'Y IS FOR YESTERDAY'..........FAREWELL, KINSEY MILLHONE...........

Y Is For Yesterday by Sue Grafton (2017)   Sadly, the beloved 'alphabet' series' by the late Sue Grafton ends here....at number 25........one letter short of finishing the l980's-set mysteries that began with "A Is For Alibi".....featuring Grafton's most enduring creation, California private eye Kinsey Millhone.

            Now having read them all, let's say this up front right away.......

            In varying degrees, we enjoyed all the books........some more than others. And that's because of how Sue Grafton chose to guide the series......

             She wasn't out to write the same book 26 times, each one perfectly assembled from the same elements over and over again, like a MacDonald's Quarter-Pounder........(as do other best-selling authors and you know who they are......)

             As the series progressed, Grafton improved her style, deepened her prose and never set out to write the same book twice.  She never shied away from changing up the structure or point-of-views if it suited her purpose to tell her stories in a new or different way.

             We can't honestly tell you that "Y Is For Yesterday" will stand as a fitting grand farewell for Kinsey Millhone.  We won't count it as one of our favorites in the series.......sorry.

            For us, the one book that grabbed us totally will always be "T Is For Trespass".....with pitted the dogged, persistent Kinsey against two nightmarish villains.......a senior-care nurse who looted her elderly patients' savings before killing them and her scary sidekick, her brutal Frankenstein-sized son.

              Grafton threw out the whodunit template for this one.......you knew who these monsters were from the start and what they were up to......so it was only a matter of time before Kinsey faced a violent showdown with them.  (And as long we're talking this one up, let's slap 4 stars on it right now.(****)

             And we had a fine, entertaining time visiting Kinsey in all the other books, along with her small of group of neighbors and friends, including Henry, her 90-ish landlord and Rosie, owner  of a restaurant serving the world's must nausea-inducing Hungarian dishes.

             But sad to say, "Y Is For Yesterday" won't make it into any list of our favorites in the 'alphabet' series. It's overlong and at times, painfully overwritten. Grafton fully indulges in her habit of writing exhaustive (and exhausting) descriptions of the characaters' homes, apartments and wardrobes.........to the point where you may think you're reading articles in "Architectural Digest"......

            The book bounces back and forth in time between Kinsey's 1989 investigations and the ten years earlier melodrama involving a gaggle of repulsive teens........that led to a gang-rape VHS tape and a murder.

              The mysteries in both time periods unravel at a measured, methodical pace.......but Grafton never gets a handle on how to bring the teenagers to life.......they all remain cardboard-cutout jerks, sniping at each other like slasher-movie teens, killing time before they find out which one of them's due for a killing...........

               On top of all that, Kinsey's still being stalked by the serial killer left over from "X", the previous book.  (Amazingly, she always forgets to carry her gun with her......almost as often as Janet Evanovich's goofball girl private eyes, Stephanie Plum....)

               And we're pretty sure nobody's going to like the last sentence in Kinsey Millhone's 'respectfully submitted' wrap up report.......unsatisfying, disturbing and all too true......

                One huge regret:  Grafton possessed a wonderful flair for wit and laugh-out-loud humor which she only rationed out in tiny portions throughout the entire series. We wished she hadn't been so stingy with this unique talent.......whenever she allowed the alphabet series to briefly erupt in some comedy, it sometimes made us giggle and smile wider than we did during the entire length of a Stephanie Plum book.

                This book's no exception in that regard........delivering a final go-round between Kinsey and the serial killer that's equally thrilling, gruesome and strangely hilarious.....

                 So rest in peace, Sue Grafton.......thanks for all the pleasures of these books......and goodbye to Kinsey Millhone, a welcome character we'll always miss. For "Y Is For Yesterday" 2 & 1/2 stars (** 1/2)......for the entire series as a whole, 4 stars (****)  Start at the beginning if you haven't read them yet......they're all worth your time.

             

'THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER'........A CLOSER SHAVE WITH 3 BLADES......

The Sword And The Sorcerer (1982)   As far as we can tell, this movie's singular accomplishment was beating (but just barely) "Conan The Barbarian" into the marketplace........officially kicking off cinema's  1980's  infatuation with bare-cheated, heavily muscled guys battling villains, monsters and assorted creepy fantasy denizens, stopping only for a brief tumble with curvy starlets in fur-lined bikinis.......

             Fun, fun, fun for all........except for this movie, which ironically seized the privilege of sporting the most perfect, primal title of all the subsequent films in this genre.....

