'SKYJACKED'....MGM'S BUDGET-MINDED DISASTERPIECE.....

 Skyjacked (1972)    Oh how we moviegoers loved our disaster movies all through the 1970's......all-star casts thrown together on airplanes, skyscrapers, cruise ships......and then subjected to crashes, fires, explosions, earthquakes, tidal waves,....and Richard Nixon.  

             (Okay, I personally threw in that last one, but it turned out Nixon was just as catastrophic as watching the good ship Poseidon tossed upside down......oh the humanity....)

              Leave it to MGM, rapidly crumbling under the command of James "smiling cobra" Aubrey, to pump out a quick, low budget airplane disaster movie on the heel of Universal's  1970 monster hit "Airport". 

             "Skyjacked" benefited in three big ways......the first of the genre to take advantage of using a  ripped-from-the-headlines villain -- a hijacker forcing the plane to take him to.....well, wherever he decides to go.  In real life, long before our post-9-11 world of stringent security, hijackers were commandeering airplanes left and right, with Cuba usually their preferred destination.  This happened so often, 'take-this-plane-to-Cuba' hijackings became punchlines for stand-up comedians.

               Second big plus......the presence of Moses-Ben Hur himself, Charlton Heston as the clenched jaw pilot contending with planeful of hysterical passengers and a mad, mad, mad, mad hijacker.  As cheap and slapped together as this movie looks, Heston's carved-in-granite gravitas makes you believe you're viewing a multi-million dollar epic. 

               Third bonus......the film's direction fell to to the highly efficient John Giulllermin, one of those British Field Marshall directors put in charge of massive projects one of, Her Majesty's Movie Traffic Managers.....(he'd go on to co-direct 1974's "The Towering Inferno" and the 1976 "King Kong" remake)

               Given the spitball script and a made-for-TV movie cast of familiar faces, Guillermin keeps things moving right along, with the exception of some dopey, clumsy scenes shoe-horned into the film - romantic flashbacks for Heston and the mad, mad, mad , mad hijacker's delirious fantasies.

                Ah yes, let us now get to Mr. Hijack.....played by journeyman TV hunk James Brolin. He appears to be an Army combat veteran driven utterly bonkers enough to seek asylum and glory in.....Soviet Russia. You heard that correctly, this bug-eyed loony tune wants the plane flown to Moscow, where he dreams of a hero's welcome.....heh, heh, heh. 

                No need to go on with any further plot machinations.......the real fun here comes from the early 1970's renditions of airline travel.....

                 No TSA pat-downs or X-ray scanning.......feel free to smoke on the plane: Heston fills up the cockpit with clouds of pipe tobacco, and speaking of the cockpit, it's easier to access than the bathrooms. 

                 BQ's own person favorite  among the cast......Marriette Hartley as a woman who thought it was a good idea to fly while 8 months pregnant, and turns down a glass of milk, preferring to swig a Bloody Mary. To the surprise of nobody who's ever seen a disaster film, she goes into labor as Brolin's threatening to blow everybody to Kingdom Come......and in this slightly kinder, gentler era of birth depictions, her labor pains sound  discreetly muted, similar to a case of mild indigestion. 

                  For all the above reasons, I can't say I didn't enjoy revisiting "Skyjacked", a junky but diverting chunk of trivia unearthed from a 1970's time capsule.  If you're looking for a guilty pleasure from that era, you could do a lot worse.......2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)

              

                

'THE NAKED SPUR'....DARKEST NOIR IN THE GREAT OUTDOORS

 'The Naked Spur' (1953)   Of the five westerns director Anthony Mann made with star James Stewart, this one's considered the best of the bunch......and I'm not disagreeing.

            All five of the Mann-Stewart westerns are fine to varying degrees but this one, a simple, primal five character piece, earns its well deserved reputation as a near perfect, classic western. 

             In the Mann westerns, the good ole Jimmy Stewart that we all know and love, the stammering, stuttering, aw-shucks, Americana good guy.....he's nowhere to be found.

             Stewart, literally battle-hardened from his World War 2 Air Force combat missions returned to Hollywood stardom ready for roles that would take him to the dark side.  He more than fully embraced the raging, obsessive, quick-to-violence characters that Mann and his screenwriters devised for him. 

