WEEKEND MADNESS WRAPUP.......SPECIAL FLIPPIN' EDITION......

            Another week where Baby Orange astounds us all,pushing the notches ever downward on the  "How low can he go" meter.....

             Baby Orange says 3000 people didn't die in Puerto Rico........We understand his outrage.........how could any of those people die........they were perfectly healthy enough to catch the rolls of paper towels Baby Orange flung at them........

              Paul Manafort pleads guilty and flips for Mueller.......possibly inching Baby Orange closer and closer to the day when he'll finally wear a jumpsuit that matches his complexion........

             

"TOMB RAIDER".........DO THEY REALLY NEED ACTORS TO DO THIS?

Tomb Raider (2018)   No, we're not kidding about the question we pose in this post........

              What's the point of putting flesh-and-blood actors in a videogame movie that's really nothing more than the game itself.......with the one exception of having pixel-created people replaced by real ones.

                We know how the makers of "Tomb Raider" would answer this question..........they'd yammer on about how they've enhanced the game experience by employing an Oscar-winning actress to bring empathy, humanity and dramatic depth to Lara Croft.....(she of the intergalactic cleavage, short-shorts and the twin automatics blasting away....)

                 Yeh, right.

                 So world class actress Alicia Vikander packs on the muscles to her slim frame and sweats, strains, runs, jumps, climbs and punches for close to two hours.

                  And no one's going to mistake Vikander for some impossibly stoic unrealistic, invulnerable video game heroine........we're talkin' Academy Award winner here.......so as she endures an Olympics-worthy marathon of physical punishment, you get to hear her every squeal, shriek, gasp, screech, scream, groan and grunt.

                  The filmmakers no doubt expected her to act the crap out this crap.....giving their efforts a professional, A-List sheen. And Alicia doesn't disappoint.

                  She may be just in it for the paycheck, but she wants you to feel her pain, damn it,,,,,,even if she knows there's no Oscars handed out for dangling from a styrofoam cliff in a green-screened warehouse.........(not this year, anyway. Maybe 2019)

                    More bad news for fanboy gamers:  as an origin story, that means no spiffy, sexy masturbatory Lara Croft costume.........sorry boys.....no short pants, no torpedo boobs....nothing to objectify here......you'll have to go back to slappin' in those old Angelina Jolie  DVDs........(or your granddad's copy of "Barbarella"....)

                    The storyline?   Oh please spare us. You can read the descriptions on the back of the games this film sampled.  Running. Jumping. Climbing. Tomb raiding. Avoiding all the boilerplate tomb booby traps like disappearing floors and surprise spikes from the ceiling.

                     In short, a game.

                     Which brings us right back to our original question. What's the point of putting real actors in this?

                    The delusions-of-grandeur  bunch who put this film together might have enjoyed more success if they'd been honest with themselves about what they're making.......and cast some majestically curvy Comic-Con cosplay girl as Lara Croft.

                     At the end of day, guys, it's still a video game.......and no matter how many gallons of award-worthy sweat you squeezed out of Alicia Vikander........your movie never amounts to anything other than a colossal waste of her time and talent.  1 & 1/2 stars (* 1/2).......Game over, man.

"THE POWER".......AN UNSTABLE GENIUS.......CORRUPTED ABSOLUTELY.....

The Power (1968)    We wish like hell we could fully embrace and love this movie.......instead of settling for mere modest admiration for its high points.

               It's loaded with brilliant little moments, the kind of fanciful magic us baby boomers fully expected from a film produced by George Pal ("The Time Machine", "The War Of The Worlds", "When Worlds Collide", "The Wonderful World Of The Brothers Grimm").

                Pal had to produce his wondrous sci-fi/fantasy films for nickels and dimes.......in the low budget ghetto that studios reserved for such films.  (We'd like believe.....if there's a heaven, Pal's looking down, smiling at the sight of studios making comic book movies with budgets that would fund third world nations for decades,,,,,,, or finance 1,000 more Pal movies)

               "The Power" was Pal's adaptation of a Frank M. Robinson novel about a group of scientists who discover there's a futuristic intellect among them.......someone who's skipped over eons of evolution, possessing a superhuman brain equipped with vast (and potentially lethal) telepathic and telekinetic powers.

                  A brilliant idea, one that cries out for a striking visual style to go along with its compelling, imaginative premise.

