R.I.P. DICK MILLER.........."OH....RIGHT.....THAT LITTLE GUY IN ALL THE WEIRD MOVIES....."

                Dick Miller (1928-2019)    Beloved by film fanatics and film directors alike, Dick Miller's prolific career as a character actor spanned seven decades...........

                  After a memorably funny career as shlubs and victims in Roger Corman's ultra-low budget shlockers, Miller later enjoyed continued employment as something of a cultural touchstone for Joe Dante and host of other young directors........

                   Though many of his roles lasted less than a minute of screen time, like any great dedicated actor, he made the most of them...........even when his casting was nothing more than an
in-joke for his directors and the fanboys........

                   They all remembered him for his one and only leading role, 'Walter Paisley', the hapless busboy in Corman's  quickie "A Bucket Of Blood"........

                    The put-upon Walter, mocked and abused at the pretentious beatnik coffee house where he works, becomes an overnight artistic sensation when he plasters over his accidental murder victims, turning them into celebrated sculptures.

                     Miller's Walter Paisley lived on and on as he popped up for his usual brief appearances in countless cult movies.........and a whole new generation discovered him as the befuddled Mr. Futterman in Dante's "Gremlins" and "Gremlins 2: The New Batch".

                      Like the classic character actors of the 1930's and 1940's, simply spotting Dick Miller as he showed up for his brief moment-in-the-sun could put a smile on your face.......and it didn't make any difference whether he played a creep, a jerk or a nice guy.

                       We were always glad to see him........and we'll miss him so much. We extend a sad Rest In Piece for an artist who may have worked in small increments......but still became an icon.

"ABDUCTED IN PLAIN SIGHT"..........AT LAST......TRUMP'S BASE, EXPLAINED.......

Abducted In Plain Sight (2017)   We normally wouldn't waste our time posting about yet another documentary about a monstrous pedophile..........

               You can watch 50 of 'em a week on the various basic cable channels......

                This one stopped us cold........and not because of its nauseating details of how a serial pedo preyed upon an innocent 12 year old girl and her family........

                 What's disturbing, frightening  and profoundly sad........is the mind-blowing stupidity of the young girl's parents.

                 In its depiction of the ridiculously gullible Broberg family, there doesn't appear to be a single functioning brain cell, or even a glimmer of basic common sense.  Until, of course, all the damage has been wreaked upon them and their then 12 year old daughter Jan.

                Their overwhelmingly evil neighbor, Robert Berchtold, managed to sexually seduce the Broberg parents to reach his primary target, Jan..........whom he kidnapped not once, but twice. (The details of all this are simply too insane to describe......you'd have to sit through the film to believe any of it.....)

                 Watching all this unfold (occurring in 1974), you realize the story is less about the Monster Next Door, whose machinations are all too typical, than about the imbecilic Brobergs, who allowed this viper to repeatedly invade their home.......and thereby destroy their daughter's childhood.....

                  What's really on view here........a coming attraction of the mass of brainless Trumpanzees who swallowed every lie and elected not just the worst President in United States history.....but one of the world's worst human beings.

                  When editorial writers, cable news pundits and 60% of the population gaze astounded at those MAGA baseball cap zombies who continue to support such an incompetent, psychotic loon, we would direct them to a viewing of this film.........

                  Take a good look at this 4 star (****) horrifying portrait of hoodwinked dopes....... .they sat back and let an immoral, inhuman creature demolish their family......much in the same way the  Trumpanzees cheer on an immoral inhuman creature as he demolishes the country.

                 ……….which makes this film more scary than any horror film playing this year so far......

"MISSION IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT".........THE ARTIST VERSUS HIS ART........

Mission Impossible - Fallout (2018)    Maybe it's just us........but we always spent more time wrestling with the 'art and artist separation' dilemma  over Tom Cruise more than Woody Allen......

               Allen survived with the Hollywood community for years on the attitude of:......"yeh, he's a creepy sleaze for marrying his adopted daughter, but his movies are so brilliant..."

