'TOM JONES'......BEST PICTURE OF THE YEAR? OR JUST THE MOMENT?

Tom Jones (1963)  You could pull your hair out thinking about the number of undeserving movies that won the Academy Award for Best Picture Of The Year......

            Cecil B. DeMille's "Greatest Show On Earth"?   Really?

            "Crash"?  Huh?  It may take decades of investigation to figure this one out......

            "Gandhi" over "E.T."?   Will anyone on planet Earth ever sit down and watch "Gandhi" other than Middle School students forced to view it for homework assignments?

             "Shakespeare In Love" over "Saving Private Ryan"?    Well, we can only give a thankful prayer that Jabba The Weinstein has no more power to shove one of his fake Masterpiece Theater movies down everyone's throats......(which hopefully means no more awards for museum waxworks items like "The King's Speech" and "The Iron Lady"....)

              "Life Is Beautiful"?  "The Artist"?   We'd like to believe that the Motion Picture Academy and its voters would never again rush to hug a fuzzy-wuzzy, cute 'n cuddly foreign film like a rescue shelter puppy with a three legs.  We'd like to believe that........ 

               We could go and on about all the movies that lucked out enough to hit the zeitgeist of the moment......walking away with an award that bestowed immortality, even if the actual movie was out-of-date and out of everyone's memory within the year of its release......

              But guess what? 1963's "Tom Jones", upon our recent re-viewing, is most definitely not one of those justifiably forgettable movies.....

              55 years later, we found it as raucously charming as when it first took the cinema world by storm.....

              Of all the goofy, gimmicky stuff that director Tony Richardson threw into the movie (silent film spoofery, fourth-wall asides from the actors, etc, etc) only the Keystone Kops speeded up slapstick moment looks really awkward and ancient......(as it does in all the 60's movies infected with camera over-cranking..)

               We still love the rest of it........Susannah York's to-die-for beautiful Sophie Western,......Hugh Griffith, as roaring drunk in real life as he is in the movie.......John Addison's score, rich in multiple themes and as tongue-in-cheek as the movie itself.......the long, long roster of iconic British character actors in the supporting cast......and most importantly, the nimble young Albert Finney giving the title role the exact correct amounts of sex appeal and self-depreciation.....

               There's no real mystery as to how the film overtook the Academy Awards.......nobody had seen anything quite like it.......high art mixed with low comedy. But unlike some of the other films that seduced the Academy into short-lived puppy-love crushes, "Tom Jones" still lives on as a viable entertaining experience......

               All these years later, it's still a 4 star movie to us (****).......(and any random minute of it is 1000 times better than the entire combined running times of "The Greatest Show On Earth", "Life Is Beautiful", "Crash","Shakespeare In Love"......and oh yes......"Gandhi"....

'SHAMPOO'........HE'S SO VAIN........WE BET HE THINKS THIS FILM IS ABOUT HIM.......

Shampoo (1975)    When it comes to long range artistic stamina, 70's movies are all over the map......

               Some of them hold up just fine......still resonating after all these years.....

               Others come off as woefully dated, all of their once-lauded techniques, performances and storylines now seen as shopworn, tiresome and obvious.

                "Shampoo" is still a mixed up stew, falling into both categories at the same time.......wittily hip in its dialogue while dopey in its blunt attempts at satiric irony......

               We remember this movie arriving as a fully anointed cultural event.......born to be instantly celebrated and praised.......(not an easy feat, considering this was decades before social media drumbeating....)

               Who could resist this idea......notorious Hollywood Lothario Warren Beatty playing a variation of himself.......a randy Hollywood hair stylist who's a bed-hopping Casanova, exhaustively screwing his way through L.A.'s entire population of aspiring actresses and Beverly Hills matrons.

               And in case you don't pick up on the movie's sardonic view of America's moral breakdown, all of Beatty's cheeky depravities play out on the eve of Richard Nixon's election in 1968.....

               Film critics at the time fawned all over the Nixon stuff in "Shampoo", gushing on about how sneakily clever it was to  compare Tricky Dick with Warren's wandering dick........two deluded dicks at the mercy of their own moral bankruptcy.......

               Watching those scenes today, you want to close your eyes, sigh loudly and whisper under your breath "yeh...yeh....we get it already...."

              What still works well:  the characters carefully crafted by Beatty and co-screenwriter Robert Towne......Beatty's George Roundy, essentially a toddler with a hard-on, furiously racing around on a motorcycle to keep up with his sexual house calls......and all the women he placates with his tossed-off mantra "You're great....", played by Goldie Hawn, Julie Christie, Lee Grant and 19 year old Carrie Fisher.

               What still surprises us........despite cloaking itself in arch satire, it turns out "Shampoo" exhibits even more strict moral rectitude than a Fundamentalist church sermon.  George Roundy's few half-baked attempts to ascend to adulthood end in abysmal failure.......embarrassing, futile tries to secure financing to open his own hair salon, and a way-too-late Hail Mary grasp at lasting love with Christie, the woman he realizes is The One.