             Maybe you thought we planned to include this one in our "moves-that-are-fun-to-remember-but-impossible-to-sit-through" category......

              Nah.  This one's not even fun to remember.  And we doubt if even the most rabid fanboy ever gives it a moment's backward glance.

             It stunk to high heaven when it came out. And still does.  With one notable exception.

             That exception is not first time director Albert Pyun, for whom the film served to begin a long, long prolific career (close to 50 films).  Until sidelined with illness, Pyun steadily pumped out a huge filmography of C-minus Sci-Fi/Horror shlock......

               We'll not deny this much.........having viewed virtually all of Pyun's output while we toiled in the video retail industry, we could cherry-pick a fair amount of memorable moments in his slapdash, throwaway movies........

               ........the spontaneous dance number in "Radioactive Dreams" still sticks in our mind......and we even fully enjoyed "Postmortem", his ambitious, filmed-in-Scotland attempt at serial killer chills 'n thrills with Charlie Sheen.

                But to get to this good stuff, you had to plow through Pyun's woeful pacing, choppy editing and murky camerawork.  And both he and his films never really improved with age.......which kept him forever stuck in the D-movie basement.

                Enough dissing, though.....let's remember a little of "The Sword And The Sorcerer"s cool crapola....

                .......the ridiculous tri-bladed sword......(the film never explained how you replaced  the two pop-out blades after you've zipped them into an opponent - whether you have to pull them out of the corpse yourself or buy a Gillette plastic-pak refill set at Ye Olde Walgreens)......the poor blood-soaked guy - after he collapses, the King cries out, "Quick! Get a leech!" When the bleeding shlub tries to speak, the King calms him with "No, no...wait for the leech!"  (This gives you an idea of what Paul Ryan's version of Medicare would look like).......and Lee Horsley as our hero, Prince Talon - what a guy,  swinging a sword after having just de-crucified himself, pulling foot-long iron nails out of his palms.....(no wonder Tarantino gave him bit roles in "Django Unchained" and "The Hateful Eight"...)

                 One individual alone distinguished himself in the middle of this confused, poorly shot and edited mess (the exception we spoke of earlier).....composer David Whitaker.

                 Whitaker stepped up to the plate and gifted this movie with a rousing, swashbuckling, Korngold/Williams/Goldsmith score that stood far, far above the bottom-the-barrel filmmaking it accompanied.........and still remains a much beloved, sought after treasure among soundtrack collectors.  For this score, Pyun should have dropped to his knees and kissed Whitaker's feet.....

               For the two springloaded blades in Prince Talon's Mach 3 sword, we'll hurl out 2 stars (**).......by all means see it if you're a sword-and-sorcery completist......if not, stick with the soundtrack alone and while listening, imagine your own, much  better movie to go with it.
               

               

             

BILL COSBY: THE MASK DROPS OFF, AT LONG LAST.........AN UGLY FACE IN THE CROWD.....

               Long, long ago, when we reached adulthood, we'd already figured out the disconnect  between the public persona of our most revered and beloved celebrities and their true selves........

                We realized that the efficient publicity arms of movie studios and TV networks maintained and guarded the assumed lovable personalities of actors.......like armed museum security cops deployed around a precious artifact......

                And who knows how many famous folks lived and died with their pristine reputations still intact....

               Those days are long gone now........washed away in the Age Of Instant Information we spoke of in yesterday's post on "Sneakers".......

               Every celebrity, journalist, politician or athlete now stands naked before us if they're revealed to be rapists, sexual harassers, drunks, pedophiles, homophobes or just overall sons-of-bitches......

              Which brings us to that once-upon-a-time most beloved figure in America's pop culture....American's Dad, Bill Cosby......finally brought to justice for at least one of his many monstrous crimes.....

              Bill didn't much care for justice......didn't sit well with him, snarling ...."you asshole" at the assistant District Attorney who successfully prosecuted him.

               And we were all treated to the rare spectacle of seeing a celebrity's 'lovable' mask ripped off for all the world to see.....

               For us, it instantly reminded us of the climactic scene in Elia Kazan's "A Face In The Crowd", when Andy Griffith's miserable mean-spirited Lonesome Rhodes accidentally rips the facade off his his folksy exterior, startling his adoring audience with the raging bastard underneath.

               No, Cosby won't be the last public figure whose false front gets ripped away.......not in this day and age.....

               But the long awaited revelation of Cosby as a monster doesn't fill us with triumphant optimism........

