'BARBIE'....GERWIG'S LIVING DOLL OUT-THINKS AND OUT-PINKS THE GOP

 Barbie (2023)    In the ever-at-a-boil culture wars we live in today, the reaction to "Barbie" was practically pre-ordained. 

             The GOP's Maga-Morons sensed the film's pro-woman, anti-patriarchy agenda which director co-writer Greta Gerwig cleverly candy coated to the highest gloss possible. 

               Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach accomplished this feat with a truly dazzling balance of deadpan satire and just plain goofy fun.....especially in the film's first act, taking place entirely in the Barbie-verse where pink's the only primary color. 

                Of course the GOP trolls like Ted Cruz  felt outraged and disrespected by "Barbie"s treatment of men, depicted as literally brainless mannequins  After all, these are the guys who finally realized, with the Supreme Court's aid, their lifelong quest to become the Uterus Gestapo......., exerting dictatorial control over women's healthcare choices and forcing raped little girls to deliver their rapist's baby even if it kills them in the process. 

               But enough of them, let's get back to 'Barbie', a movie gifted not only with Gerwig's whip-smart sensibilities but with the most perfectly cast leads ever. Who else could bring the towering (on heels) iconic living doll to life but Margot Robbie.......whose eyes, (as always in every role she plays), possess a barely contained mania. 

              And who else could play Barbie's deliberately generic consort Ken but Ryan Gosling......generating laughter with the pure, sweet innocence of his dumb-as-a-rock one dimensional world view. (Gerwig and Gosling manage to delight their little girl audience with Ken's clueless antics while treating adult women to knowing digs at male entitlement. 

                Amid all the skilled satire on display, "Barbie" takes some major risks in its storyline's  complex collision of Barbie World with the real world......and here's where some of the film's blatant,, determined  messaging  turns clumsy and obvious. 

                 Nowhere is this more apparent and ham-handed than in the low comedy overplaying of the Mattel CEO (the overbearing Will Ferrell) and his rubber stamped board of directors. They look like discards from old Jerry Lewis movies, which were never too funny in the 50's and less so now. 

               Fortunately, Ferrell and his corporate clown car are kept enough at a minimum so as not to cause any lasting damage.....

                 .......which paves the way for the movie to spring its biggest of surprises....in the way its conclusion goes straight for the heartstrings......and finishes up with a final moment both hilarious and painfully perceptive. 

               So there's no great secret as to why "Barbie" steamrolled over Hollywood's  exhausted, repetitive summer lineup of worn out franchise sequels (along with the equally one-of-a-find "Oppenheimer"). For a refreshing, bracing change of pace, the film offered something audiences haven't enjoyed in ages......a monumental crowd pleaser with both brains and heart. 

                Memo to studio lizards - take note of that before you greenlight the next- dead-on-arrival 280 million dollar budgeted superhero movie........

                Even though this Barbie breaks out of the box she came in, the movie's still worth its weight in gold an original experience. . 4 stars (****.)

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP.....SPECIAL "INDICTMENTS OF THE WEEK" EDITION.....

 Trump hit with more obstruction indictments in Mar-A-Lago case.....and proudly boasts, "No President has ever collected more indictments than me.....indictments like the world has never seen before....the most pile of charges ever amassed by a Chief Executive in U.S. History! You'll never see any President even come close to that.....that's gotta count for something, right?"

Ron DeSantis says he knows little about Florida's education edict teaching kids that slavery was beneficial to slaves.....and also pleaded ignorance regarding as additional ruling requiring  black students to scream "Thank you Massa! Thank you Massa!" when receiving homework assignments....

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declares Covid was designed to skip over Chinese and Jewish people...... and further reveals that his father's assassin Sirhan Sirhan was secretly paid for the murder by Bruce Lee and Golda Meir....in related news, Donald Trump immediately offered RFK Jr. a free MAGA hat and a coupon for the Mar-A-Lago spa. 

Elon Musk rebrands Twitter as "X".....in response, Mark Zuckerberg rebrands his rival site "Threads" to "Y Not Z if you like us better?"

'SCREAM VI'....SLASH TEST DUMMIES WITH SELF-SEALING SKIN.....

 Scream VI (2023)    It's a toss-up as to what I hated the most about this film.....

