'WEST SIDE STORY' (1961).....HAPPY 60TH TO A TIMELESS CLASSIC AND FAREWELL TO STEPHEN SONDHEIM.....

 West Side Story (1961)    We do realize we're about 6 weeks late wishing WSS a Happy 60th Anniversary.......but at least we didn't miss it by an entire year, which we've done with a few other films......

                  We wanted to sit down and re-watch this film even if we've lost count of how many times we've done so over the years.........to savor it once again before it's due to be subjected to an onslaught of comparisons to Steven Spielberg's much anticipated remake opening on December 10th......

                   How's it hold up after all these years?  Beautifully.

                    At 60 years old, "West Side Story", co-directed by Robert Wise and the Broadway show's creator and choreographer Jerome Robbins, remains now and always a brilliant display of music, dance and cinema.  A perfect storm of creative talents coming together to produce timeless art.

                    After all these years, we didn't expect to find anything new to discuss about the film, other than our great love for it.  Yet watching it this week, with a more cinema-attuned (and elderly) eye, we still found elements we never appreciated fully in all the viewings during our younger days.

                     The expertise of the camerawork and editing of the dance sequences struck us first as if watching them for the first time. In shot after shot, Wise and Robbins position the camera from either above the dancers or beneath them, adding more dramatic power to the imagery.

                      Of all the gifted, athletic dancer-actors on view, we especially stood in awe of George Chakiris, whose ultra precise, contained fury dared you to take your eyes off him. We'd like to think his well deserved Academy Award for best supporting actor was earned as much by his sheer spring-wired physicality as his acting.....a unique achievement.

                        And we smiled in agreement with Russ Tamblyn's own assessment of his performance in the film......that he deployed his unique talent for acrobatics to cover the fact that he actually doesn't do all that much dancing. 

                      Another aspect that brought us all new appreciation......the expansive, eye-grabbing sets created by the film's production designer, Boris Levin. Once "West Side Story" finishes it spectacular opening sequence in broad daylight New York streets, the rest of the film exists completely on Levin's meticulously visualized display of the story's gritty universe......back alleys, rooftops, fire escapes, a world of poverty stricken streets ringed with chain link fences trapping the volatile gang members.  

                      Everything that went into the film still dazzles today as it did in 1961.....Leonard Bernstein's breathtaking score, the virtually atomic energy of the dancers, the aching vulnerability of Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood as the star-crossed lovers......

                      .....and of course, the perfectly constructed lyrics of the late Stephen Sondheim.

                   As the ultimate theater composer-lyricist, Sondheim left us with a lifetime of superlative artistic genius........which is  why it's little wonder that no one who writes, directs, acts or composes can imagine a world without him. He took drama, music and theater to heights that no one.could have imagined.  We lost a true giant.

                    To paraphrase a line we heard in a film once.......you can wait around and hope, but you'll never see the the likes of him again.

                      For "West Side Story" and Stephen Sondheim, forever and always 5 stars (*****). 

LIVE LONG AND BINGE!.....BQ BOLDLY GOES WHERE EVERYONE'S GONE BEFORE, THROUGH THE FIRST 6 STAR TREK MOVIES....

                 We've only considered ourselves a casual 'Star Trek' fan and never a a rabidly hardcore 'Trekkie'....(whom William Shatner  so savagely mocked in that infamous 'get a life' skit on Saturday Night Live.....)....

                   And we've hardly kept up with all the subsequent 'Star Trek' TV series and films.....and damned if we could remember a single thing about those three overdone, CGI-crammed reboot movies with Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto as Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock.....  

                    But to this day, we still well remember and enjoy the initial batch of 'Star Trek' films featuring the original TV cast......so we took advantage of the long lazy Thanksgiving weekend and went on a Trekkie binge through all of them.....

                    Here's what he hope serves as an easy, breezy recap for anyone who's considering taking the plunge into Trek-world....

Star Trek The Motion Picture (1979)   Everyone's ego got the better of them in this first attempt to turn a Star Trek movie into a bigger-then-big, dazzling visual spectacle....(instigated by the wild success of "Star Ward" two years earlier....)  Nobody involved in this seemed to remember that the original series collected its die hard fan base from people who thrilled to the character interaction and the stories......not the special effects wham-bams......

                  Here's the funny thing about it......we've come to embrace this movie for all of its famously recounted faults......it's studied, pompous self-reverential tone, its funereal pace, its over- reliance on gorgeous near hallucinogenic special effects (which only came after its initial special effects supervisor was fired for his below-par efforts) and the ridiculous costumes inflicted on the actors, which made them all look like spandexed Beverly Hills dentists. 

                   Above all, there was the glorious Jerry Goldsmith score, which the producers were smart enough to install as a permanent part of the ST universe......we'll never stop listening to Goldsmith's rapturous suite that accompanies the endless sequence of Captain Kirk's wondrous introduction to the refitted Enterprise.

                     Call us crazy, but as bloated and sluggish as it is, we appreciate the massive effort that went into it......and even came to enjoy the pretentiously ambitious  '2001'-like story twist to the mission. 3 stars (***)

Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan (1982)    Here's the warm, lovable 'Star Trek' everyone adored,, hugged and celebrated as a roaring comeback - especially after the cold, austere remoteness of the first film.  It's a continuation of one of the TV episodes, with Ricardo Montalban madly chewing the scenery and puffing up his rippling pectorals as the wrathful intergalactic convict Khan, as obsessed with  destroying Kirk as Ahab was with Moby Dick.....(even to the point of quoting Ahab....)

                    Loads of fun, not to mention way more realistically comfortable uniforms for the crew, which became the standard outfits for the rest of this series of films. And the tragic but somehow promising conclusion stunned the fans. A young James Horner stepped into the composer's spot with a rippling, heroic score. 4 stars (****)

Star Trek III- The Search For Spock (1984)   The first 'Trek' directed by one of the cast members with Leonard Nimoy at the helm.......and smoothly slides into a continuation of the Star Trek II storyline.....

