The Man with One Red Shoe (1985)

A power struggle between the CIA Director Ross (Charles Durning) and his ambitious second-in-command Cooper (Dabney Coleman), leaves concert violinist Richard Drew (Tom Hanks) caught in the middle of a plan to, um. . . I'm not really sure. Ross has 48 hours before he appears before a Senate inquiry, and somehow making Cooper think the "man with one red shoe" has testimony that will clear Ross is going to actually sink Cooper?

Maybe because it'll spur Cooper to deploy CIA assets on U.S. soil, which the CIA can't do, wink wink? It does work, because Cooper charges into the inquiry with a gun chasing Drew in an attempt to kill him before he can testify. Which makes him seem unstable and unsuited for the job, but also seems like a hard outcome to predict.

To be clear, this is not a case of Ross having principles and worrying what Cooper will do if he gets the big chair. Ross likes having the big chair, and doesn't want to give it up. He's fine playing dirty, he's fine having his subordinate pick some guy to be the bait, and he's fine if the bait dies. Probably would even help, in the fantasy world this movie occurs in, where people in the Reagan administration actually faced consequences for immoral acts.

Anyway, Drew is the unwitting witness/bait. So Cooper's attempt to figure out what intel Drew has turns into a comedy (I use the term loosely) of errors occurring around a largely oblivious Tom Hanks. They incapacitate Drew's dentist before an appointment, the agent replacing him planning to yank out all Drew's teeth in a search for concealed microfilm. Only for Drew to lose his nerve when he hears a patient freaking out and bail. One of the agents Ross has surveilling the whole thing had fallen behind and ends up walking into the trap instead.

Skipping the appointment means Drew returns home early, so the team tearing his place apart does a rush job putting it back together. Now the handles on the faucet in the sink control his shower, and the toilet controls the sink, his shampoo is in his toothpaste tube, and his chairs are structurally unsound.

Drew's also carrying on an affair with a flutist (Carrie Fisher) in the symphony. Her percussionist husband (Jim Belushi) becomes increasingly paranoid as the CIA teams grow reckless. But Drew's head gets turned by Maddy (Lori Singer), Cooper's top agent, who is herself charmed when Drew plays a piece of music he's been writing (and which Cooper concludes must contain a code.)

It feels like it ought to be funny, but it mostly didn't work for me. I laughed a lot more at Paint, or even Eephus, which is not a comedy, than this film. There is one poor agent wandering the sewers for hours, because Cooper thinks all the toilet flushing was Drew putting something down the pipes, rather than just trying to use his sink. The way that guy is forgotten, still down there alone in the middle of the night, lost and defeated, while Drew's wooing Maddy with his music, that was sorta funny.

Other than that? Not much. Tom Hanks can do comedy, but the way the movie is structured, he's the center of everything, but very little of it touches him. It's all going on around him without his knowledge. Like, the whole mess with his plumbing is revealed through him trying to use the sink and the shower turning on. There's a chance for some silly physical comedy, Hanks get sprayed or something, and the movie is just like, "Nah." Most of the humor is apparently supposed to be watching these agents tie themselves in knots trying to figure out what Drew is up to.

One bit that works is when he returns home from the aborted trip to the dentist and Maddy is waiting in his living room as a distraction until the team can tranq dart him and then flee. Except it takes 3 darts to put him out (I guess because seeing her in his apartment got him too worked up for the darts to work), with his speech getting increasingly goofy until he topples over.

Belushi plays his usual loud idiot, and I guess we're supposed to laugh he's the butt of jokes because he plays dumb practical jokes on Hanks all the time. Fake peanuts, exploding cigars, I'm sure whoopee cushions are utilized. He's also getting cheated on by his wife with his friend, and then starts finding dead bodies that keep mysteriously vanishing, until he goes nuts. Not before he thinks he's going to be killed by a gunman, mind you. I ended up feeling bad for him.

Fisher feels wasted by the movie, and I didn't see any particular chemistry between Hanks and Singer to carry their romantic subplot. Drew is just panting after a leggy blonde, while Maddy doesn't seem to think of him as anything other than a job until he plays that piece he wrote, which happens pretty late in the proceedings.

Also, Drew rides his bike everywhere, but does so wearing headphones, which is insane. He's entirely cut off his hearing as an aid to keep him alive, and he's biking on roads with cars. So either he's one of the cyclists who expects everyone to give way to them, or he's got a death wish, and I don't think he's got a death wish. 

Paint (2023)

Carl Nargle (Owen Wilson) is the long-time host of a painting show on PBS-Burlington, known for his landscape paintings (mostly Mount Mansfield, highest point in Vermont), and naming the trees and bushes in his paintings. Also for his big, blonde afro and his brightly colored van, named Vantastic.

When Carl balks at the station manager's (Stephen Root) request he help boost their ratings by doing two shows a day, they bring in a new painter to follow Carl's show, Ambrosia (Ciara Renee). Who, on her first episode, paints a UFO pouring blood onto a tree stump*. Because that's what she felt like painting today. Soon, Ambrosia is the new hotness, and Carl misses all the blind adulation he once enjoyed. 

There are a few scenes of Carl trying to get people to love him again, but mostly it's him slowly - with a fair amount of help from people yelling at him - figuring out what went wrong in his life. He and the station's assistant manager, Katherine (Michaela Watkins), used to be an item, but it fell apart in a sad mixture of emotional neglect and infidelity, from both parties. Neither has moved on. Katherine really runs the station - Root is playing one of his nervous, awkward men, who somehow stumbled into a position he's unsuited for - but she doesn't seem to have found anyone else. Carl is still living in the past. Same haircut, same van, same shirt, same paintings of Mount Mansfield, again and again. Both of them struggle with intimacy, embarrassing themselves in front of potential partners at different times.

Which I appreciated. Katherine is good at her job, but Williams doesn't play her as some hyper-competent person, a complete contrast to a guy who is a walking disaster. She's smart, organized, but a little awkward and indecisive. Like Carl, when it comes to being honest with people, she stinks. Katherine couldn't tell Carl she was feeling neglected, Carl couldn't just talk to her about how her actions hurt him. Now she gets flustered around Ambrosia, blurting things out at inopportune times. Carl certainly enjoys the attention the younger staff members offer, but he gets anxious when one tries to put the moves on him and keeps trying to distract her. He can't just say he's not into her like that. Katherine can't just tell Ambrosia she's still in love with Carl.

