"SHAMUS" & "PHYSICAL EVIDENCE"......FAREWELL, BURT REYNOLDS......

Shamus (1973), Physical Evidence (1989)    We thought we'd stand out a little if we skipped over the most heavily mentioned Burt Reynolds milestones (Deliverance, Smokey And the Bandit, etc...)

          .........and instead, pick two random, long forgotten items out of his filmography......the kind of movies he'd roundly ridicule when he ruled the late night talkshows with winking, self-depreciating appearances.......(no one made fun of Burt better than Burt)

                  Whether he decided to make throwaway, disposable movie-star vehicles or put some extra effort into quality films, Reynolds enjoyed his stardom, he giggled and smirked his way through it......and for a long time, we loved him for it.

                    He happily joked his way in and out of movies that were lame jokes themselves..........and as all of us do when age overtakes us, he lived long enough to ponder all the roads not taken.

                   Reynolds became the perfect movie star for the glib, slick-surface, self-absorbed 1970's......and he rode his fame like a champion surfer skimming through the rapidly collapsing interior of a monstrous wave.

                   Until the wave finally enveloped him and sent him flying off into the foam......

                   "Shamus" arrived at the very height of his star power, coming only a few months after his critically acclaimed role in 'Deliverance'.......a skimpy little private-eye knockoff barely held together with his now trademarked, sarcastic charm.

                    The movie's a lumpy mixed bag of stuff, cobbled together with up-to-date vicious violence, Reynolds' easy-going snarky persona and chunks of scenes that pay tribute to the classic Bogart-Bacall "The Big Sleep".   (There's a clumsy homage to that film's famous bookstore seduction sequence.....but in 1973, it's crudely updated with Reynolds eyeing the shopgirl's impressive cleavage and smirking "You're a healthy devil...")

                    Nothing in the film makes any sense, from the convoluted plot to Reynolds' character, who veers from jaunty wisecracker to an enraged thug who prefers strangulation to elicit clues from shady characters.

                     Unfortunately, "Shamus" offered a sneak preview of the the bulk of Reynold's career.....negligible, worthless little movies, designed to make you forget them before you'd even made it halfway up the theater aisle.

                     By 1989, he'd toiled in a number of such films,  a rocky run of box-office disappointments ("City Heat", "Stick", "Heat", "Malone", "Switching Channels").....and the misbegotten "Physical Evidence" didn't do him any favors either.

                     Conceived as a sort of a sequel to the Glenn Close-Jeff Bridges courtroom thriller "Jagged Edge", this was one of those movies that looked like everyone involved gave up before the cameras rolled.  Except for Reynolds, who must seen a chance to create a decidedly unlovable character, with no interest in begging for audience sympathy.

                      Playing a violence-prone cop who's framed on a murder charge, the actor turned in some worthy, serious work here........depicting a miserably unhappy man engulfed in simmering, sometimes explosive rage, he gave a performance deserving of a way better movie than this one.

                     The film, a badly botched thriller with some last minute pretense of romantic suspense, doesn't even come close to matching him.

                     The movie might have quietly ended up as just a modest, mediocre effort.......except that Theresa Russell's painful, amateur night performance as Reynolds' public defender lifted the film into the realm of Razzie Award material. She's that bad........making Ali McGraw look like Dame Helen Mirren.......reciting her lines as if she'd learned them phonetically.

                     We will say this much for "Physical Evidence" (the last movie directed by novelist Michael Crichton)......before the plodding sludge of the movie itself commences, it opens with a great sick-joke sequence in which a hapless, suicidal young guy encounters the body of a murder victim on a bridge.  It's like one of those macabre, goofy sequences that Hitchcock used to dream up at random but could never find a film to fit them in.........

                      And we'll say this for Burt Reynolds........no matter how uneven the films, he loved acting, loved practicing his craft and never stopped working at it........(we'll dearly miss the contribution he would have made to Tarantino's upcoming "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood").

                     He lived with his choices, some of them detrimental to his career, and accumulated enough experienced wisdom to lament his missed opportunities and lost loves.

                      But he had a hell of a productive, creative life and had a fine time living it........and millions of movie-goers (us included) had a fine time watching him.  For these two lost movies, 2 stars each (**)......for Burt Reynolds, 5 stars (*****)

               

       

"ROBERT B. PARKER'S 'OLD BLACK MAGIC'.....WE DON'T KNOW ART, BUT WE KNOW WHAT WE LIKE....