                 A fine decent effort and by now everyone was getting familiar with the sturdy formula set up in Trek II......humorous, expected byplay between the beloved crew characters, a compelling story worth telling and competent but never overbearing special effects (used only in service to the plot and not to call attention to themselves.)

                  This one featured a wrenching (and unfixable) tragedy for Kirk that follows him into subsequent films and and an oddly cast but hugely entertaining turn by Christopher Lloyd as an evil Klingon captain.......and let's hear it for Dame Judith Anderson showing up as a Vulcan high priestess ( or whatever the hell she's supposed to be.....) 3 stars (***)

Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home (1986)    Nimoy again directs and this film, more than any of the others,  comes close to crossing into borderline 'dramedy' as the crew propels themselves back into modern day San Francisco to save the world from a future threat......

                  You can think of this as the one 'Trek' with infinite appeal to audiences that wouldn't normally go anywhere near such a film.  Loads and loads of comedic fish-out-of-water stuff as the confounded crew navigate their way through a 20th century world they they consider Medieval and hopelessly primitive.

                    Laughs, suspense, a heartwarming potential love interest for Kirk.....and whales!  What more could you ask for? 4 stars (****)

Star Trek V - The Final Frontier (1989)    Pardon us if go for the controversy here but we didn't find this one nearly as bad as everyone thinks it is.....a 'Star Trek' movie  with the singular honor of being dismissed and reviled by both critics and fans alike.......

                      Maybe it's because the reliable, proven Nimoy ceded the direction to William Shatner, finally exerting his clout to take over the director's chair as well as the starship captain's center seat. The resulting film did little to repair Shatner's public persona as a preening, egotistical diva.....(which at times the actor himself, in his good natured moments, enjoyed satirizing.....)

                        True, as an 'actor's actor', maybe Shatner did over emphasize the comedic byplay among the characters.....(and we really could have lived without having James Doohan as beloved engineer 'Scotty' do a dumb Three Stooges pratfall). And yes the script, does play as if retrieved from one of the many tossed out plot ideas considered for "Star Trek The Motion Picture".......(with the starship Enterprise travelling to the outer edges of the universe in an attempt to encounter the big guy himself.....God.)

                       Call us a heretic to Trek Scripture but we still found plenty to entertain us here. That even includes the solidly talented TV actor Laurence Luckinbill as Spock's problematic half-brother Sybok.........whose jovial, all encompassing messianic fervor to heal pain and bond with God proves his undoing.

                    Though it felt like a cheesy bad-joke letdown for a finale of a Star Trek adventure.....the film's climax resonated with us, given today's current political climate.  When true believer Sybok conspires to hijack the Enterprise and force the crew to bring him face to face with The Creator, he meets, to his everlasting chagrin......well, not God.   The entity posing as God turns out to be a raspy-voiced, pissed-off creature (played by veteran character villain George Murdock), a phony deity who's only looking to hijack the Enterprise himself.  

                       Sybok began to remind us all too well of a typical Trump supporter.....worshipping a despicable, malignant liar who's only out for himself......in other words....a con-God.

                    So to hell with whatever critics and Trekkies thought of this one.....for us, it still came out to a 3 star (***) voyage.

Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country (1991)   It's the final film voyage of the original TV series crew and a truly fitting one with a grim storyline that hurls them into as much genuine peril and dramatic conflict than they've ever faced before.....

                      Once again, as in "The Final Frontier", we found content in here that uncomfortably reminded us of today's world events......where Kirk finds himself a pawn and a fall guy patsy in a nefarious assassination plot jointly concocted by colluding Klingon and Earth generals......(essentially right-wing warhawks hoping to sabotage a peace initiative)

                      A total Star Trek package unfolds......political intrigue, suspenseful mystery, all the humorous character byplay....and a satisfying final kick-ass space battle against the odious Klingon warrior Gen. Chang (the great Christopher Plummer, growling out lines that consist almost exclusively of Shakespeare quotes, prompting Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelly) to mutter, "I'd give real money if he'd shut up".....)

                   A superb send off for all the familiar gang of Shatner, Nimoy, Kelly, Doohan, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols and George Takei......( as a treat for the fans, autographing their own closing credits at the end....).and throws in one of the best gags of the entire series, a meta joke in which Shatner lampoons his own world famous narcissism. (We won't spoil it for anyone left in the known universe who hasn't yet seen this movie....)

                  For all these reasons, we bestow this film with a 5 star (*****) FIND OF FINDS rating....and being a satisfying end to a 6 film binge. 

'THE CHRISTMAS PROMISE'.....AS HEARTWARMING AS AN UGLY CHRISTMAS SWEATER.....

 The Christmas Promise by Richard Paul Evans (2021)   Christmas themed books and films are usually after three things.......sometimes separately, sometimes simultaneously......

             1. Make you cry your eyes out.

             2. Make you chuckle with appreciative laughter

              3. Make you sigh deeply, with "Awwwwwww"  escaping from you mouth.

               We've never been afraid to admit when a Christmas book or movie accomplished any or all of these reactions from us......

                Sorry, but this book didn't do it. But not for lack of trying. 

                 In his attempt to wring tears and provide you with a teaching moral lesson straight out of the bible, Richard Paul Evans concocts a story so far fetched, so ridiculous and in its final twists, so borderline weird and creepy, it cancels out whatever warm 'n cuddly feelings it hoped to achieve. 

                  Richelle's an Asian American nurse who cares for sick and dying children in a pediatric Intensive Care Unit.  She carries an enormous burden of crushing guilt over her estrangement from her late identical twin sister Michelle, who died at the hands of a drunk driver. 

                  The twins' backstory vaguely resembles the parable of the Prodigal Son, with Michelle the wild wayward sibling and Richelle the sturdy nose-to-the-grindstone type......with the addition of a terrible shocking moment that drove them forever apart. 