             .........until he was finally undone by any number of things, the #MeToo movement, the molestation accusations from one of his other daughters.......and the sad fact that the little movies with their stellar casts rolling off the Woody Assembly Line every year just weren't very good any more........in fact, some of them plain sucked.

                   And then there's Tom Cruise......the fabulously successful action movie star who serves as the public face of Scientology,  a vast, sinister corporate-like cult that masquerades in plain sight as a religion........and whose principal goal is too drain innocent souls of both their free will and their money.

                   This hasn't stopped anyone from enjoying his wham-bam adventure movies........especially the "Mission Impossible" series, in which Cruise and his various directors raise the action bar higher with each new entry.

                    Dare we admit it.......the "M.I." fan club includes us.  And there's the rub.....as much as we love the movies, we loathe and despise Cruise's embrace of Scientology.........which we consider a far more evil organization than any of the nefarious  movie villains who make Cruise's missions so impossible.......

                  Many eons ago, when BQ enjoyed some golden summers writing children's musical plays, we collaborated with a brilliant young woman composer.......a sweet soul and gifted beyond all measure.   With her talent and optimism, a dazzling future lay before her........until she fell under the spell of Scientology.   This vile cult literally swallowed her whole.......she disappeared forever into the foul maw of those creeps.......they kept us from contacting her and we never saw or heard from her again.

                   And her story has been replicated countless times by others......some of whom were able to escape........including both of Tom Cruise's wives.

                   So you see our problem with Tom Cruise.........far more vexing for us than the Woody Allen situation.........(we jumped off the Woody train years and years ago, so the newly-woke rejection of him seemed like stale news to us.......)

                   If we do the art/artist separation thing.......then, no question, "Mission Impossible- Fallout" is a 4 star (****), top-notch, top-of-the-line thrill machine.......and no one can deny Cruise's total dedication to taking his audience on a gasp-inducing rollercoaster ride, brimming with  brutal fights, dizzying vehicle chases and stunts that make you whisper...."no way did he do that..."

                    Yes, he did. And famously broke his ankle in the process.

                    We now feel we've been more than fair........with a even-handed fair rating for the movie.
We respect the amount of punishing hard work Cruise puts into these films.........but  we also hope and pray he's never able to seduce another innocent woman into the heinous and destructive cabal he aligns himself with.........

                      In our dream version of the next "Mission Impossible", Cruise's Ethan Hunt is given the task of bringing down Scientology.........if he does that, unlike the Secretary Of State and the CIA, we promise to never disavow knowledge of his actions.......

"A NEW KIND OF LOVE".......PAUL MEETS THE 3 FACES OF JOANNE........

A New Kind Of Love (1963)   Even in the most connect-the-dots tropes of 60's romantic comedies like this one, you can catch glimpses of the oncoming cultural/sexual revolution.........

                    Before the movie predictably arrives at a conclusion that's as Puritan and sanitized as a Sunday church sermon, it indulges in all the Hollywood fantasies about Paris.......in which the city's a sparkly, joyous Disneyland of romantic entanglements and rampant sex.

                    In many ways, though, this film's atypical of the usual rom-coms of the era.......in the casting of a couple who are way, way out of this movie's league and its lopsided structure.........(the plot's central gimmick doesn't kick in until halfway through the film....)

                     This was actually the husband-wife team of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward's second attempt at machine-tooled studio farce.......the first, 1958's "Rally 'Round The Flag,Boys" cast an uncomfortable Newman as a sexually frustrated suburbanite, daydreaming fantasies about his too pre-occupied house-wifey spouse, played by Woodward.

                     Five years later, "A New Kind Of Love" has Newman as a boozing, skirt-chasing, philandering,columnist, exiled to Paris for boffing his boss's wife. (This is practically the very same role he played back-to-back in the same year's  "The Prize"......as a boozing, skirt-chasing, philandering Nobel Prize winner...)