There's a scene I like, after Carl's star has completely fallen at the station, where Katherine tries to return one of his paintings without being noticed. And Williams does a great job, the halting way she starts towards his door, then turns back, then dives into a snowbank to avoid being seen. The panicked flailing and instinctive (poor) attempts to hide, her visible terror at the thought of being spotted. You can tell she does not want to have to explain why she's there, maybe because she's not sure of the answer.

Along those same lines, Ciara plays Ambrosia as someone who can be very cheerful and friendly, but is not above getting competitive or frustrated. She's very respectful to Carl when they first meet, even as he's too absorbed in his own world to reciprocate. But when Carl pitches the idea of a fundraiser for the station where each of them paint a portrait of the biggest donor, she's all in. She's not playing the awed newbie for him any longer. Though Carl ultimately humiliates himself there, Ambrosia absolutely wanted to draw a higher bid than him, was frustrated she didn't, and also wanted to finish her portrait first. He threw down the gauntlet, and she was more than willing to pick it up.

As her relationship with Katherine falls apart, Ambrosia grows increasingly moody and spiteful, mockingly doing her own paintings of Mount Mansfield as a jab at Carl. But it's also a plea to Katherine. I can do these paintings too! I'll do as many of them for you as you want! Just forget about him! It's a nice contrast to Carl, who as he sinks into depression, just paints a canvas solid black (it's Mount Mansfield, at night) and seems disconnected from the world, needing several seconds to respond. He withdraws, Ambrosia lashes out, Katherine is just looking for the exit. 

Wilson plays the guy he usually does. Superficially nice, but self-absorbed in that clueless, idiot way a lot of his characters are. He tries to win the station staff back to his side by giving them gifts, but the gifts are just merch with his face on them. But when Ambrosia steps in and mentions she made a unique painting for each of them, Carl doesn't try to stop them from going. He knows it's a nice gesture, even if it burns him up how eager they are to get the paintings and discard his offerings.

That doesn't stop him from driving around town stealing newspapers with a lead article proclaiming him tired and unimaginative, while praising Ambrosia as a breath of fresh air, one of several scenes I found hilarious. Just the pitiful desperation, driving down the middle of a residential street in a van everyone will recognize, screeching to a stop every few seconds to dart out and steal a newspaper off someone's porch.

There were a couple of times I thought the movie was going a direction it didn't. Katherine mentions, while checking the recordings of Carl's old shows still play, that he used to draw a lot more stuff than just Mount Mansfield. Carl responds with some comment about following a dream, which I dismissed as just pap. It turns out to be relevant. I thought the disaster with the fundraiser was going to reveal he'd been painting landscapes so long he couldn't remember how to do anything else. Maybe because I remembered a Bob Ross episode where he mentions he wasn't very good at painting people, so that's why he stuck to landscapes.

The reason turns out to be something both deeper and sadder. It leads him to the Burlington Museum of Art, in pursuit of that dream he alluded to with Katherine. While that trip ended in humiliation, I thought, when he returned to the barn where he kept all his paintings, the trip would have opened his eyes to a new vision of what art could be. We were going to see Cubist Carl Nargle, or Post-Modernist Carl Nargle! And it would turn out nobody wants that. They just want him to paint the mountains. But also, they're tired of him painting mountains. So he would just paint for himself. Something like that.

And he does, eventually, take the advice he received from the museum curator to heart. But first, he flips out and throws paint everywhere, even using his afro like a brush. Which ends in another punchline that made me laugh. That was a pleasant surprise, that the movie was actually funny to me; I was worried it was going to mostly be cringe elements, like much of Dream Scenario, and I would barely be able to watch it. And there are times where Carl starts doing something you can see is going to be hugely embarrassing from a mile off and I had to look away.

But it turned out to be very funny, I think because everyone gets to be a mess in different ways. Stressed from a job they can't do, unsatisfied with the job they've got. Still guilty over a past mistake, or frustrated the person they love won't love them back. Pursuing what they think is a dream, only to find reality isn't as impressive as they hoped. Convincing themselves they're living that dream, when it only works so long as nothing changes, about them or anyone else. And they get to lash out, or act the fool, or be petty, and it frequently backfires. 

* People keep saying it's a painting of a UFO drenched in blood, but it isn't. The flying saucer is clean, all the blood is pouring from the center of it, straight down onto the stump.  

Eephus (2024)

A pair of adult rec league baseball teams meet for the final game at their local field, before it's paved over to make room for a new middle school. The game carries on from the afternoon into the night, with the few fans, the umps, and even some of the players drifting away. The rest keep playing, determined to see the game through to the proper ending they think the field deserves.

The film moves at the pace of a baseball game, which is to say, leisurely. We see a lot of the game action. The actors were expected to at least approximate playing, and you can tell which ones had more experience, especially when it comes to sliding. But these are mostly middle-aged guys, playing a game they loved for decades. Greying beards, scraggly hair and beer guts. They shouldn't look graceful, and they sure don't.

Apperson Paint's leftfielder could do a pretty convincing Santa Claus impression, based on his body shape. The Riverdogs' pitcher has a goofy windup that suggests he saw Craig Kimbrel and decided to look even stupider. Apperson's back-up pitcher has the mustache and pitching motion of an escapee from the Dead Ball era. Their catcher, by the later innings, is sitting on a footstool behind the plate, because his knees can't take it. 

That's part of what's perfect about the film. In a sense, this game means nothing. The teams aren't playing for anything other than bragging rights. Guys on the same team are all wearing different shirts, united only by colors. Apperson's coach leaves (reluctantly) mid-game because he was about to miss his niece's christening. Another guy gets fed up and just drives away. Yet that guy also got incredibly pissed when the other team, knowing he was on a diet, started taunting him by calling out different types of food while he was batting. Then the ump made them cut it out. 'Am I in a deli? Am I trying to sell you ham?' was my favorite line.

The Riverdogs' first baseman keeps bragging about the fireworks he bought to set off after the game, even lying about what a deal he got on them. Their goofy pitcher, after taking a line drive to the chest, ices it down in between innings with a beer. When their coach tells him not to put that one back in the cooler, Troy shrugs and pops the beer, taking a long swig. When one player finds no coach at third base to advise him, he decides to just be his own third base coach, including having fake conversations with himself. This does not go well.

