BRETT KAVANAUGH REVEALED........BY MATT DAMON & 'SNL'........

                  After the laughter subsides, some sad disturbing thoughts linger........

                  As ridiculous, over-exaggerated and goofy as SNL's lampooning of the Kavanaugh testimony was.......it wasn't all that far removed from the actual event it depicted.

                  Think about that for a moment........the uneasy thought that the SNL writers have to work doubly hard to duplicate and exceed the lunacy they're attempting to satirize.

                   We didn't need to see Matt Damon's riotous, richly comic rendering of Kavanaugh as a raging,lying,  entitled, brew-chugging bully........

                    Kavanaugh himself already put on an equally convincing performance of that a few days ago....

                    But granted, he wasn't as funny as Damon.........for the simple reason that Damon's an actor playing a role.  Kavanaugh, a foul-tempered vindictive minion nominated for the sole purpose of rescuing Trump from indictment and prosecution, is all too real.

                    The SNL staff did supply Damon's Kavanaugh with one scary truthful line that remained unspoken by the real Kavanaugh.........but hung in the air like a dark, visible cloud over his head....

                   "Wait'll I get on the Supreme Court......you're all gonna pay...."

                     And that's why we've stopped laughing..........at the thought of such a monumentally unfit character coming so close to the Supreme Court........

"RAMPAGE".........NO HARD FELINES, BUT WE TURNED THIS REVIEW OVER TO OUR CAT...

Rampage (2018)    While this movie ground its way through our Blu-Ray player, we mostly spent the running time catching up on e-mails, checking BookBub discounts and visiting our favorite blogs........

             We thought it best to turn this post over to the one individual in the BQ household who did watch the film riveted.......

              Sage, our new mini-mountain lion posing as a 5 month old cat......

               We fully understand how entranced she was with "Rampage".........the film was custom made for viewers with brains the size of walnuts, and loaded with lots of random, senseless movement........(based on....surprise,surprise.....a video game...)

               To put it simply, Sage fit perfectly within this film's target demographic.......

               It took some time and patience, but we used Google to track down a Cat-to-English translation site.  We proudly present the BQ's first guest interviewer........Sage.

               "Wow! Wow! Wow! Best movie ever!  Big creatures getting away with everything I do at home.......but bigger and better!  They leap around and jump on top of stuff they're not supposed to......like buildings and cars and helicopters and boats!  So cool.  Some big dopey bald guy follows them around and yells at 'em to stop  (BQ note: Dwayne Johnson)......but they ignore him, just like I ignore the humans in my house!  Couldn't help thinking.....how much litter do they go through in a week anyway?  Great flick!  5 purring stars!   Oh, sorry...gotta go.....nature calls...."

                We deeply thank Sage for her contribution......not an easy task, considering she has an attention span only slightly larger than Donald Trump's.......

                As for a BQ human review.......from whatever we noticed when we looked up from our laptop.....1/2 a star. And come to think of it, how much litter do those creatures need?

             



   

"ALMOST FRIENDS"........BARELY A MOVIE.....

Almost Friends (2016)    Movies like this are the toxic side effects of the busy, burgeoning independent film movement........

                 It's another worthless, aimless, slack trifle in that much favored genre of cellphone auteurs who infest film festivals like lice.......the 'Untethered-Millennial-Who-Can't-Figure-Out-What-To-Do-In-Life'.......

                 The would-be filmmaker behind this one, Jake Goldberger really goes out of his way to make you hate this movie.........starting with his semi-comtose leading man, Freddie Highmore, who specializes in walking around in a disconnected haze, as if startled by something he can't quite understand.

                 A skilled chef, but painfully underemployed as a movie theater manager, Highmore spends the film's interminable running time pursing a cute barista (Odeya Rush) he's nursing a crush on.  He's egged on in this quest by his best bud, played by Haley Joel Osment, the one time premier kid star who now pops up in all sorts of oddball projects.

                 Pardon us if we groan out loud at the subplot of Freddie's con-man deadbeat dad, effectively played by Christopher Meloni.  It serves its function of interrupting the scenes of the whiny, simpering Highmore semi-stalking the girl of his dreams.

                 That's it.....we can't go on. We've already put in way more effort in posting about this film than writer-director Goldberger ever did in making it. Zero stars (0).......the very definition of a Nothingburger.......