                     In what we consider deep, deep irony, Joanne Woodward, who won a 1958 Best Actress Oscar for playing a triple-split personality in "The Three Faces Of Eve", plays a designer of cheap knockoff dresses......and whom the script splits into three distinct personas......

                     When we first see her, she's almost trans-gendered as "Sam", so mannish that everyone mistakes her for a male, including Newman and later, a French hooker.....(who recoils in disgust and shock when she realizes she propositioned a woman........which leads us to believe that the filmmakers never ever encountered a French whore.....)

                      In reality, or the Hollywood version of it, underneath the exaggerated wardrobe of Sam is Samantha, really a sweetheart with a guarded heart, once terribly broken.....hence her preference for dressing as the hard-boiled Sam.

                      After the film eats up half its running time with parallel sequences of  Newman and Woodward's  Paris experience......(including an impromptu Maurice Chevalier concert)  the story engine revs up at long last.........and like all studio fake-sex romps, it hinges on deception, with one character pretending to be someone they're not....

                      Woodward, tired of living her life as 'Sam', submits to a series of punishing salon makeovers to transform herself into a platinum-wigged, high-heeled, dressed-to-the-nines maneater...........(in other words, a studio executive's idea of womanhood.....)

                       Spotting both Woodward and Newman at separate cafe tables, a clever con man scams Newman, claiming he's pimping an international call girl......he points to Woodward, outfitted in all her hooker finery. When the suckered Newman accosts Woodward, hoping she'll inspire a racy column, she decides to play along......spinning ridiculous stories of her sexual conquests, mostly copied from old novels.

                     Here, at last , is where the film, in true 1960's rom-com tradition, goes into high gear.....with make-believe sleaze designed to hide the fact that there's no real sex at all going on here.  Newman turns Woodward's fictitious bedroom exploits into dumbbell double-entendre news stories that equate her tall tales of epic screwing with bicycle racing and soccer.

                    Newman's columns (which of course, freshly endear him to his cuckolded boss) get visually depicted in the same clumsy style of the 'Rally Round The Flag, Boys' fantasies that Newman dreamed up when Woodward played his wife.......

                    Nobody need worry about the ongoing faux-immorality of all this........once the deception's revealed, our prickly couple, who've stumbled into love with each other, as you knew they would,  express the proper Hollywood levels of outrage, shame and embarrassment.

                   Even with all the standard stuff, the film stands apart, what with its extra high-class romantic duo, clearly slumming compared to their usual fare.and the wobbly construction of the plot.

                 But there's more than enough to enjoy........Thelma Ritter and Marvin Kaplan as sideckicks to each of the leads, and each supplied with a steady stream of one-liners.......and a split-screen sequence comparing models to strippers that keeps going long after it makes its satirical point......(not that we minded all that much....)

                   2 stars (**) for a something of a rom-com oddity. The catchy title song, warbled by no less than Sinatra, will stay in your head far longer than the movie........

"THE TARTARS" ......NO MAN IS AN ISLAND......BUT ORSON WELLES COMES CLOSE........

The Tartars  (1961)      For all of us in love with extra-cheesy 1960's Italian costume epics.......this one's Nirvana......the mother lode......Cheesy-Geddon!  Joy unconfined!

                 How can you not fall in love with this?  C'mon, people......it's Vikings in Halloween Shop blonde wigs versus  a Jumbo, immobile, oriental-ized Orson Welles as a Tartar warlord.

                   Orson, on his never ending Go Fund Me crusade to finance his own films, stays barely awake as waddles around his ornate palace.......he looks like a Lego Kublai Khan.......

                    Back at the Viking fortress, Heap 'o Hollywood beefcake Victor Mature parades around in one of Kim Kardashian's leftover mini-skirts. Unlike his be-wigged blonde hordes, Vic maintains his mane of greasy black hair......more power to ya, Vic.