                   Into Richelle's life comes Justin, a pitch-perfectly handsome, kindly, out-of-nowhere stranger whom she falls for hard.......even if he seems always evasive and obtuse about his own past......

                   If you're sensing a BIG TWIST in the works about Justin, you're right. Other readers claim to have guessed it ahead of time, but we don't believe them.  We don't think anyone could predict how foolishly off-the-wall this book's reveal turns out to be.......not to mention downright strange, like a twist left over from a cockeyed mystery thriller.

                   That ending, meant to elicit tears and smiles, did neither for us. Our only reaction consisted of shaking our head back and forth, muttering, "You gotta be ****in' kidding me....."

                   Zero stars  (0), unless you're willing to surrender all reality, common sense and any moral compass.  From us, this author wins a coal in his stocking.

                    

'GAME ON: TEMPTING TWENTY EIGHT'........THE STANDARD EVANOVICH BURGER AND FRIES....

 Game On: Tempting Twenty Eight by Janet Evanovich (2021)    We started reading Janet Evanovich's bestselling and beloved Stephanie Plum comedy-mystery series (in chronological order) over 20 years ago.....

            We were recovering from a fractured shoulder received during a stairway fall and holy Tylenol did these books make us laugh out loud and cheer us the hell up.........we couldn't gobble 'em up fast enough....

             A new Plum adventure has since settled in as an annual holiday treat, but somewhere along the line, the series settled into a fixed, unmovable formula, as repetitive and predictable as the last Quarter Pounder you ordered at the McDonald's drive-thru.......and whatever humor is left in them rarely  comes off  any better than mechanical and machine-tooled. 

               Little wonder why loyal readers of the series like us began to wonder if Evanovich was even still writing these books or farming them out to anonymous scribblers who work from a carved-in-stone blueprint......(similar to the assembling of Hallmark Christmas movies.....)

              Would we all love it if  once again, Evanovich would step up, become fully engaged with the series and put out a Stephanie Plum loaded with all the with laughs, surprises and sexual combustion of the early books?   

                You betcha........we can dream can't we?

                But right now, we'll just have to settle for "Game On", this year's standard entry and with all the expected characters, their quirks and tropes.......but little or no big boffo humor......

                  The good news -  Stephanie, the adorable but incompetent Trenton New Jersey bounty hunter faces a genuinely creepy, dangerous and formidable quarry - Oswald Wednesday. He's an utterly insane master hacker who's bumping off a collection of minor league nerdy hackers called the Baked Potatoes.....

                   In hacking the evil hacker, the potatoes inadvertently stumbled upon Wednesday's plan to engineer a catastrophic mass destruction event worthy of a Bond villain.  And Stephanie only thought she was chasing him because he skipped bail on a breaking and entering charge.  Popping up to to help her out is Diesel, the extra-hunky, vaguely supernatural soldier-of-fortune from previous books in the series......not to mention appearances from the usual Plum Universe cast.....the crazy Grandma Mazur, the plus-size, irrepressible ex-whore Lula, and the other two rivals for Stephanie's affection, the smoldering cop Joe Morelli and the super-dooper Security master, Ranger.

                    With all these elements carefully put into place, "Game On" provides the usual fast and entertaining pre-holiday reading......(we don't think we've ever had to spend more than a few hours on each of these books).   But anyone hoping for a Stephanie Plum book that'll recapture the spontaneous fun and explosive laughs of the earlier entries.......forget it. Not gonna happen. 

                     As comforting and expected as a Mickey D's burger or a slice of Thanksgiving dinner's pumpkin pie,  we still remain Plum happy when a new one shows up as regularly as a Wal-Mart special on flatscreens,,,which is how we know the holidays are here.......3 stars (***). (And Happy Thanksgiving to all BQ visitors and families.......

.                    ......try not to kill each other if politics comes up at the dinner table......

'KING OF COOL'.....DINO, WE HARDLY KNEW YE.....

 King Of Cool (2021)    If you're any kind of fan of classic films and TV from the 50's and 60's you do NOT want to miss this Turner Classic Movies documentary on the life of legendary singer-actor Dean Martin.

            Filmmakers Ilan Arboleda and Tom Donahue approached Martin's life in show business as a formidable challenge,  very much like the fictitious newsreel crew of "Citizen Kane", trying to unearth the essence of their subject.........who's well known by everybody......and never really known by anyone, even people supposedly the closest to him.

              As popular and beloved as he was throughout his career, Dean Martin remained remote and unknowable. To casual co-workers, co-stars, lifelong friends and family members, Martin revealed little of himself.  They only knew him pretty much the same way we the general public did......as that unflappable, too-cool-for-the-room, laid back tuxedo'd  hipster, a cigarette in one hand, a glass of booze in the other. 

              As the film works its way chronologically through Martin's incredibly charmed life, it searches for the performer's "Rosebud", some artifact, individual or event that would somehow define him and wipe away the cloudy enigma of his public persona. 

               Do they find it?  In the film's last few minutes, they think they do, but it's all a matter of opinion. 

               What we do know (and common showbiz knowledge since forever) is that Martin's marketed  image as a boozy playboy was always nothing but a false construct created by himself and publicity gurus to give the public an easy to remember way to identify him in the showbiz universe.  In reality, his greatest pleasure in life came from sitting quietly at home watching television. 

                  For Martin completists, it's all here - his years as the underappreciated, gifted straight man to the manic comic Jerry Lewis (whose own goofball persona effectively hid his true nature as a mean-spirited, misanthropic egotist).....the ups and down of his acting career where he proved in films like "The Young Lions" and "Some Came Running" that he was a much better actor than he himself or others ever gave him credit for......and of course the 'Rat Pack' years alongside the mercurial Frank Sinatra. 

