GET YOUR ROCKS OFF!..........THE STONE COLD CRAZY "MONOLITH MONSTERS"......

The Monolith Monsters (1957)    Hollywood tried scaring the crap out of America with all sorts of creatures in the 50's......

                    Giant ants, giant grasshoppers, thawed out dinosaurs, a giant preying mantis, blobs from outer space, flying saucers, martians, a giant octopus, pod-based body snatchers.......

                     Bur......rocks?

                     Yes! Beware the rocks from outer space!  And just like the gremlins in "Gremlins", you must never, never, never get them wet.......

                      If it rains on the rocks?    Baby, you're so screwed.........

                     Cause then they grow if they mainlined Viagra, sprouting up into giant 100 foot tall monoliths......

                    Oh, did I forget to mention what happens to you if you're near these rocks while they're enjoying their water-fueled erections?

                    They suck the silicone out of your body, turning you into your very own tombstone........by the time medical help reaches you, it's too late.......you're stoned out of your mind.....literally.  Forget about saying 'dead as a doornail'.....you end up lookin'  dead as the whole door.....of a crypt.  (or like BQ after sitting through Geology I lectures....)

                    Anyone left alive is still headed for a world of hurt. The Monoliths also wreck their havoc by simply falling over, smashing stuff underneath them to smithereens. Then they re-constitute (just like Michael Myers in "Halloween"), re-grow and start the falling over......all over again.....

                     Funny, as I write this, I'm feeling a measure of sympathy for the Monoliths.........

                     After all, aren't  they just like us?  Clumsily clumping through life, knocking stuff over and having to get back up and start again?

                      Well, at least I never turned anyone into stone........except for maybe a few college profs who tried reading my term papers...

                       So a big-ass A for originality for "The Monolith Monsters" filmmakers.......BQ can't wait for Universal  to give this one a full stereophonic 3-D Imax remake........and maybe re-title it a little more sexy...."Slabs With Abs" anyone?   (never mind, I think that title's reserved for the next "Fast & Furious" movie....)   4 stars(****)

                   
           

A SLAYDATE WITH THE WIFE...............TWISTIN' ALL NIGHT WITH "MY LOVELY WIFE"

My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing (2019)   Beach reads don't get any beachier than this.......

              Except you might choke with appreciative laughter on your paper cup of french fries........

              Gobbling this one up in a matter of days, I could swear author Samantha Downing was doing a sly send-up of every single "Gone Girl" clone written in the last decade.......

               Sick as hell, twisted beyond belief, not plausible for a minute........it's more fun that a barrel of kidnapped, tortured murder victims......

                Uh.....I did mention the word sick, right?

                Flame-haired Millicent and hubby meet cute on a plane.......from there, they turn into an upper-middle class suburban couple with two kids........a perfect existence until circumstance and fate put them in the path of two women they're forced to kill......

                From that point on, lethal sociopaths that they are, Millicent and her never-named mate decide to take up random murder as a full time hobby.........stalking and keeping captive young women until slaying them.......and concocting elaborate frame-ups that point to a long gone murder suspect who escaped prosecution due to flimsy evidence........

                As you'd expect, multiple twists ensue.......capped off by the WHOPPER TWIST as the book races toward its climax........

                 And anyone who can't see that final, last page, last sentence, kick-in-the-teeth twist coming......turn in your library card.......

                But not before you have one bloody, dysfunctional, hell of a good time with this book. I realize the summer's young, but right now, this stands as BQ's best fun summer read so far.....
.......4 stars (****)..... when Millicent whispers to her husband on their wedding day, "Here we go..."....trust me, she's not kidding.

           

PARTY LIKE IT'S 1999........"BEST MOVIE. YEAR. EVER. : HOW 1999 BLEW UP THE BIG SCREEN".....

Best. Movie. Year. Ever: How 1999 Blew Up The Big Screen by Brian Raftery (2019)

              Beyond the fascinating backstories of the groundbreaking  'Cinema Class Of '99', there's a cold hard fact to consider........

               20 years later, one can only wonder if any of these films could get greenlighted by the studios of today.......the studios that now pour oceans of money into superhero movies.

                "The Matrix" of course, would make the cut.  But "Office Space"?  "Election"? "The Blair Witch Project"?, "The Virgin Suicides"?  "Boys Don't Cry"? "American Beauty"?  "Magnolia"? "Being John Malkovich"? "Three Kings"? "Fight Club"?

                Why take a risk on low to medium budgeted movies like those when you can easily sink all that cash into  "Captain Marvel"?

                   How much fun a reader can have with this book strictly depends on your level of interest in the film itself........

                  'Blair Witch' aficionados  will drool over every detail of  how this held-together-with-spit fake 'found footage'  joke hit American's  zeitgeist sweet spot. (You could think of it as a higher-tech version of Orson Welles' "War Of The Worlds" radio broadcast........scaring the shit out of suckers who thought it was real.......)

