'THE HATING GAME'......BETTER LIVING THROUGH ROM-COM CHEMISTRY.......

 

The Hating Game (2022)    We've sat through more romantic comedies than no sane person should watch due to running the risk of brain damage........

            Many of these viewings, of course, came at the request of BD (Beloved Daughter) whom we are forever powerless to deny anything......

             And if there exists one true and unalterable fact we've gleaned from sitting through all these romances, it's this.....

            Rom-coms can get away with murder - terrible plots, stale gags, the most exhausted, worn out cliches, and even annoying, grating supporting actors playing the best friends of the leads......

            As long as there's chemistry between our rom-com boy and girl.

            Yes, that elusive "chemistry", the subtle, unspoken spark that any rom-com's two stars must achieve.......to make us believe they enjoy each other's company, to make us believe they're soulmates, to make us believe them as convincing, credible lovers.

            Without the chemistry, it won't mean a damn thing that the movie's well written, well edited, well photographed.......

             If the leads don't connect, it's a waste of everyone's time.....

             Now here's the good news of today's post. This movie gets it right.  And the boy-girl chemistry goes off the charts almost from the very first scene.

             "The Hating Game", based on a best selling book, fiercely embraces the most popular trope of the rom-com universe (both books and films)......Enemies to Lovers.

              We all know the drill. They start out loathing each other, then slowly discover.....(as if we all didn't know)......they were meant for each other.  Hug. Kiss. Fade Out.

              The common recipe here usually consists of a sweet, passive girl up against a decidedly obnoxious, aggressive guy. But "The Hating Game" ups the ante by making our squabbling duo both domineering, take charge, Type A personalities.  The better for a Clash-Of-The-Titans smackdown.....

                Which the movie presents to us in Lucy Hale and and Austin Stowall as two execs in New York publishing company.....both of them hotly vying for the same big inter-office promotion. The stakes couldn't be any higher, since the winner will end up as the loser's boss.....an intolerable situation for each of them. 

                 We'll skip over all the usual plot details and get right to the gist of why we'd even bother to write a review of this movie to begin with (besides placating Beloved Daughter)......to make our point about rom-com chemistry.

                 Maybe Hale and Stowell aren't the most skilled and gifted actors we've ever seen in one of these things, but as far as chemistry.......they've got it to burn, almost up to 5 alarm fire stage.

                 And the script supplies them with plenty of sharp, witty lines to hurl at each other as they're sniping eventually turns to snuggling.. 

                 In fact, we didn't even mind that the film reveals something the actors cleverly clued us in on from the beginning.......that their characters have been secretly infatuated even while lobbing verbal zingers at one another faster than at a Wimbledon tennis match. 

                 And the physical disparity between the towering Stowell and the diminutive Hale became the movie's best visual gag......(gone are the old Hollywood days when actresses used to stand on hidden boxes to smooch their tall co-stars. Stowell simply picks up Hale to bring her up to kissing level.....)

                Therefore anyone who must concede the choice of tonight's entertainment to their rom-com loving partner.......we do recommend "The Hating Game". Believe it or not, you might even like it and LOL a few times.....3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2)

                 

                 

               

              

'PORTRAIT IN BLACK'......THE PRINCE OF HIGH GLOSS OUTDOES HIMSELF.....

 Portrait In Black (1960)   Let us now remember, with a little bit of fondness, Universal Studio's Prince Of Gloss, producer Ross Hunter.....

         As much as any celebrated film director, Hunter put his own personal stamp on his productions, which mostly consisted of slick romantic comedies and overheated melodramas.

         Big stars. Bright colors. Sumptuous settings and wardrobes (for the leading men and ladies alike)....in other words, Hollywood glamour at its utmost. 

         Critics may have derided Hunter's output as trivial, escapist fluff but Hunter and Universal laughed all the way to the bank.......(especially with his all-star disaster movie, "Aiport")

         Hunter, along with star Lana Turner, struck box office gold with 1959's now legendary weeper, "Imitation Of Life" and he hoped to catch lightning in a bottle again a year later with this movie.

         Similar to his "Midnight Lace", produced in the same year with Doris Day toplining, "Portrait In Black" was a ridiculously overplotted mystery-suspense thriller, culminating in an over-the-top, idiotic attempt to emulate standard Hitchcock tropes.  (See our post on "Midnight" from 12/30/21)

           Whereas "Midnight" had audiences rooting and fearful for America's sweetheart Day as she's driven into hysteria by a stalker, "Portrait" offered Turner and a miscast Anthony Quinn as secret illicit lovers driven to murder. Quinn, usually cast as earthy, gruff characters of various ethnicities,  looks uncomfortable and embarrassed in his attempts to simulate unbridled passion and lust.  

          Since Turner and Quinn play unsympathetic characters you really couldn't care less about, the film has to rev up the melodrama to absurd levels to generate an audience response. 

          And here's where the movie unintentionally shines.  It's hilarious in the lunatic soap operatic heights it reaches.......

           Yes, dead bodies pop as our crazy couple commences bumping people off who stand in the way of their being together.......but wait!  Who's the anonymous letter-writer who knows what they're up to?

          Is it Ray Walston as Turner's sleazy chauffer with a gambling problem?  Or the legendary Asian star Anna May Wong (making her final film appearance before her death) as Turner's  stoic, inscrutable maid.  (You know she's inscrutable because the annoying music score noodles cartoonish 'orientalisms' every time she appears.)

