help. We wish we could tell you this all moves fast enough to make you forget all the story inconsistencies.......but this is a Peter Hyams film we're talking about......

                His snappy dialogue worked overtime to cover up his dopey storytelling......but only up to a certain point.

                One big plus though........whatever his faults, Hyams knew his way around an action sequence. Hackman and Archer's climactic showdown with the mob crew on top of the speeding train is everything you'd want it to be.......(even when it's capped off with a last minute blatantly unsurprising surprise...)

                 Please come back, Gene. We miss you. As for you, Peter Hyams, you can enjoy retirement......there's already way too many mediocre directors currently cranking out films just like yours.....the Wal-Mart $5.00 bin is filled to the brim with 'em.  2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2),

'MOTHER!'..........HOW TO BUILD YOUR OWN 'WHAT THE ****' MOVIE........

Mother! (2017)   If there's one movie we would have paid to see and could have dreamily watched for hours and hours.......

                   No, it's not this one.

                   The non-existent film we're talking about........would be hidden camera footage of multi-plex patrons leaving the auditorium after a viewing of Darren Aronofsky's "Mother!"

                     No other film released last year would have brought you as much excitement, laughs and pure entertainment as "Mother - The Multi-Plex Aftermath".........our guess is that it would attain a much higher Cinemascore rating than the actual movie itself......which garnered a legendary "F".

                     Even "The Emoji Movie" did better than an "F".......but we think that's because they found a 6 year old girl in Kansas who likes Emojis........

                      Okay, we've stalled long enough. Time to talk about "Mother!"........(heaving sigh.....)

                    First, a kind of a salute to Aronofsky.  With the possible exception of Terrence Malick, not many mainstream film directors indulge themselves in a pure, unfettered wallow through every nutty idea bouncing around in their heads.

                    Given the obscene amount of money it takes to make and market a major film, we doubt the studio suits get erections about funding a movie that's nothing more than a funhouse ride through the director's tortured psyche.

                     Federico Fellini built the latter part of his career on such movies and we still loved and hailed him as a genius.  American directors?   Mostly ignored and damned if they had the nerve to put out a non-linear, head-trip film.

                     So all hail Aronofsky for his brass balls in creating the perfect storm of a 'What The F***' movie,   What's it all mean?   Who the hell cares, really. Maybe some kind of allegory about the breakdown of a civil society.....maybe a treatise on the agonies of artistic creation.  Or maybe it's as deep and meaningful as "The Emoji Movie."

                       Want to make a "Mother!" of your own?   Follow these surefire BQ rules......

                     Trick 'em into thinking they're watching a normal movie.....Key rule here. Start out with what appears to be a relatively comfortable plotline.......(in this case, a devoted young wife (Jennifer Lawrence comforting her hubby (Javier Bardem),a poet afflicted with writer's block.....)

                    Go crazy in increments......Start stirring the plot slowly but steadily.....(throw in a strange, creepy middle-aged couple played by Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer)

                    Time to spill blood......Nothing amps up the looney-tune factor like random gory violence.....make sure to spill copious quarts of blood on the actors, floors and furniture. The more the merrier......

                     Finish up with a whack-a-doodle showstopper.......don't hold back, you want to make sure the film has the insane-asylum equivalent of a second-act Broadway dance number. If audience members storm the manager's office asking for refunds........give yourself a pat on the back and your own honorary Academy Award.

                    Simple, no?  The only hard part.......convince a studio to open it in a thousand theaters.

                   And that's why we're awarding Aronofsky and his "Mother!" with 2 stars (**)......one star for each of those brass balls of his.

                   

                 

'THE WHISPERING ROOM'........."PLAY MANCHURIAN WITH ME"..........

The Whispering Room by Dean Koontz  (2017)    We can admire and praise serious novelists gifted with high literary style..........but when you really crave the reading equivalent of a Big Mac and Large Fries......Dean Koontz is our go-to guy.

            Not that Koontz isn't capable of taking a break from the breathless pace of his thrillers for a little reflective thought on his characters and life in general.   He's clearly a liberal, compassionate humanist and these passages make you ache and worry even more for his deeply sympathetic characters...... outnumbered.people who find themselves pitted against vast, unspeakable evil.

             "The Whispering Room", after "The Silent Corner" is the second entry in the saga of Jane Hawk, an ultra-resourceful rogue FBI agent.  She's both hunted fugitive and avenging angel as she battles a secret cabal of Elites who've turned thousands of Americans into zombie-slaves, injecting them with microscopic nano-bots that build a controlling web around their brains.