             In "Naked Spur" he's Howard Kemp, a grim bounty hunter on the trail of Ben Vandergroat (Robert Ryan), a grinning,  murdering outlaw with a $5000 price on his head.  Kemp desperately wants the reward to buy back the ranch he lost while fighting in the Civil War......a ranch sold off by his duplicitous fiance who further betrayed him by running off with the cash and another man. 

             Kemp finally captures Vandergroat, who'd taken along young Lina Patch (Janet Leigh) the daughter of one of his cohorts.  But the capture's only made with the help of two unwanted allies he met along the trail, old prospector Jesse Tate (Millard Mitchell) and dishonorably discharged cavalryman Roy Anderson (Ralph Meeker). Roy affects the personality of a cheerful rogue, but in reality, he's a rapist with an Indian war party hunting him down for assaulting one of their women.  

             With Kemp, Jesse and Roy now forced to divide up the reward three ways, the sly, devilish  Vandergroat seizes every opportunity to pit the three men against each other.....and as this suspicious unhappy group make their way through the spectacular, picture-postcard landscapes of the Colorado Rockies, violence and major reversals-of-fortune befall them. 

             Stewart excels as always in the icy single-mindedness of his  character, with the glimmers of humanity sometimes seeping through the hard shell he's build around himself. . But by far the true acting honors here go hands down to Ryan,,,, delivering a skilled portrait in sociopathic evil that 1950's audiences rarely saw depicted in traditional Hollywood westerns of the era.   (another plum role that Ryan added to his already growing gallery of hiss-worthy movie villains). 

              You can trust cinema historians and BQ on this one, it's a genuine, bona fide, must see classic..... a 5 star (*****) FIND OF FINDS.  And today's crop of filmmakers, with their bloated 150 to 180 minute long movies, would do well to study the lean, mean 91 minutes of "The Naked Spur".....and maybe maybe learn something about swift, concise storytelling.......

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP.....SPECIAL "THE DIVIDED STATES OF MTG" EDITION.....

 Putin pulling what's left his hair out over Biden's trip to Ukraine....... "If only I'd had my useful idiot Trump in the White House, he would've sit back and let me march into Kiev and peel Zelensky's skin off!"

Fox News revealed to know all along that Trump's Big Lie was total bullshit.....and that their rabid hosts knew the people surrounding Trump, like Giuliani and the Pillow Guy were babbling imbeciles......Admitted Tucker Carlson, "What can we say?  The brain dead mooks who watch us just love it when we foam at the mouth on behalf of Trump.....jacks up the ratings like you wouldn't believe!"

Marjorie Taylor Greene wants America divided up by red states and blue states......Explained Greene "Red states can defend themselves with no help from any Federal government! We've got more people with automatic weapons who can shoot down any laser-equipped Jewish balloons sent by blue states..."

Kevin McCarthy turns over vast amount of Jan. 6th security footage to.....Tucker Carlson..."Oh don't worry," McCarthy assured critics, "I took out all the stuff with our peaceful tourists trying to impale cops with American flags.....Tucker just wants the footage of them wandering through Congress, harmlessly posing for selfies.....

Rep. Jim Jordan's "GOP Empire Strikes Back" investigative committee announces subpoenas issued to all M & M candy mascots....."We're gonna get to the bottom of this whole woke candy scandal and fair warning.....Legos better get their house in order..."

Marjorie Taylor Greene, in an interview with Tucker Carlson, says we've got to stop supporting the "war on Russia in the Ukraine......".....when are we going to realize it's not Russia's fault when those stupid Ukrainian women and children keep stepping in front of Russian missiles and bullets...it's their own damn fault!"

'THE MENU'....WHATEVER'S ON IT, SEND IT BACK.....

 The Menu (2022)    The one and only reason I resigned myself to watching this vomit-inducing atrocity came from my undying love and admiration for Anya Taylor-Joy......an actress for whom I'd sit down to view her reading from a phone book for two hours.......

           ATJ reading the phone book would've been infinitely more profound and entertaining than this wretched example of film festival culture-vulture-ism at its worst. 

          How do I despise this pretentious, self-satisfied turd of a movie......let me count the ways.....

           The filmmakers behind this phony, would-be social satire sought to blend their pathetic stabs at black comedy with artsy-fartsy horror.......once again, a prime example of delusions of adequacy gone off the rails......