                For a movie that proudly struts its hipness, it sure as hell punishes Beatty's character for his commitment-free, immoral lifestyle.......(though he does barely manage to avoid an actual physical beating for his sins,  the kind given to Tony Curtis's similarly ambitious hustler in "Sweet Smell Of Success".)

               Enough of "Shampoo" still pops,snaps and crackles for BQ's 3 stars (***).....most of those stars earned for Julie Christie's riotous scene at a black-tie party celebrating Nixon's election.....

                We don't know of any other movie where you'd see Christie attempt fellatio on Warren Beatty at a dinner party while shlock-horror movie producer William Castle looks on with amusement......and that's 1970's entertainment......

'LOGAN LUCKY'.........OCEAN'S HILLBILLIES.....

Logan Lucky (2017)   Steven Soderbergh may be the only director working now who's making movies for no other reason than the pure joy of filmmaking........

             How else could you explain the existence of this movie, which is nothing more than Soderbergh's "Ocean's 11/12/13" trilogy re-done with backwoods blue-collar Red-staters.......only minus the hyperventilating hyperbole you'd get if the Coen brothers had directed it.

             It's a tribute to the actors involved (Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Daniel Craig, Riley Keough) that you never stop to ponder how this collection of seemingly primitive rubes could not only dream up an elaborate heist of a Nascar speedway, but pull it off with 'Topkapi'-like precision.....

            It begs the question.....was a movie like this really worth Soderbergh's time and talent?

             Hell yes, if turns out as entertaining as this one.

            Soderbergh and his game-for-anything cast obviously had a great time making it......and it comes off as a throwback to the kind of movies that just wanted to show you a relaxing good time......without beating you over the head......(don't believe the rarity of this achievement? Try finding another movie like this.....)

            In this day and age of IMAX/3-D,  over-hyped monstrosities, that now sounds like a limited goal for a major film director.....,but Soderbergh doesn't care.....

            Neither do we.

            We love him for that.......who else would go from making this bouncy frivolous movie to shooting a fast, cheap horror film on a cellphone?  He's doing it for the sheer fun of it and we say....more power to 'im.

            The only downside......"Logan Lucky" has no aspirations to hit any heights. It chugs along at an even pace and even when it reveals a few twists and turns, the film never breaks out of its modest goal to simply keep you smiling all the way through it.

           The biggest jokes here come from the sly physical gags.....and by physical, we literally mean the physicality of the actors. Daniel Craig's drawling West Virginia convict is made up to look like the iconic Robert Shaw villain in "From Russian With Love".......Seth MacFarlane pops up in deep disguise as a creepy, obnoxious British Nascar driver.......and Hilary Swank drops as an FBI agent toward the end, sounding like she's doing a deeply tongue-in-cheek sendup of Jodie Foster's "Silence Of The Lamb" rookie Fed......

             Nothing spectacular, but this lower-income gang, cleverly described in the film as "Ocean's 7-11" delivers a breezy fun 2 hours.......and that's way more than you'll get from a host of the usual bloated CGI behemoths that infect the multi-plex.  3 & 1/2 stars (*** 1/2)

           

'AMERICAN IDOL' & 'THE VOICE'.....A PLAGUE ON BOTH THEIR HOUSES......

American Idol, The Voice   You don't dive any lower to the bottom of the Pop Culture barrel than TV singing competitions.......

              Networks adore these shows for being so much cheaper to produce than dramas and comedies........

              And across America, they can draw upon an inexhaustible supply of young people born with vocal cords made of vibrating stainless steel.......a nation full of kids who blast songs out of their mouths like finely tuned air raid sirens......

               We wish them well........and we especially feel sorry for the few of them who actually win whatever constitutes a grand prize on one of these monumentally phony programs (reminds us of 1950's starlets awarded  5-movie studio contracts).......it only delays their eventual slide back into obscurity........

               For entertainment value, these shows offer a slew of celebrities an opportunity take their massive egos out for a public stroll while pretending to "mentor" the auditioning hopefuls....

                We wouldn't mind these preening "mentor" performances if all the celebs involved promised to include a scene of them walking into the ocean, like James Mason in "A Star Is Born.".......since all these 'mentoring' scenes come off as staged and fictitious as any moment in the Judy Garland movie.....

                As we post this, NBC is busy bludgeoning the country with umpteen hours of "The Voice", beating it into the ground, much in the same way ABC did with "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire"....

                Meanwhile ABC exhumed the corpse of "American Idol" complete with the most odious, nausea-inducing human on television, Ryan Seacrest......

                The walking dead "Idol" may have already reached its supremely loathsome moment.....in an episode where Katy Perry, in an act of staggering Trumpian cruelty, pranked an auditioning girl group by telling its members that one of them would have to sacrifice herself and drop out.  Perry waited to reveal her little joke until the kid who volunteered to leave was emotionally crushed enough for the cameras......

                  We can only hope the viewers of this show all simultaneously put their hands together and solemnly prayed for karma to catch up to Katy Perry......quickly.

                   As for the Fox Network "The Four" (which it no doubt threatens to revive)......too hateful, sickening and wretched to even describe......to hell with it.