              Once infected, all you need say to command these poor souls to do your bidding are the magic words "play Manchurian with me"........(Koontz's loving, playful tribute to Richard Condon's "Manchurian Candidate" and its iconic film version)

               So basically Jane Hawk faces a hidden army of people with no mind or will of their own, who blindly follow remote-control instructions no matter how inhuman.........

               ........very much like a brain-dead force of Trump supporters.......the only thing they're missing are the MAGA red baseball caps..

              All manner of violent encounters, escapes and twists pop up, none of which we'd dare reveal here.  Other than to say you'll want to simultaneously bite your nails and swiftly turn the pages as Jane and a new ally launch a major offensive on the conspirators........taking place in a picture-postcard perfect little Kentucky town that's a "Stepford Wives" honeytrap, used by the Cabal to infect more victims.

               Yes, there's a third book coming this May and yes, Koontz does drop a staggering twist at the end of "The Whispering Room" to leave you salivating for the next chapter. But we don't mind this kind of shameless manipulation as long the books give us an entertaining, thrill-a-minute ride.

               And this book did it for us big time. BQ says stop what you're doing, dive into these books and join up with Jane's crusade to Make America Free Again.......(just like in real life.....)

               4 stars (****).....Koontz won't even have to say "play Manchurian with me" to get us to snap up the next one.

             

RESIDENT EVIL: THE FINAL CHAPTER......PROMISES, PROMISES......

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016)     Final? Really?   Happy days are here again......

               We'd throw confetti up in the air if the unholy husband-wife duo of Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich were truly serious about making this film the last of their video game atrocities......

                 As we've stated many times before with sludge like this, we refuse to descend into the madness of attempting a blow by blow description of the plot.

                Other than to say.........somewhere in the random jumble of images that constitute Anderson's pathetic tries at film editing, we think we caught glimpses of his wife fighting zombies, mutants, flying monsters and at least one human.

                  But that's strictly a guess. We're pretty sure she moved around a lot,but that's as far as we'll go......

                One ironic thought has stayed with us........throughout this entire miserable series.......and we doubt it ever occurred to Anderson and Jovovich.  They've never struck us as people with even one drop of self mockery about what they're doing........

                  The Umbrella Corporation.......a business entity so catastrophic in its incompetence, it defies us to find any suitable adjectives to describe it. For sheer chaos, stupidity and evil, it's rivaled only by the Trump White House......

                   Just for giggles, we would have written this scene to start off every "Resident Evil" movie.......an Umbrella Corporation stockholders meeting.

                  "We regret to inform you that having wiped out half the world's population and turned the other half into ravenous zombies, our projected profit margins will fall short of expectations this fiscal quarter........"

                    You have to wonder where the Umbrella Corporation finds suitable job applicants who aren't either dead or semi-dead, shrieking like banshees as they scramble for brains to munch on. Ah well, maybe they just promote from within.....

                   And where do Umbrella Corporation retirees go after they've gotten their gold watch and farewell fruit cup at the company cafeteria?   Not much of a world to relax in outside the Umbrella HQ building, what with Jovovich and company fighting off the zombies and flying mutants. Maybe there's a Senior Center in Ft. Lauderdale still open.......

                     Memo to Anderson and Jovovich:    If calling this movie "The Final Chapter" was  nothing but a cruel prank on your part, the BQ has supplied you, free of charge, with a surefire hook for the next one........team up Jovovich withRhianna and call it "Resident Evil: Under the Umbrella....ella....ella....ella."  Don't forget to cast the Trump brothers, Eric and Don Jr. as the co-directors of Umbrella.........cause that would explain all the apocalyptic corporate decisions.

                      As for "The Final Chapter" and all the previous "Resident Evil"s.....zero stars (0).  Can't wait for the next one......hmmm, maybe we can wait a bit. How 'bout a millennium? 

LEAST FAVORITE THINGS: GUNS 'N POSES

              How funny is this. How frightening.

              Like a robot in "Westworld", Baby Orange had to be pre-programmed to feign empathy.....to approximate normal human behavior.  With a cheat sheet.

               What a stretch for him.  What a task. Hats off to his put-upon keepers.......it must've been like teaching a chimpanzee to tap dance.

                Didn't last long, though. Baby Orange quickly stepped up the plate and trotted out his favorite fantasy that gives him more wet dreams than all his Playboy Playmates and porn stars combined......