Later, when Troy says he needs a breather, a random guy (actually former major leaguer Bill "Spaceman" Lee) who just showed up because he played on this field decades ago and wanted to see it one last time, agrees to pitch an inning. In his slacks and polo shirt. Then Troy resumes pitching the next inning like nothing happened. Despite one player pimping his home run to dead center with a nice slow trot around the bases, or another guy screaming at his teammate for being too conservative in whether to send runners or not, this is nothing like a serious game.

And yet, given multiple opportunities to call it, they keep playing, unwilling to let it end in a tie. The first baseman tries bribing one of the umps to stick around longer, using pork loins he won in a meat lottery. When it gets too dark, they drive their cars onto the edge of the field and use headlights. The scorer tries to ump from the empty press box. Players wander the woods retrieving baseballs because they're running out. Whether for pride, or just a refusal to let go of something that's been a big part of their lives for who knows how many years, they won't just, stop and say enough. The game ends only when it truly ends.

Which makes it sound like some horrible, purgatorial existence. I don't think that's the vibe intended, but watching them stagger around like blind men, trying to field baseballs they can't even see, has a certain feel of torment to it.

But release is no blessing. The losing pitcher sits down on the mound, head between his knees, dejected he couldn't pull off the win. Even though he was probably the victim of an umpire who couldn't actually see anything by that point. (I wasn't sure if the ump/scorer was blinking so much because he was getting sleepy, or he just had bad night vision.)

There are frequent asides in between innings. Two children of one player wondering why these adults care so much when they're not actually any good. An elderly man who has probably been coming to this field for decades, explaining to the mother of the children that you don't eat pizza at ballgames, and why do they need a school anyway? The kids can get experience working at a ballgame, flipping burgers or selling hot dogs. Two stoners spend a couple of innings standing beyond the outfield fence, asking snide questions of one of the players.

All of them wander off into the wider world long before the game concludes. It was just a temporary diversion, and once they got bored, or cold, or hungry, they decided to find something else to do. The only ones left were the players, and even if the winners are too weary to really celebrate, their dugout is significantly more talkative afterward than the losers. They're tired, they're sore, some of them will be hungover tomorrow. Some of them are already hungover. But hey, they won. If this is the end, they go out on top.

Overdue Movie Reviews #15 - Necessary Roughness (1991)

The Texas State Armadillos were national champions of college football. They were also cheating in a variety of ways, including steroid use, paying players under the table, and fixing grades so players could remain academically eligible. So their national championships were nullified - do you remember them winning the national championship? No you don't, according to the NCAA - scholarships revoked, and coaches fired. The program is dead.

The university president (Fred Thompson) decides to rehab the school's rep by hiring Ed "Straight Arrow" Gennero (Hector Elizondo), a retired coach known for not tolerating any sketchy stuff, even if it means kicking a star player off the team. That's why he's retired, boosters don't approve of principles. But this shattered husk of a program has no boosters, so Gennero gets to run the program as he sees fit. He brings in his old defensive coordinator, Wally Rig (Robert Loggia) to help turn a bunch of walk-on students into a football team.

Unfortunately, none of the walk-ons with good enough grades to survive the obnoxious dean's (Larry Miller) attempts to kill the team can play quarterback, so Wally recruits Paul Blake (Scott Bakula), who walked away from football 16 years ago to run the family cattle ranch, to play QB. As a 34-year-old freshman. Who smokes, a lot, and runs like a guy who smokes a lot and spent the last decade-and-a-half wrangling large, stubborn cattle.

Can Blake be the leader Gennero wants? Can he get this group of oddballs to play together and experience victory?

I did, technically, discuss this movie briefly in the opening paragraph of a comic review post back in 2009, but it wasn't really a proper review. Now, does this movie merit a proper review? Well, at least as much as any number of shitty movies I watched on Netflix over the years.

This movie is like Escape to Athena, where it's as much about what a bonkers cast it has as anything the movie itself actually does with that cast. Escape to Athena is better, having the advantage of being a suspenseful adventure set in World War 2. That's a stronger base for a story. Necessary Roughness is ultimately just a sports comedy, but it's full of people where I can stop and go, "Hey, That Guy!"

Besides the people listed above, you have early career Jason Bateman as the spoiled son of a major donor to the university. Sinbad plays a professor that walked away from college football to pursue chemistry. Blake convinces him to use his last year of eligibility to play offensive and defensive line. Rob Schneider is the team's radio announcer (we only ever see him in the broadcast booth, and he never directly interacts with anyone else, which is probably the best way to use Rob Schneider.) Desperate for a field goal kicker, Wally recruits Lucy (Kathy Ireland) from the girl's soccer team. Harley Jane Kozak plays an Intro to Journalism professor that had a crush on Blake when they went to rival high schools, and the two start up a relationship. While she's one of his teachers.

Which, look. In addition to Miller playing a snotty little tin dictator of a bureaucrat as he so often has, the dean is panting after Dr. Carter, and absolutely determined to crush the team by hook or crook. That said, I don't think he's wrong there are ethical concerns about a teacher dating a student, even if they're both in their 30s. Especially when the student's participation in an extra-curricular is contingent on his grades staying up, though the one example of Blake's work we hear in a class assignment demonstrates a thoughtfulness that suggests he's at least trying to be a good student.

(Also, Bakula is 37 when the movie came out, so he's at least close to 34, unlike all the movies and shows where a 28-year-old plays a high schooler.) 

The rest of the roster is filled with various broad characters. Manu, a big Samoan guy that plays center and initially annoys Blake by treating him as an elder to be respected. (Blake's response: 'I'm not that eld.') A bull-riding farm boy. A pair of twins that spend a lot of time fighting each other. An ROTC guy that's way too intense. A white boy really into martial arts that gets nicknamed "Samurai", and is the sole guy who only plays defense (Blake being the one who only plays offense.) A track star turned wideout who can't catch. An Aussie rugby player that doesn't want to wear pads or helmets. The Aussie gets knocked out in practice and Gennero admiringly observes he didn't drop the pass. Sure, only cost him a few thousand brain cells.

