'ACTION IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC'.....WARNERS GOES TO WAR.....

 Action In The North Atlantic (1943)   It's always a comfort to return to something from the Golden Age of Hollywood.......

             ........when the big movie studios cranked out beautifully crafted, crowd pleasing movies as fast as Detroit auto makers rolled off cars from the assembly line. 

                And you could depend on these movies being populated with already legendary actors (the likes of which we've rarely seen again) in the most compelling stories that gripped you from beginning to end. 

                Okay, maybe we're waxing just a little bit too nostalgic over that era, but it's easy to do when you compare it to some of the current films we've suffered through. 

                 "Action In The North Atlantic", Warner Brothers' stirring tribute the Merchant Marines of World War 2, was rousing war propaganda at its most thrilling.

                 It needed to be......let's remember that the United States and its allies were fighting for the very survival of Western Civilization and the right to live without the terror and bloody reign of fascist oppression.

                 To put it bluntly, this nation was fighting the the same kind of evil created by and unleashed  by Donald Trump on January 6th of this year. 

                  The film dealt with the harrowing voyages of Merchant Marine ships to deliver desperately needed war weaponry and supplies across the Atlantic to the Allies.......and their spectacular battles with 'wolf packs' of Nazi U-boats who mercilessly hunted these ships with torpedoes.

                The captain and first officer of one of the American ships (Raymond Massie, Humphrey Bogart) barely survive one of these submarine attacks during movie's opening, bravura sequence. 

                 This first episode, produced long, long before the dawn of CGI remains one of the most stunning action sequences you'll ever see in a Golden Age Hollywood film, with both actors and stunt people dangerously running around and through actual raging fires.

                  The sub not only blows up and sinks their ship, it goes out of its way to ram their lifeboat and leaves Bogart, Massey and other crew members clinging to a wooden raft for over a week before they're rescued. 

                   Back on shore before shipping out again, the stalwart Bogart reverts to the Bogie we all know and love......the casual tough guy, romancing a bar singer and discreetly punching out a loudmouth who never heard the phrase "loose lips sink ships'.......

                   The surviving crew members include a wonderful array of familiar character actors, (Alan Hale, Sam Levene, Dane Clark, Peter Whitney) who never stop their mile-a-minute wisecracking even in the heat of battle.....(says Hale amid the barrage of gunfire and explosions, "If this keeps up, somebody's gonna get hurt....")

                   These men and their officers all return to sea battles again, this time as part of a massive Allied convoy, but their new ship soon gets separated from the group. And once again they face off in a cat-and-mouse chase with the same sub that first blew them out of the water.......and another furious showdown. 

                    The morale boosting speeches put into the actors' dialogue may seem obvious and simplistic in today's jaded age, but if you think about what was at stake here, the words still ring true to us.

                    And we didn't even mind the Never Never Land innocence of the way our Russian allies were still depicted in 1943......as the salt-of-the-earth good guys on our side. That, of course, would rapidly come to an end as soon as the war was over.

                   "Action In The North Atlantic" remains a prime example of why we return to this once-upon-a-time era of movie making.....4 stars (****)

'THE BEST MAN'......"THERE ARE NO ENDS.....ONLY MEANS."

 The Best Man (1964)   Watching this again, we don't know what to choose as a more vital discussion topic.....the film's corrosive view of 1960's national politics or how prescient the film seems in light of today's toxic current events.

               Novelist-playwright-screenwriter and acerbic pundit Gore Vidal adapted his own hit Broadway play for the screen.......a withering, witty inside look at the frantic power ploys going on the middle of the hurlyburly of political party's convention.

                Facing off for the coveted Presidential nomination are two polar opposites.......ex Secretary Of State William Russell (Henry Fonda), a principled, thoughtful patrician.......and Senator Joe Cantwell  (Cliff Robertson), a conniving, ruthless 'populist', stoking up his chances with anti-Communist rabble-rousing.

                Both men desperately seek the endorsement of the aging, retiring current President Art Hockstader (Lee Tracy), a wily, savvy old political warhorse, who's trying to figure our which of the two men has enough  balls and smarts to take on the insurmountable job of President.

                It's not an easy choice, since both men come equipped with scandal-ridden baggage......Russell not only carries a history of philandering, he's also been treated for a nervous breakdown.,,,,,and the repugnant opportunist Cantwell has been accused of homosexual episodes during his Army service.

                Let the sparring and sniping begin........