               ..........O.K. Corral-style gun battles between armed teachers and school shooters. Yowza! Hey, why not? Let's use our school hallways to stage all new versions of the last ten minutes of "The Wild Bunch".   Stack up the bodies til they're high as Trump Tower.

                   Meanwhile, far from this madness, in Florida, a growing group of sane, responsible, intelligent citizens cried out for change.....

                    Teenagers.

                    We all remember teenagers, right? The kids who should now be worried about their zits,  their SAT scores, who they're taking to Prom, whether to buy the extra lubricated condoms.......

                   That's stuff from a lost, more innocent age......stuff they've had to put aside. Because, to the shock and surprise of our so-called lawmaking representatives, the teens decided they don't much care for being slaughtered like cattle in their classrooms.

                    The kids have opted for a full lifetime future......uninterrupted by bullets.

                    The GOP, sated like pigs at the trough on NRA donations, stand amazed. Imagine the nerve of these high school punks.......aspiring to something more than the latest piece of meat on a coroner's slab.    Just accept our thoughts and prayers and move on.......

                     Here at the BQ, we've always thought of 1968 as the worst possible year anyone could have lived through.......assassinations, riots, Vietnam, Richard Nixon.

                     But 68's been far eclipsed.  Not just with a demented ignoramus as President, both unfit for the office and unfit as a human being. But with this new horrendous spectacle.......schoolchildren forced into adulthood, literally pleading for their government to protect them from violent death inside their schools.

                    BQ Memo to the Florida kids:   We're humbled by your passion and courage......but you will never, never convert GOP lawmakers to pass legislation to save your lives.  You're talking to empty vessels, people who've sold their souls, whose hearts long stopped beating, whose minds long stopped functioning in any recognizable human way.

                    And in Baby Orange, you're dealing with someone who barely passes for human at all, who needs a cheat sheet to pretend to mimic a President.
                 
                     Vote them out. Toss out the garbage.

                     It's your only hope.

'PANIC IN THE STREETS'........THE PLAGUE HITS GROUND ZERO.....MOSTEL.

Panic In The Streets (1950)    You could have such a good time watching this swift, trim noir about an outbreak of Pneumonic plague in New Orleans, you might forget the dark Hollywood history it's steeped in......

             ........because it's directed by Elia Kazan, who notoriously named names to the House On Un-American Activities.......which led to the blacklisting of actors like Zero Mostel......who's one of the stars of this film.

                 Politics aside, Kazan used this film to thoroughly establish his chops as a real movie director, not just a theatrical artist hired only for reverential, unimaginative film adaptations of Broadway plays.....

                 And the film's a breathless, 90 minute corker, kicking off with a stunning night sequence where a fresh-off-the-boat plague-infested crook is stalked and killed by a  lean, mean psycho thug (Jack Palance, at his most unnervingly dangerous.)

                 Palance and his terrified, sycophantic cohort, the blubbery, blubbering Mostel, don't realize their freshly murdered poker-cheating patsy was infected by a lethal disease as easily spread as the common cold.

                  The discovery of the dumped body and its subsequent autopsy bring together two unlikely, combative allies.....a hot-tempered Navy doctor (Richard Widmark) and an irascible world-weary cop (that bulky, gregarious Everyman Paul Douglas, who was the John Goodman of the 1950's),

                Eventually, after much bickering and painstaking detective work, they close in on Palance and Mostel at the New Orleans docks........which leads to Kazan's staging of a sustained, spectacular action sequence featuring the lithe, athletic Palance and the gasping, rotund Mostel......neither of them doubled by stuntmen.

              Trust us, with the possible exception of Tom Cruise,  you will probably never see anything like this in any film today......

                 Years later, Mostel jokingly chided Kazan about the film's jaw dropping finale......having Palance and Mostel in a desperate mad escape across a dockside warehouse, both running, jumping and at one point leaping over vast rows of cargo bags.  (As you watch Mostel struggling for breath, you know he's not kidding.....)

                Not long after the release of "Panic In The Streets",  the blacklist ended Mostel's film career until 1966's "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum".  Kazan, of course, continued to  flourish, generating the lingering anger of  many film folk who refused to stand or clap when he received his Lifetime Achievement Oscar.

                The movie itself still stands as their greatest collaboration together, along with the contributions of tight-as-a-piano-wire Widmark and the comfortably grumpy Douglas.  5 stars (*****), a FIND OF FINDS........don't forget to use hand sanitizer and fist-bump instead of shaking hands........

