"I LOVE YOU, DADDY".......LOUIS CK STROKES HIS WOODY.........ALLEN

"I Love You, Daddy" (2017)   With or without Louis CK's instantaneous career destruction, this movie's a bizarre minefield to navigate..........

             If you take it in context of his abysmal, real life victimizing of women, the movie's a grotesque exercise, a half-assed, self serving, whining guilty plea.........with the actor-writer-director posing himself as a hapless,semi-sympathetic character stuck in a swirling cyclone of up-to-the-minute, hot button sexual issues.....

               Actually, that's the only way we could view the film.......since CK chose to fashion the entire movie like a meticulously slavish imitation of Woody Allen's "Manhattan".........(complete with crisp black-and-white photography and a loud romantic symphonic score.....you know, the one where middle-aged Woody obsessed over his teenage girlfriend, played by Mariel Hemingway)

              You see what we mean when we refer to this movie as a minefield.......of all the filmmakers CK chose to reference and pay homage to in a movie concerned with a 17 year old girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) taking up with a 69 year old celebrated director (John Malkovich) afflicted with pedophilia rumors...........he picks....Woody Allen?

                Some of the gags, which skewer artistic pomposity and the television business can unexpectedly earn some honest laughs.........but by and large, the movie's main agenda is making you squirm and cringe, daring you, as does Woody Allen, to separate the art from the artist.

                 The Hollywood community and its actors were more than willing to afford Allen that separation, for years on end..........but we have to wonder which of two factors finally pulled the plug on the Woody Allen Once-A-Year Movie Machine.........the molestation allegations or the fact that the movies really began to suck......big time.  The art no longer justified or validated the artist.

                   In the #MeToo era, Louis CK enjoyed no such generosity.......,,with his grand tribute to Woody yanked from release and now existing only in a bootleg copy for anyone who cares enough to seek it out.  (Poor Louis........in the internet age, he no longer had the option of burying the film in a vault, as Jerry Lewis did with "The Day The Clown Cried".)

                    It's maddening to examine this movie.........since it contains two brilliant performances from Moretz and Malkovich.........(Understandably, Moretz wants the movie to "just go away"......a damn shame since her work here, as CK's spoiled, troubled daughter, ranks among her best)

                   As for Louis CK........what can we say?  Throughout the film, he's begging us to identify with his overwhelmed, passive character (you wonder, how did such a wimp become a TV series mogul?)........then finishes up with a ghastly little moment in which he implies he's as much of a pervert as he suspects Malkovich of being.

                    Excruciating. Unsettling. And particularly queasy to watch in light of Louis CK recently crawling out from under the woodwork to appear in a comedy club..........his designated path to eventual redemption.

                   We may have had a glimpse here of the new battlefield...... the ferocity and determination of the #MeToo movement pitted against their defeated adversaries, who are counting on the short memories of the American populace to allow them back into public life.

                  As President Pussy-Grabber often squeaks,..........we'll see what happens.....

                  In the meantime, 1/4 of a star for "I Love You, Daddy".......and that's for Moretz, Malkovich and the music score.  The rest of it......should just go away.

"THE BIG SLEEP"........DOES IT MATTER WHO KILLED WHO AND WHY?

The Big Sleep (1946)   Everyone's favorite legends about this classic center around novelist Raymond Chandler and the screenwriters never fully untangling the book's astoundingly convoluted plot........

                Seriously......Robert Mueller and his investigative team would need an additional two years to figure out the 'who' and the 'why' of the book and movie's core mystery.......

                 Not that any of it matters, as far as the movie's concerned.

                 Why? Simple.......it's Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall......that's why.

                 Nobody watches this to guess who's responsible for the body count.......it's all about the white hot chemistry between Bogart and Bacall, their second pairing after 1944's "To Have And Have Not".......

                  In the process of becoming a permanent, real life couple, Bogart's middle-aged wisecracking private eye and Bacall's young, icy-hot temptress struck so many sexual sparks together, it's a wonder the film didn't burst into flames while running through the projector......