                    Vic and Orson end up with hottie hostages from each other's families.......the Vikings hold on to the daughter of Orson's late brother (slain by Vic)......and Orson grabs Vic's beloved wife as she's trying to skip town in a Viking ship.........

                    A hostage swap is agreed to........but you know things do not bode well here......the Tartar princess has been knocked up by Vic's kid brother (the only Viking who sports real blonde hair)........and Orson's indulged in an all-night rape-a-thon on Vic's wife after drugging her with what looks like half a can of iced tea mix......(watching Orson chug along like a heavily robed toad through the corridors..... we could imagine the crew dangling his paycheck on a stick to keep him moving.....)

                   Naturally this ends up in a huge pitched battle between the opposing forces, but don't look for Orson himself to show up there......he's completely replaced with a stuntman stand-in for the galloping charges and the climactic tussle with Vic.

                    And hilarious lunacy abounds throughout the movie's 83 minutes........for every other line of his dialogue, a generic dubber fills in for Vic's own distinctive voice/////so in every scene he sounds like a victim of split personality.  Even better, the fearless, cheerful star offers himself up as a human target for the Viking catapult practice.......(we kid you not).

                      If you believe the opening credits, this international goulash was supposedly directed by the old MGM studio warhorse Richard Thorpe ("Ivanhoe", "Knights Of The Round Table")//////we  can neither confirm or deny, but seriously.......if Thorpe was anywhere near this production for more than a couple of hours, we'd be surprised as hell.

                     BQ visitors know by now that we toss out all sane critical criteria when it comes to lovable disasters like "The Tartars"......therefore, on our special Guilty Pleasure scale of enjoyment ......3 curved swords (***). We feel it takes the Pure Of Heart to truly embrace a pathetic piece of crap like this one........All  Hail Lego Orson!  Long may he waddle.......

WEEKEND MADNESS UPDATE: SPECIAL 'BABY ORANGE'S WORST DAY EVER' EDITION.....

         The Toddler-In-Chief........After a lifetime of tantrums, Baby Orange finally gets his enormous, fast-food engorged ass roundly spanked by Nanny Nancy.   America cheers and sighs with relief......

           Baby Orange's 'Let-Them-Eat-Cake' minions....... telling unpaid government workers to suck it up and take out a loan to feed their families.......all our thoughts and prayers that you minions soon check in to that special room in hell reserved for you.......

             Baby Orange's Dirty Trickster gets an early morning FBI Meet 'N Greet......Roger Stone, who has Richard Nixon tattooed on his back, affects the Nixon 'victory' wave as he's indicted........and secretly prays that Baby Orange remains President long enough to pardon him.......and not end up as his cellmate.......

             Memo to everyone directly or indirectly impacted by Baby Orange's shutdown........when it comes time to vote in 2020, remember who said "I'm proud to own this shutdown"........when you couldn't pay your mortgages, buy medicine and food for your families, remember who said that government workers were..."behind me 100 per cent"........Remember.

"THE 39 STEPS" (1959).............HITCHCOCK COLORED IN......WITH KENNETH MORE.....THE MERRIER

The 39 Steps (1959)    Before any cinema purists start howling.........we're not handing out any great accolades for this fast, lighthearted, breezy attempt at a technicolor carbon copy of Hitchcock's classic 1935 original............

                  But that doesn't mean we didn't enjoy it..........being a long time Anglophile, we loved Kenneth More's cheeky yet stiff-upper-lip heroism.......as well as all his encounters with a veritable Who's Who of our favorite British character actors......(Sid James, James Hayter, Brenda de Banzie, Barry Jones, Michael Goodliffe and countless others.....)

                   Yep, we're well aware that director Ralph Thomas was no Hitchcock.........as brisk and colorful as this remake is, it's devoid of any real perverse sense of humor or stylistic touches......the unimaginative filmmaking here gets rescued over and over again by More's button-downed wit and the wondrous supporting cast.