               Donald Trump ripped off his mask decades ago.......this particular monster cavorts in public every day......and his supporters don't care.......even the bunch who sing hymns in church every Sunday......

              But there's one bright glimmer of hope.......justice and the rule of law.  It grinds with excruciating slowness, but we can't help thinking that the law did finally clamp down on Bill Cosby...

             So maybe the other monsters in our midst will have a court date in their futures.....

             Who knows?  Anything can happen.......

'SNEAKERS'.........MORE RELEVANT THAN IT DREAMED OF.......

Sneakers (1992)   This all-star romp, with its motley crew of high-tech nerds and rogues, remains as slick, clever and funny as it was when it first released......

            More importantly, the movie's prime villain Cosmo (Sir Ben Kingsley), lays out a mission statement that still painfully rings true today.......

              Cosmo, who duels with his former hacker cohort Bishop (Robert Redford) and Bishop's merry band of security experts, knows well how to fight the new battle for global dominance.....

              It's no longer about territory lost or gained......it's all about the information. And who controls the flow of it.

              You could view Cosmo as Julian Assange's Wikileaks run amok.......seeking to wield a computer program capable of breaking every secret code in the world......

               Or to put it in Cosmo's signature taunt to Bishop and company........"no more secrets."

              So here we are in 2018, 26 years after "Sneakers".........and sooner or later, everybody's secrets come flooding out into public view......(Intelligence services still bravely attempt to stem the flow with their redacting black magic markers......but it's like piling up sandbags in front of an oncoming tsunami........eventually, it's all going to come out......we're all going to read it......and jump on Twitter about it.....)

                No one knows this better than Donald J. Trump........even his perpetual non-stop lying can't overcome the sheer avalanche of information.   Just listen to his gasping, desperate, hilariously pathetic rant on "Fox and Friends.".......the panicked blubbering of a coward who knows the rising tide of information is coming up to his chin level......with no signs of abating.

                But as we all know, the data flow slices in every direction.  Ask Hilary Clinton. And what's worse, the KGB assassin in charge of Russia knows how to corrupt, warp and weaponize  information for his own nefarious ends.Proof's in the pudding.   That's his little puppet now sitting in the White House......

               You know what we'd much rather see than "Avengers: Infinity War"?  (Personally, we couldn't care less how many of those smirking, spandexed wisecrackers die at the end.....)

                We'd rush to any multi-plex to watch the whole "Sneakers" gang re-assemble again and drain the bank accounts of Putin and his oligarchs.........not to mention posting Trump's tax returns on Facebook........

                 We're only sorry River Phoenix isn't alive to reprise his role as the love-starved Sneaker......maybe the gang could have gotten Margot Robbie to friend him.......

                  For their 1992 adventures, always  4 stars (****).......but boy, do we need them to make a comback, now more than ever.......the villains running loose in the world today make Ben Kingsley's Cosmo as threatening as Gru from 'Despicable Me'.......

LEAST FAVORITE THINGS..........THIS WEEK'S ROGUE'S GALLERY ROUNDUP.......

             What a cast of characters........that no fiction writer in his or her right mind would dare make up.....

              Dr. Ronny Jackson   Huge disappointment to the BQ.......we bought five boxes of Movie Theater Butter microwave popcorn to watch his confirmation hearing.........so Rear Admiral Ronny (the "rear" part for his exemplary work in kissing Baby Orange's ass) doesn't get to claim his prize for praising Baby Orange's genes and allowing the fake president to continue feasting of KFC and MacDonald's.......

               Kanye West   Why his Trump-Love surprises anybody is a total mystery to us.......In Baby Orange, Kanye at last found a true soulmate........a raving egomaniac who lives in world constructed on false, ludicrous exaggerations of his own talent.........we hope theses kindred spirits will be very happy together.....

              Ben Carson......no doubt inspired by the late, unlamented Margaret Thatcher, seeks to wage war on poor people, raising their rent......presumably those newly fattened rent checks will help him pay off any future expensive furniture for his office.....

              Michael Cohen.......pleads the Fifth in the Stormy Daniels lawsuit.  Didn't Baby Orange once say that pleading the Fifth was a sure sign of guilt??   Hmmm...........

               Baby Orange on "Fox And Friends"    You'd find more truth and reality in watching  any Big Bird appearance on "Sesame Street".......Baby Orange gives himself an A-Plus for his presidency.......(for our take on that, please refer back to the paragraph on Kanye.....)

              Scott Pruitt   A real life comic book monster.......in that he has more slime and stench dripping off him than Swamp Thing......