Robert B. Parker's 'Old Black Magic' by Ace Atkins (2018)     We're kind of iffy on the whole business of a dead author's estate hiring another writer to continue churning out books featuring the dead author's beloved characters.......

                 It comes down to how skillfully the new writer can duplicate the original author's style and successfully breathe new life into the familiar, much loved characters.....

                 This is the 6th time at bat for Ace Atkins in crafting another mystery-adventure for the late Robert B. Parker's big, burly, wisecracking Boston P.I. Spenser.

                 So do his Xerox copies get it right and give us a satisfying Spenser fix?

                  Hmm......sometimes.

                 Atkins way overdoes Spenser's trademark snark. Robert Parker carefully honed all of Spenser's withering wisecracks........Atkins has the character spewing out endless one liners faster than Groucho Marx in "A Night At The Opera".

                 Funny stuff, but there was always more to Spenser than his quick, sharp tongue.

                 Parker's books consisted almost entirely of short, pithy, right-to-the-point dialogue scenes. His pacing was electric......you could polish off one of his books in two hours or less....

                 Atkins maintains a slower pace and contributes more descriptive sequences......but it doesn't improve his imitation Spenser books much......it just makes you very aware that this isn't Parker who's writing them.

                   Oh right....the story.  At a museum's request, Spenser hunts down a priceless El Greco painting stolen from the museum twenty years earlier......

                    His quest eventually leads him into tangling with all the old school Mafia hoods he's come up against in previous books. And the body count commences......

                   We'll admit to laughing out loud a few times at the sheer onslaught of Spencer's jokes.....(Atkins provides him with three worthy foils in two of the museum honchos and the snotty rival Brit investigator they've hired to beat Spenser to the painting.   Basically, they're like "Night At The Opera" stuffed shirts waiting to be verbally eviscerated by Groucho-Spenser......)

                  But the ending left us with an unsatisfied,  indifferent bored shrug. And that's no way to end a Spenser caper, no matter how many zingers you provide him with.....

                  Not quite the real thing, but for all us Spenser-ites who never, never want the big guy to go away......we guess it'll do at 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2).  Next time, Ace.....more genuine character moments, a few less gags.....and pick up the pace, why don't ya......

               

             

CRAZYTOWN! WE GOT YOUR CRAZYTOWN RIGHT HERE.....THE BEST TRUMP IMITATION....EVER.

             Crazytown?   You want Crazytown? 

             You've heard all the late night guys do Trump in their monologues.........the familiar whine, the knee-jerk use of "Believe me...." before or after another lie (now up to 4,370 and still counting...)

              But in our memories of classic, over-the-top performances, we remembered a long forgotten character actor who brilliantly captured the essence and psyche of Donald Trump........over 60 years before Baby Orange became a dire threat to American democracy and the entire world.......

              We speak of Jay Robinson and his back-to back, iconic, Crazytown performances as the mad Emperor Caligula in the two 20th Century Fox biblical epics, "The Robe" (1953) and "Demetrius And The Gladiators" (1954)

               Yes, we're aware.......he looks and sounds nothing like Trump.

              Look closer as these set of performances.......essentially, he is Trump.

               If you view the films again......watch him and listen to him carefully.  As he rants and brays and screams his way through these films, searching for hidden enemies, enraged with paranoid tantrums, deluding himself into thinking he's a god..........who is he really, but Trump in a toga?

              And mirroring today's White House, as revealed in Bob Woodward's new book, Caligula's inner circle cowers and kowtows as his increasingly lunatic behavior puts them in danger of getting crucified or fed to the lions......(the ancient equivalent of  being 'thrown under the bus')

              Alec Baldwin and a host of comedians may have nailed down all the clownish aspects of Trump......the preening ego, the rampant stupidity, all of it topped with that ridiculous hair........

              But when it comes to accurately replicating the dark, empty soul, the pathetic cowardice and the ever malignant evil of the man.........

               Nobody did it better than Jay Robinson and his mad emperor portrayal........

               As far as this last photo.....we'd like to think of it as a political cartoon, with the spear representing Robert Mueller's final report.....

             

"AWAKENED".......YOU CAN NEVER HAVE ENOUGH SUBWAY MONSTERS

Awakened by James S. Murray and Darren Wearmouth (2018)     Monsters!  Yea!!

            Huge, creepy, slimy, multi-limbed, razor-toothed, blood lusting, man eating creatures from deep in the bowels of the earth! 

              Double Yea!