                     At almost the exact 90 minute running time of the original, the remake hops, skips and races through all the "39 Steps" high points........the amazing human encyclopedia Mr. Memory, the murder of the woman secret agent in the apartment of Richard Hannay (More), the wrongly accused Hannay's cross country escape across the Scottish Highlands (this time using the real Highlands in rich color), the villain with the missing finger, and Hannay's romance with the innocent girl (Taina Elg) he finds himself handcuffed to.......it's all there, and still huge fun to watch even without the Hitchcock flourishes.

                    And before we close this post, let's not forget to mention Clifton Parker's sprightly music score, which knows not to take the film too seriously......

                     No great claims to make about this one........but if you warm to all things British (as we do), don't be a cinema snob and turn your nose up at it just cause it's a remake.  The BQ still had a jolly good time......3 stars (***)

"THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW".........A KICK IN THE 'REAR WINDOW'.........

The Woman In The Window by A.J. Finn (2018)   Once again, faced with same dilemma.......

               How do you talk about one of these twisty thrillers without.......mentioning the twists.......

               Clever fellow, this Finn........just like the two french authors who specifically wrote a book to tempt Hitchcock into filming it (which he did, as "Vertigo"), Finn makes "The Woman In The Window" ready-made for the movies.........complete with a gut wrenching flight-'n-fight showdown between our heroine and.......( Ooops......Sorry, no Spoilers here.....)

                Surprise, surprise......the movie, starring Amy Adams comes out in October........

                All the tropes you expect fall perfectly in alignment here......an agoraphobic child psychologist, Dr. Anna Fox, drowning her shut in misery with uppers, downers and gallons of Merlot.........a murder in a neighboring house that Anna's taken to spying on......which nobody believes happened, given that Anna, the only witness, remains permanently sloshed on pills and wine......

                   And that's as much you can get from us, except to say that there's extra fun in Anna's addiction to watching classic movie thrillers repeatedly........(one or two of these films becomes instrumental in helping her figure out the twists 'n turns of what's really going on.....but we wouldn't dare reveal which ones they are....)

                     Though lengthy for a thriller, A.J.Finn moves it along at a fairly fast, entertaining speed. And you'll want to stop whatever you're doing when you arrive at that purely cinematic, satisfying finale.  (We're not sure, however, how filmmakers will handle that standard Jumbo Twist that Finn springs about halfway through.......something easy to do in a book, but tricky to pull off in a movie)

                     The BQ's strong advice, always........don't wait for film.  Read the book, get in on the fun and treat yourself to all the thrills and chills right now.  Later this year, you can kick back in the multiplex and judge how close the filmmakers came to the book's sharp evocation of all the movie thrillers it references. 4 stars (****)  Have a great time with this one.

"SAMSON AND DELILAH".........THE ORIGINAL BAD HAIR DAY......

Samson And Delilah (1949)    Going back to watch an old Cecil B. DeMille biblical epic is great fun for about the first 20 minutes or so........

                Then it starts to sink in........that this is what the entire 130 minute movie is going to look like........

                  The stodgy, pageant-like arrangement of the actors, the slow, methodical pacing, the actors' heavy burden as they wrestle with the florid overwritten pronouncements that function as the dialogue.........

                   The overall effect is like watching a Sunday School play written for 3rd graders........ performed by adults.......

                  DeMille stands as a singular figure in Hollywood, his long career as a purveyor of spectacle stretching from the silent to the sound era.   Like Hitchcock, Ford and Hawks, he 'branded' himself as a recognizable superstar.........as a producer-director, he was as much the main attraction of his movies as the stars he cast in them. (Most of his films would kick off with a expository narration.......by DeMille himself)

                 But here's the crushing irony.......as an actual filmmaker, DeMille was barely functional. Possessing not a smidgen of cinematic talent, he had no idea how to set up a scene, position actors, or effectively use camera movement and editing to tell a story.