THURSDAY MADNESS WRAPUP.......THE SHOOTOUT AT THE JUDICIARY CORRAL .....

         The mind reels at today's toxic chaos.......,so we'll do it in quick nuggets.......

           Dr. Ford........she'll never get anything resembling justice or closure......but her testimony will live on for generations........and come back to haunt Republicans forever.....

            Republicans   It's ludicrous to call them 'Senators'......they serve neither the country nor the U.S. Constitution........they serve one man. Minions.

            The GOP "Prosecutor".........if you put this in a movie, it would be hilarious......the GOP senators, like cartoon elephants who stand on a chair, terrified of a mouse, hire this woman to function like one of those scuzzy 'Law And Order:SVU' defense shysters.......excepts she sucks at it....

            Kavanaugh   So that's what he looks like with the mask ripped off.......just another foaming-at-the-mouth Trump minion.   Fascinating to watch him when he's asked why he hasn't demanded an FBI investigation, like his accuser........reminds us of Yaphet Kotto's death at the end of "Live And Let Die"......he inflates with hot air until he floats to the ceiling and explodes.......

             The Endgame   If the GOP does manage to jam this prep school penis waggler on to the Supreme Court, it will be both a tremendous victory and a crushing defeat for them......simultaneously.

              A tremendous victory, of course, because  Beer Boy will sit on the court till he's close to death.........but the millions of women enraged and energized into the resistance and political activism will wreak havoc on  the Trumpanzees who pose as Senators and Congressmen........'crushing' might describe what's coming.......

"BOOK CLUB"......LIFESTYLES OF THE WELL-READ & WELL-HOUSED.....

Book Club (2018)     We've nothing against menopausal rom-coms, populated with AARP superstars.......in fact, they're damned funny at times and never less than a relaxed pleasure to watch......

              Except when you stop to think of how these movies waste our national-treasure actors in paper-thin, trivial roles.........reduced to spouting the by-the-numbers gags about how little sex they're getting these days........

    

               But if this is all that Hollywood studios can come up with for the likes of Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, Diane Keaton and Mary Steenburgen.......we'll grin and bear it.......we'll take these wonderful ladies anyway we can get 'em........even if it's in an instantly throwaway movie like "Book Club"......

                Yes, they play the book club matrons who've taken on "Fifty Shades Of Grey" as their next read.......cue the onslaught of jokes about whips, spankings and marathon Olympic-worthy boffing.

                  After the infamous book restarts their romantic engines, the ladies quickly get paired up with a full roster of golden age guys......Don Johnson, Andy Garcia and Richard Dreyfuss.....(Steenburgen's character is already married to Craig T. Nelson......and no, the movie does nothing with the irony of casting Don Johnson, dad of "50 Shades spankee, Dakota Johnson)

                   Everything you'd expect ensues.......internet dating gags, viagra gags, dress shop fails, yada, yada.........to freshen up Keaton's character, the script flips the concept of one of her previous menopausal rom-coms, "Because I Said So"......instead of her meddling in her grown daughter's lives, this film has her overbearing daughters itching to imprison Keaton in one of the daughter's basement, consigned to assisted-living hell.

                 And let us not forget the key element of modern studio rom-coms, no matter what the age of the participants...….the stunning, sumptuous homes that everybody lives in...…...with each room larger than some of the apartments we used to rent in our younger days.....

                  We might have laughed more than a few times during "Book Club"......but more often, we spent the bulk of the running time drooling over the sprawling million dollar real estate that everybody in the movie luxuriates in...….

                   After a while, we ceased caring about their romantic problems...…...we started to become slightly annoyed at rom-coms that seem determined to rub our middle-class noses in their characters boundless wealth...…(yeh, we get it.....for these people, Trump's tax cuts will last forever.....)

                    But for now, we'll store away our 'have-not- bitterness and stay gracious...…..watching all these veteran actors use their comic chops made for a mildly entertaining afternoon...….(and you can never have enough extended (so to speak) sequences about those 4 hour Viagra erections...) So we'll crack open 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2) for this movie book club...……(maybe if there's a sequel, the group could move on to Bob Woodward's new one as their book of the week.....)