                The slimy Cantwell (whom Vidal clearly based on Richard Nixon) has no problem threatening Russell with exposure of his damning mental health history........while Russell wrestles with his conscience about revealing the homosexual dirt on Cantwell (remember what year this was made.)  Russell's agonized about wallowing in the mud with Cantwell, even as he arranges a confrontation between Cantwell and his primary Army accuser....(a brilliantly sad and funny performance by comedian Shelly Berman)

                 As the two men each attempt to out-maneuver each other, writer Vidal peppers the script with a treasure trove of  razor sharp dialogue lines (one of which we've borrowed for the title of this post). And Vidal's knowing, sardonic overview of the political scene confirms all your worst fears and suspicions about the people who quest for you votes........that they're all glib talking con men with not a thing on their minds other than getting elected and seizing the brass ring of power. 

                  Hmmmmm........does all this sound a little too familiar?

                  At this point, we'll leave you to decide how much of this film you see reflected in what's going on today.........(though we doubt that even Gore Vidal could have ever envisioned a populist moron who'd incite and deploy an army of mindless goons to overthrow the United States.....)

                  And by the way, let us not forget to mention that this movie boasts stellar performances from the entire cast,  a script that takes rips apart political operatives with laser beam precision and a climactic resolution dripping with acidic irony. 

                   Our way of saying......don't miss this 5 star (*****) FIND OF FINDS.

'36 HOURS'.....OH THOSE NAZI PRANKSTERS.....

 36 Hours (1964).......still remains one of our favorite films of the 1960's.

           And that's even though it's far removed from the new and exciting groundbreaking cinema that was erupting all through that tumultuous decade.

            On the contrary, the film is traditional Hollywood product, solidly crafted by veteran writer director George Seaton, who specialized in big boxoffice crowd pleasers....(in a career that stretched from "Miracle On 34th St." to "Airport" and "The Counterfeit Traitor")

               This film fell into a unique genre all its own.....a suspense-espionage World War 2 thriller.

                And the plot hook here was a doozy.....on the eve of D-Day, an American Major (James Garner) one of the planners of the Normandy invasion, is drugged, kidnapped and  taken to a Nazi military hospital not far from the Swiss border. 

                .......but it's a Nazi facility cleverly decked out to precisely mimic, in every little detail, an American hospital.  

                 The German doctor (Rod Taylor) who's masterminded this elaborate ruse intends to trick the Major into thinking he sat out the war years in a coma.  And since he's awakened into a world where the Allies triumphed, the doc hopes to take the befuddled, disoriented officer down memory lane..... and spill the D-Day landing sites.

                 Director Seaton smoothly pulls off this far fetched premise, making it seem more realistic and urgent by the use of that odd combo of wide screen and black and white and further aided by the nervous piano work in Dimitri Tiomkin's score. 

                 The top of the line cast gives it their full commitment, including Eva Marie Saint as an emotionally broken concentration camp inmate forced to play the part of 'nurse' in Taylor's fake hospital. Taylor himself navigates a tricky role here, since the script ultimately casts him as an almost sympathetic figure, threatened and bedeviled by the odious Gestapo slug (Werner Peters) who doubts Taylor's elaborate prank will succeed.

              (Peters has one great bit of business here.....as he visibly grimaces while Taylor describes to Garner a rosy and uncomfortably truthful version of the war's end, with Gestapo goons hunted down and rounded up.....)

                 And let's tip our hat to character actor John Banner (renowned for his bellowing 'Sgt. Schultz 'in the problematic sitcom "Hogan's Heroes") who shows up in the film's climactic scenes as an anti-Nazi villager.

                 There's nothing spectacular or showy in '36 Hours', but it stands tall as a slick, perfectly realized chunk of old fashioned Hollywood entertainment.  And that's why we still like it a lot.               4 stars (****)..

'PRETTY LITTLE WIFE'.....A GONE GUY AND HIS SUSPECT TROPHY WIFE.....

 Pretty Little Wife by Darby Kane (2020)   Once again, we're faced with the usual challenge.....

               How do we describe this twisty and twisted mystery thriller without spoiling the fun of discovering all the WFT moments and surprises.........

                And let's face it, the primary reason you'd pick up a book like this comes from staying up all night promising yourself to read just one more chapter so you can figure out that the hell's going on.......

                 Before you know, you've reached the final chapters to savor all the payoffs.......and it's 2 in the morning.....

                 We'll now try to tantalize you enough to go out and grab a copy so you can start losing sleep like we did. .

                The trophy wife here, Lila, may well have the worst taste in men ever........starting with her arrogant douchebag husband Aaron, a champion gaslighter and.....and....well, let's just say there's more to him than meets the eye.....none of it good. 

                 Aaron's dropped out sight, a true gone guy in the great tradition of missing spouses in domestic thrillers.

                  And guess who the cops are sniffing around and sizing up as their number one suspect......especially since Lila doesn't seem too grief stricken or worried about Aaron's disappearance, and spars like a champ through repeated police interrogations. 