             Enough madness......we leave these creatures now to celebrate our Most Favorite Thing today.....38 years of marriage to our beloved, She-Who-Must-Be -Obeyed.....Mrs. BQ.......the amazing force of nature whom we couldn't live without......

           

'FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD'........BINGE-WATCHING THE 19TH CENTURY "BACHELORETTE".......

Far From The Madding Crowd (1967)    In retrospect, it might have gone better for this film if MGM and director John Schlesinger found a way to sculpt it down to a 2 hour running time........letting the first run theaters show it 7 times a day for the general public......

           Presenting it as a bloated, near 3 hour, reserved seat "roadshow" behemoth, complete with overture, intermission and exit music........zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

          Moviegoers were starting to turn their noses up at these Roadshow presentations....... they'd just as soon wait a while until these films eventually trickled down to the neighborhood theaters with ads trumpeting  "Now at popular prices! Continuous showings! "

           Despite its luminous cast, stunning photography and the promise of more star-crossed romance than 300 episodes of 'General Hospital' or any ten minutes of 'Dr Zhivago',  American audiences looked upon this movie as a huge spoonful of foul-tasting cough medicine.

            They weren't havin' any......(maybe some had nightmarish flashbacks to plowing through Thomas Hardy novels in high school, with those trusty yellow-and-black--striped Cliff's Notes at their sides......)

            We'll admit it.......the thing's a pain-in-the-ass chore to sit through, despite all its many attributes.  More than once, we felt  ourselves dozing.........when film directors start depending on the scenery to make their dramatic points for them, it signals nap-time for the viewer.......

            As we moved into the film's third hour, we began to think of the experience as a binge of multiple episodes of "The Bachelorette"......except with everybody dressed in hoop  skirts, waistcoats and travelling around in horse drawn carriages.....

            But what a grand romantic quadrangle this was.......Julie Christie (the Alicia Vikander of the mid-1960's) fiercely guarding her heart while pursued by a trio of determined suitors.........the quietly steadfast shepherd (Alan Bates), the dashing, devil-may-care soldier (Terence Stamp) and the painfully lonely rich farmer-next-door (Peter Finch).

            Watching these four world class actors at the very peak of their youth and vast talent compels you to stay with them to the very end........when tragedy, heartbreak and violence finally leaves the last man standing in the lifelong "win a wedding with Julie" contest.

             And there are a few memorable perks to keep you awake along the way........the startling sequence in which Alan Bates' dumber-than-a-rock dog herds his entire flock off a cliff......and the one scene everyone recalls, even 51 years later.......swordsman Stamp showing off his prowess with a blade to Christie by slashing it all around her......and somehow not slicing her up like a deli salami...

             Not the easiest film to sit through (and we're not likely to ever return to it)......but overall, spending time with this unique quartet of actors made it worth our while........3 stars (***).....unlike the comic book movie heroes, here's a group that truly deserves the title of "the Fantastic Four".....

         

'THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG'........WHEN BILL COULDN'T TELL WHITE FROM WONG.......

The World Of Suzie Wong (1960)   A real curio, this one.......in that it straddles the painful, awkward transition that big studio films were trying to make.........moving from standard, stolid, old-school 40's and 50's movie-making into more bold, previously taboo thematic material.......

          And doubly ironic, it's the second movie featuring top-o-the-heap leading man William Holden carrying on a generally frowned-upon romance with an Asian woman......(the first being 1955's stately, turgid "Love Is A Many Splendored Thing", candy-coating things by having Bill's Eurasian sweetie played by Jennifer Jones....)

.
           By l960,  more films tried pushing their luck with the Production Code censors.......(and we would have killed to sit in on the meetings to get "Suzie Wong" past them....)

           This time around, Bill Holden's Hong Kong squeeze is not only a prostitute, but she's played by a real Asian.......and what a hotter-than-the-sun, instant star this movie found in Nancy Kwan.

            Kwan, a stunning beauty and a skilled actress, seizes this typically bloated studio product by the throat and makes it her own........for 2 hours, you can't take your eyes off her, waiting to see how she'll react in any scene........(a far cry from our aborted attempt to re-watch "Love Is A Many Splendored Thing"....we couldn't get through more than ten minutes of its oil-painting pacing...)

              She's the only factor that makes this movie still watchable 58 years later, flashing her eyes and curves as a live-wire mercurial hooker who falls into an unlikely love affair with Holden, playing a 9 to 5 draftsman who takes a year off to live the life of a starving artist.