                  

LOLITA, WE HARDLY KNEW YE..... THE NYMPHET......IN FACT & FICTION

               Until we stumbled upon both these books, reading them back to back.......we'd no idea that Vladimir Nabakov's legendary, famous novel "Lolita" was partially inspired by a true story.....and yes, an actual real life child.

                 The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping Of Sally Horner And The Novel That Scandalized The World by Sarah Weinman (2018)    Weinman, a true crime author, takes on an extra heavy investigative agenda here......

                   She exhaustively researches and details the short tragic life of Sally Horner, a Camden New Jersey 11 year old abducted in 1949 by Frank La Salle, a monstrous serial pedophile rapist.

                     With Sally as his captive sex slave, La Salle embarked on a cross country road trip that finally ended two years later in a California trailer park........when Sally finally revealed the truth of her captivity to a neighbor, who alerted the cops and the FBI.

                    Returned to her mother, her childhood essentially stolen and destroyed by La Salle, Sally Horner only lived another two years......dying at 15 in a traffic accident.

                    In addition to the fascinating factual nuggets she digs up, Weinman draws the unmistakable parallels between Sally Horner's heart-crushing story and Nabakov's ongoing struggles to complete his novel about a young girl victimized by a pedophile.

                    The timelines between the creation of "Lolita" and the Horner crime do collide and Weinman convincingly makes her case that Nabakov most certainly read about Sally and drew some inspiration from the accounts of her ordeal.

                     The crime reporting can't help but be riveting, while the Nabakov chapters tend to suffer from dry academia.....(except for the sections on "Lolita"s up-and-down road to publication and Nabakov's attempts to adapt it to a screenplay for Stanley Kubrick.)   With its side by side tales of truth and fiction,  "The Real Lolita" never failed to grip our attention.....3 stars (***)

                     For a richly imagined fictional version of Sally Horner's story, there's Rust & Stardust by T. Greenwood (2018)   With only the sketchiest information available on the details of Frank La Salle's cross country trek with Sally, Greenwood envisions a likely, realistic account of the horrible odyssey......(La Salle began by convincing the child he was an FBI agent who'd caught her red-handed stealing a notebook from a a five and dime store....)

                       Greenwood creates some sympathetic fictional characters that Sally meets along the tortuous trip, as well as adding depth and emotion to the much bedeviled figure of Sally's mother Ella......(brutally criticized for allowing La Salle to easily trick her into thinking he was the father of one of Sally's schoolmates, taking Sally along on a family seashore vacation)

                        Even with all the softened, romanticized edges and artistic license, "Rust & Stardust" gives Sally Horner and her doomed life a worthy re-telling.......with the heartbreak, cruelty, suspense and horror intact........(and sadly, a story that never stops resonating in today's headlines)   4 stars (****)

                   

"HOW TO WALK AWAY"......AFFLICTION, AFFECTION & A CRANKY HUNK.....

How To Walk Away by Katherine Center (2018)   This book normally would have stayed way, way under our radar......along with 1000's of other chick-lit novels.......

                Except that Graeme Simison, author of two of our huge favorites "The Rosie Project" and "The Rosie Effect", (see our posts on these) wrote a glowing blurb for it.......

                And if you've stopped in to the BQ before, you know we HATE, HATE, HATE blurbs......they're about as reliable as anything out of Trump's mouth that starts or ends with...."..believe me"  or....."many people are saying...."

                 But surprise, surprise. Our guy Simison is right on the money about this one. "How To Walk Away", we don't mind admitting, played us like a piano.......

                 All it took was author Center's gift for laugh-out-loud wit to have us at hello. And it's a lucky thing she's so gifted at such dry humor, because if we described the plot, you'd think we'd gone out of our minds for liking such a blatant tear-squeezer so much......

                 So here goes.......Margaret, our typically beautiful, brilliant millennial woman ends up badly burned and paralyzed from the knees down when her golden-boy, thoughtless fiance takes her for a doomed flight on a little plane he was still learning to fly.   After crashing the plane, Mr. Feckless Fiance walks away without a scratch........while our poor gal sees her future destroyed before her eyes.

                 To the rescue, enter Ian, the taciturn, unfriendly physical therapist assigned to conduct and oversee Margaret's painful rehab. (Oh, did we forget to mention he's a hunky Scottish guy, kind of a young gruff Sean Connery?)