           Speaking of that ludicrous music, composer Frank Skinner scores the movie as if it were a Warner Brothers loony tune, there's not a solitary, single moment when it ever shuts up.

           But here's what's not be missed:  in a set piece that plays out like Hitchcock gone mad, the film has Quinn and Turner disposing of one of their victims in his own car, pushing it off a seaside cliff along the Pacific Coast highway. Turner's forced to drive behind Quinn in her own car, because he'll need a ride back after the stiff's car takes a swim.

            Except Turner's character can't drive. After Quinn gives Turner a 10 second driving tutorial, off they go down that long, treacherous, oceanside curving road......at night. In the rain .And Turner, who can barely keep the car in the correct lane, doesn't know how to turn on the wipers either.....yikes!.

             Honest, we're not making this up. 

             And this scene easily rivals the conclusion of "Midnight Lace" that featured a terrified Doris Day tightrope walking over building construction girders.......

             And that's why we enjoyed the hell out of "Portrait In Black", a  bona fide Guilty Pleasure if ever there was one. 3 stars (***) With Sandra Dee and John Saxon as the junior varsity contingent also appearing....)

(Special note: film buffs who remember Quinn and Richard Basehart together in Fellini's "La Strada" will appreciate the irony of their re-teaming here as well.....) 

WEEKEND MADNESS UPDATE......SPECIAL "WORM OF WORMS" EDITION......

          

    

           We can't even deal the madness this week.......

            And it only gets worse each passing hour.

            10 year olds slaughtered in their classrooms.....

            Images of parents pleading with police standing around the school while, for almost an hour, the madman prowled inside the school, searching for 10 year olds to slaughter.....

             And found them. 

             And following that atrocity, the GOP "thoughts and prayers" brigade arrives right on schedule. 

             This time, they're led by the most abysmal human being who ever found his way into elected office.....

              Ted Cruz. 

              We'll say this much for Cruz. Only Donald Trump matches him in his unrelenting efforts to race to the most bottom rung of humanity.  Presumably, he wants to arrive at the same level as bacteria and fungus on the evolutionary scale.

               He never disappoints in depicting himself as a Worm For All Seasons. Cruz stands tall as truly the Worm Of Worms.

              Coward, liar, bootlicker, minion......the Count of Cancun remains a staunch ally, defender and enabler of Trump, the man who sneered and mocked the appearance of Cruz's wife compared to Melania and accused Cruz's father of having something to do with John F. Kennedy's assassination. 

             Cruz, spineless to the very core of his soul, couldn't wait to bow down to Trump. 

              And his peculiar brand of madness never ends......when TV journalist asks him why America has so many mass killings, he could only do what comes natural to him.

              He fled the interview.

              We proudly present Sen. Ted Cruz the BQ "Worm Of Worms" award, a gold plated centipede.

             Nobody's worked so hard to earn it. Congrats to the Senator, our thoughts and prayers are always with him......

              But he wouldn't want to know the details of our thoughts and prayers.......

'THE TRAVELLING EXECUTIONER'....AND THE GOLDEN AGE OF QUIRKY CINEMA BEGINS......

 The Travelling Executioner (1970)   We are by far not the only blogger-critic-movie-buff who fondly remembers the 1970's as a breakthrough era for films.....

            It's the decade when the most daring, iconoclastic, off-the-beaten track film creativity found its full flowering......

             You could start to see it coming in the mid-1960's, when new directors with startling visions began to take on stories and subject matter unheard of in the Hollywood studio system factories of 40's and 50's.

              And these new bursts of fresh groundbreaking cinema came simultaneously with the collapse of the old moguls' studios and the rise of the Baby Boomer "Film Brat" talents like Coppola, Bogdonovich, Spielberg, DePalma and Scorcese.....

             Some of the most exciting times for filmmaking were just getting started......and sadly, when we look back on some of the crazily quirky, downright oddball movies made in this era, we can't ever picture them ever getting made today.....or ever finding the light of a projector bulb anywhere.

               Not when the vital arteries of today's film industry are clogged with the toxic landfill of superhero and franchise movies. 

               If we're going to kick off posts on the 1970's we figured we might as well start off with one of the most long forgotten, hard-to-find films that exemplified 70's cinema....

               Though its director Jack Smight was a seasoned veteran helmsman of 50's TV and 60' films, the script for "The Travelling Executioner" came from Garrie Bateson, a young screenwriting student who was all of 22 when the film premiered in 1970.

                 And what a script this kid delivered......and the rapidly crumbling MGM studio, who at this point would try anything as long as didn't cost much, gave it a greenlight.

                  Set in the rural backwashes of the 1918 deep South, the film's centerpiece is Jonas Candide, played by Stacy Keach as if he'd found the plum role of lifetime. A loquacious huckster with the gift of gab, Jonas travels from prison to prison with "Old Reliable", his portable electric chair. At $100 a head, Jonas fires up Old Reliable and depopulates Death Row inmates with cheerful confidence. 

                   Lucky for the condemned men, Jonas also employs his silver tongue to soothe his terrified 'clients' with a wondrous monologue about the 'fields of Ambrosia' awaiting them on the other side of death, a heavenly land of ripe fruit trees and young naked women.  (Keach's delivery of this speech at the start of the film is worth the price of admission alone and young actors everywhere would do well to study both the dialogue and Keach's masterful rendition of it.)