                 In fact, to hell with all TV talent competitions, and all their celebrity "judges" and hosts....

                 Consider yourselves judged.

'ORIGIN'......ONCE AGAIN, THE PROF & A BABE ON THE RUN....

Origin by Dan Brown (2017)    Surprise, surprise.......you're not going to hear another rant out of us about one more best selling author who writes the same book over and over......

            Seriously, we don't mind that Brown's own professorial James Bond, Professor Robert Langdon always manages to find himself repeatedly in the same situation.........racing around Europe to uncover a world-shattering mystery........always staying one step ahead of either the cops, the villains or a variety of both........and invariably doing all this while accompanied by a hubba-hubba hot woman.......

            We don't mind that at no point in these books does Langdon ever catch his breath for a moment  of self-awareness and shout out, "Why the hell does this shit always happen to me??"

            To trot out our usual analogy.......hey, it's a book version of a Burger King Double Whopper.......sure, it's junk food, but it's oh so tasty and it's guilty pleasure fun every time you chomp down on it.

             And like millions of other satisfied customers, we're more than willing to forgive Dan Brown for his clunky prose.......we're all too busy being dazzled by the staggering amount of fascinating research he pours into these books.

              Personally, if we hit Google for info more than 3 times a day, we're ready for a nap......so we can't help feeling humbled as Brown's encyclopedic tsunami of Ripley's Believe It Or Not facts washes over us.....

              Our only qualm about this one......a uneasy suspicion that Brown's running out of Big Ideas to send Robert Langdon out on another breathless quest.....

              The earth-shaking Reveal here.......where mankind came from and what we'll evolve into, has already been exhaustively covered by countless science fiction novels and films.....

               And as for Brown's Super-Dooper Jumbo Extra Twist in the final pages..........in the interest of fairness to the book's future readers, we won't even drop a slight hint as to which iconic movie he heavily borrowed it from.......

              We still had a rippin' good time with "Origin", racing through the pages to see what happens next......and that's why you pick up a big fat best seller in the first place.......to gobble it up faster than a Double Whopper.  No belching required afterwards either........3 stars (***)....

STORMY DANIELS......NATURAL PORN KILLER.......

             Briefly, (cause talking about this at length induces nausea...)....some takeaways from the porn star's long awaited "60 Minutes" interview.......

             Baby Orange's Big Mistake: Messin' with Porn people.............they come from a tough-as-nails business and you don't find innocent, naive little snowflakes among them,  Not exactly virginal Miss Universe contestants fresh off the farm, who haven't figured out yet why Baby Orange wanders into their dressing room at key moments...... Baby Orange, who exists only in the alternate universe somewhere deep inside his head, couldn't think past his own erect penis.......and now he's met his match.

             Stormy's lawyer plays "Peek-A-Boo" better than Baby Orange.......Baby Orange, until lately, enjoyed his status as the undisputed, unchallenged master of the "I'll tell you at a later date.....I'll tell you in couple weeks.....well, we'll see what happens"  bullshit teasing.  In Michael Avenetti, Baby Orange has found himself out-teased and out-bullshitted by a master..........who knows if there's anything of value or interest on that mysterious vault-hidden DVD........that fact that it's driving Baby Orange insane (and strangely silent) tickles us to infinity. Pass the popcorn........

             Memo To Stormy and the two other women......be thankful Baby Orange didn't ask any of you to wear a photo of Ivanka rubber-banded around your heads........or did he?

             A basic question bound to be ignored by red-capped Trumpanzees and Evangelicals.......
.....it comes down to this.......Why oh why did Baby Orange and his lawyer pay this woman $130,000 and ask her to sign a non-disclosure agreement??????  Non disclosure of what, exactly???

MOST & LEAST FAVORITE THINGS; BABY ORANGE HIDES FROM THE MARCHING TEENS....

            Eons and eons ago, we attended Overbrook High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania......
     
            Sure, it was a rough tough school......and riding the Brontosaurus every morning to get there was no picnic either.......

             But one threat we never, ever conceived of while there....the insane threat that now hovers today's high school kids......

             .......the threat of some heavily armed evil lunatic shooting them dead in their school.

            ........and the threat of some heavily funded evil lunatics who don't want to impede in any way the heavily armed lunatics who hope to massacre innocent children.

                 To put this simply.......

                 Most Favorite Thing ....the March For Our Lives kids, who stood up for the right to live.....and thrive in their futures.

                 Least Favorite Things  Baby Orange, at first scolding folks for being scared of the NRA, then folding up like a lawn chair after meeting with the NRA......as always, proving to the world he's an empty vessel, scampering off to play golf at his summer palace ......a man devoid of heart, soul, humanity or any convictions other than his feeding his own swollen ego.......

                 The NRA, sending out its spokes-monster, live action Malificent Dana Loesch, claiming that the hundreds of thousands of protesting kids are tools of adult manipulators. Hilarious, coming from a minion of a toxic organization that stuffs politicians' pockets with millions in cash......