                 So what happened to Aaron? And is his case any connection to a slew of young girls who've also gone missing? And what's with the creepy, threatening notes left on Lila's doorstep?   

                 If you think you can guess the worst things, you'll be wrong, since Darby Kane doubles down on sick twists in store for you.

                  Not one more word will you hear from us about it. 

                   Author Kane takes her time setting all this up, but once the twists start detonating, your jaw may stay permanently dropped as you're tearing through the pages to arrive at the endgame.

                   Terrific chills 'n thrills, with a deeply ironic, perfectly crafted wrap-up. 2021 is still young but we think this one will stand as one of the best suspense rollercoaster rides of the year

                   BQ says by all means seek it out. 4 stars. (****)

HAPPIEST SEASON'.....DON WE NOW OUR GAY APPAREL....

Happiest Season (2020)   We can well understand how much the LGBTQ+  community embraced this movie......

             After all, it's the first major, studio-backed gay Christmas romcom. 

             If we applied leniency to this cruel, bizarre film, we could always use the weary phrase, "well, it's better than having no gay romcom at all" ........

              But really, LGBTQ+ audiences deserved so much better than this mess.......a tone deaf, warped attempt to duplicate all the ancient tropes of the typical Christmas romcom centered around a wealthy, dysfunctional family reunion.

               Writer director Clea Duvall exaggerates her cliched family members way past the point of making them quirky.......they're downright repulsive and before the movie's half over, you'll want to throttle all of them.

              They're the horrid family of the spoiled, weak willed Harper (Mackenzie Davis) who convinces the love of her life Abby (Kristen Stewart) to come home with her for the holidays......

              Except that Abby's forced to pretend she's merely Harper's hetero roommate, since Harper's lacks the spine to come out to her family.

                What follows is a near unwatchable cringe-fest, with  Abby subjected to endless humiliation and ugly belittling at the hands of this overpoweringly obnoxious clan (Victor Garber, Mary Steenburgen, Alison Brie, Mary Holland)........which even throws in creepy fraternal twin children who behave like rejects from a remake of "The Shining".......

                So it's no wonder that Abby gravitates toward the town doctor Riley (a fine, subdued Aubrey Plaza) another lesbian who'd been cruelly betrayed and cast away by the whimpering, simpering Harper. 

               We have to wonder at this point if director Duvall even understood that she portrayed Harper and her family as so clueless and cold, the audience naturally roots for Abby and Riley as a couple. They are of course the only two sympathetic characters in the film, if you don't count Dan Levy's performance as that very standard romcom trope, the gay best friend

               Don't get your hopes up......the film strictly adheres to Holiday movie tradition......with a last minute finale of revelations and reconciliations......and sentiment so phony, you'll gag.

               Since the bulk of the film depicts the family members as utterly rotten, this supposed touchy-feely, pseudo heartfelt climax comes off as unearned, undeserved and thoroughly false and unbelievable.

                And as usual, the always overrated Kristen Stewart stays in her usual state of mope, further deadening the proceedings.

                 For any time of the year, no matter what your sexual orientation, this movie's a stone cold  Zero star (0) downer.

                BQ memo to whichever filmmaker is tasked with making a gay romcom for Christmas of 2021.......after "Happiest Season", you've got nowhere to go but up.

            

'SWEET LIBERTY'......DEFY AUTHORITY, DESTROY PROPERTY, GET NAKED.....

 

Sweet Liberty (1986)......is in no way the funniest of 1980's comedies, but we always found it to be among the most charming and wittily written of the bunch. 

                Writer-director and star of the film, Alan Alda poured on the charm part, while Bob Hoskins, Michael Caine, Michelle Pfeiffer and Saul Rubinek supplied the laughs.

               We instantly fell in love with the whole concept here......with Alda playing a New England history professor who's written a nationwide best seller filled with action, drama and romance.......about the American Revolution.

               Hollywood knows a hot property when it sees one, and after the book's snapped up for a movie adaptation, an entire film crew, complete with two superstars, comes rolling into the little town to film the story right where it happened. 

                Virtually all the expected culture clashes occur as Alda and his quirky fellow townspeople collide with the manic, ego-fueled personalities of the Hollywood crowd. 

               Alda finds himself an unlikely script doctor as he collaborates on the rotten, illiterate screenplay scribbled by a ultra-hyper hack (Hoskins at his most hilariously hammy). He also finds himself crossing swords, sometimes literally, with the Errol Flynn-like leading man (Caine, also very funny) and falling for the stunning leading lady,(Pfeiffer) whose method acting process has her always speaking in the refined cadence of her 18th century character.......except when she's really pissed off.