                   And you can rub your hands and cackle over the making of "Fight Club"......in which director David Fincher takes his revenge on 20th Cenury Fox after his toxic experience of making "Alien 3" for them........accomplishing this by talking them into making "Fight Club", a film that drops its pants and take a huge steaming dump on a society corrupted by corporate culture and consumerism.

                   And digging into to the "making of" dish for all these films, you might chuckle at the fact that many of them found no favor with 1999 audiences......(some of them waited for years until viewers finally embraced them on DVD.....)

                  Deepest of all ironies...…..as you read bout these directors sweating, straining and battling with Hollywood powers-that-be to put their vision on the screen, George Lucas, now unfettered and free of any studio control.(no executive notes to ponder)..….still manages to vomit up the ghastly "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace"...…..

                   BQ's personal favorite moment: M. Night Shamalyan quaking in terror at the thought of correcting a line reading by the almighty Bruce Willis during the making of "The Sixth Sense".......and all these years later watching the terminally bored Willis glumly troop through "Glass" as if he still scares the living shit out of Shamalyan......

                    Regardless of that you think of the films, no movie buff should be without a copy of this book.....a fast, breezy read, brimming with eye-opening glimpes into the high-risk, harrowing process of making movies.......4 stars (****).

SPANDEX 'N VIOLENCE........YAWNING THROUGH "CAPTAIN MARVEL"......

Captain Marvel (2019)   Let me put this out there right away.......

           I'M SO 'EFFIN' BORED OUT OF MY SKULL WITH THESE MARVEL MOVIES!!!   DID ANYONE NOTICE THAT THEY'RE MAKING THE SAME GODDAMN MOVIE OVER AND OVER AGAIN???!!!!!
  
            Ahhh......thank you......I feel much better now.

            To be clear.......I don't give a rat's ass that this is first female-driven Marvel movie, anymore than I gave a rat's ass that "Black Panther" was the first African-American driven Marvel movie.......

            And whenever the Marvel movies come out that feature the first Muslim, homosexual, homeless, autistic, deaf and quadriplegic  superheroes......I won't give a rat's ass about them either......

             Why?   Because here's what it comes down to:

              ......people blasting, punching and throwing other people around as if they were life-size volleyballs......

                And that's the last 40 minutes of every Marvel movie in a nutshell........a volleyball game with CGI figures standing in for the actors.......playing the volleyballs who get bounced off the walls.....

               So don't give me this nauseating, overblown blah-blah-blah about origin stories, backstories, character 'journeys'.......and all the other endless bilge devoted to what are essentially paper-thin cartoon characters poured into rubber suits.......

                I don't know how we got to this point........where the Hollywood studios flush billions away on films designed for two demographic groups.......

                Group #1:  38 year old guys living in their parents' basement, working days as customer service operators for Zippity-Do Veggie Slicers......

                Group #2:   Anyone living in China, terminally depressed 'cause.......face it, they wake up every morning in ****ing China......and can't wait to ditch their pollution face-masks and dive into a multi-plex.....

               Oh right.......this post is supposed to be about "Captain Marvel"......

               They recruited Academy Award winner Brie Larson for this........but for all the nuance and acting ability this role requires, they might just as well have used one of the girls who points to the appliances on "The Price Is Right"........

                 And apparently Larson's supergirl is extra Sooper Dooper Dooper.......she flies, lights up like a firecracker and does everything but shoot laser beams out of her ass.......(maybe they're saving that power for the sequel....)

                  I suppose we're all expected to stand in awe at the sight of Samuel L.Jackson CGI'd back into his early 40's...........(Joe Biden must be contacting these digital artists as we write this....)

                  But let's hear it for Goose, the little orange tabby who steals the show.......in ways which I dare not reveal lest Marvel fanboys hurt my feelings with mean tweets...…..that is, whenever they're not terrorizing the Marvel filmmakers over plot points they didn't agree with...….

                   To hell with 'em…...and to hell with Captain Marvel........Goose should  have been the primary star of this movie.......and the one and only star it's getting from BQ....(*)......that's for Goose only......



           

MIDWEEK MADNESS WRAP-UP......SPECIAL "RUSSIA, IF YOU'RE LISTENING" EDITION.......

                  Amazing moment.....Baby Orange does NOT contribute to his ever growing count of
10,000 lies told while in office......

                   In this instance, he tells the truth.

                  .........that he'd flush the United States Of America down the toilet if a foreign country  could cough up with dirt on his opponent.......

                   As long as he comes out on top.

                  And that's what it's all about......the Traitor-In-Chief, a bottomless abyss........

I SEE DEAD PEOPLE.............THE NEW "HALLOWEEN".........

Halloween (2018)    Overall, not a bad idea for jump-starting an old franchise........

              .........pretend that all the sequels never happened........re-start from where the first one ended......