                 Sadly, it didn't happen. The film, directed by one of Pal's sci-fi veterans, Byron Haskin, is staged and shot like an extra long TV episode........in flat, bright Technicolor......and populated with a host of instantly familiar character actors.....(Arthur O' Connell, Richard Carlson, Earl Holliman, Aldo Ray, Barbara Nichols, Suzanne Pleshette, Gary Merrill, Michael Rennie.....)...

                  So it's an entire movie made up of 'very special guest stars' and headed up by MGM's  resident pretty-boy, George Hamilton.....the Rob Lowe of the 1960's. (To his credit though, Hamilton's not bad and nimbly suffers through a fair amount of physical punishment similar to Cary Grant's in 'North By Northwest'.

                  Despite its bursts of imagination, overall it's plays like an extended episode from the crappy third season of "The Man From Uncle"......everyone goes through the motions.....Pleshette wanders through it like she's in another Bob Newhart sitcom, only with some nasty violence

                 So let's concentrate on the really good stuff.......starting with a ripe, rip roarin' score from the masterful Miklos Rosza.........music that actually incorporates the storyline. The mysterious SuperBrain turns out to have come from a family of Gypsies, so Rosza flavors his score with the Gypsy-sounding cimbalom, a middle-European dulcimer played with two thin hammers......(the instrument make a stunning appearance in the main titles and throughout the film......)

                  The Mysterious SuperBrain, not wanting his/her identity exposed, starts eliminating the scientists and forcing Hamilton to go on the lam, in a cross country trek to uncover the all powerful fiend.

                 As we said, every so often (not nearly enough), the film bursts into some fanciful sequences.........SuperBrain messes with Hamilton's head as our hero staggers down a busy downtown street.......making Hamilton think he sees the 'Don't Walk' traffic light start flashing 'Don't Run'.....SuperBrain, who doesn't strike us as someone with a sense of humor, even turns toyshop toys into stop-motion George Pal Puppettoons, all to the better to torment our hero.......

                   This all leads, naturally, to a climactic showdown with SuperBrain........and a more than expected, easily guessed twist. (And fair warning:  don't hold your breath waiting for SuperBrain to reveal any endgame here...…..we've no idea how SB planned to use such massive intellect......other than win a boatload of cash on Jeopardy...…)

                  As much as we enjoy "The Power" for all its sporadic pleasures........we sigh at the thought of how dazzling this movie might have been.........if Pal had only found himself a fresh visionary director for the material.......in the same way (in that same year) that Paramount mogul Robert Evans recruited Roman Polanski to direct "Rosemary's Baby".....

                  For sci-fi fans, a 3 star (***) must-see-at-least-once........(and speaking of the source material, we'll get around to posting on another Frank M. Robinson fave, "Watching", in which he imagines an entire species of super-intellects, who've been incognito among us since prehistoric days......stay tuned....)

               

             

"THE COMMUTER"........LIAM GETS HIS TICKET PUNCHED.......A LOT......

The Commuter (2018)     All hail Liam Neeson..........the one man AARP.............Association of  Ass-Kicking Retired People........

                This guy may be gettin' old.......but can he take a punch or what?  Only Mike Tyson's speed bag endures as much punishment......

                  And we love that filmmakers have dreamed up a whole new genre to accommodate him......Old Guy Battles Vast Conspiracy In Confined Public Transportaion......

                 You think our world-weary Neeson-ator had a rough flight in "Non Stop"?   Hold on to your tray tables, cause that jaunt was nothing compared to when he takes the train.......

                  His new trip?  Imagine "Murder On The Orient Express", "The Lady Vanishes" and the mine car chase from "Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom jammed into a blender.....with a healthy does of steroids.

                   When Hitchcock and screenwriter Ernest Lehman were planning "North By Northwest", Hitchcock toyed with the idea of the villains concocting a tornado to come after Cary Grant in the cornfield.........until Lehman asked Hitchcock, "Exactly how would they do that?"

                   "Commuter" director Jaume Collet-Serra obviously applied no such common sense brakes to the screenwriters here.  The beyond description, convoluted conspiracy aimed at Neeson - prodding him to engineer the death of an unidentified Federal witness on the train - is too ludicrous to explain in any detail.

                   The villains here and their cool, omniscient mastermind (Vera Farmiga) make Hitchcock's tornado seem entirely rational.......

                   But enough of them......and who cares anyway?  The whole purpose of a Liam-Vs-Deep-Cover-Bad-Guys movie is watch our aging hero walk up and down narrow aisles in various states of confusion, anxiety and terror...…...and oh yeh,....absorb multiple face punching from surprise villains, preferably in really tiny spaces...….