                  All in all, a must see deep-dive into a classic icon of 20th century culture.  You still may not get to the heart of Dean Martin, but the film's a fascinating trip worth taking. 4 stars (****)

'A RAINY DAY IN NEW YORK'......THE CANCELLED ROM-COM FROM THE CANCELLED WOODY ALLEN

 'A Rainy Day In New York' (2019)   We decided to throw caution to the wind in doing this post, our very first attempt, since starting this blog, to examine a film that no longer exists.....

               No long exists?  Yes, we're not kidding......ask any of the participating actors who appeared in it......they'll claim they never heard of the film, they don't know what you're talkin' about, it never happened.....

              The few actors who'll admit to being in the film do so with the protective coating of having donated their entire fees to worthy charities......

               The film itself, dropped like a maggot-infested hot potato by its distributor Amazon, barely creeped into America via a few streaming services......(which is where we finally dug it out from....

               Such was the fate of any film pumped out by the once revered but now reviled writer-director Woody Allen, accused pedophile and most famously known as the creepy little guy who married his own adopted step-daughter and possibly sexually molested one of his other daughters.

               For a while, actors justified their presence in Allen's films with the "it's all about the art, not the artist" argument. But in in this new incendiary age of #MeToo and #Time'sUp" and extreme cancel-culture, even that excuse wouldn't  hold water anymore......and anyone using it might end up cancelled themselves......

               Undeterred by his status as Official Cinema Pariah, Allen's output remains as prolific as ever. But the quality of his recent films does nothing to shore up his  destroyed personal reputation .....so the whole "its's the art, not the artist" discussion won't work if the art isn't any good either. 

               'A Rainy Day In New York' is Allen's attempt at a witty, cosmopolitan rom-com ....this time populated not by aging familiar faces, but by a trio of younger stars, the radiant Elle Fanning, the over-rated flavor-of-the-month Timothee Chalamet, and the still criminally underappreciated Selena Gomez, 

               Chalamet's a disaffected college smartass named Gatsby (honest) who excels far more as a high stakes gambler than a student.  He plans for a romantic dreamy day in New York with his fellow student and girlfriend, the bubby, beauty queen Ashleigh (Fanning)......just as soon as she wraps up her school paper interview with a legendary iconoclastic film director Roland Pollard (Leiv Schreiber).

                 But Gatsby ends up at loose ends in the Big Apple when Ashleigh spends the entire day as a modern day  Alice-In-Wonderland, bounced all over town, either entranced, coveted and/or lusted after by the intense neurotic Pollard, his high strung cuckolded screenwriter (Jude Law) and a slick lothario movie superstar (Diego Luna).   Gatsby, meanwhile, keeps encountering his ex-girlfriend's now grown up but acerbic as ever kid sister Chan, played by Selena Gomez with the same perfectly dry comedic timing she so ably displayed in the Hulu series, "Only Murder In The Building".  Far and away, she's the MVP here.

               The three young stars spend the film's 90 minutes spouting carefully composed Woody Allen gag lines clearly meant for older, more experienced actors.......only Gomez, with her sharp underplayed delivery makes these all these artificial bon mots sound anything remotely like real speech....and funny as well.  Chalamet rattles off this stuff sounding like it was enough of a chore for him to memorize it all and Fanning's forced to overdo the Miss Congeniality shtick until she's tiresome to watch.

                Maybe it's just as well for Woody Allen that nobody outside of film critics and a few adventurous souls like ourselves took the time to view this awkward stillborn movie.......though we will say that compared to his previous film, the embarrassing, unintentionally ludicrous "Wonder Wheel" it's  a huge improvement.

                And sadly, that's not saying much.  1 star (*) and that single star is strictly for the only star here who shows star quality, Selena Gomez. 

                

FRIDAY MADNESS WRAP-UP.....SPECIAL 'WORST BOOK OF THIS OR ANY OTHER YEAR' EDITION......

              To start off our parade of insanity, this item, we swear to you, did not come 'The Onion' or 'Saturday Night Live'......who could possibly make up stuff like this.......

Baby Orange sells signed copies of his his picture book for $229.99.....At long last, the perfect holiday gift for all GOP MAGA death cultists with I.Q.s less than a cabbage...."Our Journey Together" a photo journal of those 4 fun-filled, race-baitin', toddler-jailin',  bleach-drinkin' years of the Trump presidency.  Through superhuman effort, Baby Orange even applied his stable genius long enough to write some of the captions.   And the rave reviews are pouring in.....

            "Best book I've ever read!  Actually, the only book I've ever read!" - Donald Trump Jr.

             "There's pretty color pictures so I didn't have to work hard to color them in myself and worry about staying between the lines!"  Eric Trump

              "This book should be on every white man's coffee table."  - Steve Bannon

               "If only there were a few more pictures of hot babes in it, I could keep in the bathroom" - Rep. Matt Gaetz

                "I don't really care. Do you?" - Melania Trump

                "Love that it's printed on glossy pages, so I could wipe the hair dye off it with a paper towel!"- Rudy Guiliani

                 "I could skim through the whole thing in 4 minutes and 30 seconds.....so I'd still have another 30 seconds left on my attention span!" - Marjorie Taylor Greene

                  "Very good book......I'm putting together my own photo book ,favorite pictures of Donald and my faithful Doberman, Sergei......calling it "Life with my two loving pets" - Vladimir Putin

                    "Every word a gem, every picture a masterpiece,  And just for me, Donald threw in a special 'Please don't hang him' pardon I can use in emergencies!" - Mike Pence

Kevin McCarthy rants to Congress for 8 and a half hours to delay the 'Build Back Better' vote.....prompting the Guinness Book Of World Records to declare him the winner its rarest tribute...."Most Amount Of Demented Tripe To Come Out Of One Person's Mouth At One Time"....with McCarthy now replacing the award's previous record holder, Donald Trump for his inauguration speech.

                  And believe it or not, breaking news to provide the perfect poisonous finish to this week's wrap-up.....