                  Rick Santorum......who suggested students would be better off learning CPR than protesting gun slaughter in their schools........Sadly, no amount of CPR would do Santorum any earthly good......he's already brain dead.

                 Most Anticipated Future Moment   .....when bought-and-paid-for NRA puppets like Marco Rubio watch the kids who marched turn 18 years old and head for the polling places.....


 

'WONDER'.........CANDY COATED MIDDLE SCHOOL.......

Wonder (2017)   Every so often, a Facebook pal we grew up with posts an archival photo of our old junior high school.........an ancient forbidding fortress reeking of bad memories......

           That's when we'd usually chime in with a comment along the lines of ......"nothing wrong with this place a Tomahawk missile couldn't cure...."   (Before anyone gets upset, we referred to only the unoccupied building....)

             Mainstream Hollywood chooses to sand off the edges of Middle School, polish it up to a high gloss, include a few laughs, make it a less bitter pill for moviegoers to swallow.......

            So the school on view here, like the one in the "Wimpy Kid" movies, is fundamentally a bright cheerful place, only slightly smeared by a bully or two......

            .........in other words, nothing at all like the horrific rat's nest of hatred, cruelty and vile behavior that infected our middle school.....

                We can't imagine what the kids in our junior high would have done with this movie's Auggie Pullman (Jacob Tremblay) a sweet, sensitive and brilliant boy with a facial disfigurement......probably torment him into suicide within 2 to 3 days......

                But "Wonder" isn't real life and we didn't mind that too much........at this point in our life we'd rather sit and be comforted by a fantasy Middle School where friendship and kindness prevail, bullying receives due justice and virtue is rewarded (just like in "The Wizard Of Oz") with a medal to wear around your neck.

               This movie school even has its very own Dumbledore in Principal Tushman (Mandy Patinkin), a character so wise and gentle, it's a wonder he doesn't ride in on a cloud. (Our Junior High principal and teachers were far closer to Voldemort and Delores Umbridge.....)

                And in telling its story, this movie also lays out a full menu of heartbreak and angst that you could easily divide up into four or five separate movies.......take your pick: disfigured child angst, teenage girl angst, school play angst, parental sacrifice angst. 

              "Wonder" certainly gives you your money's worth. 

               To his great credit, screenwriter-director Stephen Chbosky nimbly hops around from one emotional crisis to the next and never resorts to blatant pandering for an audience response. In its quietest moments, the film earns its tears honestly.........(We defy anyone to sit unmoved by a brief but telling climactic father-son conversation between Tremblay and Owen Wilson....)

               So we'll hold off hurling our Tomahawk missile at this particular school depicted in "Wonder"........it sits, after all,  in the middle of a movie that does a superior job of creating the kind of world we'd like to experience...(at least once and a while).  Sadly, a world that's rarely encountered outside of movies.  4 stars (****),

'IN SEARCH OF FELLINI'........A DREAMY QUEST.........FROM BART SIMPSON??

In Search Of Fellini (2017)    Common sense tells us we should hate this movie.......and unleash scorn and sarcasm upon it......

            It revels in its own preciousness, 80 per cent of it consists of overly pretentious film-festival fawning.......hazy photography, endless soulful close-ups of its lead actress, sequences which intercut and blend fantasy and reality......blah, blah blah......

            ........with a script by, of all people.......Nancy Cartwright, who's been the voice of Bart Simpson for what seems like the last 100 years.......inspired by an incident in her own life.

            Sound like a recipe for disaster?

             What can we say........it worked for us. Sucked us in, somehow entranced us with its not inconsiderable charm.  We'll admit it.....we melted.  And beyond any rational explanation, fell in love with it.

            Come to think of it......this kind of seduction is what movies do best. That's why we watch them.

            Almost all the credit for our rapture has to go to actress Ksenia Solo, playing Lucy, an achingly innocent 20 year old who's been given a sheltered upbringing by her protective mother (Maria Bello).........despite the constant presence of her mother's worldly, wisecracking sister (Mary Lynn Rasjskub).

           After Lucy's mom develops terminal cancer, her mother and aunt must push the waifish, virginal girl into the outside world to make a future for herself..........a monumental task, considering Lucy's practically a lifelong indoor laboratory baby, raised on children's books and repeated viewings of "It's A Wonderful Life".........

            Lucy's first disastrous venture into real life  (a job interview in what turns out to be a porn studio)  ends up with her stumbling into a Federico Fellini film series.......and a viewing of "La Strada".....

            In Fellini's immortal masterpiece of pathos, love and tragedy, Lucy discovers a world of emotions and unflinching humanity previously unknown to her. After immediately immersing herself in the rest of the director's films, she's transported out of the carefully constructed bubble she's lived in.

              And off she goes to Italy (in 1993), just as the title says......in search of Fellini..... after managing to secure an appointment to see the cinema Maestro....(we realize you've got to take a giant leap of faith to swallow this part of it, but if the movie doesn't have you in its spell by this time, you might as well stop watching it.....)

              Lucy wanders through a dreamlike tour of Italy......(and having been to Rome and Venice several times, we drooled with envy at the sight of Lucy moving through all those stunning landmarks unencumbered by thousands of fellow tourists. We can only assume they either shot these scenes at 6 'O clock in the morning or computer-erased all the jostling throngs.....)