                   As if all that wasn't enough, the writers even throw in some well-deserved sniping at Wall Street's contempt for the middle class folks they destroyed during their 2008 meltdown...…(it's a wonder the movie  didn't throw in global warming and the war in Syria too.....)

                    Can't wait for the next more.... At this rate, it might feature Liam kicking and kung-fu-ing some guy while they're both stuck in a Port-O-Potty at their company picnic. Or how about a wild chase up and down a department store elevator?

                   Deep down, we're hoping Liam Neeson still gets to make these movies when he's in his 80's...….whacking the evil conspirators with his walker while they're all on the free Seniors' Bus to the shopping mall...….

                  You go get 'em, buddy...….we're with you all the way......as long you hold those movies down to about an hour and 45 minutes so we don't soak our Depends while watching them.   3 stars (***) for our favorite Golden Years Warrior and his continued dedication to providing mindless idiotic fun to one and all...…...

"YOU"........LATE NITE STALK-SHOW APPEARANCES.........

You (Mini-Series- 2018)    Oh the tongue-in-cheek irony......

              Where else would the series version of Caroline Kepnes's darkly sardonic thriller land but on on the Lifetime Channel.........home to countless cheesy stalker-suspensers.........

               The channel's schedule is already heavily loaded with with its very own stalk-a-thons...with titles  along the lines of "I'm Watching You"....."She's being watched"......"Watching Her"....etc, etc, etc.......'round the clock stalking whenever you need an endangered heroine fix........

               But here's the rub........Lifetime's stalk-a-ramas, in their own way, aren't far removed from the Hallmark Channel's year 'round seasonal, chaste romances.........slow paced to the point of stillness and mass produced like sausage.

               "You" may indeed share the basic plot structure of a Lifetime movie.......(creepy guy slowly insinuates himself into the life of his prey)......but "You" arrives with a far higher pedigree than boilerplate Lifetime product.........based on a best selling novel, it's witty, well written,well acted,   snappily paced and most clearly a quality effort.

                 So the whole stalking thing seems to serve as the only reason it landed in the sea of cheese that comprises the Lifetime schedule..........(imagine "The Way We Were" suddenly popping up right in the middle of one of  Hallmark's 'Love At the Cookie Contest" movies.....)

                 Not that we're complaining.......having birthed itself on a basic cable channel, it means we don't have to pay HBO, Showtime, Amazon or Hulu to check it out.  Very cool.

                  In her book, the first of two, author Kepnes cleverly created her own variation of Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley........he's Joe Goldberg, a seemingly harmless Ripley-esque dweeb who fixates on Beck, a beautiful creative writing graduate student who walks to into the bookstore where Joe works.

                   Ah, true psychotic love. It's stalk at first sight.

                 Joe's anything but harmless and he wastes no time launching into all manner of insidious machinations to make Beck his one and only,including swiping her cellphone.   The perverse fun in the pilot episode, as it was in the novel, is in the layer-by-layer peeling off  of Joe's mask of normality.....(his thuggish next door neighbor, however, sees right through him as no doubt others will.....)

                   A role like Joe provides a challenging tightrope walk for an actor, (how much empathy....how much psychosis), but so far Penn Badgley (of 'Gossip Girl') deftly navigates his way through the rocky shoals involved in bringing such a multi-faced character to life.

                   This show's off and running out of the starting gate and we can't wait to grin 'n grimace through all the future twists and turns......you can bet we'll post on it again as we look in on Joe Goldberg's further creepy adventures........for now, BQ stalks the opening of "You" with 4 stars (****)......premium thrills without buying a Premium channel.....what more could you want?

               

             

'THE BAD SEED' (LIFETIME CHANNEL REMAKE).......ROB LOWE AND LOWER.......

The Bad Seed (2018)    Not much we can work ourselves up to say about this thoroughly tepid Lifetime Channel remake.......directed by and starring Rob Lowe........

                Naturally, it features routine, mundane acting by Lowe and the supporting cast, befitting a made-for-TV movie.........so you shouldn't expect to see anything remotely like the shouting-to-the-rafters performances given by the 1956 film version's cast, all of them imported from the Broadway show.

                And like most TV movies, it pokes along at its own measured pace as if it has all the time in the world to lay out its story.........

                 A few pluses stood out, here and there.........

                 12 year old McKenna Grace, who looks like a midget Katie Holmes,  turns in fairly skillful work as the murderous child......not resorting to Patty McCormack-level screeching until the finale.....