                  You guessed correctly...….a rocky, bumpy road to romance follows, strewn with dialogue both funny and heartbreaking.  The book flirts dangerously near soap opera with its family secret subplot, but Center maintains this high wire act, balancing the yocks and the tears with aplomb to the very end.  (Her swift, clean prose works wonders here......makes the book move like lightning.)

                  Rare for us to ever say this...…..but you can believe the blurbs on the back cover for a change...…(but we advise never to let your guard down in that regard)  Corny and obvious.....but that didn't stop us from lovin' it......and pumping out 4 stars (****).

"MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY".....OR AS CAPT. BLIGH CALLS IT....FLOGSPOT.COM

Mutiny On The Bounty (1962)      By the time all the swollen, jumbo 3 & 1/2 to 4 hour reserved seat movies finally crawled into our little neighborhood theater, they'd lost considerable weight.......

                No overture.  No intermission music.....(actually no intermission at all). No exit music to play us out as we rushed up the aisle for a much needed pee........

                So there's some amount of fun now watching this movie with all the trimmings restored......and glorying in the sheer immensity of Bronislau Kaper's pounding, insistent score.

                 And the other, more perverse pleasure........watching Marlon Brando deconstruct the role of conflicted mutineer Fletcher Christian and rebuild it, chunk by lumpy chunk, into his own internal mindset.

                 It's as if there's two movies going on here........the mega budget 'Bounty' and another strange little trip through Brando's head, cut off from the epic surrounding his character.

                Brando's in his own movie, deep in his own method acting (the hellish bane of veteran directors like 'Bounty;'s Lewis Milestone), while the other actors (Trevor Howard as the vile, heartless Capt. Bligh and Richard Harris as an oppressed, flogged crew member) play directly upfront to the audience.

                 It all makes for one hell of a strange spectacle -  Brando kicks off the movie by mincing around like a cartoon aristocratic fop who escaped from a Restoration comedy.    Then he spends the rest of the movie mumbling barely audible asides at Capt. Bligh's various atrocities.........like a more high-toned Billy Jack waiting to reach his boiling point.

                 Say what you will about the dogged eccentricity of Brando's acting, even with his literally mumblecore performance, we still take pure pleasure out of "Mutiny On The Bounty"...…...a sweeping epic that derives its power from the charisma of its lead actors, and not from 500 CGI artists throwing digitized versions of the actors into the sides of skyscrapers...…

                  Speaking of sweeping, when an old-school multi-million dollar blockbuster like this promises you a cast of 1000's, they're not kidding. So when what looks like the entire Tahitian nation comes sailing out to meet the Bounty......it's over a 1000 real people in real boats...…(not a pixel in sight)

                   While Brando's goofball portrayal and notorious behavior led to the movie being judged as a catastrophe one day after it opened, the BQ's still happy to have it around......overture, intermission and exit music included. 3 stars (***) for a deeply flawed but still entertaining epic...….the kind of larger-than-life, logistically foolhardy moviemaking you're not likely to ever see again.       



               

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP....SPECIAL "WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' FBI INVESTIGATION, GRINGO" EDITION....

             Baby Orange attempts empathy on a storm victim......To a guy whose house has been smashed by wind-flung boat......."Well, at least you got a boat out of the deal....."........hopefully, the poor guy at least got an autographed roll of paper towels and a "good luck, have fun!"

              The GOP and the Brett Kavanaugh debacle......Hey, boys will be boys.......especially prep school Future-Douchebags-Of-America........so what if he grabbed a pussy or two.......the point is, he'll do what  he was recruited for......to pardon Baby Orange and and really stick some coathangers in every over-sexed slut who tries for an abortion.  (And girls, good luck finding a cheap coathanger.....we heart they're imported from China.......

                All opposed to an FBI investigation into the Kavanaugh allegations.....raise your hands......hmmmm.......interesting, Baby Orange and the GOP pussy-grabber enablers all shot their hands up in the air.......wonder why.........

"CLASS RANK".......WHEN TRACY FLICK MEETS SHELDON COOPER........

Class Rank (2017)    What a nice, breath-of-fresh-air surprise.........bobbing along in in today's churning ocean of cinematic cruelty..........

             With so many films mirroring the toxic Age Of Trump,  this little movie comes across like a defiantly gentle fantasy........