Kyle Rittenhouse found not guilty......and praised the Lord above for granting him the gift of Judge Bruce Schroeder, who turned the trial into a Trump-worthy clown show.  Rittenhouse, the gun-toting  Trumpanzee virgin who could only get a date if he pointed his AR-15 at her, praised his acting coach who helped him work on his whimpering routine before the jury.  When asked about his future plans, he opined : "So many different cities to visit.....so many people to kill...."

'RED NOTICE'.....THE STITCHED-TOGETHER, SUMMER-AT-THE-MULTIPLEX MOVIE......

 Red Notice (Netflix-2021)    It's fitting that Netflix outbid the major studios for the right this relentlessly generic all star-action-adventure, tongue-in-cheek heist movie.......

               'Red Notice' looks like Netflix had already birthed it out of the the same kind of algorithms it creates to figure out which movies you might like based on your previous viewings......

                 'Red Notice' unfolds like a pre-assembled, Frankenstein'd concoction, a perfect imitation of a junky summer movie you'd normally line up for to kill a hot summer night at the Multiplex.....(if you couldn't think of anything else to see...)..

                  Budgeted at a typical summer blockbuster 200 mil, it throws three of the premiere stars of CGI-loaded junk (Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot) into a swirling mess of ridiculous action scenes, snarky gags and endless references to the last 150 action romps and buddy comedies you sat through in the last 10 years.......

                  Johnson's an FBI agent hot on the trail of Reynolds, a master thief of priceless art and museum antiquities. (Do we even need to mention that Reynolds' resourceful rogue also specializes in spewing out non-stop one-liners in the midst of chases and shootouts?_Or could you guess that easily?)

                   Constantly outsmarting them both is the statuesque, drop-dead gorgeous international criminal known only as 'The Bishop' (Gadot, who, just like Ana de Armas in 'No Time To Die', dazzles as she literally kicks some asses in an evening gown and heels)

                    Our three not-quite-Amigos go 'Indiana Jones' globe trotting in search of the movie's triple MacGuffins, three golden eggs given to Cleopatra by Mark Antony. (or maybe Richard Burton gifted those eggs to Liz Taylor when they were shooting 'Cleopatra')   And naturally this leads the usual 750 CGI digitizers to fashion spectacular action scenes in which gravity is more of a rough guideline than a rule and any amount of catastrophic physical punishment shows little or no effect on our stars....

                   Johnson, Reynolds and Gadot dutifully troupe through the film playing the same cardboard-cutout characters you've seen them do in all their previous roles.  It's a tribute to their tenacity and professionalism that they managed to stay awake in their scenes together. 

                   But having said all that, we'll admit we didn't mind sitting through it at all. 'Red Notice' is so carefully, scientifically put together to resemble a mindless, big budget summertime crowd pleaser, that more often than not, we found ourselves......dare we say it.....entertained.

                  We'll even go so far as to say we admired and chuckled at one of the film's opening action set-pieces, featuring Reynolds confounding and outwitting a slew of museum guards as they chase him across multiple levels of construction scaffolding.  And every so often, one of the Ryan-ator's standard, patented, verbal snark-missiles aimed at Dwayne Johnson really lands......

                    How much you'll enjoy all this depends entirely on your continued tolerance (or lack of) for connect-the-dots, paint-by-numbers movies deliberately pieced together from random chunks of other movies that scored some big bucks at the box office.....

                    If you you get a kick out of these three particular actors going through their usual paces in their usual types of movies, then it's a 2 & 1/2 star (**1/2) mild diversion.  It's slickly machine-tooled to show you a good time......

                   Anyone who's getting weary of such films and finds them cynical, tiresome and soulless in their prefab construction.......keep on scrolling through Netflix account to find something else.......

                   

                     

                  

'THE WISH'.....THE MASTER TEARJERKER SHOWS YOU NO MERCY......

 The Wish by Nicholas Sparks (2021)    Even though Hollywood ceased automatically grinding out film versions of Nicholas Sparks' weepy, doom-filled romances (low box office), it's comforting to know that hasn't stopped him from pumping out a new one every few years......

                The good news for those who expect a good cry that'll require multiple tissue boxes......"The Wish" is prime, tear-wrenching, gut-punching Sparks.....designed to leave you collapsed and bawling your eyes out as you turn the last pages.

                  You'll find all the Sparks' tropes in play here......the terminal illness diagnosis, the sad reflection about a past littered with regrets for the roads not taken, and the blossoming of young first love against the impossibility of its survival.

                  Come to think of it, this book may well take its place along side the author's much beloved 'The Notebook' as novels considered to be quintessential Sparks......

                 Right at the start, there's Maggie Dawes, a 30 something, world travelling, world famous photographer.....now, during the upcoming Christmas holiday, she's living out her final days as a terminal cancer victim.

                  To Mark, a devoted young assistant at her photo and art gallery, she recounts her summer as a 16 year old burdened with an unwanted pregnancy. Her emotionally remote parents ship her off to live on a desolate North Carolina Outer Banks island with her ex-nun aunt, where she'll carry the child to birth and immediately give it up for adoption. 

                   What Maggie never counted on was falling deeply in love with the only other teen on the island, the boy who's been hired to tutor her as part of her aunt's home schooling efforts.

                    And that's as much plot as anyone would need to plunge into a Nicholas Sparks novel.......except to say that Sparks delivers a surprise twist to finish his tale and some final pages guaranteed to make his readers drain their tear ducts dry......

                    So now you know what's ahead for you in this book  should you attempt it.....

                    If you've always found the entire Sparks-ian universe (both books and films) to be shamelessly manipulative, maudlin and too formulaic ,then don't give it a second glance. Skip it.

                    But if you've loyally sobbed your way through all the author's previous books, then here's one that delivers the goods like no other. Prepare to turn on your waterworks, cause  'The Wish' will make your fervent wish for a 5 star (*****) Sparks-tacular come true.