              And up they come from below, slobbering and snacking on all sorts of unlucky people who attend the grand opening of a new section of the New York City subway......including, the Mayor, his wife and the President Of The United States.

               The body parts fly through the air as three separate groups of characters get hopelessly trapped underground with a slobbering, scrambling, shrieking nest of the beasts.....maybe numbering in the millions. They make the aliens in 'Aliens' look like Teletubbies......

              Oh Lordy, can you tell how much we loved this book yet?

              "Awakened" stands in stark contrast to Ezekial Boone's pathetic trilogy of books about the world overrun by hordes of spiders ("The Hatching", "Skitter", "Zero Day")

              This book is the real effin' deal......this is how to you put together a sci-fi/action/horror thriller, one that nails readers to their chairs and won't let go until they get to the last page.......

              The Boone books are close to unreadable......weighed down with clunky indigestible exposition.......and even worse,  each one turns out as nothing more than an elongated trailer for the next one in the series......a perpetual tease that never delivers. To hell with 'em.....

              Authors Murray and Wearmouth, on the other hand, put together a breathless non-stop thrill show, with plenty of excruciating suspense, spectacular set pieces and plot twists galore.

              And best news for all us drooling monster lovers......it's the first book in a trilogy.....(but worry not, the first book gives you a full measure of closure, as well as fairly setting up events to come)

               Unlike the Boone-spider trilogy, whose sequels we dreaded, we can't wait for the next "Awakened" book. Can't arrive soon enough.

                 4 teeth-snappin' stars (****)......BQ says hop on this train for a hellish....and one hell of ride. (Did we remember to shout "Yea!"?)

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI.......MAY THE CASH BE WITH YOU.........

Star Wars VIII The Last Jedi (2017)    In the midst of the bitter titanic feud between Disney and the armies of enraged fanboys and fangirls, the BQ will struggle to hold on to the sweet memory of Memorial Day weekend in 1977......

................when the first 'Star Wars' took us all by surprise and took the whole world by storm........

                What an astounding delight that experience was for the audience........something we've only seen duplicated in the roaring response to the first Sean Connery Bond films.c

                But here we are, 41 years later.

                Star Wars is now Disney corporate product......each film processed like a giant hot dog....composed of ground up chunks of previous Star Wars movies......

                 It's pointless to apply critical analysis to these films........it's like comparing one Big Mac to another.

                  So we'll do our usual thing and just point out the stuff that bounced off randomly.....

                  Luke The Grumpy Old Jedi  A true Space Oddity.......that film critics mostly embraced the idea of turning Luke into a whiny, neurotic Debbie Downer, while the fan base practically exploded their own heads in rage.   On this one, we're with the fans.......a stupid, perverse move and a criminal waste of one of the SW Universe's most pivotal characters......

                  Disney Channel humor......imported into the movie directly from the company sitcoms populated by middle school show-offs insulting each other.......yuk.

                  Poe Dameron (Oscar Issac)  Holy X-Wings, is this guy annoying or what?.......he seems only mildly annoyed as he notices that his suicide space battles usually kill off most of his fellow pilots........and then there's this whole "Crimson Tide" tug-of-war he has with Laura Dern's character.......(we were waiting to see if they'd start arguing about whether the Lipizzaner stallions came from Spain or Portugal.....)

                   Porgs  Call us crazy, but we love the sheer naked, greedy honesty of them......they're there to stock the stuffed animal shelves at the Disney stores,fill the registers with cash, nothing more........at least nobody foolishly has them beating up Imperial Stormtroopers with wooden sticks......

                  The Outer Space Las Vegas.....they left out who's appearing year 'round in the big rooms.....where's the intergalactic Britney and Celine Dion??

                 Snoke  Who and what the hell is this guy, anyway?  And why does he look like a leftover mummy from the Brendan Fraser movies?

                   Kylo Ren (Adam Driver)  Oh hell no.....we wouldn't waste our time trying to assess this character. His behavior, motivations and intentions operate only on screenwriting whim from scene to scene.  He sounds like a roomful of writers took turns with his dialogue......and none of them ever consulted with each other.

                    Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran)   We liked her just fine........but poor Tran found herself besieged and insulted on social media by those vile hordes of 39 year old, 300 pound guys who live in their parents' basements.  (Much like Trump, they've nothing to do all day but compose idiotic, bullying tweets)   So she bailed out of the internet........leaving the trolls to return to masturbation and Dunkin Donuts with sprinkles......good for her......and here's wishing coronaries to all her tormentors.