             Imagine Alexander Payne's "Election" if it were directed by the character of 'Keith', the sweet kid from John Hughes' "Some Kind Of Wonderful"........turning the dark tale of an overachiever into a sunny, gentle-hearted romance.......

               Oh, wait a minute.......come to think of it, this was directed by 'Keith' himself, Eric Stoltz.....and he brings a kindness and humanity that no filmmaker working today ever thought of putting into a teen rom-com........

                Upping the stakes, the film dares to throw together two similarly driven, obsessive super-achievers, well played by Olivia Holt and Skyler Gisondo.  Both madly self-absorbed in their quests for excellence, they join forces strictly for self-interest, with Holt becoming Gisondo's election manager as he engages in a quixotic campaign for a seat on their town's school board.

                 Holt's character is basically Reese Witherspoon's Tracy Flick, but sanded down into a girl who's warm and sweet at heart. Gisondo, on the other hand, is an even more amped-up version of Jim Parsons' Sheldon Cooper from "The Big Bang Theory" (but minus the gag-a-minute laugh lines).....and perilously close to borderline Asperger's and Autism.....

                  Holt aids Gisondo with her campaign manager savvy on how politics really works...but only  to beef up her activities resume for college applications. What neither of them counts on, of course, are the cracks that appear in their armor, their separate force fields that have shielded them not only from bullying and ridicule, but from emotional connection.

                   Put simply........it happens in small increments, but love blossoms.

                   Most refreshing of all.......not a mean bone at all in this film's body. Everyone's treated with respect and good feeling.......and the film has you falling in love with the supporting cast as well, including the forever iconic Bruce Dern as Gisondo's grandfather and Kristin Chenoweth as Holt's mom.

                    Eric Stoltz directs it all with a smooth steady hand, even showing up in a finale cameo that puts a perfect gift-box bow on the proceedings.

                    In the immortal words of Sally Field.....we liked it, we really liked it.  So if you've grown weary of romantic films in which the characters scream out lines like "What part of 'I hate you' don't you understand!"......this one's for you.  4 stars (****)

'THE 'BURBS'........LAST STOP ON THE UNIVERSAL TRAM TOUR........

The 'Burbs (1989)   Director Joe Dante flourished best in the 1980's.........where he established himself as a wickedly funny fantasist........ he specialized in turning Americana settings upside down with wry infusions of  cartoonish sci-fi and horror........("Gremlins", "Innerspace", "Explorers" the 'Good Life' segment of "Twilight Zone- The Movie")

                "The 'Burbs", on the surface anyway, seems close to Dante's signature work.......suburbanites driven to lunacy by their suspicion that their eccentric new neighbors are monstrous killers.

                   Minus any actual monsters or aliens, the film comes off like a funhouse variation of the classic early 'Twilight Zone' TV episode, 'The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street'.

                   The Dante cartoon-like characters here are three arrested development neighbors (Tom Hanks, Bruce Dern, Rick Ducommun) who've worked themselves into a hysteric frenzy over the creepy new next door neighbors (Henry Gibson, Brother Theodore, Courtney Gains).

                    In keeping with Dante's affinity for fantasy, everyone lives on the Universal Studios backlot reproduction of a suburban street.........yes, it's the same street everyone's visited hundreds of times.....in episodes of 'Leave It To Beaver', 'The Munsters' and countless other TV shows and films.

                    And fittingly, the cast and crew of 'The 'Burbs' had to stop filming to make way for the
tourists aboard the Universal Studios tram tour......

                   Any fun?  Sure thing. Since the film shot in the middle of a writer's strike (with re-writes, fix-ups and script polishing strictly outlawed), Dante encouraged his actors to improvise.......which indeed they do.......with such sweaty intensity, they carry on as if they're 10 seconds away from a nervous breakdown.

                   In the midst of the escalating chaos, Carrie Fisher wanders in and out of the film as Hanks' wife, functioning like an exasperated day care worker who's been forced to wrangle adult-sized babies.

                   Dante does excel, however, in the casting of his knockoff Addams Family-type villains, taking full advantage of the inherent strangeness of Henry Gibson and Brother Theodore.......(we fondly recall Brother Theodore, a would-be combo comic/performance artist, from his unhinged appearances on talk shows. He enjoyed leering at starlets sitting next to him, growling, "How would you like to become Theodora?")