             First, the ridiculous, tortuous running time of 122 minutes.  2 solid hours for a movie that holds, at most, maybe 75 minutes of storyline......and I'm being generous there. 

             Second, the deluded numbnuts who concocted this atrocity must take their perception of reality from watching superhero movies........where death is meaningless, trivial and far from permanent. 

             Third, their limited grasp of human anatomy seems derived from Loony Toons. In ScreamWord, it's possible to endure a six inch hunting knife plunged into your abdomen repeatedly.....and suffer only minor discomfort. 

             This movie's expected body count ends up eclipsed by the number of cast members who are gutted like freshly caught trout......but still remain alive and well for the finale.  Presumably, instead of watching their intestines spill out on the floor like 20 pounds of linked sausage, their tummies close up faster and easier than zip-lock baggies. 

             Yeah....right.

             Yes I do fully understand that the "Scream" series derives from writer Kevin Williamson deconstructing the slasher genre with meta snark.....kidding around while at the same time, letting the blood gush in fire-hose torrents. 

              And I'll even credit co-directors Matt Bettinelli Opin and Tyler Gillett with risking accusations of blasphemy and sacrilege by upending the traditional opening kill sequence.....

               But the rest of it?  Dreary, boilerplate slash-o-rama that drags on and on.......and makes the fatal flaw of slasher movies all too apparent.....

                Which is simply this.......with life valued so cheap in this these films, then why on earth should we in the audience  give a rat's ass about who goes under the knife?

                 Just askin'......

                 Okay, that's more than enough time wasted on this movie.....I realize it's an automatic must-watch for Scream completists.  And I'll say this much.....fans who expect and demand a mind-numbingly idiotic, senseless 'Ghostface' reveal, this one's a beaut and won't disappoint in its perfectly fashioned lunacy.  1 & 1/4 star (* 1/4).

'RENFIELD' & 'EVIL DEAD RISE'.....OVERDRAWN AT THE BLOOD BANK......

       

         Pardon me while I mop up the 500 gallons of fake blood that came spilling out of these two films....

             Fanboys and Fangirls, here's your double feature to die for.....awash in ripped limbs, slaughtered bodies and enough of the flowing, bursting red stuff to fill a dozen Olympic-sized swimming pools.....

             There is, however, a distinct difference between these movies.....one unashamedly caters to hardcore gorehounds.....and nobody else.  

             The other one clearly aspired to wider appeal outside of its core demographic.....to become a mainstream crowd pleaser, steeped in hip, sick comedy and offering the spectacle of cinema's premiere oddball at the height of his lunatic powers......

              Let's start with the latter, Renfield (2023).....which features a more than game Nicholas Hoult as Count Dracula's famous bug-munching minion and the mighty madman Nicolas Cage as Dracula, the role he was born to play....

              Renfield, weary of several lifetimes of Drac's abuse, has joined a support group to verbally spill his guts, while rounding up fresh victims to  literally spill their guts.....fresh blood for the Count to guzzle and thereby reconstitute himself after burning to a crisp from sunlight exposure. 

               Meanwhile, the last honest cop in the city (Awkwafina) constantly fails to nail the Lobo drug gang - an idiot, motormouthed son (Ben Schwartz) and his mastermind mother (Shohreh Aghdashloo, using her deepest gravel purr of a voice.)

              Once returned to full-bodied, glowing eyed, razor-teethed glory, Nicolas Cage embraces the role of Dracula as if he's been waiting an eternity to bring the bloodsucker to life.  He's hilarious, he's scary, he's out of his mind........it's Cage-0-Mania dialed up way over Spinal Tap's 11......

              Throughout the jokiness, the film orchestrates gore-soaked battles involving thugs, cops, and assorted vampire zombies......bodies explode, limbs go airborne and gallons of corpuscles drench one and all.  Finger lickin' fun for the fans, but in smearing itself with so much carnage, "Renfield" undid any chance of attracting anyone beyond the 'Fangoria' readership base. 

                  (Speaking of which, the film had itself a real showstopping dance number with Hoult and a chorus line dressed up as his favorite treats, bugs and maggots.....but relegated it to a deleted scene on the DVD and Blu-Ray. Bad move, they should've left it in as a palate cleanser from all the massacres...)