               Along the way, Ksenia Solo's huge pale blue eyes gaze on two young Italian men......and you won't have any trouble separating the good guy from the scumbag......as well as all the expected life lessons about finding yourself and fulfilling dreams.......(in a cameo that could only be described as Fellini-esque, Nancy Cartwright herself shows up as beautifully bizarre former "Satyricon" extra )

               This may be one of the only independent film festival entries whose aspirations to high art didn't make us want to throw our popcorn at the screen or throw a towel over our eyes.  And Ksenia Solo had us at the scene where "La Strada" captures her heart and soul. 

               Artsy-smartsy, fanciful in the extreme and hardly any of it believable........but the BQ swooned over this one like our first 4rth grade crush.......so the hell with sarcasm and common sense.....4 stars (****).

         

'BYE BYE BIRDIE'.......THE LAST INNOCENT MUSICAL.......

Bye Bye Birdie (1963)   The America depicted here is as sweet, dreamy and fantastical as as any compact little landscape inside a snowglobe......

             Did the America of 'Bye Bye Birdie' ever really exist?  Maybe not as beautifully perfected as a Hollywood musical would have you believe,  but certainly as wide eyed and innocent......

              We trusted our government to do the right things.........we smiled and shook our heads at the antics of teenagers and their crazy 'rock and roll' songs.......we all gathered 'round the TV on Sunday nights to watch the unintentionally cadaverous Ed Sullivan introduce everything from Chinese acrobats to Russian ballerinas to Elvis Presley and the Beatles......

               And we lined up for movie versions of hit Broadway shows. Especially this one, a bubbly confection that mixed old fashioned Hollywood tropes with vibrant energy of new young performers. .......while poking the gentlest of fun at what constituted 1960's pop culture.

              Then 6 months after the release of this film, we watched John F. Kennedy's brains blown out, splattering his wife with gore........and changing our lives and America forever.

              American innocence dissolved and the worst was yet to come.......Vietnam, more assassinations, race riots, Richard Nixon, Watergate........

              No wonder we love watching "Bye Bye Birdie" over and over again.......with its squeaky clean scrubbed teenagers whose only flaws are their addiction to afterschool telephoning and swooning at the swiveling hips of a pseudo-Elvis named Conrad Birdie......

             We've long ago forgiven this movie its many flaws.......primarily coming from director George Sidney's strenuous effort to bend the film into a showcase for rising star Ann-Margaret. Much has been written about Hitchcock's weird obsession with Tippi Hedren,  but for pure unadulterated on-screen ogling, nothing compares to George Sidney's meticulous cinematic travelogues of A-M's scenic wonders.

              Supposedly playing a 16 year old, Ann-Margaret hurls herself into her musical numbers as if auditioning for a Vegas nightclub review......(how appropriate, since both she and director Sidney next moved on to "Viva Las Vegas", with none other than the real Elvis. And Sidney continued his enormous A-M adoration with 1966's "The Swinger", a miniscule vehicle in which Sidney constantly has his favorite starlet stripped, humiliated and rolling around in psychedelic paint........more on that misbegotten epic in a future post, we promise......)

              The Elvis caricature here, as played by Jesse Pearson, reeks of the mocking, condescending attitude that middle-aged filmmakers took toward rock 'n roll singers and their music......he's mostly depicted as a no-talent lunk. But in a movie so lightheaded, harmless and frothy, Pearson's side -o beef heartthrob fits perfectly into the cotton-soft satire of American values.......including the song spoofing the Ed Sullivan show as holy ritual for U.S. families.  (Even the real Ed thought it was all in fun, since he shows up playing himself.....)

                We couldn't finish this review without mentioning the other driving creative force on full display.....choreographer Onna White. With "Bye Bye Birdie", "The Music Man" and "Oliver", White proved herself as the Busby Berkley of 1960's movie musicals, fully decorating the Panavision frame with her platoons of dancers tirelessly bouncing through her memorable moves.  (High school drama clubs everywhere still try to duplicate her intricate funny dance from 'Gotta Lot of Livin' To Do')

                   Living in the unspeakable nightmare of Trump makes us yearn more than ever for that long lost Never Never land of the summer of l963. We can only think our lucky stars we've still got movies like "Bye Bye Birdie" to return to. Forever 4 stars (****)......as the song goes, 'We love you Conrad, we really do....'

              

LEAST FAVORITE THINGS: SPECIAL "CONGRATS, VLADDY!" EDITION.....

Baby Orange congratulates the KGB Nerve Gasser......no doubt drooling with envy at the ease of the Kremlin Hitman's  "re-election".......Baby Orange realizes that this kind of "voting" is probably the only way he could ever win re-election.....

Baby Orange pumps out tweets filled with misspellings........cause he only knows the best words.....even if they've got the wrong letters in them, they're still bigly........