                  And we giggled at the thought of those Production Code censors turning various shades of purple while the stars engaged in a riotous, double-entendre conversation about horse racing.......(hint: they are most definitely not discussing the finer points of horse-racing, with Bacall murmuring ....."it depends on who's in the saddle...."

                  Favorite surprising scene:  We'd almost forgotten about the little bit where Bogart attempts to disguise himself as a nerdy bookworm........(asking the snotty clerk if they sell books, she snaps back at him, "Whaddya think these are....grapefruit?" 

                 Oh yes, we almost forgot......the mystery.  Hmm......loads of blackmail, some dumb bad guys who expend a lot of effort on killing each other.......including one slick sap who gets accidentally mowed down by his own minions.....(director Howard Hawks so loved that idea, he duplicated it in his John Wayne-Robert Mitchum western "El Dorado".....)

                  So much for the story mechanics..........this rarely happens,but the the sheer incendiary Bogart-Bacall pairing (along with the priceless dialogue from Williams Faulkner, Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman) renders the who-killed-who questions moot......and forever makes "The Big Sleep" a 5 star (*****) FIND OF FINDS.  To quote Bogart's line from "The Maltese Falcon".....it's the stuff that dreams are made of.

"READY PLAYER ONE" (THE MOVIE).........THE SPIELBERGERMEISTER SORT OF RETURNS......

Ready Player One (2018)   We started off the summer by posting about the book on 5/22.........so it's only natural we wind up the summer with the Spielberg movie.......

                     Same problem in both.........the story's dystopian future sucks so bad that everyone has lost themselves in a jumbo virtual reality playground created by a gaming wizard/titan/obi-wan who's a cross between Steve Jobs, Peter Pan, Gandalf and the Dali Lama..........

                      So basically, it's high-tech bread-'n-circuses to distract everyone from their squalid lives in skyscrapers made up of mobile homes piled on top of one another........

                      Pardon us if we find that scenario a tad depressing........especially since we already live in an age where more and more people choose to devote their entire lives to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.......

                       But to hell with hellish reality......'Ready Player One' is all about OASIS, the VR theme park that's functions as a pop culture landfill (mostly from the 1980's)........and any player who cracks the late Game Wizard's quest inherits his company, worth trillions.....

                      And handing this to Steven Spielberg to direct seemed inevitable.......since the movie's a jet propelled tour through all the toys and accumulated crap that cluttered up Elliot's room in "E.T.".....

                     As masterful, slick and professional as Spielberg's filmmaking is here.........there's something fundamentally cold, corporate and yes.....connect-the-dots about the entire enterprise.

                     This isn't the late 70's and 80's Spielberg, delighting and astounding us with his warm,  finely crafted mixtures of everyday life colliding with the the fantastic. "Ready Player One" plays more like a movie concocted by film's Evil Corporation to placate and massage the poor suckers stuck in those piled up trailers,

                       It's fast and way too furious, sometimes dazzling, but mostly dizzying as it hurls 80's characters and references at you like splatter blasts from a paint gun.

                      As we watched the movie take a obsessive detour into the hotel from Kubrick's "The Shining", we couldn't help sighing with disappointment.  Yes, we all hoped and prayed that Spielberg, after making so many adult dramas, would make a grand, glorious return to the humanistic sci-fi fantasy that put him on the map in the first place.

                      Alas, "Ready Player One" is not that movie.  Nothing fresh, nothing original.......just a flashy vomiting up all the usual CGI whim-whams we've endured in dozens of comic book movies.

                      And even more stranger, for Spielberg, you'll find only one real actor in the entire cast -  the director's go-to master thespian Mark Rylance........the rest of them (the gaming kids) remain underwritten, indifferently performed and half the time replaced by their motion-capture animated avatars.

                       The constant thrills 'n spills entertained us for a while, but at 135 minutes, you start to realize that there's nothing much going on here except a multi-million dollar video game. 2 & 1/2 stars (** 1/2).......and that's generous, considering we expected much much more out of Spielberg's return to imaginative movies.

                     

               

"INSATIABLE"........9 HOURS OF SOUTHERN FRIED MORONS.......