               The filmmaking process gets a gentle ribbing throughout, and if  'Sweet Liberty'  has a villain, it's the the studio director played deftly by Saul Rubinek. He's made to look like a hip new movie brat in the Spielberg-DePalma mold, but his character's a pandering philistine, more like Michael Bay, in his devotion to three golden rules of 80's movies.......defiance of authority, destruction of property and nudity.

                 Watching Alda navigate his way through these West Coast crazies kept us permanently smiling, along with more than few LOL moments.  And even if his upending and thwarting of Rubinek's three golden rules in the middle of a battle scene seems inevitable, it's still damn funny. 

                 And we don't want to forget the bonus bittersweet subplot involving Alda's dementia-afflicted mother, played by the then 93 year old cinema icon Lillian Gish.....even more icing on the cake.

                 35 years later, BQ still finds 'Sweet Liberty' as sweet a treat as ever. And in these turbulent times, a welcome, comforting re-discovery. 4 stars (****).

THURSDAY NORMAL UPDATE.......THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA.....

              

                 You've noticed we replaced the word "madness" with "normal" for this post.

                 We can hardly believe it ourselves. 

                  Four years of madness. Four years of unspeakable stupidity, greed , cruelty misogyny, racism, corruption, psychosis, attempted fascism.......and thousands upon thousands of lies. Endless, endless lies.

                   It finally,  finally came to end yesterday. With the dawn of a new era. A new President.

                  A sane President.

                  Not a President who'd send a howling mob to the Capitol to abduct and murder members of Congress and hang his own Vice President.

                  Not a President who thinks  neo Nazis are 'very fine people.'

                  Not a President who dragged shrieking toddlers out of their mothers' arms. 

                  Not a President who bragged of clutching women's crotches.

                 Not a President who tried to overturn a free and fair election......because he lost. Especially because he lost due to millions and millions of voters of color rejecting him. 

                 No, that guy went home yesterday.......back to his golden toilets and golf courses. And true to his depraved, empty soul, he went still whining falsehoods, accompanied by his family of fellow grifters and his equally soulless, vapid trophy wife who can barely stand to have him touch her. .

                  That guy's gone........and it feels like a crushing, ten ton weight has been lifted off our chests.

                  And to witness the inauguration of a sane President.

                   Let's repeat that again, because we still can't believe we'd ever have to write something so completely fantastically out of the ordinary.

                   A sane President. 

                   A President to restore, at the very least.......decency, civility, morality. 

                  And compared to what seemed like the never ending horror of the last four years, that's a start.

                   Well,  we've gotta start somewhere.........

                   To President Biden and Vice President Harris......we offer best wishes, good luck and God grant them both the wisdom and the steely fortitude they'll need to rebuild the nation.  

                    And no more madness.....let it fade away to nothing, along with the madman. 

                  

                  

'MURDER BY DEATH' & 'CLUE'.....MAY THE FARCE BE WITH THEM......

 Murder By Death (1976) / Clue (1985)   If there was ever a genre ripe for parody, it was the Agatha Christie template of assembling a disparate group of people in one single location, killing off one of them and then force the survivors of the group to solve the crime before the killer bumps off more of them.......

             Supreme Broadway and movie gagmaster Neil Simon stepped up to the plate first with "Murder By Death"....         

              With an assembled all star cast, Simon's original screenplay, stuffed to the gills with literally hundreds of the playwright's patented one liners, mercilessly mocked the most famous detectives of films and literature. 

              Assembling for a storm-swept night at a spooky old house were David Niven and Maggie Smith spoofing the 'Thin Man' married detectives, Peter Sellers as the Charlie Chan knockoff, James Coco lampooning Hercule Poirot, Elsa Lanchester doing the Miss Marple thing and finally Peter Falk as the hard-boiled, wisecracking Bogart-ish private eye. 

                For even more additional laughs, the film threw in Alec Guinness as the mansion's mysterious blind butler, comedian Nancy Walker as a mute maid and in a bizarre casting glitch, author Truman Capote as the snarky, sly host of the evening.....and inevitable murder victim.......

                .......or was he?

            The perpetual stream of Simon-ized laugh lines comes at you speedier than fastballs spewed out of a pitching machine, and you can easily picture the cast struggling to control their own infectious delight at sending up these well worn characters.

              And as playwright Anthony Shaffer did in his scripts for the Hercule Poirot whodunnits like "Death On The Nile", Simon aims more than a few satirical barbs at the inherent racism and snobbery found in Agatha Christie;s 'old dark house' setup.

              Though a box office and critical success, "Murder By Death" didn't spawn any onslaught of murder mystery spoofery from other filmmakers or studios.