The movie has a lot going on. Probably too much. My dad said once it feels like a pilot for a TV show that got turned into a movie instead. Blake and Carter's relationship. Blake trying to figure out what, exactly Gennero is trying to get from him. Rig trying to get at little respect as a coach (his only offer prior to this was to coach football at a girl's school. In England.) Bateman's thing with his dad. The dean's attempts to cut the team off at the knees. Manu and Lucy strike up a relationship almost immediately, Manu trying very hard to be chivalrous. Not that I can blame him, hustling to make time with Kathy Ireland.

There probably could have been something about Lucy trying to prove herself to a team full of guys. When she's showing off her ability to kick (showing really terrible form, she's moving flat-footed), Sinbad opines this is what happened to pro wrestling, women taking over. Yeah, and once we got past the obnoxious bra-panty match shit (and Jerry Lawler's brain-dead drooling over same) it kicked ass. 

As it is, the team sucks so bad they can't afford to turn down any help they can get, though Gennero is still reluctant to even let her on the field to attempt a game-tying field goal. Because he's afraid she'll get hurt. Typically kickers don't get hit much. There are penalties for it and everything. 

There's the sole holdover from last year's team, a walk-on named Charlie Banks, who still can't get on the field for a team that's resorted to having 10 guys play both offense and defense. You think they'd at least try giving those guys the occasional breather, risk playing the few other players they have. Especially when they're losing games 40-6. Apparently Gennero's in the Tom Thibodeau school of coaching that says you aren't trying to win unless you grind your best players into dust by playing them constantly.

So some things get more run than others. Bateman's issues with his dad just buying his way through trouble crops up very briefly near the start of the final third of the movie, but there's really nothing to set it up beyond Gennero telling Rig that the dad's name is on buildings all over campus.

The Gennero and Blake issue surfaces periodically. I can't really figure out what Gennero is looking for any more than Blake can. (Carter at one point suggests simply asking Gennero. Blake responds that a coach can't speak to a player like he's human.) In their first game, Gennero calls the same running play three times in a row, the first two attempts being disasters. When the huddle groans on the third time, Blake changes the play to a deep pass to Featherstone, the track star. It would have been a touchdown, except Featherstone can't catch. Gennero benches Blake for the rest of the game. When Blake tries prostrating himself the next day, promising to just run whatever Gennero calls so long as he can play, promising it's Gennero's team, Gennero says it has to be Blake's team, but won't explain that.

Which I guess is not speaking to him like he's human, but more like some sage or hermit on a mountaintop, talking in riddles. I mean, Blake tried to make it his team, by calling a play that might actually work, and Gennero immediately punished him.

Blake tries joining the team at a bar after another loss, tries keeping them out of a fight with the star linebacker of the #1 team in the nation, the Texas Colts, until said linebacker - appropriately named Flattop - insults Manu. Blake sticks up for his center, by starting a brawl. That's no good either. When they manage a not-loss and Bateman's dad invites the team to a party with champagne and nice jackets, Gennero shows up screeching about boosters and not accepting gifts. Blake (already in a bad mood because the dean caught him making kissy face with Dr. Carter) tells him to back off, and Gennero gets on his ass again.

I think Gennero wants Blake to get the entire team rowing in the same direction, but none of his attempts are apparently acceptable until Blake gets Sinbad to help Bateman actually study to pass his midterms. Which are happening awfully late in the semester to be taking place ahead of their final game, against, naturally, the Texas Colts. This is also the conclusion of Bateman's character's arc. He refuses to give his dad the chance to bail him out, because it would hurt the team if one of the players got their grades paid for.

Loggia gets the best lines. Early on, it's sarcastic asides to things Gennero says. Featherstone drops a pass in practice and Gennero tells him to keep his eyes on the ball. Rig adds, 'Keep your hands on the ball, too.' When Gennero tells him to keep his nose out of Gennero's offense, Rig replies, 'You got a quarterback that can't throw the ball, we're gonna be playing a hell of a lot of defense.'

During the climactic game, where Rig has to be head coach, it's things he shouts. 'Don't throw it to Stone Hands!' is one my dad still quotes, but the best is probably Rig's halftime speech where he stops trying to act like the polite and intellectual coach he thinks people want and starts screaming about how you play winning football. 'You go out there and tear off their fucking heads and shit down their necks! *pause* Now let us pray.'

It's funny neither coach seems very good at the half of the ball they're in charge of. Gennero seems to favor an offense that runs the ball. Wins in the trenches, controls the clock. The team is not built for it. The offensive line can't handle it, and their running backs crash into each other a lot. Plus, for all Blake's limitations in mobility (he gets better as the season progresses), the dude's arm is legit. Bateman and the Australian rugby guy can at least catch the ball if Featherstone can't. So can Charlie Banks. Throw the fucking ball! Go West Coast Offense, short, timed passing game, with Blake zipping it into tight windows and the receivers using their shiftiness to gain additional yards after the catch.

Meanwhile, Rig is a defensive coordinator, but can't recognize what defensive coverage the Colts are using at one point, and has to ask Popke, the back-up QB who thought being asked to show off his arm meant flexing. Late in the game, it's Gennero who figures out what defense to call to stop a Colts' drive and get the Armadillos the ball back.

Like I said several paragraphs ago, it's a sports movie. The team is losing big in the climactic game, then turns it around after Rig's inspiring speech, with trick plays and some other big stuff. I do laugh when, prior to the final play, Manu promises Blake that they'll (meaning the Colts' defense) never touch him. Blake probably wishes you could have managed that any time in the previous 59 minutes and 59 seconds, because he's taking head shots on almost every play. By the end of that game, Blake probably had fewer brain cells left than the rubgy guy.

It doesn't reinvent the wheel in any particular way, and feels both overstuffed and undercooked, but there are some funny lines and it plays the usual beats well enough that I don't mind spending 100 minutes on it. 

The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976)

Fed up with the team owner's miserly ways, and inspired by fellow ballplayer Leon Carter's (James Earl Jones) discussion of their needs to seize the means of production, Negro League pitcher Bingo Long (Billy Dee Williams) forms a team of the best players in the league. They travel the country, playing the local teams in whatever towns they reach, the money split evenly between the the players.

In much the same way I watched First Wives Club because it was touted in a post about Diane Keaton after her passing, I found out about this movie in a post discussing James Earl Jones' career. because it's really his and Williams' movie. Richard Pryor is the other big name in the cast, as rightfielder Charlie Snow, but his story is he plans to call himself "Carlos Nevada" and get into the white leagues as a Cuban. 