               ......which probably didn't sit well with Universal Studios, who've been trying to jump-start their classic MonsterVerse for some time now.....(then again, their jumbo budgeted mainstream attempts, like Tom Cruise's misbegotten "The Mummy" didn't find an audience either. 

               Moving right along, let's now pop open the dreaded human-skinned Book Of The Dead to unleash "Evil Dead Rise", personally produced by the original trilogy's powerhouses Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell. 

               Unlike "Renfield"s higher audience goals, this more-of-the-same addition to the iconic demon-rampage franchise holds no pretentions about what it is and who it's for.......

               The film serves up exactly what fans crave in Evil DeadWorld......90 minutes of start-to-finish frenzied, fiendish madness and mutilation........with hapless innocents turned into gibbering, glowy-eyed nightmares, ripping apart family members even as their own bodies break, bend and impossibly twist into inhuman positions.  

                 But as Bruce Campbell famously discovered in the first of these films......there's nothing going on here that a swinging chainsaw can't cure in a hurry.  And before it's all over, you can bet the still standing survivors will appear as fully showered in blood as much as celeb presenters doused in green slime at the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards.   

                So "Evil Dead Rise " remains honest and honorable in the purity of its intentions.  No snarky humor, no splashy action-stunt stuff to bring in anything close to a mass audience. Just an unhinged 'booga-booga' trip to the slaughterhouse of the grindiest of grindhouse horrors.  

                 Kind of a shame, really, for 'Renfield'. If they'd  adjusted the blood spigot a little and shown  some interest in ticket buyers who'd revel Cage-O-Rama, (not to mention love that goofy deleted dance number) those filmmakers might've enjoyed a bigger audience.......the 'Evil Dead' gang, on the other hand, knew their audience well and gave 'em what they came for....and more. 

                 For the neither fish-nor-fowl 'Renfield', 2 stars (**). For the perfectly realized 'Evil Dead Rise' 3 stars (***). Proceed, as always, at your own risk......

              

'INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY'....RAIDERS OF MEMORY LANE.....

 Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny (2023)    Couldn't help chuckling over that title........

             For most of us suffering through this globally warmed up summer, the only dial of destiny we care about is the thermostat on the air conditioning system.......

             But let us now turn to the latest ancient rare artifact chased by the now elderly Dr. Henry 'Indiana' Jones (played by who else, the near immortal  80 year old Harrison Ford.)

             The archeological McGuffin he seeks.....some kind of clock thing made by Archimedes.....broken into two pieces and not usable unless someone finds both of 'em to snap together like Legos.  Put the whats-it back together again and you can use it to........well let's just say you can do more with it than set it to wake you up in the morning......

             I digress, I realize. What you all want to know is whether this 5th (and what I assume is Ford's last) Indiana Jones film is a worthy addition to the franchise. 

             Yes and no......which I'll explain. 

             Good news......at the very least, it's a huge improvement over the last one, the universally mocked and reviled 'Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull'.  No fridge-nuking, I promise.....

             More good news......for one last time, we all get see Harrison Ford strut his Indy stuff, even if the very idea of him doing all this at 80 years old sounds ridiculous......

              Of course it is.......but then remember, so are creepy angels melting Nazis, creepy Thugees pulling still beating hearts out of bodies and fake Holy Grail cups turning you into instant dust......

             Further good news, the new pile of screenwriters found a way to rid the series of Indy's son (the annoying Shia LaBeouf) in such a way as to amp up the angst of the aging prof.....as well as bringing back beloved ally Sallah (John Rhys-Davies)

             Now the bad news......the addition of the monumentally overrated flavor-the-month  Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Indy's god-daughter.  Her character, a rapacious treasure-hunter only in it for the cash, spends the bulk of the movie as some kind of semi-ally-frenemy to Indy.  A terrible miscasting....

            Waller-Bridge comes off like a character actress who somehow stumbled into a lead role. I suppose the idea here was to create a passing-of-the-torch heroine who's both endearing and empowering......and maybe even spin off into a series of their own.......But with PWB?  Yikes. 

             Memo to Disney-Lucasfilm execs......you're dreaming if you think Waller-Bridge could make that happen for you.  We sat through this overstuffed, overlong 154 minute Indy movie for Harrison Ford alone.  Not in this universe or any other would anyone other than PWB's immediate family buy a ticket to any spinoff with her character.......get real, guys. 

