'THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL'.......HOW TO TEACH KIDS TO KNOW WRONG FROM REICH....

The Boys From Brazil (1978)   No one has to explain to us how ridiculous this movie is......

          We know.

          And we effin' LOVE it........

           Novelist Ira Levin was the literary equivalent of cinema shlock genius Larry Cohen......his stories always sprung from one simple whackadoodle premise....(later phrased by Hollywood as "High Concept").......

             Levin's satanic newborn and robot housewives became forever a part of American Pop Culture in the book and film versions of "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Stepford Wives".  But our personal favorites among Levin's gallery of contemporary creepezoids were the little Hitler clones of "The Boys From Brazil"......

             And what a wonderful Santa Claus did Levin's mini-Hitlers find in British producer/impresario Sir Lew Grade.......Sir Lew lavished big money and top-of-the-line talent on the film version of  "The Boys From Brazil".........

              Imagine "They Saved Hitler's Brain" if it had been made by David Lean......pulp lunacy pumped up with world class actors......

              And nobody's kidding here either, the actors tear into it as if it's a Shakespeare adaptation.....(the only creative force who displays an ironic sense of humor about the material is composer Jerry Goldsmith, scoring the film with a grand, lilting Strauss-like waltz......you can almost hear Goldsmith chuckling in the background......)

               We thoroughly reject all the carping about the performances of the two superstar leads.....we savor every idiotic moment in their company......Gregory Peck's utterly mad Dr.Josef Mengele, snarling most of his dialogue under his breath, looking like his head was dipped into a mixture of black shoe polish and Botox.......and Sir Laurence Olivier's Nazi-hunter Ezra Lieberman, deploying every cutesy scene-stealing mannerism he ever picked up during a lifetime in the theater......a cinematic Clash Of The Titans.....(more irony coming from the fact that two years prior to this film, Olivier played the evil Nazi dentist Szell, a thinly disguised version of Mengele in "Marathon Man")

                Levin's plot hinges on Mengele's embracing the nurture side of the 'nature vs. nurture' argument when it comes to his 94 Hitler clones that he's placed all around the world. Intent on exactly duplicating Hitler's childhood, he sends out Neo-Nazi minions to murder all the kids' 65 year old adopted fathers,   Watching this, we can't help wondering if Mengele ever considered what would happen if more than one of his 94 test-tube Fuhrers ascended to the heights of power.......(would the British Mini-Hitler go to war with the American Mini-Hitler? Wouldn't the Swiss Mini-Hitler object?)

                We especially admire how this movie, through the artistry and commitment of its cast, maintains a straight face throughout most its running time........it plays like a classy, high-toned thriller right up until it goes gloriously flying off the rails......in its rural Pennsylvania, beyond bonkers showdown between Peck, Olivier and a pack of ravenous Dobermans.

                  And the BQ wouldn't dream of altering one mili-second of the moment when the raving Peck explains to one of his pride-and-joy clones the genesis of the boy's birth.  To which the kid has the most honest, natural reaction in the entire film....."Oh man, you're weird...."

                 The only thing really chilling about enjoying a fun wallow through the nonsense of "The Boys From Brazil".......knowing that the current White House occupant thinks Nazi supporters are 'very fine people"......and that 39 years later,  nobody had to go to the trouble of cloning a mini-Hitler......enough hoodwinked Americans put a homegrown one into power.

                  Luckily for all of us and the world, the resistance is growing....so hopefully, when we watch it again, as we surely will,  we can still think of the movie as a guilty pleasure fantasy and continue to clone 4 stars (****).....and never have to recall an Orange would-be Hitler demanding we all march to 'Heil To The Chief'......

                 



           

'STRANGER THINGS 2'.......THE 80'S ATTIC, UNEARTHED AGAIN.....

Stranger Things, Season 2 (2017-Netflix)   Easiest comparison.....the second season of this wildly successful series is like "Thunderball" after the "Goldfinger"-like success of Season 1.  Same stuff....only more of it.....dialed up to the max....

          And we do mean more. More creepy creatures, more special effects, more over-the-top Winona Ryder, whose non-stop borderline hysteria becomes a special effect all by itself....

             The creators-writers-directors, the Duffer brothers, have had all manner of praise heaped on them for one essential achievement.......plowing through early Stephen King and all the 1980's  science fiction/fantasy films of Steven Spielberg and Joe Dante like two starving men attacking a smorgasbord.

              Filling up their series with enough reverential homages to fully replicate the era of the films they sampled, the Duffers delighted one and all with their expansive epic of a small town and its plucky children besieged by malevolent otherworldly forces.

             A basic problem arises in the "you ain't seen nothin' yet" approach to the show's second season......