(There's also a recurring gag of Snow trying to explain how to calculate batting average to Holliday, played by Otis Day, a former player rendered mute by a beanball, and never getting it right.)

But it's mostly about Bingo and Leon, fittingly enough a pitcher and a catcher, albeit on rival teams when the game starts. Bingo's all flash and style, starting each game by facing the first batter with no fielders behind him, why asking the crowd (who chant along with him), 'Who gonna hit my invite pitch?' I have no idea what an "invite pitch" is, for the record. Big smiles, slick talk and charm, and Williams has all three in high supply. Bingo tends to talk before thinking, confident they'll figure things out when they have to, and if not, he'll apologize then. He dreams big, and that's not a bad thing, it's just he's not great at the planning on how to make those dreams reality.

He tends to dodge tough conversations, but he's not without principles. When Holliday gets robbed of their money from a game by their former team owner's goons, Bingo can't exactly bring himself to stand up for Holliday, but he pays everyone out of his own pocket to soothe tempers. though he also gives them Carter's share, without telling Carter until much later.

Carter's more well-read, more thoughtful, as you'd expect from a character played by James Earl Jones. Jones also gets to show a little style and fun. In the first scene, he cracks a home run off Bingo, after telling Bingo he stole his girlfriend. Bingo, of course, tries to play it off like he was tired of her, anyway. Carter's the one, when their former bosses start convincing local ballparks not to let them play, who rides ahead alone on his motorcycle to make sure the next game is still on. He's the one who eventually beats up those goons when they take him prisoner, after escaping inside a coffin.

Although it's Bingo who comes up with the idea of eventually challenging white teams, correctly reasoning the Negro League team owners can't do shit to try and intimidate them. And who convinces the team to showboat and play a bit comical to get the crowd to enjoy themselves more. Maybe white folks won't mind seeing their team lose to black players if they get a good laugh out of it in the process.

I was expecting, given this takes place in the 1930s, that there was going to be more danger as a result of angry white people. Certainly when they arrive for their first barnstorming game and the man who set it up tells them they need to drive down Main Street and put on a show. So you have the entire team, slowly parading down the street past a bunch of sour looking crackers, dancing and strutting and playing music and I was thinking this was about to get real ugly.

(I enjoyed the difference in the pre-game festivities between the black and white games. In the games between the black teams, there's singing and dancing and it's like a party. The white ballparks, there's marching bands playing the national anthem while everyone stands solemnly with their hand over their heart like they're watching a procession for a dead war hero. We crackers can take the fun out of anything.)  

Remarkably, it didn't. The majority of the conflict is from the efforts of the Negro League team owners, specifically the funeral home director - "Sallie Potter" played by Ted Ross - that owns Bingo's old team, to nip this barnstorming, profit-sharing business in the bud. Even though it's his fault, after he told his team he was docking them all a day's pay ($5) to cover the cost of a bus ticket to send Holliday home. Plus docking Bingo an extra $5 for fomenting dissension by pointing out Potter ought to pay for the ticket himself. He pissed off Bingo enough that Bingo listened to Carter, and now he doesn't want to accept the consequences. It's gotta be everyone else's problem. Class issues transcend race. Or race doesn't erase class issues?

(However, gender issues apparently trump class solidarity, as Potter is consistently a condescending dick to the one woman owner of a team, played by Mabel King, when she's the only one smart enough to suggest they take advantage of the drawing power of Bingo's team by scheduling "extradition" games against them.)

I'm a little surprised a funeral home director can afford two goons, but Potter certainly gets his money's worth. They, at various points, intimidate ticket booth workers, rob Holliday, maim Charlie, and kidnap Carter ahead of the big game between the barnstormers and a Negro league All-Star team. They don't actually show the maiming, though there's no question of what they do, or the cruelty of using the roar of the crowd when Carter hits a big home run to mask Charlie's screams as they do it.

It was definitely not something I was expecting the movie to do, since most of the roadblocks Potter had put in their path up to then, the team found ways to work around. Sent someone out on point to make sure their next game was still on, start playing white teams, and so on. This is more overt, not something Bingo can clever his way out of, and it exposes just how shoestring their operation is. Paying Charlie's hospital bill leaves the team unable to pay the hotel. When their attempt to duck out the back fails, they end up picking potatoes in a field for a day (24 bushels gets you about two-and-a-half bucks), to try and get Bingo's car out of hock.

They fail, the car gets auctioned, and two players decide to go back to their old teams rather than work in a field. And then Bingo steals a different, newer, car from the guy who bought his car and flees the town, to Carter's immense displeasure. This, people getting hurt, stealing cars, is not what he signed on for. It's not what "seizing the means of production," means to him.

Jones plays Carter as angry, but in a sort of sour, weary way. Even when Bingo tries jumping on his back to stop him walking away, Carter can't get angry enough to knock his ass out, only shove him away. He thought he was making a dream come true, but it's all falling apart, and it makes him a little sick. It would almost have been better for it to remain a dream, rather than see the reality of it. Especially when Bingo's still making these half-ass apologies with that big grin that says, "You can't stay mad at me, can you?" For Bingo, it was maybe just a means to an end, nothing more.

Thrash (2026)

A hurricane causes enough of a rise in the sea levels to bust the levees and flood a town. This unleashes a horde of bull sharks (plus one pregnant great white) upon whichever townspeople didn't get the hell out of Dodge.

Among those townspeople: Lisa (Phoebe Dynevor), a pregnant woman whose baby daddy bailed on her. Dakota (Whitney Peak), a young woman struck with agoraphobia after the recent death of her mother. Dee, Ron, and Will, (Alyla Browne, Stacy Clausen, Dante Ubaldi) three foster kids and their shitty foster parents. Dakota's uncle (Djimon Hounsou) is determined to get to her, but that's a little tricky when the seas are insane and the roads impassable. Unless you've got a boat, and something to haul it with. 

Are we in the year 2021? Because, if so, I could be spending this time on a lot better stuff than watching Netflix movies of questionable quality. This movie sticks to 2 threads: Dakota/Lisa, as the Lisa's car gets impaled on a tree in front of Dakota's house, and the kids, mostly trapped on the living room table in their increasingly flooded house. The film occasionally checks in on Hounsou and the weather reporter guy he bums a ride from, but it's really just to remind us yes, he's still on his way.