                   But than blinding infatuation hits Jonas hard when he goes head over heals for the very next murderer due to sizzle in his hot seat, the beautiful alluring German immigrant Gundred Herzallerlieb (a stunning Marianna Hill).  And thus begins the undoing of Jonas Candide, as he undertakes a series of desperate measures, both comedic and bizarre, to save Gundred from her...uh...high wattage appointment.......leading to a startlingly spectacular conclusion.

                  There's so much to savor here, starting with the rambunctious, bouncy Jerry Goldsmith score and a who's who of the era's best character actors - Graham Jarvis,, M. Emmet Walsh, Ford Rainy, Logan Ramsay, Val Avery, Stefan Gierasch, Charles Tyner, William Mims and James Sloyan. 

                  Not quite an earth-shaking cinematic experience but the then that's the beauty of 1970's films.....they didn't have to be.  Audiences then didn't require bloated 200 million dollar budgeted CGI-stuffed franchise films to feel entertained.

                 All we needed then were simply great stories and great characters brought to life by gifted directors and actors.  And we didn't care if the films only cost a million or less to produce. As long as we had a good time. 

                  And that, boys and girls, explains why we still hold the 70's as kind of a golden age for the kind of movies you'd never see today.....and may not ever see the likes of again.

                That's why we say track down "The Travelling Executioner"  wherever you can find it. We found it a literally electrifying 4 star(****) gem.....and not a bad place to start for the 70's Age Of Quirk.

'TWO NIGHTS IN LISBON'.....A GONE GUY ABROAD SHAKES UP THE U.S. HALLS OF POWER....

 Two Nights In Lisbon by Chris Pavone (2022)   Now here's an interesting mash-up of thrillers for your reading pleasure......an international based tale (with all sorts of CIA folk and U.S. Embassy personnel) combined with a good old fashioned domestic U. S. A.  dysfunction mystery.

           Throw in a backstory that ripples and quakes right up the highest levels of Washington D.C. and you've got "Two Nights In Lisbon".

We're far from the world's biggest Chris Pavone fan.......We can still remember "The Expats" trying our patience to the breaking point. But we had a much better time and far more enjoyable, entertaining read with this one, even though it's lengthy and reveals its many secrets at a slow deliberate pace.

             And as this strange collision of domestic thriller and global politics comes together, we got a kick out the author's right-on-the-money observations about the state of where we are today.....in the new age of relentless social media, toxic political divisions and the new increased efforts to hold the power elite accountable for.....well, let's just say a host of sins. 

              The plot seems to begin with a straightforward disappearance of a wealthy American businessman in Lisbon - and his wife's increasingly desperate efforts to find out what became of him.

              But as you might imagine in a story like this, there's way, way more here than meets the eye,  much to the confusion and growing  suspicions of the Lisbon police and the CIA contingent stationed in the city.

                The American wife, Ariel Pryce has a twisty backstory that unravels in bits and pieces and her missing husband John, seems to hold an equal amount of mystery swirling around him as to the how, where, and why of his dropping out of sight.. And before long, the plight of this odd couple manages to somehow escalate into very current events, with potentially monumental repercussions back at the halls of power  in the U.S.

                 Along the way to the book's big reveals and final twists, we felt Chris Pavone, took some amount of devilish fun depicting a few of his fictional political figures as uncomfortably close to reality, But every reader should decide on their own who they think's on the receiving end of the jabs here.

                  The book does finally uncork a conclusion both timely and satisfying which more than justified sticking with it to the end (unlike that miserable time we spent with Pavone's debut novel)......so by all means, 'book' an armchair flight to Lisbon and find out why this mysterious gone guy and his wife shake up the spies and D.C. bigwigs alike. 4 stars (****).

'SHE FREAK'.....A BRIEF STOP IN DAVID F. FRIEDMAN'S BASEMENT.....

 She Freak (1967)    Even though we've spent a lifetime hunting down and viewing the most obscure, bizarre and downright disgusting horror-exploitation films, it took us forever to finally stumble upon this one.....

            Go figure......out of nowhere it crawls out from whatever rock it's been under and shows up on Turner Classic Movies.....

            And now we've seen it. Mission accomplished.

            So you don't have to You're welcome.

            Unless of course, you're a dedicated curator and/or collector of the most unwatchable crap ever committed to celluloid.  If so, have at it.....Godspeed. 

            Everyone else should not mistake this for some guilty pleasure that, given enough consumption of alcohol or other mind altering substances, would give you a jolly night of unintentional laughs. 

             Not gonna happen here. 

             "She Freak", an amateur night stab at a remake of the Tod Browning's legendary, controversial 1932 "Freaks", came for prolific shlockmeister David F. Friedman.

              Before the onslaught of hardcore porn arrived and spoiled all his fun, Friedman was a tireless producer-creator of low-grade, drive-in worthy exploitation cinema......rock bottom cheapies fueled by naked babes and ridiculous amounts of gore soaked violence. 

               Yes, he's the David Friedman who, along with director Herschel Gordon Lewis gave us the immortal blood drenched trilogy of "Blood Feast", "2000 Maniacs" and "Color Me Blood Red".

               Don't let that get your hopes up.......not a single girl in "She Freak" gets her tongue or any other internal organs pulled out of her still writhing body. Not that kind of movie.

               It unfolds more as a snail's pace home movie of  a travelling amusement carnival. And we're not kidding about the home movie part.......it's really that slow and life deadening. 