             It's one crazy mash-up.......the film still keeps the lumbering pace of  a 1950's movie yet constantly dazzles the eye with cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth's Hong Kong location shooting, neatly blended with teeming streets recreated on a British sound stage.  Meanwhile, Nancy Kwan scampers through the whole thing as if it's "Gidget Turns Tricks In Hong Kong".......(so feisty and adorable, we could have watched her for another 2 hours)

             The whole hooker part of the film is naturally sanitized to avoid the howling wrath and snipping scissors of the Production Code gang.......Kwan and her coterie of prostitutes look more like a bunch to cute sorority sisters, only with tighter skirts.  In that regard, this film's every bit as much of a fairy tale as the 30 years later "Pretty Woman"..... (including a scene where Holden won't allow a waiter to sneer at Kwan's illiteracy when she struggles with a menu).

            But it's still 1960, and traditional sexual mores and values wreak havoc with Holden's conflicted, on-and-off-again romance with Kwan.........in the film's most bizarre, startling moment, Holden angrily strips a dress off Kwan, throwing it out the window......repulsed and disgusted at the sight of her dolled up like a completely Westernized girl.  (Yep, it's as cringe-worthy as it sounds)

           And the race card gets played, as it must, with Holden's uncomfortable interactions with the bunch of colonial-type Brits he periodically socializes with........(with Sylvia Sims in the thankless role of an English girl who sees Holden as her last hope for a husband)

            William Holden does his usual sturdy work, but as as we said, Nancy Kwan's the whole show here and no major Hollywood film before this had served as such a star-making showcase for an Asian actress.   For her and her alone, we'll give "The World Of Suzie Wong" 3 stars (***)......still worth a look for its incandescent leading lady.

           

'KODACHROME'.......ANOTHER DYING OLD GUY HITS THE ROAD........

Kodachrome (2017)   It occurred to us, at one point, to do a post on independent filmmakers' never ending obsession with their favorite theme.....the Tragicomic Road Trip.......usually done with one of the road-trippers afflicted with cancer, paralysis, dementia or just garden variety eccentric old age......

           Don't worry. Sanity prevailed. We gave up the idea as too exhausting to write about........just reading the plot description of "Kodachrome" made us howl in anguish....("Dear God! Another one?")

           Since filmmakers will never let go of this trope until it's pried from their cold, dead hands......we can only judge each 'Afflicted Soul On A Life Changing Road Trip' movie by the quality of its actors.

            Mercifully, this one has a trio of gems.

            First and foremost,  Ed Harris as a dying legendary photographer who needs to hit the road for Kansas....... to take a few old rolls of undeveloped Kodachrome film to the last store on earth that's still processing them after Kodak discontinued the brand. (.....the very true situation which the movie uses to jump-start the story.....)

           Our second key player:  the never less than excellent Elizabeth Olson, playing Harris's home care private nurse.......charged with enlisting road-trip aid from Harris's long estranged son, a down-on-his-luck record producer on the verge of unemployment if he doesn't lure a hot band away from  their big record label.....

            And that brings us the film's major revelation....(cause we already expect Harris and Olson to do wonderful work)......Jason Sudekis as the embittered son, seething with a lifetime of anger and resentment toward his acid-tongued father, who was mostly absent throughout his childhood.....

            Sudekis doesn't just hold his own with Harris and Olson, he's every bit their equal in digging in to the very heart of the wounded soul he's playing......

           If you've seen at least one of the umpteen road trip movies, you know the rest........and nothing's out of place. Harris's character, an unrepentant bastard, spits out the expected stream of verbal venom at Sudekis, who volleys with wounding observations of his own......

             Olson, caught in this war zone, has a tougher job than a U.N. Peacekeeper as she falls into an awkward relationship with Sudekis......

              Of course there's no surprises here......the Dying-Douchebag-On-The-Road genre adheres to a pre-set structure as strict as Haiku poetry.  (If you can't easily figure out what's on Harris's precious Kodachrome rolls by halfway into the film, you must have been fast asleep.......)

             For this superb cast, we'll forgive "Kodachrome" for all of its carved-in-stone cliches and develop 2 & 1/2 stars (** 1/2).......with lesser actors, we wouldn't have sat through more than ten minutes of it......

'THE CRIMSON PIRATE'........THE ALLTIME BEST BUCCANEER 'DO WELL.......

The Crimson Pirate (1952).........forever stays implanted in film buffs' minds as the best pirate movie ever made......