                    Everyone remembers the iconic moments from his films.....the Red Sea parting, Samson knockin' down the pillars........but just try sitting through any DeMille film from beginning to end. They're a punishing, excruciating tour through a series of turgid tableaux, with actors stiffly posed, reciting reams of ornate gibberish.....(....."even a ruby loses luster beside your lips...")

                   We'll say this much for "Samson And Delilah".......it's by far the easiest to digest of the DeMille Bible parades.  Hedy Lamarr simmered and sizzled as Delilah........even garbed in ankle-length Old Testament robes, she always found a way to expose her gorgeous long legs. And you've got to love the old-fashioned physique of that slab 'o beef, Victor Mature......no real muscles on him, he's simply a big, barrel-chested guy.  (The studio balked at DeMille's idea of using the far more physically sculpted Steve Reeves....yes, that Steve Reeves, who went on to star in "Herclules")

                 Two more MVP we'll mention.......George Sanders, playing the Philistine tyrant as another one of his sarcastic, wittily dissolute sophisticates, purring out his dialogue as if he's still slinging barbs in "All About Eve".....and 15 year old Russ Tamblyn, itching to conk Sanders' Imperial guards with a well-place slingshot rock........

                 2 stars (**).....but that's only if you can stay awake for that long expected special effects extravaganza (damn good for 1949) in which the much maligned Mature really brings down the house........(and a very special 4 stars **** to Hedy Lamarr, whose telecommunications invention led to all sorts of future electronic wonders.....including Wi-Fi...….no joke....look it up.)

OSCAR NOMS........THE ADORED, THE IGNORED..........(AND WE'RE BORED)

                 Kurmail Nanjiani and Tracee Ellis Ross    If the Motion Picture Academy demanded an apology from Kevin Hart, then they ought to demand one from these two..........for peppering the entire list of nominees with their continuous lame gags about having gotten up too early to read the list of nominees........with or without an apology, make them the show hosts and let them complains the entire night about being made the show hosts......they're still funnier than Kevin Hart......

                   Emily Blunt.........and she thought impaling her foot on a nail in "The Quiet Place" was the worst thing she'd endure this year.......the Academy just force fed her a Spoonful Of Nothing and it won't help the medicine go down.......

                   Ethan Hawke  Best actor of the year as far the BQ's concerned.........suck it, Academy.

                    Won't You Be My Neighbor  The one movie we all desperately needed, as the USA and the world suffers through the horrors of Trump Hell. Forget the nominees, this is THE best documentary of the year........

                     Best Picture nominees that must have directed themselves......this has been an ongoing problem since......uh...forever.......where film directors see their movies in the Best Picture category, without a Best Director nod for them.   Welcome to the Academy's special 'F*** The Director' club. Bradley Cooper and Peter Farelly.....

                    Black Panther. Vs. Crazy Rich Asians.........In the land of the newly Woke, don't ask us to explain this.......an all-black superhero movie gets showered with awards and an all-Asian romantic comedy ends up with nothing.........go figure.  (We'll risk the wrath of the Woke to point out that at the end of the day, "Black Panther" is just another overlong, over-CGI'd Marvel movie about people in spandex costumes picking up and hurling around other people in spandex costumes........)

"HOT SUMMER NIGHTS"..........ANOTHER FESTIVAL DISPOSABLE.......

Hot Summer Nights (2017)     We have a vague glimmer as to what writer-director Elijah Bynum tried for here......

                     We'd only be guessing, since the film wanders all over the place......sometimes it's a studious replica of all the downbeat, rebel-without-a-clue dramas that clogged video store shelves in the 80's and 90's.........(we suppose that's why the film's titles evoke a creased, defective VHS tape...)

                      And sometimes (and BQ visitors know how much we hate this)......it erupts into all that "look at me! look at me!" stylistic crap designed to impress the hell out of film festival attendees.....

                    Never settling on what it wants to be and what story it's telling, the film presents us with a lonely alienated teen (flavor-the-month Timothee Chalamet), exiled to Cape Cod for the summer of 1991.