              In the midst of this almost documentary tour of the carnival comes a hungrily ambitious trailer trash waitress played by Claire Brennan. 

              Brennan, a tall curvy blonde bombshell, sets her sights on the carnival's freak show operator,s played by the only familiar face in the cast, Bill McKinney. (Later to achieve instant fame as one of the hillbilly sodomizers of 1972's "Deliverance"  and then on to a long career as numerous creepy villains. )

              But a horny ferris wheel operator (Lee Raymond) with the hots for Brennan murders McKinney, leaving Brennan to inherit the freak show. Brennan hates the freaks 'n geeks, who hate her right back and proceed to........well, if you've seen the original "Freaks" you know what happens next.

               After a grindingly slow 80 minutes of or so of community theater acting, the now pathetic Brennan, attacked and disfigured by the freaks, makes a brief appearance......the film's one and only reason for existence. 

               And take our word for it.....so not worth waiting for. Zero stars. (0).

'THE 355'......4 GIRL BONDS (OR BOURNES)....EQUALS....VERY LITTLE.....

 The 355 (2022)     This movie exists for more or less the same reason as the all-female 2016 "Ghostbusters" remake.....

                Each flied a flag of female empowerment in the movie marketplace......a bold declaration that top-of-the-line women movie stars can lead a big-budgeted, junky multiplex popcorn munchin' crowd-pleaser just like the guys. 

                  .....and (we should add), not be resented, sneered at and mocked for the effort,,,,as was the case with the Kristin Wiig, Melissa McCarthy "Ghostbusters" 

                Fair enough. Point taken. And BQ's been first in line to see women kick ass since we fell head-over-heels for Dame Diana Rigg dressed in a leather catsuit and hurling guys over her shoulders in the beloved TV series "The Avengers".

                But after a weary, bored watch of "The 355", we need to ask this.....

                 If some of the best major actresses working today really did have the urge to blast away with glocks and kick men senseless........this is the best script they could come up with?

                 This guy was was the best director they could come up with?

                 That the burning ambition of these actresses (no less than 3 of them Academy Award winners)  was to star in a by-the-numbers, connect-the-dots, painfully pale imitation of a Bond or Jason Bourne extravaganza?

                  Really?

                 We wouldn't dignify this movie describing its plot in any detail......the 9 to 5 clockpunchers, posing as its writers and director, merely recycled it from the the last 25 action movies they must have sat through as research and preparation.

                 5 super-secret, super-dooper secret agents (Jessica Chastain, Penelope Cruz, Lupita Nyong'o, Diane Kruger, Bingbing Fan) chase, shoot and kung-fu their way through multiple world locations. The ladies never let up their hot pursuit of a little flash drive that can.......DESTROY THE CIVILIZED WORLD!

                Feel free to yawn anytime. We did. A lot.

                To nobody's surprise, the so-called director, a comic book movie bottom-feeder named Simon Kinberg (the catastrophic 'X-Men: Dark Phoenix') applies that ruinous Paul Greengrass editing to the fight-and-chase sequences......

                 So even those who'd sit through a junk movie like this for the adrenalin rush......well, they wouldn't be able to make out who's punching who anyway.....all of that stuff's chopped into worthless confetti.

                 We're guessing our four leads had a ball here, dangling from wires in front of green screens and rackin up a formidable minion body count just like all the guys get to do.......

                  And it maybe it never crossed their minds that the end product would look no better or worse than the machine-tooled, assembly line action movies that Netflix slaps together with algorithms.....or 700 other exact duplicate movies you can pluck out of the $5.00 Wal-Mart DVD bin.

                 Maybe they felt that it was enough to produce a film proving that a slew of gifted actresses could go slumming in a worthless piece of crap.....

               Which, considering the time, money and talent spent on "The 355", seems like such a sad, pathetic, limited goal.  1 star (*)

                 

                  

'BELFAST'.....THE ALTERNATE ENDING WAS BETTER......

 Belfast (2021)......Rest easy, we're not about to start some in-depth review of a film that thousands of critics and blogger already weighed in on.......

                   .......sure, we liked it well enough, this meticulous black-and-white auto-biographical story of writer-director Kenneth Branagh's childhood in strife torn Ireland of the late 1960's.

                    Vividly rendered trip into another era with a stellar ensemble cast......

                    Branagh's intention here is to pluck your heartstrings like a frenzied harpist, and he more or less gets the job done until he blows the ending. 

                      How so?

                      Let's talk alternate ending.......who can possibly count how many of those we've sat through on the 'special features or 'extra' of DVDs and Blu-Rays.

                      99 per cent of the time, you've no trouble understanding why these scenes ended up as "alternates"......for one reason or another, they didn't stick the landing. Or they just plain sucked compared to the final scene actually used. 

                       But not this time.

                       "Belfast"s alternate ending struck us as infinitely better than the downbeat, abrupt closing scene that Branagh chose to wrap things up. 

                       The alternate, corny and obvious as it was (looking like something you might see at the climax of a 1940's Hollywood movie), seemed to us perfectly in synch with film's overall structure.....in which current-day full color scenes of Belfast were used as bookends to the main monochrome visuals.

                        We'll even go so far as to say that Branagh's rejection of this ending robbed the film of the heartbreaking, nostalgic power it was aiming for.......and greatly lessened its chances as the film entered the last Awards season.