             With good reason......

              Brash,swiftly paced,  breezily tongue-in-cheek, exciting and infectious in its desire to entertain, there's never been an action-adventure movie so joyous and fun to watch as this one.

               This arrived back in the days when popcorn movies had a much different mission......to engage their audiences and take them along for the ride as co-passengers.......as opposed to the mission of the superhero movies that clog up theaters today.......to pound and pummel their audiences into submission with 2 and a half hours of stereo noise and a vomitous river of CGI.

              "Gather round!"  yells pirate captain Vallo (the young, acrobatic Burt Lancaster).....he repeats these words constantly and well he should. Because it's made clear from the opening moments that Lancaster's Captain Vallo is gathering us 'round the campfire to tell us the tallest of tales......("believe only what you see......no, believe half of what you see....")

               And then the film's off and running like a lightning bolt, with Lancaster and his equally acrobatic lifelong friend Nick Cravat as a gravity-defying comedy team.......outwitting, outleaping and outfighting vast amounts of bumbling British soldiers in the 1700's Caribbean (including a tall young newcomer, Christopher Lee....)

               There's simply way too many non-stop thrilling and hilarious scenes to describe without making this post come out to 10,000 words.........(our personal favorite will forever remain the sight of Lancaster and Cravat taunting the militia as they use second-story awnings as trampolines....
.......always accompanied by William Alwyn's rousing , rollicking music score.)

              We also don't want to forget the gems in the supporting cast.......Torin Thatcher, oozing insincerity as Lancaster's shifty First Mate, the ever white-bearded Noel Purcell as a feisty island rebel, and James Hayter as a Ben Franklin-ish scientist who helps our heroes out with all manner of wondrous inventions.....including hot air balloons, submarines and nitro-glycerin.

              If you haven't experienced "The Crimson Pirate".....do it ASAP.  For us, nothing lifts our spirits more than at least a once-a-year viewing.....gather 'round, mateys for a swashbuckling 5 stars (*****), a FIND OF FINDS.

'BATTLE OF THE SEXES'........LIBBERS, LOBBERS & LBGTQ

Battle Of The Sexes (2017)   We wanted so much to fall in love with this movie......

          Sorry. Best we could do was....."ehhhhh......okay."

          Reason? The filmmakers overreached and jam-packed the movie with multiple issues, multiple agendas.......an avalanche of sexual/political/cultural angst.

          Add to that the lack of the film's ability to maximize the power of its scenes.......and you have a dramatically slack movie that also can't get out of its own way........

           The 1973 circus-act tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs clearly meant different things to its two combatants.....

           For King, it was dead serious, a storming of the Winter Palace, an overthrow of the myths of male superiority and condescension towards women.  For Bobby Riggs, it was a grandly humorous stunt to turn his newly minted fifteen minutes of fame into an eternity......King wanted empowerment for herself and her fellow female athletes......Riggs just craved attention.

          So we surely can't fault screenwriter Simon Beaufoy for making the film Billie Jean King's story, with Riggs' desperate efforts to keep himself in the spotlight used as poignant comedy relief.

           Problem is, we grew weary and impatient as this movie presided over a massive collision between every issue that straddles 70's and 00's........piling on women's pay inequality, gender discrimination, gay discrimination........and if that wasn't enough, the awakening of Billie Jean's lesbian sexuality.....

            You could have easily chopped this movie up into four or five separate films.....

             We admire the script's cleverness in making the much of the dialogue (especially the clashes between King and men's tennis Honcho Jack Kramer) sound like it could easily be lifted out of 1973 and applied to the same conversations we hold today.

              But that cleverness (".....aha, sounds so familiar!") also worked to jar us out of the story. All that not-so-subtle, up-to-the-minute editorializing only served to distance us from the real drama of Billie Jean King's internal and physical struggles........with so many issues to serve up, the film sometimes seemed to stop just to admire itself.

             And the co-directors, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, really don't have the chops to organize their scenes to grab an audience by the lapels and shake 'em up. They're strictly Independent film festival skimmers, deftly gliding over the material without ever digging too deeply.  (They completely sabotage the King/Riggs tennis match, filming almost entirely in long shots...)

             Brilliant casting, though.......which saves the movie. Without Emma Stone and Steve Carell, we might not have made it all the way through it.......

              So we'll lob 2 stars across the net (**) for this battle.......and those stars are entirely for Stone and Carell.........two trophy-winning performances in a movies that lobs too many balls in the air at the same time.