               Come to think of it, haven't "Game Of Thrones" fans done that already with Season 8?  Not to mention the "Star Wars" fanbase, demanding a re-do of "The Last Jedi".........

                As for BQ, I'd want to remake "Diamonds Are Forever"  and completely re-do that seriously suck-ass oil rig battle.......

                 So here's the all new reconstituted official "Halloween II", with Jamie Lee Curtis now a close-to-unhinged senior, living like an alt-right survivalist.......waiting for her mano e mano smackdown with indestructible boogeyman Michael Myers........

                  All the tropes are in place, including horny teens, insufferable Brit podcasters, assorted townsfolk and cops.......all them practically wearing PLEASE STAB ME TO DEATH placards around their necks.....

                  Heh, heh, heh......Michael Myers doesn't need to be asked twice...........

                  Other than the guilty pleasure of watching an aging Curtis take futile shotgun blasts at Michael Myers' self-sealing skin, you really start to wonder if any of this was worth all the effort......

                 One or two things did stand out........a striking shot of Myers and his fellow loony-bin inmates positioned across a vast concrete checkerboard...........like something left over from a '60's Michealangelo Antonioni silm.......

                  No doubt the filmmakers loved declaring how cool 'n cutting edge they were by having Michael snap a little kid's neck.......(but later on, he does spare a bawling infant who's just askin' for a carving knife cuddle.......)

                   And we kind of liked the teen actor who made effective use of his limited screen time by blatantly channeling a young Philip Seymour Hoffman.  Good idea, kid, since you're the only one in the supporting cast I can recall for more than 5 seconds.......

                  The rest of it?.......(pause for heavy dramatic, resigned sigh......)   You could probably write it yourself without even seeing it........

                 Since that's what enraged fans want to do now whenever they feel thwarted and dissatisfied by a horror/sci-fi/fantasy project, be my guest. Feel free. As for what's actually here on film.......

2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2) and that's mostly for Jamie Lee Curtis's fully committed work as our favorite monster-battler.......

                   Can't wait for her and David Copperfield to re-make "Terror Train"......maybe this time taking place on a Royal Caribbean food-poisoned cruise ship.........(memo to studios: don't forget to send the royalty checks for that idea to The Beached Quill......)

MUSHROOM WITH A VIEW.......TRIPPIN' OVER "ALTERED STATES".......

Altered States (1980)    Now here's one of maybe the weirdest twists of fate in film history.......

              The collision of two people who never, ever should have collaborated on a film.......

               BQ first speaks of Paddy Chayefsky, master screenwriter and playwright ("Marty", "Network", "The Hospital").......possibly the only writer whose stories and dialogue commanded the utmost fidelity and respect from directors and studios........In a Chayefsky film, he was the driving artistic force........and the explosive powerful speeches he crafted for actors often won them Academy Awards......(and a screenwriting Oscars for Chayefsky himself....)

                So how in the world did "Altered States", Chayefsky's witty and typically verbose, modern re-working of "Dr. Jeckyll And Mr. Hyde" end up in the hands of visualist madman director Ken Russell?

               Beats me.  Its like Shakespeare directed by an illiterate.

                 And yet, considering the subject matter, an obsessed scientist (William Hurt) who recklessly explores the very core of the lifeforce itself, you could argue that Ruseell was both the best and worst director for this film.......

                 Who better than Russell to take you on Hurt's magic mushroom-fueled rollercoaster ride into the the dawn of the cosmos......to the very moment when cells coalesce into living things........

                 And who worse then Russell to direct a Paddy Chayefsky script, filled with pages and pages of meticulously crafted, lengthy chunks of dialogue for the actors........(watching this film, you'd be wise to keep a Thesaurus handy.....)

                 Inevitably, Chayefsky washed his hands of the film.......but such was his clout that his contract forbid any directorial tampering with his dialogue......

                 To Chayefsky's horror, Ken Russell found a way around this iron-clad clause.......

                 He simply had Hurt, Blair Brown and other cast members tear through the dialogue at 90 miles an hour.......

                 It's something to see and hear, allright.......the cast delivering their lines like they're tobacco auctioneers.......to fully savor and appreciate Chayefsky's work here, BQ would strongly advise viewers to watch it with the hearing-impaired subtitles on, so you don't miss the essence of the writer's art......

                 Without a doubt, Ken Russell's trippy-dippy stuff is a hell of a guilty pleasure to watch.....(Hurt's immersion into a sensory-deprivation tank turns him into this movie's version of Mr. Hyde, a snarling caveman who wreaks no end of havoc in the lab......)

                 But there's just as much pleasure to be had watching Hurt and company give their all to Chayefsky's exquisitely written lines........even as Russell's forcing them to speak their words like ADD-afflicted pre-schoolers.......

                 A very mixed bag........but I couldn't take my eyes off it for one second......3 stars (***).....BQ guarantees you won't see anything like it.