            BQ's favorite Anya plays the gal pal of of a rabid foodie (Nicholas Hoult) who's been invited an exclusive  remote island restaurant......along with a host of other uppercrusters, all of them obnoxious in varying degrees. 

            The legendary master chef in charge (Ralph Fiennes) oversees an ominous kitchen staff who snap to his attention like a platoon of robotic Nazi stormtroopers. 

             As the weird evening proceeds, it first seems to lurch into 'Knives Out' territory, with assembled diners as the rich, entitled unusual suspects. But ultimately it's Chef Ralph's revenge feast on this gang who've wronged him in one way or another.......and death's on the menu for everybody...

             From that point on, tedious eye-rolling, supposedly shocking horror tropes get rolled out... and.all of this puffed-up nonsense leads to a climax  requiring the actors to abandon normal human behavior in service of .....well, I could almost hear the writers and director of this sludge patting themselves on the back for their false sense of ghoulish cleverness

             Grandiose, bogus garbage from beginning to end, "The Menu" more than earns BQ's worst of all possible ratings, the AFH....the ABOMINATION FROM HELL.

             And yet my love and admiration for Anya Taylor-Joy still stands.....she's terrific as always, and still worth the cinematic torture I endured for her.    

'PT 109'....JFK'S OWN PROFILE IN COURAGE, AS SPIFFED UP BY JACK L. WARNER

PT 109  (1963)    Consider the circumstances surrounding this slickly made, standard Hollywood war movie......you're never likely to see anything like this repeated again......

             Imagine a biographical film depicting the thrilling World War 2 exploits of young John F. Kennedy....now imagine it.in release halfway into the third year of Kennedy's term as President Of The United States.....

              I'm thinking Warner Brothers would have caught all kinds of hell from the GOP if they'd put the film into theaters a year earlier, before the mid-term elections....(heh heh heh).......

              Warner's and its formidable chief mogul, Jack L. himself, allowed Kennedy to pick out the actor to play him. And the Prez picked out, of all people, Cliff Robertson....who, at the time of his casting, would be close to 15 years older than the real Kennedy during his time commanding a torpedo boat in Pacific sea battles. 

 

               A wise choice, as it turned out.....Robertson's Kennedy expertly combined youthful enthusiasm with a steely, courageous resolve.  And hats off to Robertson or whoever else made the decision to have him avoid attempting to duplicate Kennedy's distinctive Boston accent......(though at one point, when discussing his background, Robertson jokingly pronounces 'Harvard' as 'Haahhvahhd')

                Not much to discuss about the film itself. It's a sturdy, standard, Hollywood version of World War 2 conflict, brightly Technicolored and sanitized for family audiences with not a drop of blood and guts in sight.....virtually carbon-copied from  the same template as hundreds of films that came before it.

 

                On the plus side, the pivotal moment of Kennedy's  PT 109 command - the literal bisecting of his craft by a Japanese destroyer - is rendered with as much harrowing spectacle as Warner Brothers could pour into it.  And viewers who love spotting familiar character actors will find a treasure trove of them here, including a young Robert Blake ,James Gregory, Norman Fell, George Gaynes, Ty Hardin, and the Incredible Shrinking Man himself, Grant Williams.)

                 The only real surprise for me came at the end credits, revealing the very stirring, Max Steiner-ish score that plays non-stop through the entire film came not from Steiner, but from two Warner Bros.  musical journeymen, William Lava and David Buttolph. Their combined score's incessant but highly effective and duly rousing.

               And as we all know, to the country's everlasting sorrow, Kennedy death at an assassin's hands marked the end of American optimism and innocence.....as well as the beginning of the end of stand-up-and-cheer war movies like 'PT 109'.....

               Perhaps old fashioned and antiquated for the cynical, divisive and blood-soaked world we live in now......but BQ couldn't help enjoying another viewing of this film........a simple direct 3 star (***) celebration of pure courage.....a breath of fresh air amid the sad, sorry  collection of spineless cowards who walk through the halls of government today.....

              

'DRIVE, HE SAID'.....A BASKETBALL REBEL DRIBBLES THROUGH A TROUBLED AMERICAN CAMPUS.........

Drive, He Said (1971)    Jack Nicholson's directorial debut arrived at the tail end of the pile of movies dealing with an America ripped asunder by its catastrophic participation in the Vietnam war. 