                         Anyway, that's our opinion on this one and we'll stand by it. With the ending as it stands, we'll give "Belfast" 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2). ......if the alternate had been used instead, there's no way we would've given it anything less than 3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2)

                         Remind us to keep checking out those alternate endings......

'TOMORROWLAND'....THOUGH CANCELLED BY DISNEY, WE GO BACK TO FUTURE TO FIND IT....

 Tomorrowland (2015)   We'd put this movie completely out our memory until we came across a fascinating rant on the internet.......

             A few folks noticed and bitched about "Tomorrowland" getting kicked off the Disney Plus streaming site....

              Huh? Say what now?

              You mean to say the Mighty House Of Mouse exiled one its own movies.....a $190 million budgeted potential tentpole that featured spectacular special effects and George Clooney, a major movie star? 

               True, considering the amount of money and marketing thrown at it, the film underperformed, to say the least.......the best that critics and audiences alike could rate it was something along the lines of a B Minus.......

                Sad indeed, cause the film represented a rare attempt by the corporation to create an original product instead of another remake, reboot, reinvention or ruinous live action version of one of Uncle Walt's old classic movies.

                Three years after this film, in 2018, they tried yet another stab at crafting an original effort, "The Nutcracker And The Four Realms"......it died even faster than 'Tomorrowland'......

                The result..... it'll be a warm day in "Frozen" before you ever see another Disney film that wasn't strip-mined from their back catalog......

                And now, with the banishment of 'Tomorrowland', they'd like rewrite history and pretend this movie never happened. 

                 Not so fast, Mouse-kins.......we tracked down a Blu-Ray and watched it. 

                 And damn, we liked it......even with its many, many problems that probably turned off kids and parents who went to see it. 

                 The major problem.....it's way, way, way too convoluted and complicated to digest within the context of a fantasy-sci-fi adventure that hoped to please the masses....and set up multiple sequels.

                 Kind of like figuring out the ins and outs of inter-galactic trade agreements in "The Phantom Menace"......

                 Most of the scenes containing the exposition of the film's dense backstory were deleted to streamline the pace......which left lots of acrobatic battles and frickin' ray gun zapping but only a precious few breathless lines attempting to explain it all......

                 We could only shake our heads imagining perplexed parents trying explain what's going on in this movie to their equally confounded kids.  

                 We'll take a very quick stab at it......as far we could tell, geniuses like Jules Verne, Tesla and Edison zapped themselves into another dimension to build Tomorrowland unencumbered by foolish humans bent on wars and global destruction.  A child genius, zapped into the futuristic city at the 1964 World's Fair, grows up into George Clooney to produce a huge machine that predicts the eventual end-of-times for Earth...ya know, nuclear war, climate change, yada, yada.  The current malevolent bigwig in charge of Tomorrowland (Hugh Laurie) had decided the apocalypse is inevitable.....so why not let it happen and give humanity what it deserves.......

                 But wait! A young teen girl genius (Britt Robertson) has been recruited to save Tomorrowland (and the world) by a cute-as-a-button robot child sent out to find fresh saviors.  And so teen girl genius and cute robot further recruit grumpy genius Clooney, (who'd been bounced out Tomorrowland by the evil bigwig.) The quest proceeds, with the trio hounded at every step by creepy robot commandos with disintegration zappers, sent out by.....you guess it.....bigwig Laurie. ...

                As much as we admired this ambitious storyline, it's barely explained overall in the midst of the dazzling renditions of Tomorrowland and the superbly orchestrated action sequences

                 Yet through all the stuff jammed into it, the movie somehow maintains a sense of innocent charm and optimism.......and it's tremendously scored to grandly exciting music from Michael Giacchino, underlining the wondrous vision of Tomorrowland created by Lucasfilm's Industrial Light and Magic. 

                  So we strongly advise BQ visitors to ignore Disney's backhanded attempt to cancel out this movie from their very own streaming service.......(supposedly begun as a one-stop destination for the best of their output)

           ,     Seek it out, we say. It's fun, fast, eye-popping to gaze at and far more worthy of your time than Disney landfill like "Cruella" and the atrocious "Lion King" CGI remake.  3 & 1/2 stars (***/12)

                 

MIDWEEK MADNESS WRAP-UP.....ANOTHER TRUMP-SPAWN CRAWLS OUT OF THE WOODWORK......

            

         

                 Let's be clear here.......since so far, we haven't heard anyone say this plain and simple.

                The loathsome little worm who crawled out of his hellhole and slaughtered 10 innocent people at a Buffalo supermarket has two fathers.......

                 His biological father and his true ideological father....Donald J. Trump. 

                 Nobody needs to be a very stable genius to trace the genesis of the Buffalo massacre.

                 You can start with Trump's embrace of the "birther" movement........

                  Then move on to Charlottesville, where the country's most un-American President announced that Neo-Nazis were "very fine people"......the kind of people that thousands of Americans laid down their lives to fight in World War 2.

                  Then move on to Trump constantly referring to Covid as the "China Flu".....touching off attacks on Asian-Americans

                  Trump's election became a blast of triumphant trumpets for the darkest, most evil souls in America.....racists, Nazis, and everyone else consumed with simmering grievances against people of color.......

                  They even had their very own news cable network, Fox News, where Rupert Murdoch's stable of clownish fake pundits spewed out Trump's toxicity every single night.......and still do.

                   At long last, these larva felt legitimized and could flaunt their hatred in broad daylight. The believed they'd found a champion.......in the White House, of all places. 