               

'THE ALIENIST'..........STILL AS D.O.A. AS ITS RIPPED UP BOY WHORES.....

The Alienist (TNT series, 2018)       5 episodes in (out of 10) and we're still waiting for this one to develop a pulse......

                What a colossal bore.

                 Years ago, our first attempt at reading Caleb Carr's bestselling book went nowhere.

                 We gave up after 50 pages or so. Couldn't hack our way through the glacial pace, the thick, impenetrable prose.  For all the praise it received, we thought it was a futile chore to read.

                  A year later, we put our nose and reading glasses to the grindstone and finally read it from start to finish. Damned if we could ever remember a single thing about it.

                 So here we now have the mini-series. And it's wonderfully faithful to the spirit of the book in that it moves like a squashed deer on the highway and is riveting to sit through as watching the grass grow on your front lawn.

                 The producers of this series have foolishly presented it as a weekly basic cable show instead of making all its episodes available for binge streaming.  Big mistake.

                  Seven days between episodes?  You could easily forget what happened in any of these episodes 10 seconds after you've seen one, let alone 7 days.

                  In fact, they could have run the 5 episodes we've endured so far in random order and we doubt anyone would have noticed the difference.

                  We do appreciate the meticulous production design, the studious recreation of late 19th century New York in all its corruption, squalor and brutal divide between the immigrant working classes and the aristocratic wealthy.

                   But for a dramatization, it lacks any forward momentum. And for a story about an 'alienist' (a prehistoric psychiatrist) tracking a Jack-The-Pedophile-Ripper who carves up boy hookers, the lack of pacing does more damage to this show than its psycho does to the kids.

                 We'll give it this much.........at least the show's casting director has a perverse sense of humor casting Sean Young as the prime suspect's uppercrust mother.  If anyone knows about batshit crazy behavior, it's her........

                  As for the rest of the cast......well, they look awfully spiffy in their period duds.

                  1 star at the halfway point of this show (*) and that's primarily for the decor. We'll visit again after the finish.......and who knows how many cups of strong coffee it'll take to keep our eyes open........

'SNATCHED'.........NO GOLDIE IN THEM THAR HILLS.........

Snatched (2017)   Two sad thoughts struck us while watching this.......

              Amy Schumer, bound and determined to make us squirm at the sight of her character's many deficiencies, isn't that far removed from Aubrey Plaza's psychotic internet troll in "Ingrid Goes West".

               Like Plaza's Ingrid, Schumer's Emily uses selfies as a therapeutic balm to smear on her insecurities and personal failures.  She feels she's not living a life unless it's captured on her smartphone......

               Emily hasn't reached Ingrid's level of implacable psychosis yet........but only because "Snatched", designed as a comedy, wants us to laugh at her........not fear her.

              Personally, we didn't find Schumer's character any funnier than Plaza's.......even during a scene where a handsome guy Schumer has her eye on catches a glimpse of her washing her vagina when the Ladies room door swings open.

           That's what passes for humor in this movie.

           The other depressing thought hit us when Schumer flips through an old family photo album with pictures of her mother, played by Goldie Hawn.

            The photos are actually pictures of Hawn in her younger, movie-superstar days, all of the photos capturing the wide-eyed elfin charm that made the whole country fall in love with her.

            And then the movie presents us with a soul-sucking view of Hawn as she appears today......

            God only knows how many plastic surgeries and Botox injections have flattened out Hawn's face into a featureless wall of flesh. She resembles a cartoon character who's had their face smashed against the pavement......and for a few seconds, before the character shakes it off, their face comes off pavement-shaped....

             Except Goldie Hawn can't shake it off......

             The movie itself? A rickety, desperate contraption about the mother-daughter's calamitous vacation in Ecuador. You can practically envision screenwriter Katie Dippold's sweat dripping on to the laptop keyboard as she frantically throws in any crap that might set off a snicker or two.

             Well, Katie, for all your exertions, you did get a grudging chortle out of us at least once.......at the sight of someone dangling a piece of meat in front of Schumer's open mouth to entice a tapeworm to come crawling out of its hiding place in her stomach.

             Probably more appropriate for a horror film.......but for us, the comic high point of this movie.

             The rest of it......the usual worthless litany of people behaving badly, which the filmmakers hoped would elicit big yocks.

              Yeah, right.