                    Not that we ever cry while reading such things.......hardly ever.

'NEVER SAW ME COMING'......WHAT PSYCHO'S KILLING THE COLLEGE PSYCHOPATHS?

 Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian (2021)    We only wish this book had fully lived up to its potential.......cause its premise sucked us in like a nuclear powered vacuum cleaner......

            A college that recruits psychopath students to study them while they study?  Yes please.

            A psychopathic cutie-pie frosh who's out to fulfill her long held self-promise to murder a frat-boy classmate who raped her when she was 12?  You had us at hello.

            A murderer who's identified the 8 psychopaths in the collegiate study and is systematically stalking and killing them in all sorts of gruesome ways?  For the love of Norman Bates, hallelujah!!

            Everything was in place here for a juicy up-all-night read, but the book's start-and-stop pacing constantly kept slowing it down at exactly the times when the story should have made us tear through the pages at light speed. 

             We could tell that author Vera Kurian was enamored with her main character and primary narrator,  the feisty, sexy psychopath Chloe Sevre, whose hotness functions mainly as part of her weaponry.  Lacking anything resembling moral human emotions and empathy, she also lacks the healthy sense of fear built into normal humans......so in her quest to hunt down the hunter of her fellow psychos, she brazenly plunges into dark rooms and alleys like a fractured Nancy Drew. 

           Full confession: we loved her as much as the author and really hope she'll stick around for further adventures, just like the beloved and feared Lisabeth Salander of the 'Dragon Tattoo' thrillers....

             Forming her own Scooby gang,  she's aided by the dashing Charles, newly elected Class President and rich-boy psychopath (who's got a thing for Chloe and vice versa)......and Andre, a black freshman who's hiding the fact that he's no psycho at all,  but lied his way into the study for free college tuition. 

               Twists, turns and and the expected surprise reveal of the real killer await, but as we said at the beginning of this post, too many chapters slow the proceeding down with a lot of overwritten descriptive blah-blah-blah.

               But long live Chloe Sevre, we say and we'd love to imagine what kind of lethal chaos she wreaks during the rest of her college career....or beyond.  3 stars (***).

                     

             

'SKIDOO'.....PREMINGER FINALLY OTTO-DESTRUCTS IN MAD, MAD MAD PSYCHEDELIA......

 Skidoo (1968)   At long last we steeled ourselves to sit down and view this loony-toon disasterpiece, whose reputation as the craziest, most wrong-headed, most train-wrecky of 60's movies only grows and grows.......

          We had a fairly good idea of the idiotic lunacy that awaited us.....but nothing could prepare us for the experience of actually watching 'Skidoo'.......

           Back on 6/20/17 we did an extensive post on the crash-'n-burn atrocity of director Otto Preminger's "Hurry Sundown" (1967), a film that forever put an end to Preminger's series of Big Star, Big Budget, Big Issue spectacles.....(such as "In Harm's Way", "Exodus", "The Cardinal"  and "Advise And Consent").

            Desperate to recover some shred of cinematic validity,  Preminger, like a few other directors of his aging generation, foolishly thought to tap into the exploding revolutions of the youth culture.......even though the counter-culture upheavals of the late 1960's were as foreign and unknowable to Preminger and his contemporaries as the dark side of the moon.  

            Even worse, he decided to fashion his excursion into hippie-dom as a zany comedy, even though the blustering self-promoting director never once displayed a sense of humor in his life and entire career. 

            The result is a madhouse of a film that's akin to watching a youtube video of a fatal 50 car chain reaction accident on a busy freeway.  There isn't a minute of its 98 minutes that doesn't defy belief.......with scene after scene brimming with sights you wish you could unsee.....but you simply can't look away......

             This 'Gangsters Meet The Hippies' farce features Jackie Gleason as a retired Kingpin who's forced by his former crime lord boss  to sneak into Alcatraz and murder a fellow thug (Mickey Rooney) who snitched on the mob. The Boss, known only to one and all as 'God', is played by an addled, exhausted Groucho Marx, grossly made up to resemble a waxworks figure of his 1930's self..

                While all this goes on, Gleason's nubile daughter (Alexandra Hay) hooks up with mellow hippie guru 'Stash' (John Phillip Law) and his coterie of flagrantly stereotyped movie hippies.....(or at least Preminger's fractured cornball idea of what those 'wild 'n crazy' kids were like.)

                 And before we go on with more insanity, let's not forget to mention pop-eyed, gravel-voiced stage diva Carol Channing as Gleason's wife.......who, incredible as this may sound, functions as the movie's sex object, having her prance around in a bra, panties and go-go boots......(a sight we dearly hope will drift from our memory someday soon....

                  So off we now go to prison, where Gleason and the entire prison population, inmates and guards alike, all end up deliriously trippin' on LSD......(and please, we beg of you, don't ask for the plot machinations that led to this).

                   This all leads to the movie's penultimate sequences.......dancing trashcans saturated in blinding psychedelic tints, Gleason's prison escape in a hot air balloon made from vegetable sacks, a flotilla of hippies laying siege to Groucho's yacht while Carol Channing croaks out the title tune in a 'Pirates of Penzance' costume.   (Watching all this, you might begin to think you're tripping harder than Gleason.....)

                     As final icing atop this Mt. Vesuvius of Madness, an offscreen Otto Preminger introduces songwriter Harry Nilsson and a chorus to sing the entirety of the film's cast and credits......for those in the audience, we suppose, who've been left too dumbstruck by the film to even read the names that appear on the screen.......

                    And that cast!  Like Stanley Kramer's bloated, misbegotten, and equally unfunny "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World", you'll spot dozens of veteran character actors   Cesar Romero, Arnold Stang, George Raft, Peter Lawford, Burgess Meredith, Slim Pickens, Fred Clark, Frank Gorshin, Richard Kiel and, sorry to mention, the ever unctuous, inevitable Frankie Avalon........