                     Chalamet quickly forms an uneasy, unlikely friendship-alliance with the town's legendary Bad Boy Delinquent pot dealer (Alex Roe)......also the estranged brother of the town's legendary Bad Girl Hottie (Maika Monroe).......risking the wrath of the still fiercely protective Roe, Chalamet pursues a forbidden romance with Monroe......

                    At this point, you're suddenly supposed to believe that the mumbling, dazed Chalamet is some kind of nascent criminal mastermind,talking Roe into ever more lucrative, ambitious drug deals with a local, lethal kingpin (Emory Cohen)

                     Director Bynum never decides whose story this is.......the movie randomly bounces around from sweet, coming-of-age romance to thuggish bad-assery......and back again.  Ultimately it ends up as nobody's movie and you wonder why you wasted an hour and 47 minutes on it.

                    (And memo to Bynum.......all your little film festival whim-whams, so beloved by the indie film culture-vultures, leave us massively unimpressed.........if you cut to a shot of a 7 year old girl saying, "He fucking killed someone...", it doesn't make you Steve Soderbergh.....)

                    1 star (*) and none of that star goes to the blank, boring Chalamet, the overly smoldering Roe and the dead-eyed, vacant Monroe.......the single star gets divided up between Emory Cohen and Willliam Fichtner for their short but memorable scenes at the drug bosses you never want to mess with.......

WEEKEND SADNESS UPDATE..........ATTACK OF THE MAGA LARVA..........

               That wasn't a typo on the post headline........the Madness does go on......but this falls under the heading of Sadness as well...…….

                  This photo from the viral video says it all.

                  The purest evocation of Trump's America.  Anyone who desires a quick and easy illustration of the irrevocable damage to the United States wreaked by Baby Orange.......

                    Here it is.

                    A Baby Orange larva, a Trumpanzee in training, smirk firmly planted on his soulless face.....

                     Mocking an aging Native American.....and Vietnam War veteran......a man who fought in a war that the Baby Larva's hero, Baby Orange. successfully avoided with a phony doctor's note.

                     The Larva made sure to wear his red MAGA hat........a glowing beacon of  racism, cowardice and overwhelming stupidity........in that regard, he did his leader proud.

                     So take a good look at this photo.  This grinning gargoyle is as much Trump's child as Ivanka and the other two, Tweedle Don Jr. and Tweedle Dumber.

                      And pray for the heart and soul of America.

"HER ONE MISTAKE"..........A GONE LITTLE GIRL........

Her One Mistake by Heidi Perks (2019)     In the winter onslaught of suspense thrillers, we're happy to announce.......this one's a goodie......

                    This one cleverly blends everything you'd expect in a kidnapped child scenario with the all the layers of deception and dysfunction in a friendship gone awry.....(a la "Big Little Lies")......

                    Harriet and Charlotte's friendship comes apart when Harriet's young daughter, her only child, disappears during a school outing.....while the child was in Charlotte's care along with  Charlotte's own brood of three tykes.

                    An agonized Harriet and her angry husband wait for police to hopefully find their missing little girl.......as an equally distraught Charlotte is shunned by neighbors and vilified by social media and the press, citing her lax supervision that led to the child's disappearance......

                    And that's as much as you'll hear from us about the plot.

                    Yes, you can look forward to a mouth-opening twist.......and subsequent curveballs that drive up the suspense to near unbearable levels........(and a more than worthy villain.....pathetic, cruelly psychopathic and dangerous.....)

                    Heidi Perks smoothly handles all the mainstays of this now well worn genre......the shifting timelines, the alternating narrators.......but remembers to layer in genuine emotion and drama in the fractured relationship of the two women.

                      And she brings it all to a climax that's both realistically bittersweet, sad and yet satisfying.

                      Looking for a fast good read for a cold winter night?  Settle in and buckle up with this one. 4 stars (****)

                     

"SORRY TO BOTHER YOU".......A GOOD SWIFTIAN KICK IN THE ASS........