'THE SILENCERS'.........YEAH, BABY......THE ORIGINAL FRICKIN' LASER BEAMS........

The Silencers (1966)    Much as we'd prefer to say otherwise, this one definitely falls into that curious category of films we've mused about before.........

              Movies that are fun to recall, fun to think about, fun to discuss......

              But watching them?    Oh boy........pretty much unfit for human consumption.  (Prime examples......"Barbarella", the all star 1967 "Casino Royale"......and this film.)

              In 1966, the worldwide obsession with James Bond was still in full flower.......so out rolled the imitators.......some of them so idiotically silly that decades later, they provided Mike Meyers with more than enough inspiration (and satiric ammunition)  to create the Austin Powers trilogy.......

              Personally, of the the 60's wanna-be Bonds, we dug James Coburn's Derek Flint the most.......with his wolfish grin and limber physicality, he at least approached the role fully engaged. He kept his sardonic, wink-wink approach to the ludicrous material at a manageable level......he was in on the joke but maintained a serious actor's commitment to the role.......

              Which is more than you could say for everyone's favorite fake-drunk Vegas lounge lizard, Dean Martin......

               Martin's secret agent Matt Helm was nothing more than Martin's carefully constructed public persona........the crooning, boozing, skirt-chasing wastrel. (Pure artifice.....Martin in real life was no more this character than Jerry Lewis was the sweet, whiny-voiced lovable clown)......

               Incredibly, Martin got to wander through four Matt Helm adventures, barely looking at the other actors, his attention span lasting as long as it took to sip his last martini........as far as we could tell, the only acting discipline he exercised throughout this series was not constantly checking his watch to see when he could go home........(which we did frequently while watching "The Silencers.")

                Martin's boredom and casual detachment from everything and everyone around him makes the movie lethally inert.  And that's bad new for a movie that's supposed to be mostly funny.

               Almost all the film's scenes lay dead on arrival.........the obligatory action sequences come out even worse, done with sped-up Charlie Chaplin camerawork. It resembles one of those indifferently rehearsed "Saturday Night Live" skits where all the jokes don't land, filled with uncomfortable silences.

              In pure desperation, the movie allows Stella Stevens to turn her hapless bimbo role (hey remember, this was the '60's) into a dopey mixture of Shirley MacClaine and Jerry Lewis.......performing a full array of slapstick pratfalls, careening into furniture and mud puddles.

              To qualify for his paycheck, Martin duly musters up enough energy to wield a machine gun as he wipes out the HQ of  the evil "Big O" organization.......which resembles an elementary school pageant version of Ken Adams' sets for "Dr.No".......complete with genuine Austin Powers frickin' laser beams, humming and melting the styrofoam underground cave walls.

                We know.........we're making this sound way more fun than it actually it is. And that's always the danger we face when posting about movies like this one and the Woody Allen/Peter Sellers/Orson Welles "Casino Royale".   We can make ourselves positively giddy describing all the lunatic sequences in such movies.......

                 ........and forget that sitting down for a couple of hours and devoting your full attention to them can make you slip into a coma......

                 It's a testament to how infatuated the world became, once upon a time, with James Bond and all his various imitators.  We couldn't get our fill.......so much so that we'd even accept Dean Martin as an espionage hero,  lazily singing lame offscreen song parodies and making his best effort to stay awake while ogling girls with character names like Lovey Kravezit.

                  Yeah, baby......the 60's didn't get any 60-ier than this......."The Silencers" would probably be better off displayed in the Smithsonian.....1 & 1/2 stars (* 1/2)

                 

'BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE'........BEWARE THE WHOOPSIE-DAISY RAY...........

Battle In Outer Space  (1959)   Laugh all you want at the primitive effects........but back in 1959, kids all across America derived countless thrills 'n chills from this Japanese alien invasion Space Opera spectacle.....

           Who else but Ishiro Honda, the undisputed GrandMaster of monsters and spaceships could have directed this?

           What's not to love? No wasted time.....right after the credits, the alien saucers blow up our beautifully cartooned space station......

           And they're kind of nasty little jokers, too........levitating a bridge just before a speeding train hurtles forward to cross it.....ouch.  (Even Tim Burton's little brain-trolls from "Mars Attacks" never thought of that one....)

           When we finally get to see these little bastards, (from the planet 'Natal'), they reveal themselves as gibbering mice-midgets, complete with space helmets designed to fit over their snouts....