                   With no creatures or aliens to fall back on for his big finale, Dante has to orchestrate an exhaustive Looney Tunes slapstick finish, putting his actors through all manner of Wile E. Coyote physical punishment that would kill real human beings.

                  And that takes us to most disappointing part of the film, since you realize all the noise and pratfalls were designed to distract you from the film's mundane, severely disappointing ending. Anyone waiting for Dante to pull the rug out from under this story with a twist worthy of the film's overall craziness.........nope, never happens.

                   But Hanks, Ducommun and Dern bust their asses to wring fun out of what they were handed.......and on the voltage of their inventive energy, they make it work most of the time.......and turned the movie into a well thought of, well recalled cult favorite.

                   Special kudos to composer Jerry Goldsmith's score, which more than keeps up with and matches this fractured suburban fairy tale..........2 & 1/2 stars (** 1/2).......this definitely does not fall into our category of 'Movies-fun-to-remember-but-a-chore-to-watch'.......'The 'Burbs' is still a hoot, after all these years.....

'ANNIHILATION'......DNA CAN YOU SEE, BY THE DAWN'S EARLY LIGHT......

Annihilation (2018)     The fate we predict for this movie............it'll stay forgotten for decades before it's rediscovered and hailed as some kind of fractured, sci-fi masterpiece........

            The rampaging, reptilian film and theater producer Scott Rudin stood his ground and wouldn't bow to Paramount's demand to make this movie more touchy-feely audience friendly........

            Fat chance that would even remotely work.   This movie's as cold, austere and remote as one of Jupiter's moons.......and in its still-life pace and adamant refusal to explain its many mysteries, the film most resembles those strange, arid Russian sci-fi epics, "Solaris" and "Stalker".........

            So the film went out into theaters trying to find an audience that doesn't exist.......mass quantities of people who'd jam into the multiplex to watch intelligent, art-house sci-fi/horror.  Yeh, good luck with that.

            The story itself?  A jumbled mish-mash of "2001", John Carpenter's "The Thing", "Alien" and "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers".

            Some of it even reminded us of Ivan Reitman's stupid 2001 summer comedy "Evolution", a sci-fi version of 'Ghostbusters........with dopey characters battling a rapidly evolving array of alien life forms.......

            'Annihilation'  unfolds like 'Evolution' if it had been directed by Terence Malick. Or maybe Michaelangelo Antonioni.......

             Everything in it looks maddeningly familiar to every sci-fi movie you've seen.......yet the film maintains its very own personal, introverted, weird vibe.  And it never compromises itself to beg for your favor with wham-bam action tropes and pseudo snarky one liners from its cast.

             We seriously hate describing plots of movies......but here's a quick stab at it. Five brave female scientists explore a chunk of coastal real estate overtaken by what they dub 'The Shimmer'.....a pulsating alien atmosphere that's settled down on the environment.

             The Shimmer, whatever the hell it is, acts like a warped funhouse mirror on the DNA structure of the surrounding flora and fauna......corrupting, twisting and blending plant and animal life into all new Shimmer-ized mutations.

              In other words, a massive bummer for anyone who stops in for a picnic or a stroll.........

              To nobody's surprise, horror, gore and death quickly ensue.......and at this point the film wisely centers on its star, Natalie Portman, who bows to no one in her ability to play a deer caught in the headlights......or in the sights of monsters who can mimic the screams of their dead victims.

               No popcorn munching here.......if you're up for a challenging, sometimes confounding two hours, then by all means submit yourself to "Annihilation"....(but if your idea of sci-fi is confined to the noise and fun of 'Star Wars' and the Marvel Universe, don't even dream of going near this one....)

               Since we doubt we'll live long enough to see this movie re-examined and newly heralded for its dazzling imagery and its refusal to ask for anyone's admiration or understanding we'll jump the gun right now and hurl out 3 & 1/2 stars (*** 1/2)   Given its chilly reception, we can safely guarantee a balmy day on Jupiter's moons before a studio ever pumps out something like this again.....

'HATARI!'......HANGIN' WITH THE GUYS, A GAL, RHINOS 'N GIRAFFES.......

Hatari! (1962)    This may be the only movie we love that wanders aimlessly for 2 hours and 40 minutes without so much as a trace of any narrative drive........