          All out civil war broke out along every societal divide imaginable.....black vs. white, young vs. old, liberal vs. conservative.  And college campuses became ground zero battlegrounds for all these divisions, breeding a counterculture generation, some turning to active revolution......

           "Drive He Said" bears a vague resemblance to the previous year's riotous, rambunctious "Getting Straight" a blunt comedy designed as a crowd pleaser and  propelled by the manic energy of its star Elliot Gould.  But as a director, Jack Nicholson's style duplicated his acting.....reflective, laid back, the view of a casual, cynical observer of life rather than an active participant. 

           Nicholson's film stands as a perfect example of the "New Cinema" that took the world by storm throughout the late 60's and well into the 70's......(until effectively stamped out by the rise of the "Jaws"-"Star Wars" juggernaut of blockbusters.)

          Quirky, iconoclastic, often shapeless and random in structure and always contemptuous of  authority figures,  young audiences embraced the New Cinema as their very own.......and a whole new movie-going demographic was born. 

           Everything's in place here....most importantly, a college campus used as a display of American values beginning to buckle under the weight of the carnage, corruption and immorality of the Vietnam war. 

           The film centers around the school's basketball star Hector Bloom (William Tepper). Bloom enjoys his athletic skills only for his own personal satisfaction - he's not much of a team player, much to the aggravation of his blustering, micro-managing coach (Bruce Dern, in full splendid Dern-o-rama)

           And living a star athlete's celebrated life while the country dissolves into chaos clearly weighs on Bloom.  The rah-rah boosterism in the midst of a society coming undone only serves to isolate him from the teamwork his sport and coach demand of him..  And to add to his further angst, he continues a rocky affair with restless, unsettled  faculty wife Olive (Karen Black)....in full view his professor friend,  who also happens to be Olive's weary husband Richard (screenwriter Robert Towne).

          For better or worse, the storyline, what there is of it, gets jump-started by the antics of Bloom's roommate Gabriel (Michael Margotta, rabid and bug-eyed), a furious, drug-fueled revolutionary facing imminent drafting and probable death in the Vietnam meat grinder.  Gabriel's ongoing rage destroys what's left his sanity, leading to the film's vivid but overall pointless, disconnected set  pieces. 

         None of what goes on in "Drive He Said" ever coalesces into anything solidly dramatic or ever fulfills its potential to grip an audience with its storyline and characters.  True to the New Cinema, events unfold with no particular point or urgency.....you watch it all and make up your own mind about what you're seeing.  

          And don't wait for anything like a climax or closure of any kind. The film just stops.......which should come as no shock whatsoever to anyone who's sampled even a few 1970's independent films.

          What truly disappoints here -  you'd expect a film directed by an actor to feature professional, fine tuned performances. But Nicholson's handling of his two male leads is downright clumsy and amateurish.  Tepper wanders through the film with blank, barely reactive line readings and Margotta's blatant overacting belongs in a Warner Brothers Loony Tune....or inevitably a loony bin. 

           By the time the film meandered into its final half hour, I'd already begun to loathe and despise Margotta's way-over-the-top showboating. When Nicholson has him streak across the campus  (and I mean streak in that old original 1970's definition) the sight of Margotta's swingin' dick is still the most subtle part of his role,  It's no great surprise either, since the film's already treated us to a full frontal locker room scene at its beginning.

          Though filled to the brim with individual memorable moments and scenes, Nicholson never bothers to unify it all......he was content to let it all lie there and....well....let it be. A definite must for lovers and curators of 1970's 'golden age of indies', and at the very least a time capsule reminder of what useless, uncalled for 'forever wars' do to us all. 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)

'BLONDE'....GENTLEMEN INTER BLONDES.....

 Blonde (2022-Netflix)   Yep, I'm way late in catching up with this one.....as I try to inhale as many Oscar nominees as are available to me......

            (But I'm resigned to waiting for Cameron's 'Blue People Go Underwater' to eventually park itself on Disney Plus and/or Blu-Ray, where I'll be free to pause it for pee breaks during its 3 plus hours.....)