                   Once again, in the interest of common sense reviewing, we'll supply two separate ratings for anyone daring to consider approaching "Skidoo".....

                    FOR AUDIENCES OF TRADITIONAL MAINSTREAM MOVIES:   You gotta be kidding, right?  Think of this movie as being trapped in a closet with a coughing, sneezing, drooling, recently infected COVID patient.....who's a hugger. Zero stars (0).

                    FOR AUDIENCES WHO YEARN TO SEEK OUT OFF-THE-BEATEN-TRACK, LUNATIC HARD-TO-FIND, ONE-OF-A-KIND CULT MOVIES:  Congratulations......you've struck gold, hit the mother load, ascended to Valhalla.....4 stars (****)

                   

'XANADU......THE WHEELS COME OFF ROLLER DISCO.....

 Xanadu (1980).....existed as the collateral damage left over from the blockbuster success of 1978's "Grease", the musical that officially anointed Australian pop singer Olivia Newton-John as American's Sweetheart.....

                As a comparison, you could think of this movie as similar to the leftover radiation lingering in the air after the 1950's and  60's H-Bomb tests.....

               We can say one thing in its favor......the movie helped hammer one of the last nails in the coffin of the mercifully brief Roller Disco fad that gripped the nation in the late 70's......and that death couldn't come soon enough......

                In the midst of the embarrassing silliness of 'Xanadu', we could detect what the movie was attempting......a simple, sweet, practically Disney-fied musical fable about a struggling artist (Michael Beck (the embattled delinquent of "The Warriors")who falls head over heels for his muse......and by that we mean an actual, ethereal Greek mythology Muse (who else but Newton-John......on roller skates no less...)

                 A tale like this required a director with a lighter-than-air touch, a visual stylist who'd throw in enough razz-ma-tazz to make you put your brain on hold and embrace the fantasy..... (yes, we're thinking of people like Gene Kelly and his collaborator Stanely Donen)

                  The director it got, Robert Greenwald, possessed no such talents and the resulting film stays firmly earthbound throughout. His pokes the movie along at an indifferent pace (deadly for a musical) and his mediocre, journeyman TV-movie direction only serves to accentuate how dopey are the cartoon-like proceedings.

                   Amid the wreckage, there stands, in his final film appearance, the immortal icon of movie musicals, Gene Kelly himself.   Ironically, he was 68 when he did 'Xanadu' and he's the only one in the film who looks comfortably at ease singing and dancing on roller skates. 

                   Newton-John bravely attempts tap dancing with Kelly in a 1940's-inspired number while the hunky Beck tries to keep a safe distance from any musical stuff.  

                   The movie clunked about and couldn't even benefit from its ear-candy array of fluffy pop songs from the Electric Light Orchestra, which specialized in  rich, bouncy harmonies that even your grandmother could hum along to......(the soundtrack sold wildly, even as the movie crashed and burned at the box office....)

                    Judged a flaming bomb at the time of its release and years later spoofed in a successful Broadway musical, we found 'Xanadu' moderately amusing as a Guilty Pleasure from a bygone era that no one's especially nostalgic about.  Maybe pre-teen girls might find it a hoot for slumber parties and anybody who's passionate about movie musicals might want to look in on it for Gene Kelly's film farewell. 

                    Everybody else probably shouldn't waste time with it......1 & 1/2 stars (* 1/2).

                    

'THE GREEN KNIGHT'...... A BLIGHT OF THE ROUND TABLE......(OR A MASTERPIECE???)

 The Green Knight (2021)   We're torn in half over this one and racking what's left of our brain cells on how to post a review that makes any sense.......

             We can't decide if this film is either one of the most imaginative, visually brilliant pieces of art we've ever seen......

             ......or one of the most pretentious, maddening and near unwatchable pieces of overblown crap we've ever punished ourselves by sitting through......

              Or maybe both? 

             Film critics went all in with that first opinion, lavishing 4 star praise on it. 

             And whole bunches of folks who went to see it, had that second impression.  Including us.

             So much to admire here, the eerie cinematography, the mysterious, dangerous atmosphere, the startling images, the subtle nuances of the actors. 

              But the film stays impenetrable and cut off from any connection to an audience trying to understand it.  With non-existent pacing, it stays stubbornly inert and a puzzlement from its first minute to its last.  

               This is not so much a storytelling exercise.....more of a beautifully rendered painting that's slightly animated, a carefully composed display of some dark, unknowable world swirling around in the director's mind. 

                 On its surface, it's a fractured re-imagining of the Medieval fable 'Gawain And the Green Knight', in which the untested young would-be Arthurian knight Gawain crosses swords with a monstrous, mythical opponent, the Green Knight. 

                Gawain, portrayed deftly here by Dev Patel, is a feckless, wayward wastrel who on behalf of his uncle King Arthur (Jared Harris) accepts the Green Knight's challenge to exchange one blow apiece.

                The Green Knight, some kind of giant talking tree, astounds one and all by picking up and reattaching his own head after Gawain's lopped it off.......and warns Gawain that under the rule of the challenge, Gawain has to meet him in a year.....and allow ole Greeny to strike the same blow in return.....ouch.

                 And after a year's drunken carousing, Gawain embarks on his epic quest to find Big Green and let him put Gawain's head on the...uh....cutting edge. Along the way there's mystical, harrowing encounters with thieves, giants, witches, temptresses.....and even a talking fox. 

                  We realize that we're running the risk of making this film sound entrancing and bizarrely exciting to watch.

                   It isn't. 

                   "The Green Knght" proceeds with lethal, sleep-inducing slowness, with no real interest in telling its story in any meaningful, compelling way to anyone who views it.

                   The film's obsessed with its own visual splendors and nothing else, crawling down its own rabbit hole, oblivious to an audience, but daring us to stay with it and make sense of it. 

