WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP.....SPECIAL "DICTATOR FROM DAY ONE" EDITION.....

Trump responds to Sean Hannity's helpful prompting to assure people he won't be a dictator by saying he'll be a dictator...'from day one".......and declares all children 10 and older will be ordered to join the para-military Trump Youth, and immediately train to march in parades honoring Trump as well as informing on their parents for harboring any anti-Trump thoughts......

Ukraine desperately hurting for U.S.aid while GOP busies itself planning to impeach Pres.Biden.....in Moscow, Vladimir Putin prepares multiple Order Of Lenin awards for dozens of Republican congressmen........

Tommy Tuberville finally forced under pressure to relinquish his traitorous hold on military promotions....legislation is immediately drafted to require all members of the Senate to have I.Q,s at lease 3 points higher than than a hedgehog......

Speaker Of The House Johnson plans to blur the faces of Jan 6th rioters before releasing all of that day's footage......and additionally will offer all rioters not currently in jail or under indictment coupons worth 20% off each My Pillow from Mike Lindell.......

GOP Congress presses on with their plan to impeach Joe Biden without a single shred of tangible evidence.......while stalling on aid packages to Ukraine and Israel.  Explains Sen. Comer...."as we speak, our investigators found at lease 25 imaginary witnesses whom we're sure will materialize if  all the boys and girls in our country will just clap three times and say, I DO believe, I DO believe!     

Kevin McCarthy announces he's quitting Congress, saddening and shocking......no one......and becomes the very first U.S. congressman to receive letters from both Republicans and Democrats that read, "Don't let the back door bump your ass on the way out...."

Trump's potential 2024 cabinet said to include resident immigration  Gestapo Stephen Miller and congressional loony-toon Marjorie Taylor Greene.......at a recent rally, Trump promises the crowd....."a cabinet that'll make the Barnum And Bailey Clown Car, look like......a smaller Clown Car."

Taylor Swift's selection as Time Magazine's Person Of The Year outrages and confounds rabid Trumpanzees and tinfoil hat wearing MAGA conspiracy loons......Trump Nosferatu Stephen Miller warns that Trump's 2024 administration will immediately arrest all Swift fangirls and transport them to special re-education camps....... once there, they'll be forced to watch Fox News around the clock and not to be released until they sign an oath that they're ..."never ever getting back together" with Swift. 

All BQ visitors, please enjoy a madness-free weekend.....see you all Monday!

'SHAZAM - FURY OF THE GODS' & 'THE FLASH'.....DEEP IN THE DEPTHS OF D.C. DESPERATION......

                              You may wonder why I'm devoting a post on these two films, given that I stand strongly with Martin Scorsese in holding comic book movies responsible for turning today's cinema into a toxic waste dump.

            The very good recent news has been about the possible death knell of these bloated CGI atrocities clogging up theaters.......that maybe the assembly line of  spandex will mercifully grind to a halt.

              The onslaught of comic book crap perpetrated by Disney and Warner Brothers may at long last reach its 'meteor-ends-the-dinosaurs' era.......all it took was audiences avoiding them, sick of the going-nowhere-fast trajectory of their labored storylines and  the mind-numbing repetition of their overlong superhero smackdowns. 

               Therefore today, I'll present brief overviews of these two misbegotten monstrosities as prime examples of why these films are stumbling into oblivion faster than dinosaurs sinking into the La Brea Tarpits.......

               At this point, it's been weeks since I made myself suffer through this double feature from hell , so only general impressions remain in my memory..... as for plot and characters details, I've already blotted them out of my mind.......let's begin out first Mt.Everest of manure......

Shazam - Fury Of The Gods (2023)  This kicks off with Dame Helen Mirren, God help us and Lucy Liu as a couple of rogue goddesses trashing a museum (and innocent civilians) to grab some ancient knick-knack plot device.  Whoopi-de-doo.......

               We move on to Philly (BQ's own hometown!) where the annoying motor tmouthed Shazam (Zachary Levi) rescues motorists as the Benjamin Franklin bridge (gateway to New Jersey!) starts to go bye-bye-bye. Having spend half a lifetime driving over that bridge, the only calamity I ever encountered was clogged traffic trying to get to Jersey beach resorts (or as we natives say, 'down the shore')

                Shazam's un-super alter ego Billy Batson (Asher Angel) has his own problems.....mainly from his foster brother Freddy nursing a crush on yet another rogue goddess (Rachel Ziegler) who's sort of in league with Dame Helen and Lucy. 