              Given all the traumatic events suffered by the characters.....child abductions, child torture,  alternate-dimension monsters running amuck, the grisly disappearance and death of an innocent teen, the science-gone-awry of a shadowy government agency..........why would any rational human being choose to keep living in this town?

             As far as we can figure out, they all stay for the simple reason that Netflix ordered up another 9 episodes.......the only thing missing: having them all wear caps that read "Make America Weird Again".....

              The show trots out a bigger monster this time and an increased level of misery for show's most victimized, vulnerable character......(the gore quotient also rises, ensuring that some people won't be around for Season 3.....)

               And in an odder plot development, the small town's Dept.Of Scientific Evil Headquarters still fully operates, continuing to futilely cope with the hole they've punched into the nasty, gooey Alternate Dimension. In fact, the townsfolk unwisely use the place as a medical clinic.....(presided over by an older, heavier Paul Reiser, doing a more benevolent version of his "Aliens" corporate snark)......personally, we think they'd be way better off stopping in to a Walgreens walk-in clinic or signing up for Obamacare.....

               It's all still a huge entertaining wallow in all your favorite moments from all your 1980's faves.....there's even an extended, heart-tugging sequence that evokes John Hughes....and we sat back and admired the Duffer brothers for the sheer reckless abandon of their Barnum & Bailey showmanship........smiling at the thought of who-know-what they''ll have to do to top all this in Season 3.....

                Which naturally will make us ask the same question.....why is anybody still living in this insane town??   (Although we won't wonder about that in regard to Winona's character, since she seems to enjoy living in a permanent state of anxious frenzy....)

               3 nostalgic stars (***)......and we strongly suggest a Season 3 in which the populace considers an alternate health-care provider.....

               

             

             

LEAST FAVORITE THINGS.....SPECIAL 'ALABAMA SUNDAY SCHOOL' EDITION.....

           Welcome, BQers, to another week of 'you can't make this stuff up'..........

            Roy Moore  Remember "drain the swamp"??  This Alabama toad brings his own ready-made Everglades with him.........what a perfect GOP candidate.....a southern fried Humbert Humbert.....

            Alabama politicians reference Joseph & Mary to okay pedophilia.....they also hailed the new animated "The Star" as 'the best filmed-live-as-it-happened docu-drama we've ever seen!'   

            Baby Orange at first believes Putin's denial about election meddling......what sealed the deal for Baby Orange:.....Vlad said the magic words....."Honestly, I never worked my ass off to get you elected....believe me..."

            Baby Orange tries to take back "I believe Putin".......after a unnamed White House aide, whispered something to the Prez about Benedict Arnold.......Baby Orange muttered later, ..."but he still sounds like a very fine person.....I hope they don't take down any statues of him....."

            Taylor Swift charges 20.00 a piece for separate materials packaged with her CD's....."Look what you made me do....Look what you made me do......Look how you made me rich.....look how you made me rich....."

             Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K, Bret Rattner, etc, etc.....all together in an exciting new project in the DC comics universe....."The Career Suicide Squad"........

              and to finish....one Most Favorite Thing......

              Voters send Baby Orange a message....."We see you. We know you. We're on to you. The con only works with your redhat zombies. As for the rest of us........if Mueller doesn't end you, eventually, we will......bye bye...."


           

'THE WITCH'......SOMETHING WITCHIN' THIS WAY COMES....

The Witch (2015)   This one sat somewhere in the middle of a huge pile of Halloween DVDs we hoped to get to before Halloween........we gave it an out-of-season shot anyway, since it's perfect for a cold, cold November night's viewing.....

            Not to dissuade you horror buffs out there, but this film's more of a studious exercise in technique than a scare film.....

             Think Stanley Kubrick, but with a rock bottom budget.......like Kubrick's version of "The Shining", it's strictly academic and rigid as a doctoral thesis in its attention to authentic detail.

              And like Kubrick's work it casts a distanced, dispassionate eye on its characters.....inviting you to watch them like scuttling bugs in a glass terrarium.

              Not so much a horror film, more a scholarly treatise......(and nothing livens up a scholarly treatise more than abducted babies and satanic goats....)

             It's that loads 'o laughs time and place, 17th Century New England.....where an uncompromising farmer, his wife and five children get tossed out of their Puritan community......(evidently, from what we can pick up, Dad's too Fundamental even for these folks.....)

              Off they go to make their own way near the deep woods.......
unluckily for them, this place is not exactly Yogi Bear's Jellystone National Park......and this family isn't smarter than your average bears.....

              Horrible incidents pile up, centered around the family's oldest child, a teen girl......played by our new Official Fave, fast rising Star Of Tomorrow Anya Taylor-Joy....(trust us, this girl has all manner of awards in her future...)

               Scary?  (That's usually the only thing folks want to know when we're talkin' horror).  Watch it at night with the lights out and the film's quiet, methodical devotion to its own artistry might sneak up on you after a while. But hardcore gorehounds might end up scratching their heads, finding it a pretentious bore 'n snore.