                  And they had no trouble discerning what "Make America Great Again" really meant.....that the English translation was Make America Like The First Half Of the 20th Century Again"

                  When people of color knew their place.......as less-than-human, second class citizens.....who shouldn't even have the right to vote.....

                And naturally, being less than human made it open season on African Americans, Jews, Asians, Muslims and anyone else whom Trump designated as unworthy........

                 To continue the clarity.........the monstrous cretin who took those lives in Buffalo may not share Trump's DNA.......but in every possible way, he's as much a son of Trump as Don Jr. and that other idiot whose name isn't even worth remembering. 

                  The lethal cancer of Trumpism may have been cut out of power in 2020, but it continues to metastasize across the country......

                   And like every lethal cancer, it kills without mercy. Just read the headlines.....

                  Something every sane, decent voter should remember in every election.

'THE GIRL FROM PLAINVILLE'.....TEXTING HER BOYFRIEND TO DEATH......DELUDED OR EVIL?

 The Girl From Plainville (Hulu series - 2022).....purports to be an account of the infamous Michelle Carter, the high school girl who through, marathon texting, convinced her deeply troubled boyfriend Conrad 'Coco' Roy to take his own life. 

            In a bold, unprecedented move ,a Massachusetts  D,A, prosecuted her for involuntary manslaughter, winning a conviction, for which she did 11 actual months in jail and the rest of her 2 & 1/2 year sentence on probation.

             As is the current fashion with streaming mini-series, this sad tale of teen angst gone awry gets dragged out to 8 tedious hour long episodes when the story could've been better told in a compact 2 to 3 hours.......

             The length leads to multiple problems......the script writers become forced to needlessly pad out the episodes with endless fictional scenes between Carter and Roy......none of which occurred but serve to reinforce the show's seriously skewed point-of-view.

            And that point of view,, reinforced by Elle Fanning's skillful, heartfelt portrayal of Carter, creates a character who may only exist within the confines of this mini-series and nowhere in real life.

             Fanning and the show's creators paint an overall sympathetic picture of Carter as a pathetically love-starved needy girl who aches for a sense of belonging.......to the point where she fantasizes herself as a star of her own tragic romance, with her in the role as the surviving partner of a star-crossed couple.

            Then this would explain, if you believe the show's agenda, why Carter had to encourage  Roy to gas himself while sitting in his pickup truck......so his death would enable her to act out his noble, heartbroken girlfriend, bravely carrying on after his demise and winning the love, symptathy and admiration of everyone around her.

               As much as we admire Elle Fanning's riveting, full commitment to this conception of Michelle Carter's character, it left us dubious about the truthfulness of it. To us, it practically smelled like a whitewash, a version of the story that sounds as if it were concocted by Carter's defense attorneys.

                It's entirely possible that a different set of filmmakers (who weren't set on making the series a showcase for Elle Fanning's performance) would create a much different version of Michelle Carter.....perhaps closer to how the prosecuting attorneys viewed her - calculating, devious and malevolent in the efficiency of her 'kill yourself' texts to the already anguished Roy.

                Which poses the question......which version's more believable?  Which one's closer to the truth of the matter?  Which one would convince you?

                 Since we're a major Elle Fanning fan and root for her in every project she takes on, we'll rate her and show separately. For Fanning's work here, 4 stars (****).  For the show itself, overwritten, overlength, and too freewheeling in its imagination of what happened, 1 star (*). Proceed accordingly.

             

'WATCH OUT FOR HER'......WHO CAN YOU TRUST IN THE NEW NEIGHBORHOOD? DOES 'NOBODY' RING A BELL?

 Watch Out For Her by Samantha M. Bailey (2022)

              How can anyone resist a fast paced domestic suspense ride like this one - where those nice houses in nice neighborhoods are stuffed with dysfunction, deception, and no end of disturbing secrets. And don't forget the hidden cameras, mysterious unknown stalkers and vaguely suspicious neighbors with possible hidden agendas......ooo boy, can't wait to move in.

              So let's roll out the welcome wagon for nervous newbie Sarah, husband Daniel and rambunctious little toddler Jacob. They just moved out of their previous home after a weirdly upsetting experience with their early 20's babysitter Holly, who desperately latched on to them as a replacements after her own family disowned her.

         But Holly's quite a story all to herself, which indeed gets told in previous timeline'd chapters that alternate with Sarah's currently dread-filled attempts at a fresh start.......a fresh start at a life free of Holly's unhealthy needy attachment to her family.

          The dread comes to Sarah from all directions......Who stuck the hidden camera in the new house? who's sending the ominous, semi-threatening texts? Who's the unidentifiable person skulking around? And what in the world is up with the pushy, nosy next door neighbor and that creepy guy across the street who keeps staring?

                And right there we've got every element in place for an absolutely riveting trip into domestic thriller-land.

            True, there's no real sympathetic characters anywhere in sight here but Samantha Bailey never ever lets the pace lag for even a single paragraph. She deftly avoids the fatal flaw of other domestic thrillers that tumble down the rabbit hole of internal monologues and never climb out again. We simply couldn't zip through these pages fast enough.

         And all the startling twists and reveals arrive right on time with the breathless finale......and maybe we;re old fashioned but we do adore one of those hyped-to-the-max, melodramatic showdowns that channel old Hitchcock movies....which "Watch Our For Her" nicely serves up. That always makes for a fast, fun 4 star (****) read.......so if you love this genre, this one's a 'don't miss' to put on your spring-summer TBR list.