I think that works to its advantage, compared to Deep Water, where the movie was dancing between like 9 characters, scattered between three or four locations for a lengthy stretch of the movie. The film can focus on just a couple of situations, and really show how those circumstances are getting steadily worse. When Dakota forces herself to climb out the window to rescue Lisa, then slips on the eaves, she falls several feet before hitting water. By the time she climbs out the window to try and retrieve a rowboat, the water is already halfway to her knees, and she and Lisa are taking refuge on the second floor of the house.

The kids' it's a little less about the water, and more about the fact their lousy foster dad doesn't die as soon as they - and the audience - would hope. So right when they're thinking they're at least free of him and can start making their own plans, here he is, hauling himself on the table and ordering them into the water under the "logic" that sharks don't attack kids because they don't like the taste. Like how dogs don't eat their own shit. Which is both factually inaccurate and not a proper analogy.

That's a thing this movie does periodically, add a little humor among people try to either swim away from sharks or stay very still as sharks swim around them. Lisa triggering her perfect pregnancy playlist as the floodwaters start to float the bed and the house tries to collapse. The kids enthusiastically shouting "fuck you!" to the foster dad they think is dead, only for him to come bursting out of the water, still alive. Hounsou's saying, 'We lived in Mozambique, not The Jungle Book,' in response to the reporter's idiot question. It's a little strange, given how much the movie focuses on people getting swarmed and torn apart by bull sharks in the early going, but the situation is so bizarre a little absurdity doesn't feel entirely out of place.

I did expect the great white was going to be a bigger part of the movie than it was, but they played it as Chekov's Shark. Make you aware of it, then wait to use it for maximum (ridiculous) effect. The pacing got a little wonky about the time Dakota reached the rowboat. It's just down the street from her house, she makes it to the boat while it's still dark, and then the sun is well up in the sky and she still hasn't gotten back to her house. Like, what's she doing? She went for the boat to get the pregnant lady to safety. She gets the boat and then just, doesn't go back to the house. 

Reel Trash

I saw the writers at Defector discussing this a couple of weeks ago, and since I haven't finished either a video game or book recently, I'm stealing the question: What is the worst movie you saw in theaters?

I put the question to my coworkers and they replied, variously: Lovely Bones, The Time Traveler's Wife, and Fifty Shades Freed. The latter two insisted these were movies they saw while on dates, the former went with friends, and is apparently not a big horror fan.

Alex said Date Movie, though he later tried to add Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but I'm going with the first one he named. His girlfriend responded How to Deal, which she went to with friends.

The responses do highlight the different ways you could approach the question. Alex cited the Rotten Tomatoes scores for the ones they selected, which suggests a lean towards more of the critical consensus of how good the movie was. My coworkers seemed to take the approach of which movie they, personally, enjoyed watching the least.

That's the divide I found myself hung up on, trying to choose my answer. Because I thought of a half-dozen movies. Some are just lousy movies, and others, while I wouldn't call them good by any stretch, at least had some sort of vision or premise behind them. I simply didn't like that premise of vision.

The '90s Super Mario Bros? Bad. Just a shitty mess of a movie. Batman and Robin? Not good, but I can at least grasp that Schumacher had a specific vibe in mind. I have no nostalgia for '60s Batman or "camp" in general, so it didn't work for me. 

If I took Alex's approach, it's probably Super Mario Bros. or Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, though there's a part of me that wants to pin it on Drillbit Taylor, a film I can neither see any reason to exist or for Alex and I to have gone to see it. But my review suggests I enjoyed it in spite of how cliche it was, so I guess I can't play revisionist historian.

Which is fine. I'm ultimately going with the film I enjoyed watching the least, and that's Saw. I don't think I knew the term "torture porn" before Alex dragged me to this, but I did by the end of this movie, and I knew I hated it. It was sadistic to no purpose, and the reveal at the end that the killer was in the room with the two victims the entire time, playing a corpse so perfectly they never noticed, made me audibly groan and nearly roll my eyes out of my head.

Even if the movie succeeded in making the victims truly despicable, and I can't remember why anyone was getting targeted so the movie clearly failed on that score, I just want scumbags to die. So they can't harm anyone else. If I want elaborate deathtraps, I'll read a comic with Arcade in it. At least his shit is colorful and has a hint of twisted whimsy.

So that's my answer.

Deep Water (2026)

A commercial airliner crashes in the middle of the ocean through a variety of factors. Such as, poor maintenance, disregard for regulations by both the captain (Ben Kingsley) and the guy at the x-ray machine for the luggage, and a particularly selfish and conceited dickhead (Angus Simpson) that stored flammable shit in his suitcase.

Despite the best efforts of the first officer (Aaron Eckhart), the plane's belly gets caught on a coral reef during the ditch attempt, upends, and falls to pieces. The survivors are scattered between various sections, dealing with injuries, the sort of poor decision-making that comes with terror, and a lot of really hungry sharks.

You got a hodgepodge of brave stewardesses, two e-gamers that can't confess their feelings for one another, an aggro jock and his more reasonable teammate, a recently re-married couple and the kids each is bringing into the relationship, a grandmother and a dorky guy who repeatedly tries and fails to be cool.

I'm going to tell you right now, Dan the Dickhead dies. That's one thing you'd have to look forward to if, for some reason, you watched this. And he does so without demonstrating a single redeemable trait or action through the entire film. So at least he stayed consistent. No last second recanting on his deathbed!

Alex rented this on Amazon Prime, then called me to tell me to watch it. At the time he was watching, the plane was still in the air. When I texted him after I finished watching it, he responded, 'Yeah, as soon as Ben Kingsley died I knew the budget had gone downhill.'

The breaking up of the plane does allow for a few varieties of peril, except they all boil down to needing to stay out of the water because of sharks. Eckhart, one of the flight attendants, and the stepsister are near the cockpit. The dork, the grandma, the stepbrother and another stewardess are in a submerged section of the tail, as the water slowly rises. The rest are trying to stay in the central cabin, watching the water come in from either end as the reef collapses under them. That's what coral bleaching will get ya, structurally unsound support for your crashed airplane.