Baby Orange sues the porn star for violating the non-disclosure agreement that Baby Orange knows nothing about and has nothing to do with......in related news, Disney Studios offer Baby Orange the Mad Hatter role in the next 'Alice In Wonderland' movie.......

Mrs. Baby Orange vows to continue her crusade against cyber-bullies........and once again hears the deafening sound of millions of people snickering under their breath.........

Baby Orange's Russian Puppeteer, Komrade KGB, celebrates an election victory......and loves reading Baby Orange's attacks on Baby Orange's own cabinet members, the media, Gold Star families, war heroes, war widows.......in fact, everyone in the known civilized world.....except Komrade KGB......

Baby Orange can't spell "counsel".......but will eventually learn a brand new word he'll soon hear frequently........Traitor.

'PITCH PERFECT 3'........BRINGING BACK THE 1940'S SEQUEL (CHEAP 'N CRUMMY)

Pitch Perfect 3 (2017)..........watching this astoundingly abysmal 3rd entry in the 'Pitch Perfect' series gave us a light twinge of nostalgia.......

             If nothing else, this huge steaming turd of a movie reminded us of how studios used to make sequels to their hit films back in the l940's and 1950's.......

             Back then, there was no thought of pouring more amounts of money into a sequel.....to make it bigger and better than the original.....

             Sequels were strictly fast-buck operations........make 'em quick, make 'em cheap, slap 'em together with just enough elements that brought in the ticketbuyers the first time around......and grab the cash before word-of-mouth catches up.......

             A far cry from sequels today........where the budget balloons enough to feed a third world country, the CGI platoons triple in size and the running time inches ever closer to 3 hours.

             So we were honestly stunned at "Pitch Perfect 3", whose blatant awfulness and complete contempt for its audience is a direct throwback to the sequel-making of those bygone eras......

             Once again, we're talking about a movie not really made by writers or a director.......what we have here is a take-the-money-and-run-scam dreamed up at the accounting department of Universal Studios.....

              Think of this movie as the equivalent of those robo-calls you receive where a recorded voice tells you you've won a free trip to the Bahamas.....(and just give 'em your credit card number to conform your reservation......)

             Universal used the wrong logo to open this film. Instead of their spiffy modernized version, they should have opened "Pitch Perfect 3" with the same logo they used in front of the dirt cheap "Ma And Pa Kettle" and "Francis The Talking Mule" series.

             ..........because this barely written, barely directed collection of random sequences is a direct throwback to every cheapo, hastily assembled old-time sequel that ever rolled off the studio assembly lines.....a single-serving size of spam-in-a-can.

             We'll not further humiliate the actors by discussing this film in any detail......let the rating speak for itself.....Zero stars (0).  Suitable only for employees of the Universal accounting department.....who no doubt took pride in their work......

'THE YOUNG LOVERS'.........ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDA....

The Young Lovers (1964)     Nothing generates more unintentional laughs than Old School Hollywood's attempts to examine youth culture.......especially college students.

            This modest little MGM college life romantic drama stands a farther distance away from reality than the studio's "Forbidden Planet" stood from planet Earth........

             But there's some fun to be had watching this bizarre try at capturing young adult angst on the campus........back in the days when college offered guys a temporary refuge from the Draft and abortions were secretive, expensive and illegal.....

             Those two government-imposed imperatives fuel the drama here, primarily a bumpy romance between a self-absorbed rebellious art student (Peter Fonda) and the shy, reserved co-ed he falls for (Sharon Hugueny).

             You know Fonda's a rebel from the little motorbike he uses to zoom around in. But you also know he's lovable from his inability to stop the bike without slamming into something. You heard us right......he's more like Queasy Rider.

             Hugueny, a modestly talented refugee from the Warner Brothers starlet factory, plays a quiet, grounded education major who's gradually charmed by Fonda's strenuous meet-cute efforts.
 
              Hmmm......did we say quiet? Grounded?  All Fonda has to do is throw a tango LP on the record player and Hugueny goes into a choreographed pseudo-sexual frenzy, releasing her inner  dancing Ann-Margaret. It looks as crazy as it sounds, like a deleted scene from the script of "Where The Boys Are"....... and it's the first indication that the tone-deaf script will force the actors to jump in and out of character at a moment's notice....

             And the very young Fonda and Hugueny have little or no acting skills to make these cardboard cutout kids even remotely believable as flesh and blood humans. In scene after scene, the camera lingers on close-ups of their handome/pretty faces as they paste on whatever emotion the clunky dialogue demands of them.  (.....as if the directer called out various emotions to them using hand signals....)

            Before the two leads can make you slip into slumber, the movie's rescued by two miscast but more than welcome actors playing the other, more lively romantic couple......the too-old-for-college Nick Adams as a footloose slacker one short step ahead of the Draft and the too-young Deborah Walley as his cute, but conservatively exasperated girlfriend.  Who the hell knows how these two stumbled into this movie, but they perk things up a little....their main function, we think.