Sorry To Bother You (2018)   Satire may flourish on Saturday Night Live and late night talk shows.........but few filmmakers ever risk taking a no-holds-barred shot at it......

              So we immediately bestow the BQ 'Big Brass Ones' award to writer-director Boots Riley....

              He's got all the requisites for a first class satirist........he's funny, talented and seriously pissed off at the state of things today.......

                Even better, he's unafraid to to suddenly take his already freewheeling movie into batshit-crazy fantasy to hammer home his points........Johnathon Swift must be smiling down from Satire Heaven......

                In our much, much, much younger days, we briefly did a stint as a telemarketing cubicle slave and it was every bit as horrible and soul-sucking as it's depicted here........even without the new corrosive depths of racial profiling and corporate greed that Boots Riley throws into the mix......

                The film's hapless telemarketer (Lakeith Stanfield) stumbles into success beyond  his dreams when he affects a whitebread voice (dubbed in by David Cross) to convince suckers to part with their credit card numbers.  In no time, he ascends into untold heights of greed, falling into the clutches of WorryFree, a corporate slavery conglomerate run by a hyper coke-sniffing reptile (Armie Hammer)

                  That story set-up allows the movie to take deadly well-aimed potshots at everything in its path......corporate culture, insultingly idiotic TV reality shows, racial division.........even performance art and rap music go under the knife......

                   And in no way would we dare reveal the film's  high-diving plunge into enraged, demented fantasy during its final third........you're just going to have to see it believe it.......or stare at it in disbelief.

                    Here at last is a film festival escapee that deserves a wide audience........even  should those audiences scratch their heads as the film deliberately flies off whatever rails it barely held on to.  4 Swiftian stars (****) for a ripping good satire that's not afraid to let 'er rip........

"TARGET FOR KILLING".........EURO-BOND BATTLES KRIMI KREEPS.........

Target For Killing (1966)   Uncovering this weird little Euro-trashy faux-Bond checked off so many boxes for us.........

                 Indestructible secret agent ! Check.

                 Many ultra hot Euro-Babes of the 60's!  Check.

                 Mastermind villain with an army of minions! Check.

                 All manner of nutty tropes carried over from those West German 'Krimi' films based on old Edgar Wallace novels!  Check.

                 A 60's Euro dream cast of pulp actors......half of them veterans of actual Bond movies! Check.

                  Klaus f*****g Kinski! Check.

                   How could we not wallow in this cinematic dumpster?   With no less than 4 Bondian refugees.....Molly Peters and Adolfo Celi from "Thunderball", Curt Jurgens from "The Spy Who Loved Me" and forever popping her huge eyes in shock and terror, Karin Dor of "You Only Live Twice"...........

                  Our super secret agent here is our favorite old swashbuckler Stewart Granger.......and he obviously didn't take this junk seriously. Throughout the movie, he breaks into exaggerated comedic mugging, as if he's the lead in a silly romantic comedy.....

                  Since Karin Dor's on hand, the film saddles her with the exact same role she played in the Edgar Wallace 'krimi' mysteries......an heiress who fends off multiple attempts on her life from villains who covet the millions she's due to inherit...........

                 Our evil mastermind (Curt Jurgens) maintains, as do Krimi villains, an army of heavily armed monks with machine guns. Why do they have to dress up as monks?  Don't ask. They just do.
Jurgens also employs two guys who use bulldozers to knock out and bury airport cops........why? Don't ask. They just do.........

                  We can't possibly apply normal standards of criticism to 1960's secret agent movies........for us, they'll always exist in their own dopey, trashy little self-contained world.......they bobbed along like backwash debris in the wake of the James Bond juggernaut ........(and we couldn't get enough of 'em....)

                 So if you love this fractured, oddball genre like we do, "Target For Killing"s a 3 star (***)keeper.   But if you can't appreciate the sight of Karin Dor tortured by an aquarium of electric fish, (whoopee!), you should probably steer clear......