              We'll now fast forward to 9 years later, moving from the sublime to the ridiculous.....with the release of "Clue", one of Hollywood's first attempts to craft a narrative feature film out of a completely different form of entertainment......in this case, an adaptation of everybody's favorite rainy day Parker Brothers' board game......

              So you could reasonably know where to lay the blame for the eventual plague of rotten movies based on video games.......

               To their credit, the makers of the 'Clue' movie did take meticulous care in creating amusing facsimiles of the game's character as well as the geography of the playing board itself.......(and yes, we mean all those various rooms where you'd have to figure out if it was Miss Scarlet in the kitchen with a knife or Col Mustard in the library with a rope.....)

               If only they'd asked Neil Simon to write the script......

                The writing-directing chores fell to Jonathon Lynn, who managed to sporadically sprinkle his script with some funny lines and bits of business.

               But mostly, Lynn relied heavily on frantic, overdone slapstick farce to pump up the laughs. When dialogue failed him, he resorted to having his ensemble cast run from room to room in a clustered group, like a stampeding herd. 

                The overall result was a mere fraction of the laughs that 'Murder By Death' generated.  Sometimes 'Clue' erupted into genuinely funny moments but the bulk of it carried the stench of a worn out Jerry Lewis groaner. 

                Watching it again 36 years later, we well understand why it bombed so badly, even with its labored gimmick of putting it into theaters with three separate surprise endings......(all video releases and airings now include all three finales together)

                 And yet over the years, many folks still fondly remember it and newer audiences fully embraced it for its strenuous silliness. 

                  So now it's thought of as a rediscovered cult hit. Go figure.

                 We really can't get on board with the whole 'new cult hit' stuff. For all its determined nuttiness and fine ensemble cast (Martin Mull, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd, Leslie Ann Warren, Eileen Brennan, Michael McKean, Tim Curry, Coleen Camp)......it's not all that funny. 

                  For the real laughs, we'll stick with Neil Simon and "Murder By Death" - 4 stars (****).....as for the clueless 'Clue', even at its peak, it never rises above 2 stars (**).

'TRADER HORN'......THE DEATH OF MGM BY COBRA.....

 Trader Horn (1973)   Rod Taylor's always been a BQ fave, an unsung, underappreciated leading man who effortlessly straddled multiple genres.....from the roughest of rough 'n tumble action adventures ("Dark Of The Sun", "Darker Then Amber") to the fluffliest of romantic comedies ("Sunday In New York" and his two Doris Day romcoms, "The Glass Bottom Boat" and "Do Not Disturb")......not to mention his roles in two now legendary films, "The Time Machine" and Hitchcock's "The Birds".

           Which is why we felt so sorry on his behalf that he stumbled into this worthless piece of wreckage left over from the toxic reign over MGM by James T. Aubrey (a.k.a. 'The Smiling Cobra')

            Aubrey, a rapacious corporate reptile, strip-mined his way through MGM, pumping out some garbage movies of his own while slicing and dicing up other directors' films for the studio.

             'Trader Horn' may stand as the most defining movie of the awful Aubrey tenure......a brazen attempt to slap together a rock-bottom cheap movie with almost 60 per cent of its footage exhumed from an older movie collecting dust in the MGM vault

              So off we go to the wildest, darkest Africa of "Trader Horn", which consists of Rod Taylor and the other actors wandering through their scenes shot in the woods of a Los Angeles public park.....

               But every time they turn around, the film cuts to huge chunks of grainy, washed out sequences extracted from 1950's "King Solomon's Mines".

                You can almost hear Aubrey on the soundtrack, cackling about all the money he's saving.

                On and on this goes, for 101 unendurable minutes.......and any movie buff who reveled in MGM's once golden age could almost weep at the sight of this mess........a film bearing the MGM roaring lion that's barely one step up from "Plan 9 From Outer Space"

                  Granted, by the 1970's, all the major studios sat in various stages of disarray, destruction and financial distress.  The upside: since no one in charge of studios had any idea what audiences wanted, a slew of young, hungry, hotly talented young filmmakers got their foot in the door and their films produced.

                  The downside: the rise of sharks like Aubrey, who ripped apart what was left of Hollywood with  their malignant greed and wrong headed decisions.

                 For the presence of Rod Taylor, we felt slightly inclined to give out 1/2 of a star.......

                 Sorry.....as much as love Rod, we couldn't do it. The whole existence of this movie is an insult to cinema. Zero stars (0).

'COMPULSION'......AMERICA'S FIRST THRILL KILLERS.....

 Compulsion (1959)    Richard Leopold and Nathan Loeb were, of course, not the very first Americans to kill a young child just for the hell of it.......

                We're reasonably sure there were at least one or two psychotic, homicidal sociopaths running around the 13 colonies in 1776.......