                  Speaking of Patty.......the original baddest of all bad seeds turns up as a friendly psychiatrist.......just enough time to throw in a meta joke or two about how little McKenna  "reminds me of myself...".....heh, heh, heh.....yeh, we get it.

                  This new version transforms 'Leroy', the evil child's handyman nemesis, into a snarky, scheming babysitter.....played by Sarah Dugdale as if possessed by Aubrey Plaza.....(not a bad idea, but carrying over the original character's threat of 'the little pink electric chair for girls' sounds jarringly out of place today.......no self-respecting psychotic child of the new millennium would fall for it. )

                    For today's more bloodlusting audiences, a few of the child's murders are fully depicied instead of occurring offscreen. And since there's no longer any censorious Production Code to decree the child suffer punishment,  we knew the filmmakers didn't have to resort to hurling a lightning bolt at her like the original film did......literally.

                    Given the primal, stark nature of the story, we suspect that every generation will receive its very own remake of "The Bad Seed".........personally, we'll stick with our very own screwy, way-over-the-top Warner Brothers original.........for this version, a so-so 2 stars (**).

                 

'THE CAINE MUTINY'........A DIFFERENT CREW APPALLED BY THEIR UNHINGED COMMANDER

The Caine Mutiny (1954)    While Trump searches high and low for the hidden SuperMole Of The Resistance in his midst,  we couldn't think of a more appropriate movie to post about........

              Quite controversial in its day, with its depiction of a completely fictitious U.S. Navy mutiny, the film gave Humphrey Bogart yet another legendary role.........the paranoid, cowardly, half mad Captain Queeg.

               Paranoid?  Cowardly?  Half mad?   Hmm.......who does this guy remind us of?  Hold on, it'll come to us in a minute, we're sure.......

                It doesn't take long for a trio of his officers, (Van Johnson, Fred MacMurray, Robert Francis) to judge Queeg as dangerously unstable.......(basically, the guy's 2 cans short of a 6-pack and a genuine menace to the World War II minesweeper he commands.....)

                MacMurray's character,a spineless eel always covering  his own ass, eggs on Johnson and Francis to overthrow Bogart before he capsizes the boat in the middle of a raging storm........setting the stage for the film's climactic fireworks at the two officers face a court martial for their mutiny.......

                 And Bogart caps an already bravura performance with his cross-examination at the military tribunal.......in which his psychosis and unfitness are laid bare for all to see.

                  Coming back to whom Queeg reminds us of.........surprisingly, it's not entirely Trump, though Queeg does indeed share Trump's cowardice, paranoia and overall pettiness....(and Queeg's insane search for the strawberries-and-ice-cream thieves does mirror Trump's enraged hunt for the SuperMole....)

                 In revisiting Queeg, he seems a far more Nixonian character.......almost pathetic in his many failings.....a damaged soul who, dare we say it, comes close at the end to engaging your sympathy.

                 The sniveling, mentally undone Queeg, madly spinning little ball bearings in his hand, sees a world that's turned against him.......and he can only rail and rant about the unfairness of it all. In this regard, Queeg's a perfect coming-attractions preview of Richard Nixon.

                  Where Queeg veers off from the our current, so-called 'commander-in-chief'........Queeg, for all his deficiencies, is not afflicted with Trump's ice cold streak of cruelty and the soulless lack of empathy for anyone except himself...... all the trademarks of a sociopath.

                  Queeg is all too human and in his climactic breakdown, you sense that deep down, he's aware of his own destruction. Trump, on the other hand, existing only within his own ego, could never attain that level of understanding.........there's not a single drop of humanity in him to make that possible, not to mention his unlimited capacity for bullying and elementary-school style insults.

                  What also struck us mightily was Fred MacMurray's Lt. Keefer.........presented in the film as the story's one true, genuine villain........a two-faced worm who's willing to engineer Queeg's downfall without getting his own hands smudged or taking any real responsibility.

                   Lt.Keefer kind of reminds us of the current GOP crowd pretending to serve the country........sniping at Trump privately but quaking at his rage publicly........Keefer especially made us think of the SuperMole hiding within Trump's inner circle, crafting his/her Resistance manifesto while staying safely......(how would Trump put it...)....amominous.....anominal.......annominish....

                   Timely viewing for a rainy weekend, we salute "The Caine Mutiny" with 4 stars (****).....as for our current woeful Commander, as always.... Minus To Infinity And Beyond.......