              Sweet spandex, I'm already getting a headache thinking about this, so I'll cut to the chase.....Shazam and his entire foster family end up battling the Goddess Gang (minus Ziegler, who's defected to the good guys), but not before Dame Hel unleashes hell by letting loose a buffet selection of CGI monsters to decimate my beloved Philly.  And as usual for comic book movies, we're not supposed to think about the thousands of bystanders who die in the process......not to mention untold squashed cheesesteaks and soft pretzels...... Also usual amidst the interminable end credits, the teaser for yet another DC turd that nobody asked for and nobody's looking forward to......

'The Flash' (2023)   I'll spend even less time with this since it contains very thing I despise most about these films with every single atom of my existence......the multiverse.  This plague, this nuclear winter of superhero movies forces an audience to keep track of which versions of which characters are doing what to which versions of other characters in multiple universes. 

                I'd compare the experience to signing up for an advanced Physics class and discovering the classroom is a portal to hell......or listening to Donald Trump for more than 20 seconds. 

               What did tickle me no end was not the movie itself, but the agonies Warner Brothers went through as their titular 'Flash' actor, Ezra Miller, racked up loads of bad press from his....uh.....various unhappy encounters with law enforcement (later blamed on...uh...'mental health issues'.) I giggled at the idea of Warners and its reptilian CEO David Zaslev, spending millions to digitally erase Miller from the film and replace him....with who?  Dame Helen Mirren?

               But on to the film.....Miller's Flash discovers his speedy superpower can break the time barrier......so why not flash-forward himself himself fast enough to alter history and prevent his mom from being murdered?   Poor dumb Flashy should've watched some previous multiverse movies so he'd familiarize himself with the golden rule.....don't f*** with the multiverse.  

               This all leads to a muli-timeline clash involving the original Batman (Michael Keaton) the ever scary General Zod (Michael Shannon) and a new alternate universe Supergirl (Sasha Calle). For extra lunacy (and cameos) the multiverse cracks open, or springs a leak or I dont-know-what, spilling out all sorts of actors who played Batman and Superman......which, if nothing else, provides at least 48 seconds worth staying awake for....

                Nothing left to say, other than the immortal words of Marlon Brando in 'Apocalypse Now'.....

               The horror.....the horror. For both films, BQ presents its rare AFH awards.....for each of these landfills with delusions of adequacy....ABOMINATIONS FROM HELL.

'GOLD'.....ROGER MOORE (AND BLACK SOUTH AFRICANS) GET THE SHAFT.....LITERALLY....

 Gold (1974)..... Set in the gold mines of 1970's South Africa, and designed as a crowd pleasin', popcorn muncher, this action drama avoids any depiction of the toxic racism generated by the country's apartheid policies. 

               The film seems to depict a South Africa where whites and blacks, though still segregated,  live in relative harmony with each other. Incredibly, there's only one rabid racist on display in the entire film, a vile miner who regularly beats and abuses the black miners who work under him.

               Even worse, this bigoted creep  (Bernard Horsfall, the other British agent of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service") is in league with the film's main villain (Bradford Dillman)  the oily, conniving son-in-law of the mine's crusty CEO (Ray Milland).

              Dilllman's merely a minion of a London-based wheeler-dealer cabal (headed by John Gielgud) who task him with flooding the company's gold mines.......which will send the value of their own gold holdings soaring to new heights.

              But who can put a stop to this odious conspiracy to blow a hole in the underground lake adjacent to the mines, thereby drowning hundreds and hundreds of trapped black miners......who? who?

             It's Slater.....Rod Slater..... the brave no nonsense mine troubleshooter .played with the usual smooth panache by the then newly installed Bond, James Bond......Moore...Roger Moore.

             To Dillman's alarm,, the cantankerous Milland makes Moore the new mine boss after the previous guy died trying to execute that evil  flooding plan. But fate smiles on Dillman when Moore  falls into an affair with Dillman's wife (Susannah York) who's also Milland's daughter. While Moore and York dally in some remote hideaway, Dillman has Horsfall dynamite the wall between the mine and that threatening lake.......thereby jacking up the cabal's profits while giving the trapped miners the shaft....a real watery one. .

             Along the way to the big suspenseful spectacle of the finale, there's a variety of good, bad  and downright bizarre stuff to sample here.  For example.....

             As you can already see, there's a load of actors and craftsman borrowed from the Bond films......Moore, Horsfall Nadim Sawalha,, director Peter Hunt (of the immortal OHMSS), editor (and later Bond director) John Glen, production designer Syd Cain, and those striking opening credits by, who else but Maurice Binder.  