Insatiable (2018)     This might have been tolerably entertaining as a 90 minute movie.........a bunch of low-grade Coen Brothers redneck rejects insulting and plotting against each other.......

                  Stretched out to 12 streaming episodes that total about 9 hours.....it becomes a punishment from hell.......the same caricatures hammering away at the same jokes until you beg for mercy.

                   Maybe Homeland Security could pin open the eyeballs of Guantanamo prisoners and make them watch it.

                    Social Media Snowflakes worked themselves up into an uproar about the first episode.....which features an obese, bullied high school girl (Debby Ryan) losing all the weight and turning into.......well, Debby Ryan minus the fleshy plastic fat suit.

                    So off Debby goes, newly slim and hot,  to exact revenge on her tormentors and that's pretty much the end of the fat shaming part of the series.

                    The rest of the show hurls Debby into a never ending comic soap opera populated by a host of deep South, deep fried Gargoyles.........who carry on like exaggerated oddities that escaped out of deleted scenes from 'Raising Arizona' and 'Steel Magnolias'.......

                     Pinning her hopes for a brighter future on winning beauty pageants, she puts herself in the hands of a high strung bi-sexual lawyer (Dallas Roberts) who fancies himself a mentor-manager of beauty queens.

                     We're already exhausted describing this much of it........and we haven't even gotten to all the repetitive twists, turns and various subplots in which the eccentric cast members bounce off each other like ping pong balls in a rotating Bingo basket.

                     A few genuine laughs pop up along the way, but the sheer overlength of the series conspires to make the whole thing wear out its welcome after a few episodes........as we mentioned.buried somewhere in those tedious 9 hours is a rapid-fire 90 minute satire aching to get out.

                      Special Dishonorable Mention goes to Dallas Roberts.......playing his sexually conflicted character the same way actors used to score cheap laughs in 1960's movies with gay-stereotype shtick...... 9 hours of watching Roberts mince, swish and hysterically babble his way through the episodes made "Insatiable"  especially torturous.

                        1 star (*) for the sporadically placed gag lines......maybe someone should attempt the opposite of a director's cut and just leave the funny stuff. We're guessing it would run......90 minutes.

"BABY TEETH"......THE BADASS SEED.....AN ALL NEW ENFANT TERRIBLE.....

Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage (2018)   Who doesn't love a good, juicy psycho-killer-child story?

                Uh....well.....probably a whole bunch of people......who shouldn't continue reading this post.....

                  Any story like this automatically has to stand in comparison to the Big Mamma-Jamma of all psycho-killer-children, Patty McCormack's pig-tailed, sickly-sweet, rampaging sociopath in the 1956 film "The Bad Seed".

                    You gotta love Patty for her pre-pubescent dedication to racking up a body count.....in the course of the film, it's implied she's already offed an old lady by tripping her down the stairs.....and then proceeds to fatally bludgeon a classmate to death and immolate her apartment's nosy handyman.

                     This sits not well with her mom (Nancy Kelly) who spends the entire film wailing, moaning and indulging in hysterical fits at the thought of spawning such a monster.....

                      In fact, the entire cast of the movie, imported directly from the Broadway play, performs at the top of their lungs for the upper balcony seats........they reproduce the play as if they're doing it for the Super Bowl Half Time.........(for us, that's part of the movie's crazy charm....)

                     We don't want make this post longer than a Marvel Avengers movie by detailing all the evil tykes who followed in Patty's wake (we promise to deal with them individually)........so let's get directly to the New Kid On The Block.......Hanna from "Baby Teeth".

                      An adorable 8 year old. whip-smart, creative Hanna confounds her loving parents by having yet to attain speech.

                       Oh, she can talk alright when she wants to.......but generally chooses silence.......unless she's freaking out her mom by pretending she's possessed by a burned-at-the-stake Medieval French witch. Mom hates when that happens......

                        She dotes on loving daddy Alex, a clueless dope who works all day, therefore oblivious and deep in denial about his kid being a lethal, loony wack-a-doodle,

                        Mom Suzette, however, is stuck at home on Li'l Devil Daycare duty since there's no school Hanna can't arrange to get herself kicked out of......for all manner of disturbing acts.