              1 star (*).......a vacation about as much fun as one of those Carnival cruise ships where the bathrooms stop working.......

THE 007 WINTER OLYMPICS.......THE SCORES ARE IN.......

             You may have noticed there's no mention of sports in our"about me" profile.......

              Many many eons ago, we spent several miserable boyhood summers at a camp whose activities consisted of 90% baseball.  No golden nostalgic memories here for any kid who was a mediocre to poor athlete. It soured us on sports forever........

               Which explains why all our encounters and enthusiasms for sports come strictly from movies......

                And winter sports?  We prefer to take our snow and ice-covered thrills and chills from James Bond films.  So here's our Bondian Winter Olympic lineup.....complete with our own simple scoring system from 1 to 10.......

              On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)   The one Bond film that offers a full menu of winter sports........
                               Curling   Far more entertaining to watch when playing against an international team of beautiful girls....after sneaking into their rooms for some pre-game lovin'.......
                               Downhill  Extra degree-of-difficulty points for zipping along on one ski while being chased by minions with machine guns....
                              Bobsled   Our kind of bobsledding......with grenades....and polishing your opponent's helmet by holding his head against the side of the track....
                              Snowplow Human Hamburger Grinding  Special Gold Medal to the guy who gets chewed up in the industrial strength snowthrower. A tough setback, but we hope he pulled himself together......
                              Avalanche Racing  This would give you a good idea of what the Winter Olympics would look like if they were held in North Korea......
                               Overall score for George Lazenby's stuntmen.....10

                 The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)   After two movies in sunny, sultry climates, Roger Moore finally becomes the Spy Who Goes Into The Cold.......
                             Downhill Rocket Launching  Superb form and skill in skiing backwards while firing a rocket bullet out of a ski pole. Try that, Lindsay Vonn.....
                              Ski Jump Off A Mountain  Bravo to Rick Sylvester for executing the most WFT moment in the series.
                              Overall score:  once again, 10

                   For Your Eyes Only (1981)   Roger suits up again for the widest array of winter mayhem since OHMSS.........
                              Two Man Ski Jump  Special degree-of-difficulty bonus points......considering the guy sliding along side you is trying to kill you......
                               Ice Hockey   Betcha the Olympic committee never thought of this rule.....one guy versus an entire team.  Always makes it interesting.....
                               Biathalon   Tough event for Bond.....up against a blonde East German Frankenstein with a yen for a human target.....
                               Bobsled-Ski-Motorcycle Race  By far, the most brilliant edition to the pantheon of winter sports.......the only thing missing on the bobsled track are life rafts and Volvos.......
                             Overall score 7.5   (Sorry, but at Roger's advancing age, you know that can't possibly be him doing all this.....)

                  A View To A Kill (1985)  Roger's last Winter Games......
                                  Beach Boys Snowboarding   Like something you might see in  a Dean Martin/Matt Helm movie. Even Doris Day's "Caprice" took a ski chase more seriously.....
                              Overall score  7.5  (Same reason as "For Your Eyes Only")

                    The Living Daylights (1987) Timothy Dalton announces a new guy's in town by actually running like hell in Gibralter, scaring the monkeys.......
                                  Downhill On A Cello Case  Considering  Timothy's angry-tortured-Hamlet-at-MI6  interpretation of Bond, this sledding-on-the-Cello seems jarringly out of place, more fitting for one of Roger's capers.....
                           Overall score   6.0......this may be why they cut out the sequence with Bond riding a Persian carpet across telephone wires.......

                        The World Is Not Enough (1999)  Pierce hits the slopes in fine style.....
                                  Downhill With Para Gliding Assault Vehicles   At long last, downhill skiing brought up to date.....with stuff blowing up and big fireballs.
                                   Avalanche Racing With Roly Poly Survival Tent   We'd watch TV coverage of this only if Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski tried it out......
                           Overall score 9.0 ......especially for the airborne minions colliding with one another..

                         Die Another Day (2002)  Comic book nonsense finally ends Pierce's reign.....
                                    Invisible Car Ice Racing   We can't even believe we just typed out "Invisible Car Ice Racing".  Oh the shame.
                          Overall score  1.0  Cause of "Invisible Car...." we can't even type it anymore. Also for the Nintendo 64-level surfing sequence.....