             First question to answer.....is Ana de Armas a serious contender for Best Actress?  Sure, she's got a shot at it, even though up against the towering Cate Blanchett and the perceived front runner, Michele Yeoh (for whom the zeitgeist proclaims this is her year...)    (I won't even bother including Andrea Whats-her-name and Michele Williams, who's been jammed into this category even though strictly a supporting player in "The Fablemans")

             The movie?  A tortured, tortuous culture-vulture, Felllini-esque slog though the swamp of fact and fiction surrounding Marilyn Monroe's life. 

              Paced like an oil painting and pretentious to the max, it's a warped, funhouse-mirror version of Monroe's mostly misery-strewn 36 years on earth, , falsely juiced up with soft-porn sex and Cronenberg-ian body horror....

             Keep in mind, the film takes its inspiration from 'Blonde' a Joyce Carol Oates novel that swirls together well-known public news with the writer's completely fictitious impressions of Monroe and her place in the pop culture firmament.  Personally, I would've hired Quentin Tarantino to tell this story, since he would 've let Marilyn overcome her neuroses and addictions to live a long and fulfilling life a collecting multiple Lifetime Achievement awards......

           Ana de Armas's superb work exists not within some kind of  docu-drama, but rather a slow moving horror movie, which admittedly adheres to the overall trajectory of Monroe's spiral into an early grave.....though. grossly exaggerating or downright falsifying the actual facts of it.

            Writer-director Andrew Dominik does impressively re-create Norma Jean Baker's excruciating trip into the meat grinder of the Hollywood studio star--making machinery (including anal rape by 20th Century Fox mogul Darryl F. Zanuck) and her predictably doomed marriages to baseball legend p Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller. (competently enacted by Bobby Cannavale and Adrien Brody)

          But Dominik fancies himself something of a fabulist artiste.......so we're treated to the ridiculous spectacles of chatty fetuses within Monroe's womb and even a camera angle from inside her vagina. And virtually all the dramatic scenes in the film are staged with an affected torpor that Dominik must have thought added additional gravitas to his direction.  I does not. 

           All this director accomplishes....he .makes you check your watch to see when it's all over. A lot. 

            For Ana de Armas' performance, 4 stars (****). For the film itself, 1 & 1/2 stars (*1/2)......undone by its phony-baloney, film-festival pandering.

             

            

                

'QUO VADIS'....TOGAS 'N LIONS 'N CHRISTIANS, OH MY!

 Quo Vadis (1951)   It dawned on me suddenly (as most things do nowadays) that in a long lifetime of movie watching, I'd only ever viewed this film in isolated chunks......catching bits and pieces of it as it played on various TV channels.....

            And in all those various moments, I'd never gotten to see the one sequence it's most famous for, the burning of Rome by mad, mad, mad emperor Nero.

            Settling in for a truly ass-numbing sit, (courtesy of the wonderful TCM), I finally subjected myself to the movie's entire 170 minutes.

            Can't say I'm sorry I did......I found some of the stuff in it a hoot, and the scenes of Rome ablaze look about as good as early 1950 special effects could make them. 

            But the whole show here, which took me by surprise, belongs to the then young Peter Ustinov as Nero. He seizes control of this epic and makes it all about him.....which, come to think of it, it is. 

             Ustinov must have realized that no actor who's a born hammy scene stealer like himself was ever gifted with such a plum role and golden opportunity. And oh boy, does he make the most of it.

            Ustinov's Nero comes across like Trump draped in a toga..... childish,  paranoid, narcissistic, devoid of human feeling and psychotic to his very core......and surrounded by groveling minions and toadies to cater to his every lunatic whim. 

            And I could keep taking this metaphor even further since the movie features Nero burning Rome and revving up the surviving populace to blame the "other".....in this case, Christians. (Much in the same way Trump whipped up his MAGA zombies to believe immigrants and BLM protesters were the cause of all their woes....)

            This prompts an upstanding, loyal Roman general (Robert Taylor) to declare, "The people won't believe such a lie!"  To which Nero's long suffering, disgusted advisor replies, "But they are believing it....people will believe any lie, if it's fantastic enough...")

            Getting back to the fun parts of "Quo Vadis", what a stunning experience to behold massive crowd scenes with, believe or not.....real crowds of thousands! No CGI pixels, but thousands of real people milling about!    Think of it this way.....to do a movie this way in 2023 would take the combined wealth of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and the British Royal family.......