            No sane filmmaker would create a movie like this intentionally.........unless they were depending on enormous good will from an audience.

           Producer-director Howard Hawks, the master of male bonding, of films about people joined in deep friendship to complete a daunting task together, knew his central theme was a crowd pleaser.

            And 'Hatari!', for all the slackness of its construction, stands as the purest evocation of  a Howard Hawks film ........ in which the real story becomes the grace-under-pressure camaraderie of men challenged as a group.

             Everything we've read about the making of this film confirms the end results.........it plays like they were making it up as they went along.......because they pretty much did make it up as they went along.....

               We can't explain it with any rationality, but watching this movie duplicates the experience of hanging out in a bar with a group of your closest friends.  Random laughs, competitive but friendly arguing and banter........and everyone knowing that they've got each other's backs when the going gets tough.......

                So how does Hawks manage to entrance us.......even with his movie's lackadaisical pace and virtually non-existent plot?

                With rhinos, giraffes and monkeys.......oh my.

                 Not to mention ostriches, hyenas and zebras......oh my.

                 And no less than John Wayne.......leading a bunch of international rough 'n tumble young guys on wild motorized safaris through stunning Tanganyika locations. Their common goal:  to capture all these animals for a zoo and literally bring 'em back alive.....

                 That's the entire movie right there.........interrupted only by international super-cutie Elsa Martinelli, playing a photographer sent by the zoo to document it all.  Elsa wastes no time falling for the taciturn-but-hiding-a-heart-of-gold Wayne.......accomplishing all this in between the randomly arranged scenes of animal hunts and relaxing evenings with the rest of gang.

                  The animal capture sequences still thrill and amaze.....(you can see Spielberg paying tribute to them with his bravura dinosaur safari-chase in "The Lost World" ).....and the chemistry of the assembled easy-to-like cast carries the rest of the movie along......

                 And before you know it, the movie's quickly eaten up its 157 minutes........(it practically leaves you longing for a sequel about the funny odd-coupling of the lumbering irascible Wayne and the live-wire, hot tempered Martinelli.)

                  Howard Hawks felt he more than deserved all the expected criticism about 'Hatari's complete lack of plot.......but sorry, we love everything about this movie......(especially the dialogue, stretched out to consist of the characters always feigning denseness about something just explained to them......(as in....."....what are you talkin' about? Make sense!')
'

                 Like Hawks, we have no defense for 'Hatari!'......but every so often, we want to just soak up the 'friendly bar' atmosphere of this movie.......and enjoy the company of the nicest bunch of cinematic folks you could meet.  (as well the baby elephants and the pissed off ostriches...) 4 & 1/2 stars (****1/2),

               

'MARY ROSE'......THE GIRL WHO GOT AWAY FROM HITCHCOCK........

Mary Rose by Geoffrey Girard (2018)    We don't know what's sadder and stranger about 'Mary Rose'........its storyline, a star-crossed romantic ghost story taken from J.M.Barrie's celebrated 1920 play.......or the thwarted, lifelong efforts of cinema giant Alfred Hitchcock to make a film version......

              Author Girard expands Barrie's fantastical little ethereal play into a full fledged gothic thriller.......ominous, creepy yet always achingly romantic and tragic.  At times, you can sense Girard envisioning what a Hitchcock film might have looked like......in its theme of a man who obsessively uncovers the bizarre, otherworldly mystery surrounding the woman he adores.........even if the answers leave him terrified and grieving.

                  As a character in Barrie's play and Girard's novel, Mary Rose remains forever elusive, almost mythic. As a child, confounding one and all, she somehow survives a month long disappearance while with her father on a mystical little island off the Scottish coast.

                   When she re-appears on the island, astonishing all who searched for her, she's unharmed, untouched and with no memory of where she was or what happened to her during the weeks she was gone.

                    Cue the Bernard Herrmann woodwinds hitting their lowest, scariest notes........

                    As an adult young woman, Mary Rose entrances the man who becomes her fiance......a man who senses how tormented and haunted she is. And like a true Hitchcock hero in delirious love, he recklessly believes that the a truthful revelation of her past will release her from whatever dark forces swirl around her.

                     This includes, as you might have guessed, Mary Rose's return to that starkly beautiful but unsettling little island where it all started.......