                         Spectre (2015)  Maybe Timothy Dalton was too ahead of his time, since now the world's ready to embrace Daniel Craig's  grim, pissed off Bond......
                                     Airplane Vs. Car racing  We realize this is not yet an officially sanctioned Olympic Winter Event.......but what the hell, it looks like loads of fun with all kinds of degrees-of-difficulty
                                  Overall score 10.  For a new winter sport with enormous potential vehicle damage.......

                          Here's hoping Daniel Craig slaps on some skis in the next one........see you on the slopes.......we'll be watching from the Lodge.......



             

'NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA'.......THE ROADSHOW HITS THE ROAD......

Nicholas And Alexandra (1971)    You'll never hear us go all nostalgic about the 3 and 4 hour epics that used to play theaters in what the film trade called "roadshow" presentations.......

            In other words, like a theatrical play. Reserved seats. Overture music. An intermission.  Exit music to see you out as you staggered up the aisle with legs still slowly waking up.......

             By the time the dinosaurian "Nicholas And Alexandra" lumbered into theaters, the roadshow had reached its twilight.  The huge 2000 seat movie palaces that hosted these cinematic behemoths were already on the verge of turning into parking lots, office buildings......or most humiliating of all, twin theaters.

             But we'll freely admit that in revisiting this film, we found pleasures that we may not have fully appreciated when we first sat trapped in a dark auditorium with it for 3 hours.

              Mega-producer Sam Spiegel ("Lawrence Of Arabia") avoided the expense of signing super-dooper international movie stars........he cast the entire movie with every familiar, brilliant British actor he could get his hands on, even his two leads, played by completely-unknown-to-the-world Michael Jayston and Janet Suzman.

             The cast list here reads like a Great Britain acting Who's Who.....Laurence Olivier, Harry Andrews, Jack Hawkins, Ian Holm, Brian Cox, Irene Worth.....and Tom Baker, later everyone's favorite Dr. Who, as Rasputin.

              Watching them all again, all of them in their prime, somehow made the film's punishing length much easier to endure this time.  And visually , Freddy Young's masterful cinematography is still a gorgeous sight to behold.

              Call us hopelessly old-fashioned, but we'll take true epic sweep over CGI landscapes and digital crowds every time......

              But the film's fatal flaw and the reason it died  a quick death still exists.  And that's the idea of building an epic around Tsar Nicholas II himself.

                Tsar Nick is no larger than life heroically tragic figure....(though the film takes a few awkward stabs at portraying him that way in its final third).Not a guy to keep viewers riveted to their seats.   He's pretty much a clueless, entitled royal moron, refusing to acknowledge the 20th century's end of monarchic rule and oblivious to the oppression and suffering of his subjects.

                 By the time the upheavals of the Russian Revolution catch up with him and his family, you're not apt to care about the humiliations and violent end awaiting them.......no matter how pretty all his princess daughters are.

                And not many moviegoers wanted to sit through a story centered around an idiot who gets what's coming to him. Not for 3 hours at reserved seat prices anyway.

                Which is why the best parts of the film are those that wander away from the woeful Romanov soap opera to have a look at the revolutionaries' struggles as they birth the uprising. And like an anticipated musical number, Tom Baker's protracted Rasputin murder scene becomes the movie's one and only showstopper. (And you'd better believe Tom makes the most of it...)

               No, we  don't miss the roadshow movies. But we do miss the meticulous artistry that was poured into movies like this one...........the kind of film where watching the incredible array of actors assembled were all the special effects you ever needed.

              That we do miss.  2 & 1/2 stars (** 1/2)

           

LEAST FAVORITE THINGS: SPECIAL GOP 'THOUGHTS & PRAYERS' EDITION

           The AR-15 Assault rifle.

            No question about it, it's a brilliantly efficient piece of warfare equipment in terms of what it's designed to do......

              ............to spit out enough of  a non-stop lethal spray of bullets to kill mass quantities of human beings in less time than you'd take to text 'let's have lunch' to a friend.

               Two separate groups of people make use this weapon.

                Group # 1:  Men and women in the military, battling all the assorted Middle East fanatics who've let their faith and ideology reduce themselves to a plague of insects.

                Group # 2:  The Make America Great Again Redhats, whose minds and hearts, like their dear leader's,  are as frighteningly empty as the darkest, coldest voids of outer space.

                 You may well ask about Group 2........what exactly do these people in the United States need with guns engineered not for hunting, not for home defense, but for pitched warfare on battlefields?

                 Let us clue you in. Two reasons.