                     Sorry, but we prefer to keep a safe distance from this new era of Star Wars......and by that we mean all of it......the never-ending Disney-manufactured hype, the boiling anger of the fans and  the movies themselves.........noisy, snarky and in their pre-packaged calculation,....and light years removed from the primal fun and innocence of the those first films.

                      For "The Last Jedi", 1& 1/2 stars (* 1/2)........it made our fond memories of that 1977 Memorial Day weekend....something from a kinder, gentler galaxy, far far away.....



             
                 

"STILL OF THE NIGHT"........STRICTLY STILL-LIFE HITCH HOMAGE.....

Still Of The Night (1982)   You always have us as 'Hello" when it comes to movies that take a stab at imitating Hitchcock.......

                 This one's by far the oddest......and was actually titled "Stab" at one point......

                  'Still Of The Night' turns out as a far better title than the stark, simple 'stab'.......cause this one's literally as still and inert as a painting.

                   Unlike Brian DePalma's trademark,overheated wildly hysterical Hitchcock homages, this movie, directed by Robert Benton and scripted by Benton and David Newman, remains a dry, schematic, academic exercise.

                     It's like a visual version of a graduate student's Hitchcock thesis........it glumly, methodically works its way through a checklist of traditional Hitchcock tropes, duly copied from 'Vertigo', 'Spellbound', 'Rear Window' and 'North By Northwest'.

                   It only spends 90 brief minutes spreading this stuff across its thin, barely-there plot......without ever developing an identity or life of its own. Or a pulse,for that matter. 

                  What a missed opportunity this was......since it paired two powerful leads, Roy Scheider and Meryl Streep,,,,,,,with Scheider as a soft spoken psychiatrist entranced by Streep, a mystery woman who may or may not have murdered one of his patients.

                    You can imagine what a roaring good time Brian DePalma would enjoy with this storyline.......swirling, twirling camera moves, operatic bloody killings and a rumbling imitation Bernard Herrmann music score to go with it. 

                      Benton, however, directs the film like a slide-show lecture on Hitchcock.....it unfolds as more of a power-point presentation than a movie.   (Except in a glaring omission, Benton leaves out a Herrmann-esque score.......he has Broadway composer John Kander contribute a sweet little tune that plays at the main and end titles......and has no relation to the movie at all.....)

                      We'll admit, there's some measure of fun in spotting the Hitch moments.....a clever little bit with an incriminating wristwatch, a creepy spin on the 'Spellbound' dream sequence, Scheider's unsettling scrape with danger in Central Park, and a clever enough riff on the 'North By Northwest' art auction.......but we get the distinct feeling we had more fun spotting them than Benton did filming them.  And that's a shame. 

                     One thing the film does get so right........turning Streep into a drop-dead gorgeous, icy blonde Hitchcock temptress.  Deliberately made over to resemble Eva Marie Saint's 'North By Northwest' character, she's a stunning vision to behold......we'll stand corrected if we're wrong, but we think this may be the only Streep film in which her sole function is Sex Goddess. 

                    BQ only recommends this one for film buffs who, like us, never pass up any faux-Hitch attempt.......everyone else, proceed with extreme caution...….2 stars (**).

THE WEEKLY MADNESS WRAPUP.......SPECIAL 'I'LL HOLD MY BREATH TIL YOU GO AWAY' EDITION

            Baby Orange proves to world that.........he's Baby Orange........After a week of typically abysmal behavior disrespecting John McCain, the Baby-In-Chief pouts like a two year old as reporters ask him for a comment on McCain.  The expression says it all...…..if only he'd held his breath a little bit longer......

              Baby Orange claims the stock market will crash if he's impeached and violence will erupt if Democrats win the mid-term elections........and other bad stuff, like cats and dogs sleeping together.......

              Baby Orange claims he'll fill up a stadium for a rally for Ted Cruz......really? He'll do that for Lyin' Ted?   Even when Ted's dad may have had something to do with killing JFK? (You know that's true.....it was in the National Enquirer...)  Even when Ted's wife looks like the Wicked Witch Of The West compared to Melania??  Even when Ted called Baby Orange a 'sniveling coward'.......(which is still very true,by the way......but let bygones be bygones, etc, etc, etc)

              Baby Orange's White House lawyer heads for revolving door.......not to worry, Mr. So-Called President........we're sure, in 30 hours of questioning and testimony with Mueller, Don McGahn only discussed the weather and sports scores...........