                    In his novel, Geoffrey Girard makes a bold move that astonished us, adding an all-too-worldly, repulsive crime to the supernatural elements of the story.  Though this twist screams out Hitchcock in capital letters, we can only wonder if the director would ever consider such a jarring plot turn for the gossamer fantasy that gripped his imagination since he'd seen Barrie's play as a young man.

                    Which brings us to the real-life sad story of 'Mary Rose'........

                    Over 40 years after the play's premiere, Hitchcock came as close as he would ever come to realizing his long held dream of turning  'Mary Rose' into a film. He got as far as an actual script from Jay Presson Allen, who wrote his 'Marnie' screenplay.

                   But by that time, his overlords at Universal studios, unhappy with the box office failure of 'Marnie', wouldn't hear of it.  In no way would they allow the celebrated Master Of Suspense to go off the beaten track and make a weird little ghost story.

                    They even put it in their contracts with Hitchcock, specifically forbidding him to make 'Mary Rose'.

                     Think about that for a minute.  Then think about the millions upon millions of dollars that studios (including Universal) lavished upon mediocre film directors to make their own beloved dream projects.......and belched up misbegotten movies that no one paid a a thin dime to see.

                     So 'Mary Rose' remains both a story and a never-made film that hold a permanent aura of sadness around them.

                     For J.M Barrie's play and Geoffrey Girard's re-imagining of it, 4 ghostly stars (****).....and who knows, maybe one day, some audacious filmmaker will bring the story to the screen........stranger things...(as strange as Mary Rose herself)..have happened.

                   

'THE 10TH VICTIM'......BACK TO THE FUTURE OF 1965....POP GOES THE REALITY SHOW

The 10th Victim (1965)   If you look past all the snazzy, jazzy ultra-mod Euro-Pop trappings of this movie, it's a way, way ahead-of-its-time satire on where we are right now.......

              Not that we'd ever want to look past those trappings.........we live for snazzy, jazzy, ultra-mod Euro-Pop.....

              Long, long before "The Purge" and all its sequels and variations came along, this movie, tongue firmly planted in cheek, envisioned a not-too-distant world in which everyone could sign up for 'The Big Hunt' to vent their frustrations......

             Two big-ass computers (spitting out punch cards, naturally) designated Big Hunt participants as either hunters or victims.......and off they'd go for legally sanctioned stalking and death hunts......(you could shoot your assigned victim in the middle of a public street, but you might risk getting a parking ticket, thereby incurring more of a penalty for an expired meter than an expired person)

             So it's a world-wide reality show, complete with corporations signing up Big Hunters for sponsorship.......(the more civilized European countries have imposed restrictions on the contestants as to where they're allowed to off each other - no plazas, no restaurants, etc)....but in America, God Bless Us, you can feel free to shoot anyone, anywhere, anytime...)

             Just like today........

             Which brings us to our star participants played by Ursula Andress and Marcello Mastroianni.

             For any of you who hold some vague memories of this movie.......yes, it's the one where Ursula murders her victim with guns hidden in her bra. The poor sucker lies dead, but the mammaries linger on......

              Andress has polished off her 9th victim........one more and she can retire from the game with the grand prize of.......(wait for it, while we rev up our Dr. Evil pose)  ONE MILLION DOLLARS!!

               Hey, for 1965....big bucks.  As for Mastroianni, coiffed like Steve McQueen with short blonde hair, he does a sly send-up of the persona moviegoers assigned to him......the languid lothario, bored to tears and too cool for school.

             Director Elio Petri puts a lot on the plate here.......a brutally funny Battle Of The Sexes in which actual lives are at stake, some nasty comic swipes at religion and big business.......and all of it scored by Piero Piccioni to a typically pulsating, nervous, pop-jazz score, complete with wah-wah vocals.

              To the disappointment of some, the movie settles for a finale that's all too familiar to anyone who followed Italian rom-coms of the 1960's........but for us, the damned thing is so much fun to sit through, we didn't mind at all......(how could we possibly not like a film loaded with cute girls dancing around in futuristic mini-skirts.complete with tinted plastic hats?)

              Everyone feel free to have a ball comparing the state-endorsed madness of "The 10th Victim" to everything going on today......on second thought, it might make you queasy.  4 stars (****).....or converted to 1965 superlatives.....ONE MILLION DOLLARS!