                 The Zombie Apocalypse  MAGA morons cling to their AR-15s like their high school prom dates cause you never know when the walking dead will rise up, looking for brains to chew on. If only the walking dead knew that among the MAGA crowd, there's less brains there than on a single nibbly in your TV snack tray.

                  The Black and Brown Apocalypse   Now here's the real nightmare that keeps the MAGAs up late all night........the ever growing demographics of people who aren't white, God-fearin' folks, the kind of shifty characters who won't automatically line up to support pussy-grabbers and pedophiles the way God, Man and Baby Orange intended.

                   And their last line of defense.........Republicans with their coat pockets stuffed and bulging with NRA cash.

                   Sitting atop of a mountain of dead bodies, men women, teenagers and toddlers shredded to pieces by AR-15s, the GOP offer their "thoughts and prayers" for the slaughtered.

                    For fifteen seconds, or however long it takes them to post a tweet, they pretend to feel the pain of parents who've had to identify the ruined bodies stretched out on morgue slabs as their children.

                   As soon as the tweeting's done, the GOP, reduced from lawmakers to writhing, spineless parasites in defense of their leader,  dream of the crisp green NRA money in their campaign war chests.

                  Baby Orange, of course, won't speak of guns.....only mental illness.

                  Well, here's the funny thing about mental illness. Mentally ill people who who commit mass murder don't do it by waving the interior of their diseased foreheads at their victims......or willing people to drop dead with the telekinetic power of their paranoia and schizophrenia.

                  Breaking news..........they do it with AR-15s.

                 Maybe we should make it just a teensy-weensy little bit harder for them to get the guns.

                 No way, says the GOP. Not the time to discuss it.  They gave you their thoughts and prayers........so suck it up, bury your dead kids and move along.

                 Baby Orange, though, does have compassion for the mentally ill.

                 One of the first things he did in office was make it easier for them to get AR-15s.

                 The BQ also offers thoughts and prayers to Baby Orange and his Minions........praying that the bloodstains of those Florida victims stay forever smeared on you until you reach the special room in hell reserved for you.

'SHE RIDES SHOTGUN'.........DADDY'S GIRL GOES MEDIEVAL ON YOUR ASS.....

She Rides Shotgun by Jordan Harper (2017)    Fasten your seat belts, kids.....it's gonna be a bloody night.......

          What a blast of a read, we couldn't turn the pages fast enough.

          A film version of this would make a far more worthier 'Grindhouse' entry than those two fake movies concocted by Rodriguez and Tarantino ("Planet Terror" and "Death Proof")

           The beauty of this book is that you get the unadulterated adrenalin rush of non-stop action minus the slowdown for the Tarantino pop-culture blah-blah-blah dialogue.

          Nate McCluskey, a badass career criminal, gets sprung from prison on a legal technicality......but not before he has a difference of opinion with a member of the 'Aryan Steel' brotherhood.

           This difference of opinion leaves the Aryan goon dead, which doesn't sit well with the guy's brother, confined in Solitary, but still Chief of the whole gang.

           So Nate walks out into the world with a death sentence imposed not only on him but his ex-wife and 11 year old daughter Polly.

           He's too late to save Polly's mom, but he picks up his shy, withdrawn little girl from school and off they go......with every homicidal biker, meth-head and sociopathic thug in Southern California gunning for them.

            To Nate's total surprise and not a small degree of fear, it turns out Polly is truly her father's daughter, filled with untapped rage and a thirst for cold, calculated vengeance.  As the oddest of teams, father and daughter take the fight directly to the Aryan Steel hoods who run the outside-of-prison operations.

             And the blood flows faster than that tidal wave that cascaded down the hotel hallways in Kubrick's "The Shining"......

             That's as far as we'll go with description......you need to grab yourself a copy right away to take this rollercoaster ride for yourselves.

              After crawling our way through two lugubrious, overpraised so-called 'thrillers' (yes, we mean you "Woman In Cabin 10" and "Into The Water") this book picked us up and slammed us against the wall.

               And oh, how we loved flyin' and tearin' through this one. No question about the rating here......5 stars (*****), a FIND OF FINDS. BQ says get a two handed grip on "She Rides Shotgun" and dive right in, if you dare.

'THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX'........CORPORATE MASTURBATION.......

The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)   How do we even begin to explain this?

           How much studio money does it take to fund J.J. Abrams playing peek-a-boo-fooled-ya with sci fi fanboys?

           How much studio money got flushed down the toilet on this current abortion.......which seems to be the aftermath of Abrams and the studio marketing team all jerking each other off?