            Moving on to good-bad news......the film does make an exhausting effort to duplicate the kind of outrageously spectacular action sequences that Steven Spielberg so thrilled us with way back in 1981's "Raiders Of The Lost Ark",,,,,and what a joy to hear those scenes thrillingly scored, as always, by master of maestros John Williams.

             But two key factors ruin all those fights and chases.......the massive over-reliance of CGI and the chop-chop mincemeat editing of the action. 

            So therefore literally nothing in front of your eyes looks real, with everything drawn and animated by the armies of digital artists who make the end credit crawl drag on for 15 minutes. And even if you try to pretend it's real, you couldn't really see what's going on anyway......the frenzied editing reduces the action to visual confetti. 

             Yes, the advances in CGI enabled the filmmakers to effectively de-age Ford down to thirty-something, so we can enjoy the spectacle of him punching out 1940's Nazis.  But even devoid of that chilling 'Uncanny Valley' effect, you're always still aware it's a trick......

            Final thoughts.......I'm not sorry I paid to see it on the big screen instead of waiting for it to inevitably wander over to Disney Plus (Indy's new landlord). 

            Unlike some other fans, I had no problem with the truly bonkers climax, which breaks way over-the-top new ground...even for an Indy adventure. 

              Best moment for BQ......the very last minute or so. For everyone who still well remembers "Raiders Of The Lost Ark".....the film cleverly wraps up with a bit likely wring out a tear or two.....

              Farewell Indy.....at long last, enjoy retirement. 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)  (Would've bumped it up to 3 stars if only they'd cast anyone other than the tedious Waller-Bridge.)

               

'THE BITTER PAST'......ATOMIC SPIES RESURFACE TO BLOW YOU AWAY....

 The Bitter Past by Bruce Borgos (2023)

           Attention all avid readers......here comes one of those books that we all hope and pray for, the kind of non-stop read we never stop searching for.

          You know the book I mean. The one that turns all the daily things we put up with .(meals, work, chores, sleep, TV news, etc. etc.) into annoying distractions........annoying and distracting 
because they're keeping us from feverishly turning pages of this book to see what happens next.

           Yes..... it's that kind of book.

            This one pushed all kinds of buttons for me. I've always loved stories set in the arid, lonely and forbidding deserts of the American Southwest.  And that would  also account for why I'm additionally obsessed with the mid-40's to 1950's history that unfolded amidst that landscape - the development and testing of the atomic bomb. Of course that includes everything that came with it.........the cavalier test detonations that sent deadly radiation floating into the winds and the frenzy and fear about Russian spies, trained to look and sound like us while they steal our vital top secrets. 

           "The Bitter Past" throws together all of those elements in one big suspenseful package........it's a contemporary breathless thriller whose seemingly endless twists and turns have their roots firmly in the past.....back to the atomic espionage in the 1950's Northern Nevada deserts. 

           That's the mystery facing Sheriff Porter Beck as he investigates the beyond horrific torture and murder of an elderly retired FBI agent. And he finds himself both perplexed and entranced by his most unlikely ally in his hunt for the killer -FBI agent Sana Locke, stunning to behold, but sitting on any number of secrets of her own. 

             Flashbacks to 1957 also unfold, where a deep cover Russian spy-saboteur manages to infiltrate an atomic testing site posing as an all-American security guard......even to the point of courting the daughter of the scientist in charge of of the site of a new, highly unusual test. 

              Put all of this together and you've got a mystery-suspense-action-adventure thriller guaranteed to make you want to put off everything I listed earlier.....meals, work, chores, sleep, shopping, etc, etc.   When the plot twists start poppin', they come at you like a literal hailstorm of surprises......and in the rapidly steamy banter of Beck and Locke, there's laugh out loud wit, a duel of  two suspicious minds, and all the simmering sexual combustion that comes with them.  

            Since I've now given what I think is pretty accurate description of a 5 star read, (*****) I'll end the review right here....except to mention thriller fans need to jump this one to the very top of their TBR's. Enough said?

'THE BLOCK PARTY.....A CUL-DE-SAC TO LEAVE YOU TAKEN ABACK....