                        And it doesn't take long for Suzette to figure out that Hanna's master plan involves bumping off Mommy so Hanna can have Daddy all to herself. And the sweetie's schemes involves all sorts of fun stuff, like weaponized M & M's and claw hammers.......

                        Torn between love and fear of her own child, Suzette plays an ever dangerous cat-and-mouse game with the sly, evil child.........finally resulting in the inevitable horror, blood and gore you'd expect and demand from such a scenario......

                         Entertaining?  Up to a point..........

                         All through the book, we hoped and prayed that author Stage would somehow come up with a climax that put a fresh, unique spin on this well-worn genre.....(otherwise, why publish a book version of this tale, when movies have thoroughly tread this ground......)

                         In 1956, iron-willed Puritans still supervised movie studio content under the censorious Production Code. A child killer was way, way off the rails for them, so they forced Warner Brothers to tack on a ridiculous Deus Ex Machina to "The Bad Seed". (....and an even more lunatic comedic curtain call, with Nancy Kelly stepping out of character to roundly spank Patty McCormack for all those naughty, naughty murders......but again, now a part of the film's charm)

                       Unfettered by any rules imposing such a moral compass, Stage merely settles for the same standard, by-the-numbers climax that all subsequent Evil Child movies adhered to, once they were free of the Production Code.

                       So after all the bloody angst, you arrive at a closing chapter that will only elicit a ...."that's it? That's all there is?"......an ending that begs for impatient sighs and yawns.

                      But up until then, BQ won't deny having a creepy, goose-bumpy old time with this book.  So we'll stab out 2 & 1/2 stars (** 1/2) for "Baby Teeth"  and a 4 star (****) basket of kisses 'n hugs (Patty's favorite phrase) to "The Bad Seed".  These kids are definitely not allright........and we wouldn't have 'em any other way........

THE LION AND THE WORM..........MCCAIN AND TRUMP.

                When you arrive at a certain age, you don't need any more lessons about how life is unfair.

                We get it.

                 The staggering gulf between the late Senator John McCain and the piece of human excrement currently pretending he's President looms larger than the Milky Way...........

                  Merely thinking of the comparisons between the two men is enough to take anyone's breath away......and enraged at cruelness of fate.

                   A man of vast courage, honor, integrity, spending a lifetime of service to his country......dead at 81.

                   A man of cowardice, lies, racism, bigotry, unbridled greed, spending a lifetime of hoodwinking his way to millions, dodging military service as he faced the greatest challenge of his life.......to screw porn stars, whores and starlets without contracting STD's........he lives on.

                   Once again, proof positive that life's profoundly.......an unfair bitch.

                   Rest in peace, John McCain.   Rest in a Federal prison's psychiatric wing, Donald Trump.

                 

                 

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAPUP: 'MOTHER OF MERCY! IS THIS THE END OF RICO?

                We couldn't help borrowing Edward G. Robinson's last line from "Little Caesar".......gasped out by Robinson's gangster character as he's finally cornered like rat........

                 Cornered like a rat.........hmmmm.......what does this remind us of????

                 Manafort & Cohen go bye-bye.........fueling the new push to Make Prisons White Again...

                  Trump Republican throws his wife under the bus as they're both indicted for finance fraud.......what a sterling guy, learned from the master.  The sound you here is coming from Don Jr., Jared and Ivanka.......the sound of sweating bullets if the hammer falls on them.......when Daddy will shrug and say, "Kids?  What kids?  I hardly knew 'em, believe me.  As far as I know, they brought me Diet Cokes.....you'd have to talk to Micheal- oops, never mind....."

                     Enquirer guy turns on Baby Orange.........can't wait for the paper's future headlines...."Trump paid Uranus Aliens to cover up his alien baby!!!", "Trump found in Motel 6 three-way with Hilary and Nancy Pelosi!"