              And BQ would never miss an opportunity to see the always fetching Susannah York, even in a worthless, throwaway role like the one she's handed here. Oh, Susannah, you can read the phone book and I'll be there.........

            What's problematic -  the way the film deals with its one and only major black character John Nkulu, a.k.a.'Big King', played with gentle gravitas and minimal dialogue by Simon Sabela.  He's apparently meant to represent the entirety of the black population of South Africa, a bear-ish but saintly figure who works so hard in the mines, Milland presents him with a golden helmet at a public ceremony.  His character resembles  the roles Jim Brown played in some of his first film appearances ("The Dirty Dozen", "Rio Conchos", "The Dark Of The Sun").....a noble hero quietly enduring the societal racism and yet willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good.   

           (Interesting that only a year earlier Moore's first Bond film "Live and Let Die" offered gifted black actors like Yaphet Kotto, Geoffrey Holder and Julius Harris the chance to play a host of evil villains for a groundbreaking change of pace....

           Overall "Gold" ends up exhibiting a slight, but evident whiff of that entitled colonialism that hung over many British films set in foreign lands. With a major star and a jumbo budget on the line, the film's only interested in presenting itself as an all-audience-appeal,  international action-adventure with little evidence of what's going on in the country where it unfolds.  Just eat your popcorn, it implies, and thrill to the sight of villains vanquished and Roger Moore saving the day....

           2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2).....if you seek it out, you'll find any number of streaming sites that offer it free..(and features a sturdy, muscular Elmer Bernstein score)

                          

'NEVER TALK TO STRANGERS'....UNLESS THEY'RE ON A MOTORCYCLE IN A 90'S SEX THRILLER.....

 Never Talk To Strangers (1995)   Let us now show a moment of remembrance for a genre that flourished through the 1990's......and filled up the shelves of video stores everywhere.

         (And I should know , having toiled as a movie buyer for stores during that era....)

          The 1992 release of Paul Verhoven's violent, hot 'n bothered  "Basic Instinct" opened the floodgates for sexually charged thrillers faster than Sharon Stone infamously opened her underwear-free crotch in that film.  

            Some of the more high profile, A-list heavy breathers (like 'Never Talk To Strangers') made it into theaters but countless others went strait to video, with titles like 'Basic Obsession' or 'Guilty Instinct' or 'Fatal Panties'. 

            The set-up for these films was fairly simple and primal. They either featured a relatively sane man driven into hormonal frenzy by a duplicitous femme fatale.........or a troubled, unsettled woman bubbling up to boil over a vaguely threatening stud...... who may or may not be the neighborhood mad slasher. 

          'Strangers' falls into that latter category, with Rebecca De Mornay as a repressed criminal psychologist who slowly but ever so surely unthaws for the smoldering, aggressive stranger (Antonio Banderas who....uh.....inserts himself, so to speak, into every aspect of her...uh....life. 

            Goes without saying that this unlikely blossoming hothouse relationship doesn't sit well with Rebecca's jovial apartment house neighbor (comedian Dennis Miller) who's been nursing the hots for her.....

            And since we're talkin' thriller here, the fun starts with Rebecca heating up the sheets with Antonio, while an unknown stalker commences terrorizing her. After the usual traditional stalker present of dead flowers, the sick-sick-sicko graduates to more grisly stuff designed to send her over the edge. 

            But who's the cuckoo-for-cocoa-puffs psycho who's got De Hots for De Mornay?  The already shady suspicious Antonio? The wisecracking Miller?   Norman Bates, maybe? Or Hannibal Lector?

          No, no no, BQ will never tell.  I wouldn't dare reveal the film's BIG REVEAL, a  literally bonkers, you-gotta-be-shittin' me wrap up that leaves no perversion untouched but does leave a floor littered with dead bodies.......

           De Mornay, who co-produced the film, gives it her full hysteria-ridden attention and Banderas rides the hell out of a motorcycle and sends Rebecca's temperature up way higher than COVID readings.....simply all that's really required of him. 

           If you're a completist for these kind of films, by all means give it a one time viewing. One couldn't ask for a more prime example of a genre that once ruled the multiplexes, but now mostly resides on Netflix. 3 sweaty stars....(***).

           

'CIRCUS WORLD'.....SAMUEL BRONSTON'S EPIC MOVIE FACTORY FINALLY FINALLY TIPS OVER......

 Circus World (1964)     No, I'm not here to throw more dirt on the grave of mega-epic producer Samuel Bronston.  Through the late 50's and early 60's, Bronston, fueled by American bucks and big breaks from Generalissimo Franco's Spain, pumped out all-star epics like the popular "El Cid" and BQ's own personal favorite "55 Days At Peking". 