 The Block Party by Jamie Day (2023)

             As much as I thoroughly enjoyed this book, I couldn't help wondering......did author Jamie Day want us to take this stuff seriously? Or  does "The Block Party" function as a sly, dry humor spoof of those plunges into uppercrust suburban dysfunction like "Big Little Lies" and "Little Fires Everywhere"?

         I only mention this because the host of troubles in the sumptuous Alton Place cul-de-sac makes those other books look like Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. And the neighbors of Alton Place, to the everlasting entertainment of their  community chatboard members,  make the characters of TV soap operas look like the Teletubbies in comparison. 

           And that's what makes this book such a fun read........you'd have to plow through 800 episodes of "Days Of Our Lives" to revel in the Mt. Everest of tribulations that author Day compactly piles into one single swiftly paced novel. On this one cluster of houses, those "sands in the hourglass" come pouring out at the speed of light. 

             In cataloguing the sheer amount of heartaches, anxieties and deep dark secrets on display,  I'm almost tempted to put them alphabetical order......

             Just name your poison and it's all there waiting for you on Alton Place. Crumbling marriages, infidelity galore, spousal abuse, drug abuse, booze abuse, (enough wine guzzled to fill several Olympic pools) ,rumored mariticide, racy photo apps, psychotic stalking, rape, emotional wounding of adolescent kids, and some serious anger mis-management issues.  That's as much as I can remember at the moment, but I'm sure I'm leaving out more than a few additional miseries and maladjustments.

              And YA readers may also want to dive into all the turmoil, since one of the gang's teen daughters co-narrates, thereby providing a bonus list of teen angst tropes......parental torment, peer pressure, forbidden sex, aching crushes, college applications, bullying, drugs, cyber-revenge....and horror of horrors... summertime grounding!

               As anyone can tell from these descriptions,  sooner or later, this ongoing melodrama kept a constant boil will not bode well for more than a few of the neighbors and come to a rip roarin', twist-revealing finale. In that regard, "The Block Party" doesn't disappoint. 

              Whether you swallow this for real or chuckle along with it as a guilty pleasure, I fully admit I had a great time with "The Block Party"......but never, ever as a neighbor, just casually visiting.....like slowing down on the highway to rubberneck a fender bender.  4 stars (****)

'VALLEY OF THE DOLLS'.....NOT EVEN FUN TO MAKE FUN OF.....

 Valley Of The Dolls (1967)     TCM recently ran this glossy mope opera as part of series of what they considered movies so bad, you could knock yourself out mocking them. 

            In other words, guilty pleasures to freely hurl Mystery Science Theater 3000 insults at, while you gobble down buckets of buttered popcorn. 

             But this one?   Not even. It just lies there and stinks on ice with any unintentional laughter anywhere in sight.

             It originated as trashy a best seller from Jacqueline Susann, a failed 1940's starlet who re-invented herself as would-be novelist......think of her as the "50 Shades" E.L. James of the 70's, with a prose ability at the level of 6th grader.

             Susann crafted her crude, semi-sleazy show-biz melodramas with characters she obviously based on real life celebrities......and amassed enough of a readership panting to find out who was going to play who in the movie version. 

              20th Century Fox entrusted director Mark Robson with bringing the author's first big hit "Valley Of The Dolls" to the screen........who else but the guy who managed to turn the notorious Grace Metalious  novel "Peyton Place" into a shameless wallow that racked up big B.O. numbers. 

              Lightning didn't strike twice, though. Audiences found "Valley" a dull, plastic bore.....and with only a few exceptions, indifferently acted by a cast of generic non-entities.  It wasn't even worth the time to ridicule it. 

             Three young beauties try to navigate their way through the treacherous perils and pitfalls of a life in showbiz.  Anne Wells (Barbara Parkins) goes for behind-the-scenes jobs on Broadway,  Jennifer North (Sharon Tate) becomes a Monroe-like bombshell. And finally, to keep the melodrama at a full boil, there's wanna-be future diva Neely O'Hara (Patty Duke) a Judy Garland clone headed for drugs (the "dolls" of the title) and career disaster. 