                   But Leopold-Loeb, as they came to be known, like some kind of evil comedy team, hit the big time in the roaring 20's with nationwide newspaper coverage......and attracted no less them premier super-lawyer Clarence Darrow as their defense attorney, who rescued them certain death by hanging with an impassioned anti capital punishment speech to their judge. 

                  The two lived on in books and films, providing  Alfred Hitchcock with the inspiration for his  one-take wonder "Rope.

                    Hitchcock used only the basic premise of Leopold and Loeb's crime.......two snotnose college boys, fueled with Nietzsche-ian philosophy, think they're so superior to everyday humans, they commit murder for no other reason than the sheer rush of taking a human life. 

                   "Compulsion", based on a novel's fictionalized account of the actual events, presents a slick, Hollywood-polished version of this sad, horrific tale that still remains compelling. 

                     In short order, things to love:

                   Black and White Cinemascope, that odd visual combo that spreads the noir-ish doom across a proscenium arch expanse....

                    Bradford Dillman and Dean Stockwell, both acting up a storm as the infamous duo, with Dillman giving a showy Actor's Studio bravura turn, while Stockwell goes more subtle, internalizing his repressed rage and thwarted sexuality.....

                     Orson Welles as 'Jonathon Wilk' the Clarence Darrow character.......we've never seen Welles acting more precisely focused and honed than his work here.......you'll never take your eyes off him when he delivers his bravura courtroom address, a plea for life imprisonment over the death penalty.......(it's no wonder the speech itself became a best selling recording.....)

                    That reliable versatile journeyman director Richard Fleischer puts it all together like a step by step crime thriller, but in a fitting farewell to the more staid 1950's spares audiences any depiction of the unspeakable crime itself......(imagine, if you will, somebody remaking this story today......)

                    Even 62 years after its release, we still found "Compulsion" compulsively watchable.......and still well worth the time to re-visit. 3 & 1/2 stars  (***1/2)

WEEKEND MADNESS UPDATE.......THE FASCIST TODDLER GOES BYE BYE......

                 Like almost everyone else in the country and the world, we hardly can process the catastrophic events of the last few weeks.......

                 But since we've got a blog, we'll give it a go......

                  BABY ORANGE.....America's first official Traitor-In-Chief. A complete failure at everything, including his last gasping, desperate attempt to fire up an army of his mindless goons to invade the Capitol and install him President For Life. Only his overwhelming ignorance and incompetence saved us from the horrors of a fascist dictatorship.  The one and only comfort to the end of this reign of terror, hatred, cruelty and racism is that once stripped of his Presidential powers,, winter is coming for Baby Orange.  Along with indictments.

                   THE TRUMPANZEES......Hilary Clinton's calling them 'Deplorables' proved to be biggest understatement of the last 4 years.  A true horrorshow, nightmarish horde, a plague of fascistic locusts spawned by a monster......and a terrifying preview of coming attractions if Americans ever fall back into complacency and don't vote with the same fervor they displayed in cutting out the cancer of Baby Orange.

                    MIKE PENCE......maybe he might have reached an epiphany if the Trumpanzees made their chants come true and actually gotten to put a rope around his neck. Hey Mikey, if Trump's Imperial Stormtroopers ever caught up with you,by the time they'd got done with you,  you'd have more than just one fly landing on you..........

                      THE 'MY PILLOW' GUY.....still dreams of Baby Orange using the military to seize the country......which is why his head, like his pillows, consists of nothing but fluffy stuffing.

                    TED CRUZ & JOSH HAWLEY......if this was a fair world, these two additional traitors would end up expelled from Congress, indicted, tried, convicted  and jailed for sedition. In the real world, we may only enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that their reputations stand forever stained and will go down in history as infamous figures. By the way, Ted.....even with all your endless kissing of Baby Orange's ample ass, he still thinks your wife's ugly and your dad killed JFK,

                     BABY ORANGE'S MILITARY FAREWELL.....to include a 21 salute and a red carpet. Melania promises to speak for the a grateful nation by wearing her "I Really Don't Care, Do U" jacket. A special Medal Of Freedom will be bestowed on Baby Orange by a Grand Wizard of the KKK. Vladimir Putin declined the invitation to attend, claiming, "I'd cry like baby. I'm going to miss him so."

'THE SENTINEL'.......A BELOVED CHARACTER....LOW-JACKED.

 The Sentinel by Lee Child and Andrew Child (2020)     We'll make no attempts to understand why Lee Child seems hellbent on on disappointing, aggravating and confounding the vast loyal audience for his Jack Reacher books. 

           Like "Blue Moon" the last Reacher adventure, (reviewed here on 3/6/20), the newest one's tedious, dumb and warps the character of Jack Reacher into somebody who's nothing like the Reacher we've come to know and love. 