           Once considered a theatrical release, at some point an attack of sanity broke out at Paramount when they realized it was unfit for human consumption........

           Hence, the dumping on to Netlfix on Super Bowl Night......surprise, surprise.

           As is our policy here at the BQ, we refuse to dignify this thing by describing its incomprehensible storyline in any detail

             You can always refer to our review of last year's "Life", which was the same recycled spaceship-horror garbage vomited up for the umpteenth time.....

            Abrams and his cohorts dump every single trope from doomed outer space outpost movies into one huge landfill........complete with a whole crew regularly scheduled for squishy, gory, special-effects laden deaths. (Some of these kiss-offs stick out for sheer idiocy.....one guy's head turns into a worm grenade....)

            These clueless stiffs keep firing up some jumbo contraption on their space station to solve earth's energy crisis. All it ever seems to do is collide them with alternate universes and infect the Earth with a whole bunch of those Godzilla wanna-bes who stomped on the NYC yuppies in 2008's "Cloverfield".

            After its interminable body count finishes up, the film offers us, as if it were a treat thrown to a performing seal, a glimpse of its pet monster.

             It roars as if it's auditioning to replace the MGM lion......

             Memo to J.J.Abrams.......please go to hell and take this movie with you.
           
             Zero stars (0)......wait'll it's on Netflix.......oops.....oh, wait a minute......just ignore it. Period.

         

'HOT MILLIONS'.........PREHISTORIC CYBER-CRIME.........

Hot Millions (1968)    Decades before they were knighted, Sir Peter Ustinov and Dame Maggie Smith teamed up to play the quirkiest, funniest, most unlikely of romantic teams.......and it was comedic heaven watching these two acting masters work together....

                We don't want to run the risk of over-hyping the movie.......it is, after all, a lighter than air entertainment, designed to keep you smiling and chuckling without provoking you into any uproarious belly laughs.

                 But that still puts it miles above what passes for film comedy today.......

                 Remember, this movie came from an era where vast numbers of modest little dramas and comedies could still be made without budgets that approached the U.S. national debt.

                  Today, no studio would ever greenlight such films........given that they lack dinosaurs, tsunamis and actors wrapped in spandex slamming each other around like human tetherballs.....

                  "Hot Millions", co-written by Ustinov, presented itself as an up-to-date, brightly Technicolored version of those many quaint black-and-white British comedies in which lovable, larcenous eccentrics pull off a clever scam, outwitting and outraging all the usual Authority Figures....

                  Ustinov's Marcus Pendleton, a gentlemen embezzler newly sprung from prison, can't figure out where he'll fit into modern society.......until 'computers' rings a bell.  (Cue those wonderful shots of 60's computers.......enormous machines spitting out punch cards, tapes reels spinning away inside glass cabinets.....)

                   Posing as a data processing whiz, Ustinov secures an executive position at a company-engulfing conglomerate run by a gung ho American (Karl Malden) and his quiet, methodical V.P. (Bob Newhart, doing his patented conservative introvert persona from his stand-up routines)

                   Ustinov wastes no time in overriding the company computer's security safeguard (a big blue alarm light), funneling cash to himself by having it delivered to dummy companies he set up inside bakeries, barbershops and empty offices all over Europe.

                    Complications arise when Ustinov's screwball, screwup apartment neighbor Patty Terwilliger (Maggie Smith) secures a job as his secretary.......having incompetently lost countless other jobs.....

                   And what a pair they are.......Ustinov's virtually a one man show, a riot of muttered asides and improvised expressions.......and you can't help falling immediately in love with Smith's scatterbrained Pixie.....who may not be as hopelessly air-headed as everyone thinks, including herself.
The scene in which these two oddball societal outcasts stumble into marriage is a perfect mixture of unsentimental dry wit and warm romantic comedy.

                    With the suspicious Newhart hot on his trail, it seems like Ustinov's goose is cooked but film has one final delightful twist up its sleeve.........leaving everyone happy, including the audience.

                    Nothing earthshaking......nothing world-changing........but then most 1960's movies didn't hold those daunting aspirations......(and they didn't live or die based on how much money they made on their opening weekends....)

                     Just a light piece of fluff that more than succeeds in giving you a smooth, pleasant ride for an hour and 45 minutes. And that's more than okay with us.....4 stars (****).......(maybe today's government bigwigs should have that big alarm light on their laptops.....)