             I won't even waste time on the various men surrounding them....all cardboard cutouts, instantly forgettable. Only Patty Duke, smelling a possible Oscar nomination, goes all out with the histrionics which earned her nothing but ridicule.  Doing her best to out-do her......veteran Susan Hayward as Duke's nemesis, a braying Ethel Merman-esque harridan .  

             As much as I love the curating of the TCM programmers( the ones who escaped the layoffs, anyway), the passage of years did NOT turn this tiresome turd into some kind of campy joy to watch. It remains what it always was.......assembly line studio sausage unfit for human consumption. 

              For true, undiluted guilty pleasure madness, stick with the immortal Russ Meyer-Roger Ebert  classic "Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls".....which in 1970 delivered everything the original "Valley" promised but could never even dream of delivering.....gobs 'n gobs of sex 'n violence. 

             For '67's 'Valley'......Zero stars (0)....un-campy, unfunny.....infinitely skippable.....

 

'FUNERAL DAZE'...A SURFBOARD WHIZ AND A 12 YR OLD MORTICIAN BRING LAUGHS, TEARS AND THRILLS

 Funeral Daze by Dorian Box (2023)

               Writing this review, I find myself breaking out into a wide grin just remembering how much fun I had reading it....and how much it left me clamoring for more adventures for its lead characters.....

           I could never imagine telling anyone that some book would make them laugh out loud and bring them to tears all the way through......sometimes simultaneously.

            "Funeral Daze" did that for me.....all the way through. And I always considered myself a pretty tough audience for any author who tries that 'laughs 'n tears' double whammy on a reader. 

             How could I resist the oddest and yet most lovable combination of a Guardian-and-Child matchup......Florida surfer Danny Teakwell, a grieving widower at loose ends and Jessica Jewell, 12 year old precocious force-0f-nature and skilled in all mortuary arts and sciences from being raised in her family's funeral home. 

            They first came across each other in the author's 'Psycho-Tropics', when Jessica was seven and Danny, framed by a psychopath, stood accused of first degree murder. 

             Now it's Jessica who's in peril while her parents flee from cartel gangsters who threatened them and seized their funeral home. The cartel's master plan - stuff overweight corpses with cocaine packages for easier nationwide smuggling.

               Now in hiding, Jessica's desperate parents ask Danny to look after their daughter, who's on an unstoppable quest to expose and thwart the cartel.  This does not sit well, as you might guess with the cartel's brutal chief enforcer, who favors death to eliminate all obstacles.....including children. 

              Helping out this unlikely investigative duo (and jacking up the laugh-out-loud quota)  is Fink , Danny's so-called lawyer. But then again, Fink, armed with an impossibly convoluted gift of gab, did manage to finesse a 'not guilty'" on Danny's murder charge before anyone found out Fink hadn't yet passed his Bar exam. 

               I would defy anybody to not fall in love with these characters.........as slowly and surely, the emotionally closed off Danny finds his heart warmed as he  attempts caring for Jessica, whose take-no-prisoners invulnerability masks the sweet, aching heart of an outcast lonely child.

                After finishing  "Funeral Daze",  I tried to remember the last time I encountered a book that actually delivered on its advertised promise to have you giggling while you shed a tear or two. This one's the real deal....a genuine 5 star laugh-getter and tearjerker., and with thrills 'n chills thrown in. By far one of the most entertaining books of 2023.  (*****)

'ALL IN A NIGHT'S WORK'.....SHIRLEY IN A TOWEL, DEAN ON THE PROWL......

 All In A Night's Work (1961)   Somehow, after all the 1960's movies I've viewed in my lifetime, I never did get around to seeing this until yesterday......streaming it off of Hoopla.

            The poster, though, always stuck in my memory......how could it not, featuring Shirley MacLaine running around draped only in towel. 

             It's such a slight fluffy little rom-com......you could almost picture the whole thing floating off like a soap bubble before popping altogether.

            Three writers labored on this frantic, over-plotted farce and between the three of them, they couldn't come up with even a single memorable gag line.....

            Functioning as sort of a big-business satire (a la the previous year's giant hit, Billy Wilder's "The Apartment", once again we have MacClaine as a vulnerable, manic pixie office drone. But  in this film, she's been  promoted from elevator operator up to research department assistant. 