'MY WIFE IS MISSING'.....A HUSBAND HUNTS FOR HIS GONE, GONE WIFE AND KIDS.....

            

               After plowing through a bunch of movies with varying degrees of quality, it's about time we honored the "good stuff to read" part of our blog mission......so here's prime page-turner more than worth checking out......

                  Since we had one of those "up all night for just one more chapter'" experiences reading D.J. Palmer's previous thriller, "The Perfect Daughter", we couldn't wait to inhale this one.

            Sure enough, it was yet another up-all-nighter.

             This domestic dysfunction, twist-filled tale doesn't sit still for a moment and starts off with a premise guaranteed to keep a reader glued to it for the whole journey, till the very last secret makes your jaw drop.

            How could anyone pass up a compelling set-up like this - Michael and Natalie, in the throes of a troubled marriage take their two young kids, Bryce and Addie on a New York City excursion. When Michael returns from bringing a pizza back to their hotel room, Natalie and the kids are gone.....with no explanation. But how? To where? And why?

           From that point on, this book is literally off and running.......with many, many secrets and startling twists to be uncovered along the way. Flashbacks from Natalie's point-of-view unfold some of the motives and backstories, but multiple surprises still await all of major players here - Michael, Natalie and a strangely chummy police detective, who for some reason takes it upon himself to join an uneasy Michael in the hunt for his missing family.

              We wouldn't dream of going into any further details that would spoil the near unbearable suspense and the "well, I didn't see THAT coming" moments in the final chapters. That's all part of what makes a book like this an absolute blast to read.

              Simply a superb nail-biter and by now, all psychological thriller lovers should put D.J. Palmer high on their "must read" list of authors. This author knows how to craft a 5 star (*****) FIND OF FINDS.

BQ'S HEART-HEALING MOVIE BINGE!

          As we rest at home, slowly but surely recovering from a bout of heart surgery, we couldn't think of a better way to heal than with a non-stop binge of the most eclectic titles we could pile up.....

            As they say on TCM......let's movie.....

Toys In The Attic (1963).....based on a Lillian Hellman play, this feels more like pseudo-Tennessee Williams, an overheated serving of Southern Fried Family Dysfunction.

             But damn, we had ourselves a good ole time takin' it all in.......veteran stage titans Wendy Hiller and Geraldine Page play two down-on-their-luck New Orleans sisters....(Hiller the world-weary one, while Page goes full delusional Blanche Dubois). They anxiously await a visit from their wayward,  ne'er-do-well brother (none other than the Dino himself.....Dean Martin, more than holding his own against the powerhouse duo.)

               Dino, a dubious  business wheeler-dealer suddenly flush with cash,, shows up with his sweet, childlike bride (Yvette Mimieux, sort of the Elle Fanning of the 1960's), The marriage doesn't sit well with big sis Geraldine, who's been nursing the forbidden hots for her little bro since who knows when.  And his attempt to rescue a former lover from an evil rich guy touches off no end of feverish melodrama and a turning point for everyone involved.    One of the films that wears its loud theatricality right on its sleeve and a fine showcase for the whole cast. . 3 stars (***)

March Of Die (1977)   One of those big pre-packaged international productions assembled by British impresario Sir Lew Grade and an early producing credit for Popcorn Junk mogul Jerry Bruckheimer. 

                We guess this must have looked great on paper.......sweeping action-romance about the 1920's French Foreign Legion struggling to maintain colonial control over hostile Arab tribes.

                But, no, it mostly lies there inert and by-the numbers until the Legionnaires finally meet their Alamo-Custer's Land Stand as the hands of the howling tribesmen. 

                Indifferent bored performances from Catherine Deneuve and of all people, Gene Hackman, who looks like he's counting the days until he could escape the set. And yet another failed attempt to make a big star out of the Spaghetti Western prettyboy, Terence Hill.  Mostly dull 1 & 1/2 stars (*1/2)

Brannigan (1975)   By far the better of  John Wayne's two attempts to jump on the "Dirty Harry" bandwagon of Tough Cops Who Take No Prisoners.  (the other being "McQ") The Duke goes to London where he tries to extradite a Chicago kingpin (John Vernon) who's taken up British residence with his slippery scheming lawyer (Mell Ferrer.)

                 Well that doesn't sit well with the Duke, especially when Vernon's kidnapped under the not-so-watchful eye of a Scotland Yard commander (Richard Attenborough), who's not crazy about Wayne's freewheeling policing.  (Call us old-fashioned, but we loved the cornball pub brawl that features Wayne and Attenborough doing Wild West Saloon punch-outs.)

                  Don't mind admitting, we enjoyed this one, as standard and predictable as it was. Throws in all the expected Bull-In-A-China-Shop tropes as the two fisted Wayne outrages the stiff upper lip Attenborough, but still charms his young policewoman minder (the ultra-cute starlet Judy Geeson). And director Douglas Hickok really moves it along. 3 stars (***)

                

'THE HUNCHBACK OF SOHO'.....KRIMI MADNESS IN FULL COLOR!!

 The Hunchback Of Soho (1966)   We know the first question some of you must be asking......

               "What the **** is a Krimi?"