            But now for some warnings for any brave, hardy cinema-loving soul who wants to take the plunge into this......you will suffer through that ornate, ponderous  overwritten dialogue that defined Hollywood costume epics....and prepare to endure an actual full length sermon delivered by none other than the Big Fisherman himself, Peter (Finlay Currie). 

             Hang in there, though......you don't want to miss Nero's gaudy Coliseum spectacle, including lions making a lunch out of Christians and Deborah Kerr served up for goring by a raging bull....(no not Robert DeNiro, but a real raging bull)   But fear not! You can thrill to sight of Kerr's noble, giant defender Ursus (Buddy Baer) coming to her aid... .literally taking the bull by the horns. 

             Essential viewing for all completists of  classic Hollywood cinema history......but one time only is all anyone really needs.....3 stars (***). 

             

           

'RED SONJA'.......AH-NULD THE BARBARIAN MEETS HIS SOULMATE......

 Red Sonja (1985)   As a movie-buyer for a video store chain, I'd shake my head and smile at the avalanche of 'sword and sorcery' movies flooding the market in the mid 1980's......

           Prompted by the 1982 success of "Conan The Barbarian", (introducing Arnold Schwarzenengger to the world), a pulp fiction genre stormed cinema.....

            Though they may have seemed like ancestors of the Italian 'peplum' Hercules movies that reigned through the 50's, the 'S & S' genre dialed up everything.....bigger beefcake heroes, more luscious babes in chain mail bikinis, heavier swords, fantastical fantasy and entire hordes of assorted rampaging villains and monstrous creatures.  

           But only the original 'Conan', scripted by Oliver Stone and directed by John Milius, enjoyed a large enough budget to bring all the above mentioned ingredients to a vivid boiling point.

            The rest of the films in this burgeoning genre labored, to varying degrees,under their low budgets and the minor talents of the the people recruited to make them and star in them. 

             The ever busy international movie mogul Dino DeLaurentis somehow convinced Schwarzenegger to show up as a 'Conan' clone and supporting player in 'Red Sonja'. The principal title role of the blazing red-headed girl warrior fell to Brigitte Nielsen, a dead eyed fashion model married, at the time, to Sylvester Stallone. 

             But even with its low budget, 'Red Sonja', unlike the many other S & S adventures , benefited from a way-above-average team behind the camera......directed by master-of-all-genres Richard Fleisher ("The Vikings", "20.000 Leagues Under The Sea"), photographed by Giuseppe Rotunno ("The Leopard", Fellini films) and scored by Ennio  Morricone (do I even need to list any of his credits?)

             So off we go to Barbarian World (similar to a MAGA rally, but with nicer scenery). Evil Queen Gedred (Sandahl Bergman) slaughterer of Red Sonja's family, has just seized the 'Talisman' a glowing basketball whose owner can use it to conjure up cataclysmic earthquakes and storms. 

             Pissed about her dead family and determined to save the world from Gedred's misuse of the glowball,  Sonja goes a questin'. Along the way she's aided by Kalidor (Schwarzenegger) a fellow broadsword wielder......and later gets saddled with Prince Tarn (Ernie Reyes Jr.) a insufferably spoiled kung fu brat, and his long suffering minion-bodyguard Falkon (Paul L. Smith of "Midnight Express" and Bluto in Robert Altman's "Popeye"),

            This unlikely quartet of heroes wanders, stumbles and otherwise falls in and out of all the traditional S & S perils.....and vast amounts of stuntmen ( or maybe just the same 10 or so) get sliced, diced, shredded and beheaded whenever Arnold and Brigitte hurl themselves into action. 

              It's an utter waste of time to discuss the low levels of acting here......nobody sits through a movie like this for nuanced performances that speak to the human condition. Not much dialogue for them to say anyway and that's a godsend, since most of them loudly announce their lines like they've only recently learned the English language. 

              Sword and sorcery completists shouldn't miss it, of course.....and for casual visitors to the genre, there's a decent amount of genuine fun to be had here......(I especially loved the battle between the pint-sized Reyes Jr. and Gedred's oily minion, played by Ronald Lacey (forever instantly recognizable as the Gestapo troll in 'Raiders Of The Lost Ark").

             3 Guilty Pleasure stars (***).....but if you're bound to view it, I'd put it on a double feature with a quality 'S & S'er, such as the original 'Conan The Barbarian'........simply to add a little quality to the evening....