             Her Florida vacation, a slapstick comedy of errors, left her with an expensive fur coat and that towel-only mad dash through the room of an elderly CEO who'd just died in his sleep. The dead codger, naturally, was the founder of the magazine publishing company she works for......

             Shirley returns to work with the dead magnate's playboy nephew (Dean Martin) now the new CEO ..... and he and his corporate board think Shirley canoodled with their late boss and plans to blackmail them with that revelation.  (Please, please, don't ask me to detail the laborious plot machinations required to set up this situation....I'm  beggin' ya....)

               More complications arise as Dean variously stalks, harasses and/or romances Shirley, who's trying in vain to impress the stuffy, rich parents of her fiance (Cliff Robertson, taking on the most worthless, thankless role you can have in a rom-com - the guy who ain't gettin' the girl....ever....)

               All ends well after Dean and Shirley engage in the expected bout of slapstick....which involves Shirley chased all around Dean's expansive bachelor pad.....(set up much like Rock Hudson's girl-trap in "Pillow Talk")

              Some funny lines would have really helped here.....but if you love the two stars in their prime, "All In A Night's Work" goes down easy.....Dean's smooth and suave, Shirley's the definitive kooky girl next door and the film also benefits from its solid cast of familiar character actors....(Gale Gordon, Jack Weston, Richard Deacon, Mary Treen and others...)   

              And it doesn't hurt that Andre Previn delivers a insistent, exuberant rom-com score that sounds like it was written for a film way better (and funnier) than this one.  So if you love the whole era and its stars, there's a whole lot worse ways to kill 92 minutes....2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)

          

'MACHINE GUN MCCAIN'....THE GODFATHER OF INDIE FILM VS. MAFIA GODFATHERS.....

 Machine Gun McCain (1969)    I feel remiss in taking so long to get to this one.......since BQ positively dotes on such 1960's International Co-Productions.....filled with multi-national casts, and then arriving in America with everybody re-dubbed in English.....oh how I loved 'em.....

             This nasty, violent little gangland shoot 'em up benefits from an especially primo cast.....John Cassavetes, no doubt picking up a paycheck to help finance his groundbreaking independent films, takes the lead. Also on board are Cassavetes wife Gena Rowlands, giving the role of his long estranged partner in crime extra power and poignancy......and Peter Falk as a brutal, volcanic tempered mafioso...(the kind of role later taken over by Joe Pesci in Martin Scorcese films.)

              (And as we all know, Falk and Rowlands  would go on to contribute memorable roles to Cassavetes' iconoclastic indies like "Husbands" and "A Woman Under The Influence)

               Falk attempts to bully his way into getting a slice of a new plush Las Vegas casino, not realizing it's owned by his all powerful East Coast Godfather boss (Gabriele Ferzetti, already having one hell of year with iconic roles in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" and "Once Upon A Time In The West")

               The ever hot headed Falk arranges a pardon for hardened, imprisoned gangster Hank McCain (Cassavetes)  He then recruits McCain's dumb punk son to get dad to rob the casino.  Once Falk finds out who's he's screwing over, his attempts to reverse course go awry......cause Cassavetes plans to rob the place for himself anyway,  with the help of a Vegas hooker, (Britt Ekland) he romanced and married overnight. 

               It's all gritty fun stuff, with director Guiliano Montaldo (of the glorious heist epic "Grand Slam") and his Italian crew filming shootouts and chases all over Las Vegas, without ever getting permits from the city....(a standard practice for the mafia blood-fests shot in Rome and Milan.)

               And for lovers of 1960's Euro-trash  plenty of favorite faces to spot in the supporting cast......the always dangerously stunning Florinda Bolkan and the formidable Tony Kendall of those action packed 'Komissar X' spy capers. American character tough guy Val Avery pops in too, but evidently skipped the re-dub of his own lines. 

              All you'd need for the cherry on top....a somber but catchy theme by the ultimate maestro Ennio Morricone,  You got it......with even overwrought lyrics put to the theme as the end credits roll.  ("No man ever was or will be like the man called Hank McCain!")

             For all film buffs who can never get enough of this kind of unabashed pulp fictioneering. With its inevitable high body count and terrific cast,  'Machine Gun McCain' remains a guilty pleasure treasure....4 rapid-fire stars (****)

'65'.....EVERYTHING BUT THE WOLVES YAPPIN' AT THEIR HEELS.....