             Bronston set up his own studio in Spain as well, with enough  acreage to build massive replicas of Peking for "55 Days"  and a vast spectacular Roman Forum for "The Fall Of The Roman Empire".  But while the action-packed "El Cid" and "55 Days" rang up the box office,  "Roman Empire", a 3 hour turgid, stillborn snooze, flopped dead on arrival in 1964......and it took Bronston's Spanish empire down the drain with it.....

           But wait! There's more! (Pardon my infomercial hyperbole). In 1964, only a few months after "Empire" fell, Bronston still released one last genuine popcorn gobblin' crowd pleaser to finish off his reign of epics. Who could resist a circus with John Wayne, lions, tigers, elephants, clowns, trapeze artists, Stagecoach shootouts and the infinitely adorable, vivacious Claudia Cardinale?

            I'm not the biggest fan of "Circus World" but it's infinitely more fun and easier to watch than Cecil B. DeMille's grossly over-awarded "The Greatest Show On Earth".....(but yes, we all still love the train wreck scene, the only thing anyone remembers from it, including young Steven Spielberg in "The Fablemans")

           Directed efficiently enough by Hollywood war horse Henry Hathaway, it's saddled with a soap opera plot worthy of a Douglas Sirk high glamour weeper. John Wayne's big top impresario Matt Masters takes his combo circus-Wild West show on an ill-advised European tour,. He's hoping to re-connect with his long lost love, high wire-trapeze star Lili Alfredo (Rita Hayworth). Lili fled into obscurity after her romantic dalliance with Matt drove her husband to suicide........and for extra soap bubbles, she left behind daughter Toni (Claudia Cardinale), whom Matt raised as a stand-in Dad, without ever telling the kid about her famous mom. 

           Now let BQ rest a moment and contemplate how much we despise having to outline overly complicated movie plots........okay, I'm rested, let's move on to the cool stuff....

           Samuel Bronston never failed to deliver spectacle to any of his projects......(not that it helped "The Fall Of The Roman Empire", whose audiences mostly viewed that one in deep slumber).

          Therefore 'Circus World' is bookended by two Bronston-ized showstoppers, but it's really only the first one that sticks in my memory.......the big circus boat that tips over with all hands (and performers) on deck.  (While the boat's docked in Italy, an on board publicity stunt goes awry with a performer plunging into the water.  And everyone on the boat unwisely rushes to one side of it to see what's going on.....ooopsie, perhaps this crowd of rubberneckers was unfamiliar with gravity....)

           What's cool about it (and something you'll never see done in today's bloated CGI era)......the entire sequence (much like the upending of the main salon in Irwin Allen's original "Poseidon Adventure") is staged for real, with hundreds of stunt people and extras taking a unwanted dive into the harbor..)

          As per usual BQ procedure, I wouldn't waste my time (or yours) describing the unfolding plot in the bulk of the film......(of course Rita Hayworth returns to the circus, touching off all sorts of melodramatic yada yada yada...)

          Let's just cut right to the literally fiery finale, with the circus tent ablaze, accomplished with mostly standard, thoroughly unconvincing special effects. Cue the necessary, required heroics and. "Circus World" literally folds its tent (or what's left of it)......

         But rest assured, not even a capsized boat and a raging fire can stop John Wayne's lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Unfortunately for Samuel Bronston, a capsized "Roman Empire" finally put an end to the Bronston 3 ring circus of gigantic historical epics. Damn shame too, since the next one up was supposedly "The French Revolution". (I could almost picture Bronston constructing the Palace of Versailles in his Spanish back lot.......

          And I'm not ashamed to admit I pine a little for these films....... and for ballsy moguls like Bronston who weren't afraid to roll the dice on making such grandiose movies.  True enough, some worked, some didn't, but sure as hell not for lack trying.......

         "Circus World" was far from the best of them, but certainly not the worst way to finish off a long gone brand of splashy, colorful showmanship.....2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)

'THE STONE KILLER'....THUGS, GOONS AND MOBSTERS GET BRONSON'D....ON BOTH COASTS.......

The Stone Killer (1973) .....serves as the purest, uncluttered example of the 'Rogue Cop Plows Through The Hell Of Big Cities'  genre that flourished in the 70's, following the double whammy release of "The French Connection" and "Dirty Harry" in 1971......

            And who better to spew bullet ridden bodies across the screen with such gleeful abandon but the then powerhouse team of the impassively stone-faced Charles Bronson and his prolific go-to director Michael Winner. 