            Naturally, Fonda and Hugueny pay for their random, unprotected sex with a pregnancy......(this leads to a vivid 1960's time capsule moment, with Hugueny thoroughly scolded by a grandfatherly doctor she hopes will hook her up with a backroom abortion)

            The wild college party is a hoot, too.......(even if the poor shmuck who suggests a hootenanny is told to get lost). Lots of balloons. (We've been to our share of out-of-control college parties and we don't remember a single balloon.......but then none of our bashes followed an MGM script.)

             We did admire the vast Southern California campus on view........the only students who attend appear to be the four lead actors and about 20 kids from Fonda's Ancient History class......the rest of the place looks abandoned, with the school's huge outdoor amphitheater used only for Fonda and Hugueny's heart-to-heart meetings.  (What, no Joan Baez concerts?)

             Quite a rarity coming from a major studio in 1964......(around this time, only American International and Roger Corman had figured out the identity of the most active movie-going demographic......the studios were still making movies for 45 year olds)  And Hollywood wouldn't return to making serious college-set movies for another 6 years......when both the country and the campuses were embroiled in turmoil.

              The irony is.....some of those later films weren't any more a realistic depiction of college life than "The Young Lovers".  But just for giving it the ole college try, we'll grade on a curve and send out a transcript with a 2.0 average.....(**)   (We hope that poor 'hootenanny' guy at the party at least got a part in MGM's "Hootenanny Hoot" the year before.....)



           

'FROM THE HIP'.........THE IDIOTIC 80'S ALL IN ONE MOVIE.......

From The Hip (1987)     Ridiculous and stupid as it is, we can't help but keep a warm place in our heart for this raggedly slapdash movie.......which starts out as a legal "Revenge Of the Nerds" and turns into a lunatic "Law And Order" episode for its second half.....

             We managed a thriving impossibly busy video store when this film came out....(back in the you-bet-Jurassic period when homevideo was fresh and fun for everybody....customers and employees alike......)

              One genre every movie renter couldn't get enough of in those days.........freewheeling comedies built around some wisecracking smartass who turns the tables on asshole authority figures......through a mixture of guile, wit, charm and....(most importantly) an enormous set of brass balls.......

               These movies invariably ended with our hero winning the day, humiliating the douchebags who foolishly stand in his way......and snuggling up with his overwhelmingly cute girlfriend.....

               Who better to concoct a film out of this boilerplate blueprint than Bob Clark, whose cartoonish, dumbell directorial style served him so well in the "Porky's" atrocities and his biggest hit, "A Christmas Story".

                We always thought of Clark as a sort of minor-league Robert Aldrich, with the same blunt, lowest-common-denominator sledgehammer approach to whatever genre he dabbled in.   (Unlike Aldrich though, Clark stayed content with crowd-pleasing pop entertainment.......you'd never see him go off the deep end and make something like "The Legend Of Lylah Clare" or "The Killing Of Sister George"...... )

                 "From The Hip" gives you a full helping of Clark-isms........wildly exaggerated comedy sequences accentuated with physical gags and actors hamming it up to the point where they come close to bursting blood vessels.....

                  The comedic stuff comes primarily in the first half of the movie, detailing the outrageous behavior of a fledgling young lawyer Robin 'Stormy' Weathers (Judd Nelson) who tricks his conservatively patrician Boston law film into allowing him to try a simple case of assault and battery.

               Nelson, in secret collusion with the equally ambitious young assistant district attorney, turns the trial into a media celebrated slapstick trainwreck, confounding the apoplectic judge (Ray Walston, playing to the last row in the balcony).

                 In accordance with the strict rules of this genre, Nelson wins both an acquittal for his client and partnership in the law film, much to the disgust of all the uppercrust senior partners......

                Now here's where the movie turns genuinely interesting, lurching its way into thriller-drama territory. The law Partners exact their revenge on Nelson by handing him the impossible task of defending Dr. Benoit (John Hurt), a psychotic, over-the-top snobbish English professor who used a hammer to crack open the skulls of a whore and her pimp.

               Hurt's role here, a snotty egotistical precursor of Hannibal Lector,  is an actor's dream come true.......armed with dialogue made up of only the biggest words plucked out of a Thesaurus, Hurt has himself a one man "Look-at-me-I'm-crazeeee!" show you can't turn away from.  He's damn fun to watch........even when he's forced into the script's final, unbelievable plot twist.........(not that we fault him. Remember, he's completely at the mercy of the how this genre has to finish up)

               As for Judd Nelson........it didn't take very long for audiences and critics to judge him as a one trick pony.......an actor whose severely limited range consisted mostly of eye-bulging and yelling at key dramatic moments.  Fortunately for him, this being a Bob Clark movie, he at least got to star in a film that played to his one strength........under Clark's primitive direction, all of Nelson's arm waving and screaming fit perfectly.

              Back in the forgiving video-store 1980's, filmmakers could still find a ready and willing audience for a movie so strangely flawed and uneven as "From The Hip".  Whatever it's many, many problems (only a few of which we've detailed here) it remains watchable and entertaining. Bob Clark may have been a simpleton director making painfully simple movies........but he did want to show everyone a good time. With this one......he succeeded in spite of himself.  3 stars (***)

'LOVE' (SEASON 3)..........WITH ONE EXCEPTION, GOOD RIDDANCE......