              We'll say this......writer-director Robert Eggers proves himself a cinematic force to be reckoned with and the BQ can't wait to see what he comes up with next. 3 &1/2 spooky stars (***1/2).......a movie that doesn't get your goat.....the goat gets you.......

'CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND'......HAPPY 50TH.......

Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977     What a way to end the movie year of '77, already galvanized and forever changed by "Star Wars".......with yet another spectacular movie feast from yet another young director proven to be a master visualist.....

             For the purposes of this post, we watched the original theatrical version and Steven Spielberg's final 'Director's Cut'.......we skipped the 1980 'Special Edition' positioned in between these two versions. Why?  It took Spielberg some time to realize that the abysmal, wrongheaded sequence inside the Mothership was all kinds of a horrible idea.......the BQ, on the other hand, hated that scene from the moment we first laid eyes on it in a theater......

            .......for the simple reason that everybody wants to dream their own dreams about what the inside of the vast alien craft might look like.......just like the powerful nightmares we could easily conjure thinking about what that thing behind the bulging door in "The Haunting" looks like.....

              Can't explain it rationally, but we watched the original theatrical cut 'cause we've always had a soft spot in our heart for that early scene at the power plant, where Richard Dreyfuss's boss yells into the camera, "In ten minutes, we're goin' to candle power!!"

              Sure, we've read all the blah-blah-blahs about the movie's thin characterizations.  True enough.....and even the mature Spielberg admits it's very much the film of a young man with little or no experience of how people behave with each other in the real world......

              But Holy Flying Saucers.....who the hell cares?  The movie presents itself, then and now, as a purely sensual, tactile experience.  It functions as a 137 minute fireworks display, meant to make us all go "ooo" and "aaaah".......(and better than fireworks, works to touch our hearts so we also throw in a few "awwwww"s)

             Things we love the most........

             The craft of the shots......1970's movie directors embraced visual gimmicks with the fervor of ADD-afflicted toddlers playing with and then discarding their new toys......dizzying zoom lens shots, shifting focus, split-screens, multi-screens......all quickly forgotten but forever dating their films as quaint antiques of the era.  Spielberg, however, stuck to meticulous, classic formalism in his visual compositions......every shot beautifully framed for maximum dramatic impact. It's what set him apart from most of his peers and what set him on the road to a celebrated career......he deployed Hitchcock's theory of pure cinema to its greatest heights.....

               The master of crowd control......Since Spielberg now concentrates more on performance-driven dramas, we miss this great talent of his.......his ability to outdo Cecil B. DeMille in his manipulation of spectacular crowd scenes. The scenes looked like he directed thousands of people with the same pinpoint precision he applied to the actors......prime examples: the India sequence and the mass chaos at the Wyoming train station......

                 Terri Garr......a special shout-out to this unsung actress who had to play the same role twice in one year......as Richard Dreyfuss's tormented-into-hysteria wife in "Close Encounters" and John Denver's stunned, perplexed spouse in "Oh, God"........two women who watch their normal existence go up in smoke as their husbands are touched and selected by......well, a higher power.  Although we've never been crazy about her (and Spielberg's) overuse of her shrieking tantrums, we think her finest moments come from her silent, pained, embarrassed reaction shots as she endures the Air Force debunking conference for Dreyfuss and his fellow UFO spotters. Sad and funny at the same time.....

                 John Williams......the first film that managed to duplicate and even improve upon the legendary Morricone-Leone collaboration of "Once Upon A Time In The West"......in which film and music blend into one singular creative entity.....and that's one breathtaking achievement to pull off....

                  We could go on and on......but we'll wrap it up by saying this is one 50th Anniversary movie that's a joy to re-visit every year.  5 stars forever (*****), a FIND OF FINDS......keep watching the skies.

               

           

R.I.P. KARIN DOR......BOND VIXEN, HITCHCOCK VICTIM, & ALL-AROUND EURO-TRASH PRINCESS....

             Beyond depressing to think about Bond girls dying off......

             Like the title of that coffee table book about them, we always though Bond Girls were forever.......

             We encountered the stunning Dor long before she turned her hair flaming red to menace Sean Connery in "You Only Live Twice".......through the wonderful world of UHF TV stations.....

              For those of you who didn't live through the Jurassic eras of television, UHF stations popped up in the 70's.....you can think of them as sort of prehistoric, cheapo cable channels.....

               You needed a separate antenna to bring them in and once you did.....oh my, what an avalanche of junk programming.......roller derbies, wrestling, long forgotten l950's TV shows, ancient Hollywood films.........and best of all.....

                 Euro-Trash!