Eckhart's character is running from trouble at home, trying to focus on not losing his job by strictly following the rules, and I guess takes the stepdaughter on as a surrogate child to protect in lieu of the son he can't help. Does he break the rules in some of the things he does to try and save as many as possible, and that's his arc? He stops being afraid of failing and acts? Or is it seeing how much the girl misses her family makes him decide to stop running away?

Most of the deaths aren't too surprising, though I did expect the dorky guy, who swam out of the submerged section to try and find help, would make it back to help the grandmother. They had a rocky first interaction, and she kept giving him shit afterward, calling him a "five". As in, "out of ten." Maybe six, if he cleaned up. Yeah, I bet her granddaughter was just counting the minutes until Grandma showed up to criticize her posture.

Props to that one flight attendant for hauling herself into a life raft and applying a tourniquet before passing out. That is a remarkably cool head under pressure. It did seem like we saw a lot of the women get bitten - though not always killed - while more of the guys died off-screen. Not strictly that dichotomy, but it felt like the men we did see die via shark mostly died quick. The women tended to get chomped on the calf or thigh, and maybe they could swim to safety, but maybe they got torn to shreds. Either way, a lot of panicked flailing and screaming. I don't know, just something I noticed.

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

Padraic (Colin Farrell) has a farm with his sister Siobhan (Kerry Condon) on a little island off the coast of Ireland. Their days are repetitive. Siobhan cooks, tries keeping the house clean (despite Padraic letting his miniature donkey, Jenny, inside), and reads. Padraic takes the animals to the fields, delivers milk across the island to the general store for money, and goes to the pub at 2 p.m. with his best friend Colm (Brendan Gleeson.)

Except one day, Colm declares he's not friends with Padraic any more. At least, not the kind of friends who speak to one another, or spend any time together. He's been thinking of mortality, and what he'll leave behind to mark his time on Earth. He thinks it'll be music, but if he's to do that, he can't waste two hours at a time listening to Padraic describe what he found in his donkey's - sorry, it was his pony's - shits. When Padraic fails to take the hint, continually trying to resume their friendship as though nothing changed, Colm ups the stakes. The next time Padraic speaks to him, Colm will cut off one of his own fingers. Fingers are kind of important for fiddle players.

Padraic can't figure out what's happening, Colm can't seem to explain it in a way Padraic will understand sufficiently to leave him alone, and Siobhan's being worn thin trying to protect her brother from his own faults.

The thing that keeps coming up in this movie is "nice." When Padraic asks people if he's dim, or boring, they tell him he's not, but they don't say he's smart, or interesting. They say he's "nice." And nice is, seemingly, never saying what you actually think or feel, at least not in front of the person you're thinking or feeling about. The shopkeeper - a noxious little gossip - wants to hear news from the far side of the island, but when Padraic, irritated by the local cop poking fun at him, spills the cop beat his son with a kettle in front of said cap, she dismisses that as 'shite news.' She'd beat Dominic (Barry Keoghan) herself, if he were her child! No doubt as soon as both Padraic and the goon of a cop were out the door, she was making a note to press the next customer for more details.

There's an elderly woman, Mrs. McCormack, who, with her pale, wrinkled skin and dark robes, makes me think Emperor Palpatine's on the loose. She roams the island, observing and making ominous comments. When she tells Padraic there will be a death on the island before month's end, possibly two, and she'll pray it isn't him or his sister, Padraic can only stammer out how that wasn't a nice thing to say. Her reply, 'I wasn't trying to be nice. I was trying to be accurate.'

Nice is a lie. Nice is a bland smile that hides contempt or hatred or pity. It's something confused with kindness, but it's probably more about the person being nice, than who they're being nice to.

When Padraic gets drunk at the pub one night and lets Colm have it for hanging out with a cop who beats and sexually abuses his kid, his finishing insult is that maybe Colm was never nice to begin with. Because to him, that's a horrible thing to be, not-nice. And Colm,who had his own spiel about how no one remembers people for being nice, they remember them for creating things of lasting beauty, like music, remarks that was the most interesting Padraic had ever been. When he was drunk and pissed and said what was on his mind without worrying if anyone would disapprove of him airing the cop's dirty laundry right in front of the entire village.

Padraic's an interesting character, in that I don't know what to feel about him, exactly. In some ways, he's completely guileless. A terrible liar, clumsy in his attempts to jab back at people who hurt him, and ultimately extremely self-centered. When Siobhan tells him she accepted a position as librarian on the mainland, his first two questions are, "But what about me?", and "Who's going to do the cooking?" And maybe that's a consequence of his sister looking after him all these years, shielding him, or maybe he just can't really think in larger terms.

There's something, in how literal Padraic is about everything, how he tends to focus on particular points of fact while ignoring the larger meaning, that makes me wonder if, had the movie taken place in the present day, he'd be diagnosed with some level of autism. When Siobhan responds to the question about cooking by asking if that's his first question, he points out his first question was, "But what about me?" Being technically correct, while missing the point she's trying to make, that he's not thinking at all about her. When Colm, trying to make his point about what lasts in memory, says everyone's heard of Mozart, Padraic immediately rebuts that he hasn't heard of him. Correcting Colm that he was discussing his pony's shit, not his donkey's, while not addressing Colm's larger point that it was not a meaningful conversation or what Colm considered a good use of his limited time on Earth.

It doesn't feel like an attempt to derail the conversation so much as Padraic's mind just seizes on these minor inaccuracies. Those he can actually address, so he does. Maybe in his mind, since that point was wrong, the whole argument is pointless or misguided? It really highlights the foolishness of Colm's threat, even beyond that he's gone well past "cut off your nose to spite your face." Padraic is never going to understand what Colm is trying to tell him by lopping off fingers. He's going to see it as his friend is sad, or mental. Try to get the priest to help him with his "despair. So they can go back to being pals and drinking at the pub together every afternoon.

I would say Farrell gives Padraic the energy of a yappy puppy that follows you around, begging for attention, chewing on her pant cuffs and pissing on the carpet, then looking hurt when you scold it. But even Colm's dog figures out what's what, at one point actively trying to drag the shears out the door and away from its master. But Farrell does this sort of befuddled, wounded expression so well, that I can feel bad for him not being able to understand, while simultaneously wanting to tear my hair out each time he tries once again to renew his friendship with Colm.