            Aided and abetted by his brother Andrew, Child might well be on his way to cutting down the size of the Reacher fan base. 

           While we're not a hardcore 'Reacher-creature', one more book like this one and we may pass up the one after that......

            Reacher comes to the aid of a small burg's I.T. guy who's become a loathed pariah after the town's entire computer systems collapse.  You can tell how seriously this guy's hated because his coffee shop barista treats him rudely.  Holy crapola!

            This sap's not only out of luck, he's out of latte......

            Even worse, whole carloads of thugs try to snatch him, which is when, of course, our boy Jack steps in to sort things out and kick some ass. 

            And the asses in question, as you may have already guessed, belong to Russian hackers, busily pursuing their ongoing mission to bring chaos to America. 

             We wish we could tell you that this whole 'ripped-from-the-headline' storyline comes off as breathless, exciting and designed to make you zip through the pages all night.

              We zipped through the pages, sure enough. 

               But barely reading them, since the book bogs down into a lethally boring slog, with Reacher and the I.T. guy conducting an endless search for missing servers that will exonerate the I.T. guy, and incriminate the Russians.  

               One plus for all you die hard Reacher-ites.......the book throws in a couple of Russian villains that look like they were borrowed from a James Bond film.......a towering hulk who goes mano e mano with Jack and a woman minion who keeps a thin sharp blade hidden in her hair. (We suppose that replaced the poison knife hidden in shoes as standard equipment.....)

                You'll have to decide if waiting for the expected Reacher punch-ups are worth sifting through all the useless, excess verbiage on display here.

                For us, it's a 1 star effort (*).  The lone star is only for the jumbo Russian thug and that nasty hair-knife lady.

                SPOILER ALERT:

               The barista's much nicer to the I.T. guy in the final pages........

IN THE MYSTERY BOOK BAG!......."THEN SHE WAS GONE"

Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell (2018)    In the miserable COVID life we all lead now, our library remains closed to visitors, but offers curbside pickups of books we can reserve on the library's website.

         As an extra bonus, as we rush out of our car, masked, to receive our reserved pick from a masked librarian, there's a 'grab a bag 'o free books' cart parked outside to shop from.......

         The mystery bags, thoughtfully categorized by our librarians ("Mystery", "Horror", "Biography", "Romance" etc,....) are filled up with four of five books.......and there for the taking.

           So we took one. 

           And what a nice surprise, we found a real gem in the 'Mystery' bag......a book we might have even paid for if we'd heard about it in advance.......

           Since it's a psychological thriller centered around a missing child, we'll follow our usual policy of only describing the initial set up and leaving potential readers to plunge into the  twists, turns and shocking reveals in store for them. 

          Here's the deal:  Laurel Mack has endured the crushing tragedy of her beloved youngest daughter Ellie's disappearance......leading to the end of her marriage and her distant relationships with her two surviving now grown children. 

           Out of a random coffee shop encounter she finds love again with a charming guy named Floyd......whose exceptional, precocious daughter Poppy just happens to bear an unnerving, striking resemblance to Laurel's  long gone Ellie......

           And that's all you'll get from us.......other than to say by the time you get to that point in the story, you won't be able to tear through the pages fast enough.

           One final word of warning ......steel yourself for the reveals here.  Every dark disturbing turn of plot you might imagine in your worst nightmares get fully realized by author Jewell. And what goes on is both monstrous and heartbreaking. 

             You may not know whether to shiver or cry.......and that makes this book a most definite 4 star (****) find in our Mystery book bag.  Don't wait for it to pop up in your own library's free bags....BQ says seek it out by name. 

'SAVE YOURSELVES!'......SUNDANCE DUNCES FACE TRIALS AND TRIBBLE-LATIONS.....

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 Save Yourselves! (2020)     It's been awhile since we indulged ourselves in a cathartic rage 'n rant about one of those miserable, unwatchable, independent film festival atrocities that beg like lap dogs for approval from Sundance culture vultures.......

                So here we go!

                The makers of this disasterpiece must have high-fived each other repeatedly over what they thought was a concept too cool for school.......

                Why not take the usual obnoxious 'millennials blather away at each other' trope and improbably weld it to an alien invasion story.........genius!

                  No, not genius. Imbecilic. Tedious. And as a comedy, monumentally unfunny

                Eating up the first interminable chunk of this crapfest's running time is the introduction of our twenty-something, social-media crazed couple, Su and Jack (Sunita Mani and John Reynolds, two actors we wouldn't mind never seeing again.)

                Off these idiots go to a friend's cabin retreat in upstate New York.......and gradually they come to realize the world's been invaded by furry little aliens who resemble the beloved Tribbles from one of the first episodes of the original Star Trek TV show.