                     Trump Organization CFO get immunity......Making Baby Orange feel like he's trapped in the giant trash compacter from the first 'Star Wars'........except that he's swimming in all his own trash there's no Artoo around to stop the walls from closing in on him.........

                     Baby Orange thinks "flipping" should be outlawed.........especially when everyone's flipping on him.......

                     Baby Orange again whacks the Pinata shaped like an Attorney General.......Pinata whacks back.......but Jeff Sessions proudly announces his Religious Liberty Task Force has seized 138 wedding cakes from gay couples as they attempt to walk out of bakeries......

                    Baby Orange claims he might take over and "run" the Mueller investigation.......imagine the press conference, "Based on evidence collected by me in the investigation of me.......I hereby declare myself innocent of all charges....."

                    Baby Orange gives himself an A+..........in terms of assessing the most incompetent, unfit, delusional, psychopathic and traitorous American President in history........A+ is about right.....

                    New engraved nameplate added to Oval Office desk:   'Unindicted Co-Conspirator-In-Chief........

"CONTINENTAL DIVIDE".....THE ART OF THE RETRO ROM-COM.....

Continental Divide (1981)   Since we covered the imitation screwball farce "What's Up, Doc?" yesterday, we thought we'd naturally slide right into this equally entertaining attempt to duplicate a Spencer Tracy-Katherine Hepburn comedy. ( as in ...."Adam's Rib", "Pat and Mike", "Desk Set"...)

                Screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan had the formula down cold.........tough city guy, rough around the edges, locks horns and matches wits with a classy patrician woman who's way out of his league.......that is, until they wear each other's defenses down enough to fall for each other.

                 As a modernized Tracy character, the film gives us John Belushi as Ernie Souchak, a streetwise Chicago newspaper columnist.  Beulushi's own Hepburn is Blair Brown as Nell Porter, a famed but reclusive wilderness researcher who studies and protects bald eagles from a remote Colorado cabin.

                  You almost start smiling immediately at the thought of capricious fate, in the form of Kasdan's script, throwing these two completely opposite people together.

                   Souchak's blistering print takedowns of a corrupt politico earn him a beating from rogue cops........so his worried editor temporarily exiles him to those snowy heartland mountains, in the hopes of snagging the first interview with the mysterious, hermit-like Nell.

                   That's all the premise you really need to start the laughs flowing........not the frenzied, swing-for-the-fences yocks of "What's Up, Doc".....more of a smooth, gentle wry comedy that comes mainly from the clash of characters rather than from any rapid fire spewing gags.  That's fine with us.

                   And the film's not kidding with its clever, double-meaning title........it's not just the humor that rivets an audience here......you're hooked with it to see how Kasdan and director Michael Apted can possibly come up with a happy ending for a couple whose fundamental differences involve vast gaps in temperament, interests and geography.

                    BQ declares this one a forgotten gem.......the kind of movie that studios have exiled to Netflix (and some of those we'll post on soon, we promise). 4 stars (****)  Any fan of witty romance who've already gorged themselves on the resconstituded Netlix stuff, check out "Continental Divide"........the real thing.

"WHAT'S UP DOC?"........THE TECHNICOLORED SCREWBALL COMEDY......

"What's Up, Doc?" (1972)  Always fun to come back to this one.........even when it strains so hard, you fear it'll give the actors strokes.......

                 For a couple of years in the early 70's , director-writer Peter Bogdonovich reigned supreme as a skilled refurbisher of beloved old Hollywood genres.......(you could think of him as a sort of pre-cursor to Quentin Tarantino...... a movie-buff director who poured his love of cinema lore back into his own films.)

                 "What's Up Doc?" was his studied, but brisk and exuberant imitation of Howard Hawks' 1938 'screwball' comedy 'Bringing Up Baby" with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn.

                   The 'screwball' designation of this genre meant that it usually involved a stuffy, reserved guy who finds his life turned upside down by a an adorable but maddeningly manic girl.  Chases, comedic misunderstanding and chaos ensue.

                    Somehow, a modernized version with Ryan O' Neal and Barbra Streisand replicating Grant and Hepburn........worked.