          

'HALLOWEEN ENDS'......PROMISES, PROMISES.....

 Halloween Ends (2022)    First off, anyone expecting the nonstop splatterfest of 2021's "Halloween Kills" will groan in agony while suffering through this one.....

             So sorry, devoted gorehounds, fanboys 'n fangirls everywhere.....the filmmakers came down with a bad case of Delusions Of Adequacy.....they decided they'd try their hand at a deeply felt, drama-filled plunge into arthouse horror. 

             But nobody told these folks that artsy-fartsy horror was way beyond their skill set.......so all they've accomplished here is pissing off millions of dedicated "Halloween"ers who watch the films for a slashin', blood drenched good time with jump scares aplenty.

              This one wastes no time in hurling itself off the rails......with the introduction of 'Cory' a feckless, wimpy teen soon off to college. But his babysitting gig for a young boy goes, as they say, horribly awry, leaving the kid accidentally dead and Cory vilified by the entire town.  

               (By all means, feel free to wonder why this kid's small town suburban house features a fifty foot high circular staircase..)

               I could practically hear this film's writers congratulating themselves over what they considered their stroke of creative genius......by allowing a whimpering, simpering minor character to hijack most of the running time of  a "Halloween" movie. 

              In the film's most idiotic of its many ill-conceived plot turns, the woeful Cory crosses paths with our indestructible boogeyman Michael Myers.......and we're supposed to swallow that he survives the encounter, cause monstrous Mikey somehow recognizes a dark kindred spirit in the beaten, bullied Cory. 

             Yeah, sure. Right. Whatever.

             More dumb developments pile up, including Cory befriended by the weary, broken Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis), and tentatively romanced by Laurie's equally unhappy granddaughter (Andi Matichak)....(both of them forever emotionally scarred by the previous film's slaughter of Laurie's daughter at the hands of you-know-who. )

            To the everlasting ruin of this film, Michael Myers, who we all came to see to begin with, takes a backseat through most of the movie as it devotes precious, wasted time to the agonies of the woebegone Cory.  (Feel free to scream out, "Who the **** is this guy and why is a ****in' Halloween movie about him instead of Michael Myers?".....)

              Somewhere toward its end, the filmmakers at long last wake up and remember why anybody would spend time watching their trilogy finale......the promised ultimate showdown between Jamie Lee Curtis's beleaguered, tormented Laurie and the legendary monster who's been terrorizing her since her 1978 days as a teen babysitter.

              At least in that regard, the film delivers competently enough, with a finale designed to make it tough on any future writers and directors hoping to resurrect Michael Myers......

             But knowing the overpowering greed of movie producers, I wouldn't put it past them......

             A must see, I guess, for all 'Halloween' completists......but prepare yourself for a movie irreparably damaged by all its wrong-headed choices. 1 star (*).

             

MIDWEEK MADNESS WRAP-UP.....MCCARTHY'S GOP CLOWN CAR SHLEPS ON THE GAS.........

              BQ's old enough to remember when a State Of The Union address by the President was a staid, stately affair......as opposed to today, when, like all current political discourse, it's  devolved into a lost episode of 'The Jerry Springer Show'......

               Irony alert.....a few days ago, Redumblican bible thumpers like Ted Cruz clutched their pearls at the sight of Sam Smith's devil-hat at the Grammy awards......and yet last night, they unleashed, for all the country to see, their very own Goblin From Hell, Marjorie Taylor Greene......

Cruella De Ville or Narnia's 'White Witch'?    The Twitter-Verse couldn't make up their minds......personally, she's much closer in spirit and appearance to Linda Blair's demon-possessed 12 year old in "The Exorcist"....

Kevin McCarthy tries "shushing" his clown car members as they heckle Joe Biden.....his warnings that any such behavior would result in withholding his bag of Purina Idiot Chow treats...

Following GOP hecklers, Sarah Huckabee Sanders response to Biden's SOTU speech includes a warning to choose between 'normal' and 'crazy'......No problem, Sarah, no problem whatsoever.  All it took to make up our minds was the sight of MGT doing her lunatic asylum escapee impression.....

Biden tricks GOP hecklers into agreeing with him to keep their hands off  Social Security and Medicare......but resisted the urge to whisper "Numbnuts say 'what'?" so all of  American could hear the entire GOP contingent mutter, "....what??"