           Unlike the previous year's Japanese alien invaders, the Mysterians, the nattering Natalians aren't lusting for Earth women.  Just as well, 'cause these Lollipop League refugees probably couldn't get a date to save their lives......not even if they stood next to a hot girl and claimed they dropped their Nobel Prize on the bar floor.......

            But not to worry, the U.N. sends an international coalition in a couple of spaceships to the moon, where the mice-midgets have set up operations. (that's another thing we love about this movie......the way it strongly embraces globalism in the midst of a world fractured by the Cold War....)

           Space battles galore!  Our lightning-like heat ray goes up against the aliens' garden-variety laser beams.......and in the ensuing contest as to which side can do better at blowing shit up.....surprise, Earth prevails......

           But wait! A few alien saucers and their chubby little Mother Ship made it off the moon in one piece........and they zip on down to Earth in order to chew gum and kick ass.  And they're all out of gum.....

           Rest assured, we blast 'em good, but not before the wobbly-on-its-wires Mother Ship unleashes its ultimate weapon......an anti-gravity ray......

            Or as we like to call it, the Whoopsie-Daisy ray.

            One dose of the Whoopsie-Daisy ray and half of Tokyo, buildings, cars, buses and people literally come unhinged and go flying up in the air.

           What an apt metaphor for today's political climate.......

            For pure unadulterated entertainment value, you can't equal the sight of a Cinerama movie theater breaking into little pieces before it hits the clouds........clearly the aliens didn't appreciate the laborious technology that went into synching up three projectors to throw an image on a curved screen....

             And as we mentioned earlier, this movie doesn't horse around with anything but a sustained battle of the worlds from beginning to end......no subplots, no character nuance, no comedy relief...(unless you count the intergalactic mice-midgets as laugh-getters)

             A wonderful 3 star (***) piece of our childhood..........and a huge BQ Thank You to Sony video for retrieving this one (along with "H-Man" and "Mothra") from the depths of the Toho Studio vaults.........may the Whoopsie-Daisy ray now live forever.......

         

'WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES'..........ROUND UP THE USUAL SIMIANS.........

War For The Planet Of The Apes (2017)     A tough one to deal with........

            We can't fault the filmmaking here. It's superb. Top notch. The height of professionalism and dedication to craft.

             We also cannot escape a cold, hard fact,,,,,,can't avoid it.

              This movie's a miserable experience to sit through.......a dark, glum, gloomy, we're-all-gonna-die-sooner-or-later doubled-down downer.......

             As much as we admired the motion-capture acting, the writing, directing, camerawork.......the overall effect was like getting our teeth cleaned for two and a half hours.......

             In 1968, like everybody else, we got a huge kick out of the first Apes movie. Nobody had seen anything like it before.....it played like a feature length "Twilight Zone" episode, with a script co-written by the TZ maestro himself, Rod Serling........complete with the mother of all TZ twists in the last 10 seconds........(who can ever forget Charlton Heston screaming "Damn you all to hell!")

             What a high wire act that film was......a daring blend of action-adventure, sci-fi and sardonic, dystopian satire.......perfectly scored with eerie dissonance by Jerry Goldsmith....

             The four subsequent sequels, each one progressively cheaper and tackier, left us cold with their overall depressing, downbeat view of humanity and the future.......but to be fair, all sci-fi cinema held this worldview until Lucas and Spielberg brightened things up a bit with "Star Wars" and "Close Encounters"........

               So the "Apes" movies never held any nostalgic place in our heart......and that certainly included Tim Burton's misbegotten,  convoluted, upside-down-and-backwards remake of the original film....

               And we were never any big fans of the new millennium trilogy of Ape movies that "War For The Planet Of The Apes" wraps up.....("Rise Of....." and "Dawn Of.....")......more foolish humans, more abused apes......only now with state-of-the-art digital splendor....whoopie.

             The only thing that kept us awake through this one was the whole "Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now" homage.....with Woody Harrelson doing a fully engaged version of Colonel Kurtz,....the kind of performance that Francis Coppola must have originally envisioned for "Apocalypse Now" instead of the one he ended up with from the bloated, bored, ever-distracted Marlon Brando......

                We'll leave it at this.........a few days ago, the whole world collectively went "awwwww" watching news footage of a mother gorilla cradling and kissing her newborn baby......

                 We extracted more drama, pathos and hope for a brighter future in that 20 seconds of footage than the entire running time of the last 8 Apes movies......2 stars (**) for "War For The Planet Of The Apes".......admire them all you want.......as for us, in the immortal words of movie mogul Sam Goldwyn.....include us out.