                    The stars tore into the rat-a-tat, back-and-forth dialogue with exceptional skill and Bogdonovich backed them up with a huge, Mel Brooks-worthy roster of supporting actors.

                    The director was smart enough to know how fast a screwball comedy has to move......and finished up his 93 minute romp with a riotous, stunt-filled car chase throughout San Francisco......(this 11 minute chase, by the way, packs in more jokes and thrills than the entire 3 & 1/2 hours of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World".)

                     A BQ irony worth noting:  The movie features Kenneth Mars as repulsive, preening, Middle European villain 'Hugh Simon".....a devastating takeoff on the notorious acidic critic John Simon, famous for his toxic reviews that mocked actors' physical appearances without mercy.

                    Incredible to imagine in this day and age, but the real Simon filled his reviews of Barbra Streisand's films with endless, hateful descriptions of her......wait for it.....nose.  (In essence, he's the spawn and ancestor of all our current cyberbullies and Twitter Twits.....including you-know-who...)

                   Therefore it's so fitting that the movie version of Simon in "What's Up, Doc" gets roundly insulted and finally humiliated by none other than the young, sexy and gorgeous Barbra Streisand. Makes us love the movie even more.

                    And some critics resented the film giving Ryan O' Neal the chance to throw a well aimed, climactic zinger at his huge mega-weepy hit "Love Story."

                      Not us. "Love Story" had it comin'.......(and how can anyone resist the ageless visual gag of turning a dashing Hunk into a nerd with only a pair of horn rimmed glasses.......it apparently never gets old with Hollywood - from Cary Grant in 'Bringing Up Baby' to Chris Hemsworth in the remade 'Ghostbusters')

                      4 screwballs (****) for this one........BQ says pick it up whenever you need come cheering up.

                     

RIP, BARBARA HARRIS.......FOREVER OUR FAVORITE MANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRL.......

                Long, long before anyone ever thought to coin that phrase, 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl', theater and film actress Barbara Harris created and embodied that template character.......(much in the same way Tuesday Weld made the role of 'Trailer Trash Jailbait Lolita' her very own.....)

                In a career filled with unforgettable work in memorable roles, Harris always brought along her pinpoint comedic timing that let her easily steal every scene she was in........(not surprising, since she was one of the co-founders of the famed Second City improvisational comedy troupe. )

               Our favorites include........the shy social worker in "A Thousand Clowns", the body-switched mom in Disney's "Freaky Friday".......and naturally, her last starring role in Hitchcock's final film "Family Plot".......(such was her power to make audiences embrace her, that when William Devane's "Family Plot" villain smacks around Harris, we remember the audience letting out a distressed gasp at the sight. How could anyone dare hurt someone so adorable?)

                 And we certainly couldn't close out this post without mentioning her work in Robert Altman's 'Nashville'........in a film teeming with improvised performances, she still managed to stop the show in the film's final scenes.

                 So Rest In Peace, Barbra Harris........a true, beloved cinema treasure.

SHOW BIZ, BABY, SHOW BIZ! PRESENTING BQ'S NEW SMOKIN' HOT ENTERTAINMENT WRAPUP

                   It hit us all at once........since we're all now living in a horrifying, soul-sucking episode of "The Apprentice", we might as well weigh in on entertainment news too......

                    After all, it's no less crazy, idiotic and unhinged than what's going on in the White House, so here goes......

                   The MTV VMA'S........Funniest part for us......MTV use to make a valiant, strenuous effort to instantly erase the audio on everybody's  "shit,", "f**k", "motherf***er".  Seems like they only made a half-hearted attempt this year......as if they groaned, muttered "what the f***" and gave up..........

                    Twitter erupts at Madonna's "But let's talk about me" tribute to Aretha Franklin....The thought of this is even funnier.......all those Twitter snowflakes in a rage about Maddona.....for being obsessed about Madonna.  Memo to Snowflakes:  we assume you were literally born yesterday or paid no attention whatsoever to Madonna during her decades long career.......sweethearts, the woman successfully built her entire career on self-absorbed, self-promoting narcissism......so get over it.  Hint: she's not interested in world peace either.