               Of all the strange sub-genres we've stumbled upon in our never ending search for weird, obscure cinema, the West German produced 'Krimi' thrillers of the 1960's and 70's were a genuine find......'Krimi' being short for Kriminalfilm, a series of creepy thriller-murder mysteries based on the piles of fogbound London whodunits pumped out by the prolific Edgar Wallace.  (Yes, the same writer who collaborated on the orignial "King Kong" script.)

                 Somehow (don't ask us), these books and films became huge favorites in Germany, where audiences couldn't get enough of them......pulpy,semi-bizarre, borderline horror tales in which dogged British police detectives hunted down evil murderous conspiracies, usually in stately manors and/or castles where either a hooded, costumed figure or a hulking minion racked up a sizable body count.

                  The 'Krimi's threw together a wild 'n crazy mixture of Agatha Christie, grotesque villains, Germanic noir and perverse violence that would later find its full flowering in the Italian "Giallo" genre of sex-oriented slashers. 

                   And if you watch enough of them, you could have no end of fun spotting future international stars like "Goldfinger"s Gert Frobe, the stunning Karin Dor (of "You Only Live Twice" and Hitchcock's "Topaz)......and cinema's all-time legendary madman, Klaus Kinski. 

                    We did encounter a batch of them when some English-dubbed versions wandered over to American TV stations in the mid-'60's (along with with loads of Spaghetti westerns and James Bond knock-offs). 

                     And here's our fave of the bunch, the first Krimi shot in ripe, bright color after all the black-and-white ones.

                     Everything's in place here, starting with the always loud, insistent jazzy music that precedes the first of many gristly murders in a Sherlock Holmes-ian never-neverland Britain. Given the title, of course it's a shambling, loony hunchback who's knockin' 'em dead.

                      A sweet, adorable heiress to a relative's fortune finds herself kidnapped and enslaved in a basement laundry along with other nubile girl delinquents. Holding the babes captive are an oddball crew indeed - a supposedly pious reverend, a whip-wielding matron and a vicious hitman .. They've replaced the heiress with a phony double to scoop up the inheritance, and anyone who thwarts their plans gets a strangulation appointment with that hulk with the posture problem........ 

                     That's all you need to know as the film careens from one lurid sequence to another, with special attention given to the pretty laundress chain gang and Hunch-Guy's neck-wringing.

                     We dearly love uncovering Euro-Junk like this, but we realize it's not for everyone. Even as they leave murder victims generously strewn everywhere, there's a quaint, innocent charm to the 'Krimi's......probably from their steadfast adherence to Edgar Wallace's Jolly-Olde-England atmosphere.

                     With all the elements in play here......horror, mystery, surprise twists and hints of sadism and sexual perversity, the 'Krimi' offers a sneak preview of the heartless, blood-soaked carnage that would dominate the European genre films throughout the 1970's.

                       So if we intrigued you enough to sample one, hunker down with "The Hunchback Of Soho", a 3 star (***) best-of-the-bunch......

                

'THE BUBBLE'.....MAKING MULTIPLEX JUNK, MID-PANDEMIC....

 The Bubble (2022).......serves as writer-director Judd Apatow's gargantuan raised middle finger to a Hollywood industry now devoted solely to pumping out soulless, mindless CGI franchise sludge to clog up theater chains much in the same way cholesterol blocks arteries. 

                And who knows.....at a swift, sharp 80 to 85 minutes, this satire of all the current standard Hollywood tropes and stereotypes, might've come out as a fast 'n funny treat......

                 Nope. That didn't happen. 

                 Instead, at a repetitive, tortuous 126 minutes, Apatow pounds away at the same targets over and over again.......self-absorbed idiot actors, overpraised fatuous directors, rapacious agents and studio bigwigs and the ever omnipresent green screens used to fashion comic-book garbage for the multiplex masses......(most of whom line up to view this landfill in China....).

                  He's preaching strictly to the choir who follow the rising and falling fortunes of the film industry, but by the time this movie exhausts the last one its 30,000 barbs, even the choir could find themselves yawning. 

                   There is one good idea in play here.....setting the story at the tail end of 2020, where the studio decides to risk making the next installment of their cash cow action-adventure franchise while COVID still rages worldwide. To this end, they establish and enforce a quarantine 'Bubble' in which to make the film.....on the grounds of a luxury hotel housing the cast and crew. 

                   This means all the movie folk, each of them an imbecilic loon of varying degrees  are stuck together as the shooting schedule drags on, month after month. 

                    The concept's funny for the first 20 minutes or so.....the idea of the actors, all of them working on their last nerve to begin with,(and very little sanity) succumbing to rising heights of anger, panic and idiocy as the shoot drags on, under its woeful, clueless director (Fred Armison), a film festival geek who won Sundance with film he shot on his IPhone.

                     But in a case in insular art imitating art, "The Bubble" itself drags on and on right along with the toxic movie it's chronicling - ("Cliff Beasts", an all too typical CGI crapfest, forcing actors to bounce around on wires, pretending to dodge flying dinosaurs..)

                     Long before Judd Apatow finally fires off his umpteenth gag at the expense of the faux-movie and its increasingly unstable personnel, we found ourselves begging for mercy to escape the endless torment as much as the characters did. 

                     After suffering through excrement like 'Moonfall' and 'The Eternals', we couldn't agree more that the film industry had this coming to it.........but "The Bubble" quickly becomes too much of a slim joke pounded into the ground until it gasps its last breath. 

                      Which leads to a 126 minute comedy that's just not that funny. 1 star (*).