Love (Season 3-Netflix) (2018)   We'll at least offer writer-director Judd Apatow a backhanded salute for squeezing so many episodes out of a show populated with repulsive characters constantly saying the most hurtful things to each other at all the wrong moments........

             It's designed to make you cringe, each episode the equivalent of 30 minutes of fingernails screeching across a blackboard......

             So we can't say we'll miss it much........and we could never imagine ever going back to re-watch even a minute of this show, any more than slamming our head repeatedly against the wall......

              So farewell to this misbegotten bunch of 30-something Los Angeles strivers, including the barely reformed booze-drug-sex addict Mickey (Gillian Jacobs) and her unctuous, sniveling, whiny boyfriend Gus(Paul Rust) , a useless teacher of child-actors and would-be filmmaker.

              While Jacobs supplied a deeply thought out, fully dimensional portrayal of a damaged, dysfunctional human, Rust settled for making his character a one note worm.  After a few episodes, you find yourself taking delicious pleasure in his many well-deserved humiliations and defeats.

               One character (and actor) we will miss (and as far as we're concerned, the show's one and only MVP, the ever bubbly Australian pixie Bertie, played to perfection by Claudia O'Doherty. She may have been the only character in this show we didn't have the urge to throw out the window of a tall building.

               We're torn as to what kind of final rating to give this show now that it's wrapped up.......on the basis of what it set out to do, we'd grudgingly call it a success.....(in compressing every embarrassing moment of your life that you regret into 30 minutes)

               As to whether any of it qualifies as entertainment.......depends on how it strikes you. Yes, we watched it all, but then we slow down to watch people getting traffic tickets too......2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)

'NOVEMBER CRIMINALS'.........IS THERE A MOVIE IN HERE?

November Criminals (2017)   This one's a total puzzle to us.....

           The novel it's based on sweat bullets to come across as a "Catcher In The Rye" wanna-be.....loaded with countless pages of snarky internal monologues from its quirky high school protagonist.....

          The filmmakers chose to completely drain the book of everything except the bare skeleton of its storyline, which has Snarky Kid and his adorable girlfriend conduct a Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew investigation into the seemingly random shooting death of their best friend......

           So when you see the credit, "inspired by the novel by Sam Munson"......be afraid, be very afraid......

           In stripping the novel of all its stylistic finesse and character development, the filmmakers couldn't even decide on which simplistic tale to tell.  A thriller?  A teen angst drama?  A coming-of-age romance?

           It's ends up as none of those things.......85 minutes of watching good actors going through their paces with no clear direction as to what kind of story they're telling or where they're going with it.

           We have no earthly clue as to what the filmmakers attempted here.........sucking all the air out of their source material and then expecting a coherent piece of art to come out of it.

           No sense even discussing this any further. The film's a black hole, an empty vessel....a (feel free to fill in your own metaphor here.............)

           We'll grudgingly give up 1/2 of a star (1/2) purely for the always welcome presence of Chloe Grace Moretz.......always watchable even when stuck with a useless, thankless role in this nothing of a movie.

'FLATLINERS' (2017).......ONCE AGAIN, THE AFTERLIFE GOES "BOOGA BOOGA!"

Flatliners (2017)    You all know by now that discussing a Corporate Marketing Move masquerading as a movie is equivalent to a root canal without any Novocaine......

              It's a given that this movie has no reason to exist other than to scam a few fast bucks off of teens who heard about the l990 original from their parents......("oh right, they stop their hearts to see what it's like after you die....."

               So let's put on our Hazmat suits and poke through the toxic waste and see what we can salvage.........

               Ellen Page.......a gift that's 1000 times more than this movie deserves. Every cheapo cheeseball horror film prays for at least one real actress to anchor it.......sort of like smearing a bright shiny coat of paint over a rusted car with no wheels......

                Kiefer Sutherland.......this movie's only gasping attempt at a sense of humor......having one of the original Flatliners hobbling around as an irascible old doctor.

               And that's about it for the positives.......

              The rest of it?  Uncooked creamed spinach......

               A depressing thought......there's probably vast numbers of film directors who would have jumped at the chance to do a new fresh take on the idea of making a round trip to the afterlife......instead of a lock-step connect-the-dots jump-scare horror movie.  But the words "new" and "fresh" would hit the people who made this movie like a bucket of water on the Wicket Witch Of The West.......

                This lazy bunch don't even rouse themselves to correct the senseless plot device of the original film........while two of the afterlife tourists are legitimately haunted by people whose deaths they feel responsible for........the other two get haunted by people who are still alive........???? (How does that happen exactly, considering you normally don't have to stop your heart to feel guilty about someone you mistreated in your youth or childhood.....)

                 Enough words wasted.......we wouldn't even take 99 cents out of an I-Tunes card for this one. If you're bound and determined to compare it with the first film.......wait'll it hits the Sy Fy Channel, sandwiched in between 'Sharknado 10' and 'Catfish-asaurus'......which shouldn't be all that long. For the presence of Ellen Page only 1/2 of a star...(1/2)