                    Director Danny Boyle leaves 'Bond 25' due to 'creative differences'.....Honestly don't know what to make of this news........why did the producers even sign on to Boyle's pitch idea to begin with?  Our guess: Daniel Craig decided he liked it even less than "Cowboys and Aliens".......and sorry to say, we're thinkin' that means no cameo from Queen Elizabeth.....



                 

'THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY'......NETFLIX'S COSTUMED HALLMARK MOVIE...

The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society (2018)    We don't want to end up sounding too snarky about this movie.........an ambitiously rendered period romance that takes place in post-World War 2, 1946 England.

                It's perfectly sweet, cozy, comforting and adorable.........you couldn't ask for a better movie to watch on a lazy Sunday afternoon........

                 In fact, what it really reminded us of.......a smooth hybrid of a 'Masterpiece Theater' BBC offering and a Hallmark Channel Movie.
     

                  Our plucky, indescribably cute novelist (Lily James) travels to Guernsey, one of the English Channel islands that suffered Nazi occupation. Once there, she finds herself entranced by the tragic romances and mysteries that surround the quirky group who form that titular Society........a book club the group made up on the spot during the war........to avoid the Nazis arresting them for staggering around drunk after curfew.

                   In between flashbacks that reveal a sad tale of wartime sacrifice and doomed love, plucky Lily finds herself in a Guernsey romance of her own.......with a shy, humble but ever so sexy Literary And Potato Peel Pie society member. (Michiel Huisman). (In this movie, her defenses get peeled along the the potatoes....)

                 But wait!

                 What's a British girl to do when she's been proposed to, Hallmark Channel Style, by a smooth, slick, dashing American hunk (Glen Powell, taking on the most thankless role any actor can play).....gifting her with an engagement ring that looks like a jumbo, precious artifact that Indiana Jones might consider searching for instead of the Lost Ark.

                 Anyone who's spent any amount of time with a typical Hallmark Channel romance can figure out the resolution to this in about 1/4 of a millisecond........

                 Our heartfelt sympathies go out to Glen Powell, stuck with the inevitable role of Guy Who's Destined To Be Kicked To The Curb Just Before The End Of The Movie.

                 But since this film is so much classier and better written and directed than your run-of-the-mill Hallmark movie, Powell enjoys a far better kiss-off scene than all those other Rejected Hunks.

                  Our only regret with this movie........watching it in the midst of humid, rainy late Summer.. It's designed more for crisp Autumn or Winter nights, with frost on the windows and a cup of hot chocolate warming in your hands.......at the mere thought of that (and the presence in the film of the great, great Tom Courtenay, who we've been watching forever), we'll peel off 3 stars (***) for "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society"

                    They don't come any cozier than this.

               

EXTRA SPECIAL WEEKEND MADNESS.....BACK TO THE FUTURE OF 1984

               Direct from the Ministry Of Truth:

               ........from Big Brother and the Minister of Truth himself, Rudy Giuliani......


                 To quote Rudy......"Truth Isn't Truth"


                 Glad he could clear that up for us.

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAPUP......SPECIAL UNREALITY SHOW EDITION.....

           Baby Orange Vs. Omorosa......not since Godzilla went one-on-one with King Ghidora  have we been more entertained by two fantasy cartoon characters bashing each other senseless.......and never have two people more deserved each other more.....

            The Grand Baby Orange Military Parade cancelled......Damn!  We can't describe how much we looked forward to this.......especially the big finale featuring the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes dressed up like huge Bone Spurs.......and the presenting to Baby Orange of the new Congressional Medal for Meritorious Service For Avoiding The Clap in NYC during the Vietnam War.......

             Baby Orange revokes John Brennan's security clearance.......when the only true threat to National Security....(of the nation and the entire world).....is Baby Orange.....

             Melania plans to attend anti-cyber-bullying event......ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

              Steve Bannon praises Baby Orange's rant about Charlottesville........the Boob-enFuhrer has spoken...…

             Admiral McRaven's tweet to Baby Orange.....Memo to Republicans......read and re-read this tweet...….for a moment, you can imagine what it's like to have a spine......