                  The creatures, whom our two motor-mouthed morons dub 'pouffs' are far from the gentle Tribbles. Malignant and violent, the pouffs spit lethal tentacles, suck gas out of cars and kill people. 

                   And then the rest of the film consists of punishing us with the spectacle of Su and Jack in panic mode as they flee the pouff purge.......(leading them to scream the inevitable line, "There's pouffs on the roof!"

                   This stench filled turd of a film does remain true to the spirit of countless other pretentious Sundance Festival entries.....in that it remembers to come up with maddening, stupid, non-ending of a climax designed to stir up the festival-istas, when the audience and filmmakers get to preen and bloviate at the post-screening Q & A..

                  In short......to hell with this movie and all the guilty parties who committed this crime against cinema. 

                   Zero stars (0). But we're sure the filmmakers' immediate families loved it.  We post this  review in the fervent hope that nobody else wastes a precious minute of their lives watching it. 

MURDER, THEY WROTE........"THE LAST OF SHEILA" & "DEATHTRAP"....

                Since we're on a murder mystery kick, having delved into two Agatha Christie movies yesterday, let's fast forward out of the long-ago-faraway colonial British Empire of ChristieWorld.......and into more contemporary, up to date mayhem......

                  The Last Of Sheila (1973)  came from, of all people, the collaborative pens of actor Anthony Perkins and legendary Broadway composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim.

                   The duo, well known for their love of intricate puzzles and celebrity 'puzzle parties', concocted a fictional version of such a get together...... a collection of bitchy, witchy movie-biz types converging on the yacht of  a saturnine producer (James Coburn) whose late wife died bouncing off the the car of a hit-and-run driver. 

                    Coburn's guests are a viciously clever send up of very real Hollywood types and they're deftly played by Richard Benjamin, Joan Hackett, James Mason, Dyan Cannon, Raquel Welch and Ian McShane.

                    One of them, obviously, is the hit-and-run murderer of Coburn's wife, which he gleefully intends to reveal by having his guests scavenger hunt for clues based on their own hidden nasty secrets....(prison time, pedophilia, homosexuality, etc, etc,......)

                    We dare not say one more word at this point......other than to point out that Anthony Shaffer, who wrote the masterfully tricky thriller play and film "Sleuth" once considered titling it "Who's Afraid Of Stephen Sondheim?"........(our way of telling you that the intricacies of the final reveals are a complex wonder to behold.....)

                  Normally we can't abide any movie that spends so much time celebrating its own cleverness, but Coburn and the gang, well armed with Perkins' and Sondheim's vast quantity of withering show-biz zingers, makes it all go down easy. 

                   The most fun wild card here is Dyan Cannon, having the giggling time of her life playing a thinly veiled version of powerhouse, wheeler-dealer Hollywood agent Sue Mengers, who was actually offered the opportunity to play the part herself. 

                     Our one and only quibble here.......early in the film, director Herbert Ross resorts to a blatant, cheesy technical trick.........and, sorry, but it helped to tip us off as to which  of these characters would end up as the film's primary murderous villain. 

                    Then again, maybe it'll slip right by most viewers......but even if it doesn't, "The Last Of Sheila"s still remains one hell of dazzling puzzle party. 3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2)

                    Deathtrap (1982)   World renowned thriller novelist Ira Levin ("Rosemary's Baby", "The Boys From Brazil", "The Stepford Wives") wrote the kind of ultra-twisty and witty stage thriller that's every Broadway producer's dream.....the five character, one set whodunit that simultaneously chills audiences while making them burst into laughter.  

                    That idea in itself becomes "Deathtrap"s best meta joke......since it's about a once brilliant murder mystery playwright (Michael Caine) whose string of flops has left him demoralized, destitute and more dependent than ever on his still wealthy wife (Dyan Cannon). 

                   Cannon's character, a high strung, easily frightened  woman with a weak heart, is aghast at Caine's new brainstorm to regain his fame and fortune........to murder a young fledgling playwright (Christopher Reeve) who's just sent Caine his first effort, a perfect murder mystery that would run for years and garner a huge movie sale. 

                    Or as Caine jealously puts it, "It's so good, even a gifted director couldn't hurt it."

                    And this is the point, dear BQ visitors ,where in the interest of your full enjoyment of this movie, we'll stop describing the cascade of twists and surprises that flow one after the other.......except to mention the funny supporting role by Irene Worth as Caine's nosy neighbor, a celebrated psychic who supernaturally senses foul doings every time she stops in.

                     As befitting a film directed by Sidney Lumet, it's an actor's feast and for thriller fans, "Deathtrap"s a 4 star (****) treat.