            Winner's reputation for maximum efficiency accounted for his ability to pump out a film every year....no wonder the studios couldn't wait to give him work.  And there's not a wasted minute or moment in the blood soaked 95 minutes of "The Stone Killer". 

            Fair warning to millennials and the subsequent young gens.....like all 70's cop movies, it's steeped in systemic racism, so try not to clutch your pearls, fanning yourself as you hear those toxic words flying about in the dialogue. Remember, my children, this occured long, long before the days of political correctness and woke-ism.....

           But let's head right for the fun stuff.....primarily from watching Charles Bronson cut a swath of corpses on both sides of the U.S.A. (Fired from the NYPD for being too free with his bullets, Charlie heads right over to L.A., where an equal amount of scumbags need immediate terminal  Bronson-izing

           And what a perfect case he stumbled on to.....a small army of Vietnam vets turned commando assassins for hire. They've been assembled by mafia boss Viscari (Martin Balsam) to wipe out mob's Sicilian contingent in revenge for a similar wipeout perpetrated by the Sicilians in 1939.  Some long memory this guy's got.....

            Before figuring all this out, Bronson has to work his way through the food chain of lower echelon scumsuckers, one body at a time........ including some shlub who's smashed through a building. assisted by the front grille of the speedy Charlie-mobile.

            Finally, we arrive at what we came to salivate over in any Bronson film.....the climactic  carnival of carnage where Charlie and the cops engage the freelance death squad......but only after the squad's already used their automatic weapons to turn the Sicilian confab into rare hamburger meat. (Let's hear it for the poor capo who's perforated enough to send him flying out a window to die screaming til he hits the pavement. That's some bad day this guy having.....)

           Grisly good pulp all the way, made even more fun by Winner, as always, populating his cast with so many. instantly recognizable character actors  Special standouts......Stuart Margolin as the almost comically intense leader of the Vietnam squad and Ralph Waite (of "The Walton") as an idiot detective who's so stupid Bronson wouldn't waste a bullet on him. 

          Speaking of major cities afflicted with high crime, only a year later Bronson and Winner would nail the country's prevailing 'mad-as-hell' atmosphere with unerring precision.....in their startling, controversial vigilante bleeder,  "Death Wish".   And that one ushered in a whole new sub-genre all its own......with a host of fed-up heroes taking the law into their own handguns......

    

          As for "The Stone Killer", in a few brief moments it allows Bronson to muse over the sorry state of things.....the stark legacy of young Vietnam war vets returning home broken and angry along with the tsunamic of crime overwhelming society in general.  

          Not to worry, action fans, trust Bronson and Winner to never let any philosophizing slow down the firefights and the crimson rivers.....3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2),

             

            

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP.....SPECIAL "SANTOS CLAUSE AIN'T COMIN' TO TOWN" EDITION.......

 

Pathological liar George Santos is finally expelled from Congress......immediately causing the organization APPLE (Association of Phonies, Perjurers and Lying Equivocators) to file a discrimination suit against all members of Congress who voted to expel. Claimed APPLE's Chairman Emeritus Donald Trump, "if they can do it to George, they can do it every Christian God-fearing liar in America.  Santos blew a raspberry at the the chamber as he left, claiming, "Screw you all, I've just discovered I'm related to the British Royal family and currently am 25th in line for the crown....."

Henry Kissinger dead at age 100.....leaving behind a legacy of millions of slaughtered Vietnamese, Cambodians and American soldiers killed during the Vietnam War......and a Nobel Peace Prize. Which reportedly caused Vladimir Putin to grumble, "Well then why can't I get one of those?"

Trump rages against MSNBC for saying mean things about him and wants the government to "come down hard" on them for abusing free airwaves.....and is heart to have muttered privately, "Now take that Arabian towelhead MBS....now there's a guy who knows how to deal with journalists, chopping 'em up like hamburger meat......something worth taking into consideration for my next forever term of office.....

Liz Cheney's new book mentions Republicans who referred to Trump as 'Orange Jesus'....but to give them credit, Cheney claimed more than few Republicans drew the line when Trump asked them to sacrifice their first born by throwing them into a fire pit at a Mar-A-Lago cocktail bar. 

Elon Musk, after posting anti semitic messages, tells advertisers who left X to "Go f*** yourselves".......and furthermore, contemplates the social media outlet once called Twitter to undergo yet another name change. Millions chime in, recommending "Shitter", with a overflowing toilet replacing a bird as the symbol......