65 (2023),  a stripped down, no frills sci-fi action-adventure parked itself theaters briefly before settling in to its ultimate nesting place, Netflix. 

            The guys who wrote "A Quiet Place" came up with what they thought was another high-concept, lean 'n mean little rollercoaster theme-park ride.......A space pilot (Adam Drive) and little girl (Ariana Greenblatt) stranded on a prehistoric planet populated with a host of CGI dinosaurs......who look like they blew their tryouts to get into "Jurassic World". 

            But wait!  There's more!  Driver and tyke are actually galactic residents from long ago, in a galaxy, far far away.  The planet they've crashed on (courtesy of an asteroid storm) is none other than our own green ball Earth some 65 million years ago.......

              Sucks for them, for sure, since they spend the film's 90 minutes dodging a variety of voracious dinos in all shapes and sizes......and designed by digital artists for maximum creepiness without ever referencing any real paleontology info........

              There is one scientific theory this film buys into though.......that the dinos met their doom at the hands of a  jumbo asteroid colliding with earth......and guess when that's gonna happen. 

              ......just as Driver and doll-baby desperately hike up to their damaged ship's escape vehicle, still parked on a mountain top,  Sheesh.....talk about bad timing......

              With all the perpetual perils crammed into the film's brief running time, it's never boring, to say the least. But then again, it's never adds up to any more that what it purports to be......a catalog of calamities hurled, one after the other, at an adult and child....the same formula that worked for these screenwriters in "A Quiet Place"

                For an actor as intense and talented as Driver, this seems like a waste of time, (how did Nicholas Cage let this role slip by him?) but on the plus side,  young Greenblatt's more than his equal in conveying the fear and panic required. 

               Not much else to say......fanboys and fangirls might think of it as a semi-acceptable time-waster for and an hour and a half......I'm not why anyone else would bother with it. 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP.....SPECIAL "I'LL SEE YOU IN COURT" EDITION

 The Un-Supreme Court.....Come to think of it, is it really necessary to say anything more than....the Supreme Court?

In a move of extraordinary wisdom and restraint, Clarence Thomas withdrew from his opinion a special message directed at black high school seniors applying to colleges....."Sayonara, Suckers!!!!"

Trump tells his rally Trumpanzees, "I'm being indicted for you!"

Happily, Trump announces to his rally attendees that they've officially made enough donations to start construction of an alligator filled moat to surround Mar-A-Lago.....in case he's convicted and is forced to make a last stand......

'FEAR THE SILENCE'.....A DEAD HUSBAND'S SECRETS PUT HIS WIDOW IN PERIL

 Fear The Silence by Robert Bryndza (2023)

                 One tough thing about reviewing a top notch, couldn't-stop-reading thriller like "Fear The Silence"......I don't want to run the risk of dealing too much in plot details, or else spoil the non-stop detonation of twists, surprises, nerve-wracking reversals-of-fortune and overall suspense. 

                Oh yes, this is one of those humdingers that makers you put off bedtime cause you just gotta know what happens next to the distressed damsel at the story's center. 

                 Maggie's one of those heroines living a perfect satisfied life as a doctor, happily married to Will, a former pathologist turned successful architect-house designer. Happily that is, until Will's shocking death, according to police investigators, came not from a burglar but from Will's own hand. 

                 The confounded, grief stricken Maggie travels to the sumptuous vacation home Will built for them on a remote Croatian island. Collecting his belongings at the house, Maggie comes across baffling, disturbing information that Will left for her to find.......evidence that connects him to..........well, here's where I need to firmly keep my mouth shut about anything further that Maggie, discovers and the harrowing calamities befall her. 

                 But since we already know author Robert Bryndza specializes in race-through-the-pages thrillers, you can already surmise that Maggie's put herself in the crosshairs of a powerful, ruthlessly vile 

villain........and her life's transformed into a rollercoaster of near fatal encounters and breathless escapes. 

                "Fear The Silence" hit all the right notes for me......a tear-along pace, an innocent lead character put through one dangerous situation after another and a fine double-whammy of a wrap-up......so that's a 5 star (*****) read for me, making my  recommendation to suspense-thriller fans very easy... ......do not pass this one up.