              Baby Orange revokes the Beached Quill's security clearance.......not a moment too soon....we were one click away from posting something stupid, nasty and racist that Baby Orange just said.....oh wait a sec.....it's already in one of his 4am Tweets???  Ah well, I guess we can still speak our mind anyhow......

              The Enemy Of The People.......Hint....it's not the press. Three guesses as to who it is........

PLASTICS! RE-SEDUCED BY "THE GRADUATE" AND BORED WITH "SEDUCED BY MRS. ROBINSON....."

         Eons and eons ago........as we wandered through the Temple University student lounges, staggered at the amount of reading assignments to plow through, we overheard a conversation between two fellow students:

           GIRL:  Have you seen 'The Graduate'?

           BOY:  No.

           GIRL: (In reverent awe....)  Oh.....Baby!!

           That's all we (or anyone else) needed to hear. For the Baby Boomers hitting college, "The Graduate" nailed the zeitgeist to the wall.......the struggle for self-identity, the struggle for self-worth, the eternal rebellion against the materialistic (and increasingly suspect) values of the generation that spawned us........(and also, don't discount the attraction of running off with the Hot Babe Next Door...)

             Best of all......making the movie an immediate sensation as well as a timeless classic......the off-the-wall, against-the-grain completely bonkers casting of the unknown,  diminutive, homely Dustin Hoffman......in a role designed for a dashing young suntanned Blonde God Movie Star.......

             This guy looked like us.......he sounded like us.......he was us.

              And so "The Graduate" (1967)  took its generation by storm. The rest, as they say, is cinema history.

              Almost 51 years later.......does it still hold up?

              How could it not?  The razor sharp, exquisite timing between Hoffman and Anne Bancroft......the practically scientific precision of Mike Nichols' widescreen compositions, positioning his actors for visuals that accentuated all the dry humor amid the festering unrest, anger and alienation.

               The only bad news for us personally........Nichols' groundbreaking use of Simon and Garfunkel songs on the soundtrack put the symphonic score in retreat for over a decade. But so many filmmakers who aped Nichols by flooding their movies with pop music never did it with the skill of "The Graduate".......they slapped jukebox tunes on their films like Post-it notes, with barely any connection between the music and the story content.

                "The Graduate" still stands proud as a brilliant accomplishment in social satire, and contemporary drama that resonates today more than ever........(even the predatory Mrs. Robinson now enjoys a more sympathetic view in light of the female empowerment movement)

                  Which brings us to "Seduced By Mrs. Robinson: How 'The Graduate' Became the Touchstone Of A Generation" by Beverly Gray  (2017)

                    We'd normally adore a book that would exhaustively detail the genesis and making of 'The Graduate' as well as examining it in terms of current our current life and history.......

                    Sorry to say, we found the book to be a dry, mostly by-the-numbers slog.......like a dreary graduate school thesis that never ends. Beverly Gray plows through facts, personal observations and a numbing list of already well known films that offer homages to "The Graduate".......all of it in tedious, plodding prose.

                   A few gems pop up in the book here and there........a preening Steve McQueen bemoaning the rise of ordinary-looking leading men like Hoffman........the revelation (previously revealed by Hoffman himself) that his beloved-by-critics,  Christ-like pose against the huge church window came primarily from the Pastor's angry warning against accidentally breaking the glass by pounding on it....the strange life and work of Charles Webb, the author of the original novel.....and the backstory behind those legendary expressions of uneasy ambivalence on Hoffman and Katherine Ross's faces as they ride off in the bus together......

                   As for Gray's sleep-inducing, shot-by-shot description of the film, from beginning to end, and her encyclopedic rundown of every movie and TV show that ever referenced "The Graudate"......we couldn't skip through the pages fast enough.

                  So here's to you, Mrs. Robinson.....BQ loves you more than you can know. For the film, eternally a 5 star (****) FIND OF FINDS......for the book, 1 & 1/2 stars (* 1/2).......stick with the movie Graduate.....the book's only freshman-level blah-blah-blah.