                 Desperate to fill up their schedules, UHF station programmers purchased loads of syndicated packages of the junkiest 1960's movies imaginable.......sword 'n sandal imitation Hercules flicks, spaghetti westerns, the cheesiest Italian would-be James Bond knockoffs.....(with titles like "Super Agent 009: Mission Beirut").

                 Personally, we binged on this video sludge before anyone thought to use the word 'binge'. We couldn't get enough......especially the really strange stuff thrown into the mix......West German westerns and 'Krimi' films......

                 And that's where we came across the beauteous Karin Dor, who traipsed across all these international genres, flashing her huge expressive eyes. (For easy comparison, we usually referred to her as the Germanic Barbara Steele.....)

                  The 'Krimi's' were bizarre, grotesque little murder mysteries based on novels by British author Edgar Wallace........invariably set in fogbound London and old mansions with lots of secret passageways. They all blend into one film for us.....with the wide-eyed, horrified Dor chased around the castle grounds by the ever nutty Klaus Kinski.....

                   The German westerns she appeared in were even crazier.......unlike the spaghetti oaters filmed in the arid Spanish deserts, the wienerschnitzel westerns leisurely unfolded among the lush rolling hills and forests of Yugoslavia.  They maintained the antique innocence of 1930's Hollywood westerns.......they resembled an elementary school pageant, except with grownups instead of kids dressed up as cowboys and indians.  Pretty unwatchable on every level......until we spotted Dor in one of them....as..(we think).....an Indian princess.

                   In the middle of nursing a crush on her, imagine how delighted we were when she hit the big time with a double-whammy of major parts......the SPECTRE assassin in the Bond film and a few years later, a doomed, anti-Communist Cuban rebel in Hitchcock's  lugubrious "Topaz".....(a film that only briefly develops a pulse during Dor's elegantly photographed murder, with her red robe billowing out on the floor like a spreading pool of blood....)

                   Sadly, neither of these roles propelled her into mainstream stardom.......she wandered through a few American TV series episodes and mostly forgettable, worthless movies.

                  But the BQ will always remember those piercing brown eyes of a true international movie star.......a woman who managed to add a sense of style and class to all those low-rent, dues-paying junkers she appeared in.

                   Rest In Piece, Ms.Dor......from a fan.

'TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN'........THE FAULT IN OUR GERMS......

Turtles All The Way Down by John Green (2017)     Been a while since we strayed out of our wheelhouse (and demographic)........so we thought it high time to take a brief plunge into the tortured, angst-filled universe of Young Adult literature.....

           This isn't hard for the BQ to accomplish, since all we have to do is pluck a random book from the voluminous stash belonging to Beloved Daughter, supreme reader and expert on all things YA.....

           We had to delve into this book, since it constitutes a major publishing event, the first novel in six years from author John Green, writer of the overwhelmingly beloved and celebrated "The Fault In Our Stars".

             Though hardly prolific, Green became the touchstone author for YA readers........and their long, long wait for his next book was due to his personal struggles with mental illness.

             He has transferred those struggles to his new primary character, Aza Holmes, a 16 year old girl beset with OCD, tormented by a torrent of random fears and thoughts that keep her at a distance from reality and her own sense of self.....

               Unlike the externally cancer-stricken teens of "The Fault In Our Stars", Aza's agonies chip away at her mind instead of her body......her recurring, gruesome phobias about stomach bacteria prove as debilitating to her as any cancer.   (We don't envy any screenwriter who tries to turn this into a workable script, given that 70% of the story exists in Aza's internal thoughts.....)

                Oh yes, there's quite an involved plot and other characters that orbit around Aza........centered around the search for a fugitive millionaire crook, whose flight from justice has left his two young sons heartbroken and orphaned.  (We won't go through the convoluted details of it, since however poignant and heartwrenching these subplots may be, the book belongs to Aza and her lifelong battle with her affliction.)

                We've no idea if this book will give teens the kind of huge, heaving, cathartic bouts of weeping they took from "The Fault In Our Stars".  We doubt it. Aza's (and by proxy, Green's) mental illness doesn't lend itself to monumental, star-crossed tragedy........it's more the stuff of everyday survival, a war won in small skirmishes rather than decisive victories.

               But maybe that will resonate even more with the book's readers, for all we know......coping with the toxic thoughts that invade your head uninvited may strike a deeper chord with the all the teens (and adults as well) who are probably devouring this story as we speak.....

              One aspect will delight them......John Green's mental woes haven't blunted his razor sharp wit or his skill at making his finely crafted prose go right to the heart of the matter.  He's still John Green and his readers will want to savor and copy down specific passages from almost every other page......

                Okay, back to the wheelhouse for the BQ, but regardless of who the marketing targets,  we heartily recommend this fast, entertaining and painfully thoughtful read to everybody, regardless of age......4 stars (****).