                    We doubt anyone but lifelong cinema purists will take up the challenge of watching this film in its entirety. Life's too short to sit through a movie that's a such a pain in the ass to suffer through for over 2 long, long, long hours. 

                     Therefore, we're going to supply two separate ratings......

                     FOR CINETASTES, LIFETIME FILM BUFFS WHO'LL SEE ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING: 4 stars (****). You all need to experience this at least once....to say you've seen it before you die.....

                      FOR EVERYBODY ELSE WHO DOESN'T FALL INTO THE ABOVE CATEGORY:   Zero stars (0).  Don't go anywhere near this movie. Give it a wide, wide pass. You'll end up bailing out of it long before it's over..........

'BLACK WIDOW'......FRANKLY, SCARLETT, WE ALMOST GAVE A DAMN.....

 Black Widow (2021)    We always nod our head and smile a bit whenever we read about critics and audiences suffering Marvel Superhero Movie burnout......

               'Cause we began suffering that eye-rolling reaction to the MCU universe long before it became a 'thing'.....

                 No matter how much money Disney poured into these movies, no matter how aggressively they were marketed, no matter how much the Marvel fans either fawned and/or fumed over the fates and fortunes of their favorite characters, it always amounted to the same stuff......

                 .......people in spiffy costumes pounding on other people in spiffy costumes, throwing each other around like frisbees, pausing only for sarcastic meta jokes and assorted snarky wisecracks.....

                 And as we pointed out in some our other musings on Marvel product, reviewing these movies is akin to passing artistic judgement on a some national televised parade......(oooh, look at the size of that giant float, ooooh, look at the pretty dancers and acrobats, oooooh, look at marching bands.....)

                 Having gotten the rant portion of this post off our chest, let's just move on to all the things we liked about "Black Widow".......

                 Scarlett Johansson and Florence Pugh.....make one hell of a team of unflappable, indestructible kick-ass super-babes. (and who can resist Pugh indulging in some knowing mockery of Johansson's carefully arranged pose whenever she drops to her feet from heights that would normally kill a real human being......)

                  David Harbour and Rachel Weisz.....serving as a fake 'mother' and 'father' to Johansson and Pugh, who turn out to be fake 'sisters' as well.  The film only slows down in the middle for an extended reunion between this dysfuntional quartet of deep cover Russian operatives who posed as an apple pie American family, (a la the series, "The Americans" and the film "Little Nikita")  Oddly enough, it's the one feature of the movie that sets it apart from the other Marvels......and we sensed the actors were having as good a time at playing it as we did watching it. 

                  And the rest of it?  Usual Marvel boilerplate.......CGI car chases, CGI explosions, CGI vehicles, CGI stunts......all of which bend the laws of gravity, if not break them altogether......

                   Let us now pause (as we did with  'Fast and Furious 9') to send out our thoughts and prayers out to the dozens of innocent anonymous motorists who almost certainly end up either killed or maimed as collateral damage  whenever superheroes hit the road......

                  If you only consider yourself a casual spectator of the passing Marvel parade, "Black Widow" as one of the most accessible of the films to enjoy........no alternate universes that require a doctorate in physics to comprehend, no glowy alien objects that everyone must possess to control the cosmos.....and no traffic jam of costumed actors one-upping each other with non-stop zingers. 

                 Just four very watchable actors to show you a popcorn-gobblin' good time. 3 stars (***).

                    

TUESDAY MADNESS WRAP-UP.....TED CRUZ GETS FLIPPED THE BIRD....FROM BIG BIRD..

               A madness wrap-up so early in the week?  What can we say.......in today's political and cultural climate, insanity never takes a day off. For Example....

Aaron Rogers......we hardily congratulate this lunkhead for achieving a unique place in broadcasting record books - the first (and hopefully last) 'Jeopardy' host who's later revealed to be a blithering idiot and a cowardly liar.

Ted Cruz Vs. Big Bird.....The most punchable senator in U. S. history never disappoints......accusing 'Sesame Street's  beloved giant canary of government propaganda by showing the kids he's been vaccinated.   Like other members of the GOP death cult, Ted resents anyone who'll impede parents God-given right to let their children die gasping for breath on a ventilator.....

Kellyanne Conway claims there were never any supply chain problems under Trump.......therefore assuring us that we must have imagined the rows and rows of empty store shelves all throughout 2020....not to mention people hoarding vast stashes of toilet paper.   But even MAGA Trumpanzees beg to differ with her.....they still remember how tough it was finding enough bleach to guzzle as a COVID preventative......

Trump threatened to quit the GOP after losing the election.....and threatened to start his own third political party, which already had its own name and marketing plan....'Independent Imbeciles'

Mike Pence trying to hide pictures of him from January 6th.....one of the photos shows Secret Service agents fitting Pence with a steel neck brace in case Trump's lynch mob reaches him......

AOC and 'The Squad' vote against Biden's infrastructure bill.....continuing their master plan to become so obnoxious and repulsive to American voters that they'll help put Trump back into the White House in 2024......they all automatically received pool passes at Mar-A-Lago.....

Travis Scott continued his Astroworld concert for another 30 minutes after the the crowd surge crushed  people to death.....and already had a history of encouraging his crowds to go wild and storm the stage barriers.  His next big appearance:  in multiple courtrooms facing hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuits.....where they only people rushing toward him will be the plaintiffs' lawyers.....

                To finish the wrap-up on a positive note......a little bit of welcome sanity amid the madness

Saturday Night Live's new Trump,  James Austin Johnson.....doing a devastatingly accurate rendition of Trump that far eclipses Alec Baldwin's.......and arriving just in time to remind everyone of those nightmare years when a malignant and deranged moron conned his way into the Presidency. One glance at Johnson's uncanny depiction of Trump's demented ramblings is enough to make anyone's blood freeze at the thought of him ever returning to a position of power.......