Gleeson wears a pinched, weary air whenever he's dealing with Padraic. The lines on his face get deeper, and he seems to grow pale, like interacting with Padraic drains the life from him. Or maybe that's just the blood loss. With other people he laughs, or listens attentively, leaned towards them and looking ruddy and healthy. Even if what they're saying is horrible, like the cop being excited to travel to the mainland as extra security for some executions tomorrow. Which side is doing the executions doesn't matter. Pity they're shooting them instead of hanging, but he'll see some people die and get paid for the privilege, what fun. And Colm listens, makes comments. He may think it's awful, but I guess the conversation is real, says something about people. This other man's indifference to cruelty, his gleeful avarice, is worth Colm's time in a way Padraic's chatter about shit is not.

Yet, part of him still cares for Padraic. Picks him up when the cop slugs him and loads him in the wagon, later punches the cop for behaving like a dick towards Padraic. He doesn't like hurting Padraic - who likes kicking a puppy? - but apparently the notion of picking up and leaving, going somewhere far away, like Siobhan ultimately does, where Padraic would never find him, doesn't track. Better instead to lop off fingers - and never bandage them, seriously, at no point does he appear to receive any treatment, big ups to that band playing his song while Colm presses a hand full of stumps to his chest and conducts with a bloody fiddle - in the futile attempt to drive the man away. 

Maybe the saddest parts are Padraic's interactions with Siobhan. Because Condon makes you see that Siobhan loves her brother (and Padraic does love her, as best he can) but has spent her entire life accommodating his quirks, and his schedule. Fighting a losing battle to not let the donkey in the house. Read a book that's sad, and be asked what it's about, or at least why she reads it if it's sad, be told she should read a book that's not-sad. And even though I don't think she particularly gives a shit about Colm - she dismisses him as just like all the other men on the island, tied up in petty grievances, and corrects him on when Mozart lived - she tries to keep Padraic away so Colm doesn't further mutilate himself.

(The Mozart thing I think is a rebuke of Colm's point. People remember Mozart's music, but they don't necessarily remember the man. Whereas, at least on the island, people might remember Padraic as the nicest person. Or, they would have, at one time.) 

But because Siobhan calls the shopkeeper out on being a nosy ass that opens people's mail then lies about it, or tells the cop it's none of his business what she does, she gets told nobody likes her. Because she's not nice. She reserved that for her brother, holding back her frustration with his satisfaction with the monotonous rhythms of their life, and it's eating away at her. One of the hardest scenes was after the cop told her that, when she's crying in bed. Padraic hears her, starts to sit up in his bed, then rolls away. Either he doesn't know what to say, or can't bring himself to try. He's probably never felt like he had to. Can't fault her for getting the hell out of there.

Most of the movie, Condon's hair is a stringy mess trailing around her head like a bush that's not been trimmed in years. It's only when she's decided to accept the job that the bags disappear from under her eyes, she starts to smile, works her hair into something neat. She's getting out, chasing what she wants and it brings her to life. In that sense, Padraic's letter back to her, while maintaining his usual self-centered niceness, is a gift. He doesn't tell her Jenny died. He doesn't tell her he burned down Colm's house, possibly Colm with it.

He does tell her Dominic died - and I can at least hope Dominic's shitbag father drank himself to death soon after - but only as a way of explaining why he can't come live with her, because Dominic is no longer an option to take over the farm. By keeping everything raging inside him locked away from someone who would care, who would probably come rushing back to try and keep her brother from getting killed, he grants her the peace to keep living the life she wants.

One thing that feels significant in a way I can't place comes during the final conversation between Colm and Padraic. All through the movie, characters use the word "feckin'." Feckin' mental, feckin' shitbag, and so on. In this final conversation, in response to Colm's apology for Jenny's death, Padraic says, very clearly, "I don't fucking care." The shift in word choice or pronunciation feels important, but I'm not sure how. The whole conversation does mark the shift in the landscape between the two. Colm seems ready to put things behind them, Padraic is not. They're both still alive, so nothing is over. Colm looks across the sea to Ireland and remarks there's been no shooting for a couple of days (this takes place at the tail end of the Irish Civil War in the 1920s), and maybe there'll be peace.

Padraic dismisses the idea. Doesn't nod along mindlessly or agree. They'll be back to fighting soon enough. A metaphor for he and Colm. This quiet conversation doesn't change things, even if part of Padraic still wishes it would. The way he nearly breaks when Colm thanks him for looking after his dog, like he can't tell if he wants to cry or throw up. I wonder if, in that moment, he was about to ask Colm if he wanted to go to the pub, and had to stop himself. Like he's learned a lesson, or this is the "new me" as he yelled at Dominic's back at one point, but the old him isn't entirely gone yet. Instead, he responds "Any time," and walks away. It's outwardly polite towards a person he hates, but it's also a threat. He could come looking to settle things with Colm at any time.

Overdue Movie Reviews #14 - Mad Max (1979)

A lunatic calling himself the Nightrider - sorry, the Night. . .RIDER! - steals a police cruiser, then dies while being pursued by the Mobile Police Force. The rest of his biker gang aren't too pleased, but nothing much comes of it until a different member of their group, the drugged out, spineless Johnny the Baby (Tim Burns), gets arrested, then released because there's no witness who will testify. The arresting officer, who everyone calls Goose (Steve Bisley), punches Johnny repeatedly on the way out the door, and is ultimately killed.

Between this and Top Gun, not a great stretch of years for guys called "Goose."

Goose's being burned alive prompts his buddy Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) to retire to live in the countryside with his wife, Jessie (Joanne Samuel) and their baby. Obviously that's not going to last. The movie's called "Mad Max," not "Mellow Max."

Yes, I used a variation on that bit when I reviewed the Mad Max video game. It amuses me, I'm using it again.

I guess because it had been a couple of years, I had the details of the plot messed up. I thought Toecutter and his bunch declared war against the MPF for Nightrider's death, and Goose's death was part of a larger war of attrition. Max retired and they hunted him down.

That's probably the way most '80s American action movies would have done it, but that's not the way George Miller plays it here. Toecutter indulges Johnny's desire for revenge - in the stupidest, most overly complicated way this gang of intelligence-deficient biker trash could manage, we'll come back to that - on Goose, and Max leaves. Then Jessie just so happens to encounter Toecutter and the gang on the way to the family farm "up north," and doesn't take kindly to his being a creep. So they take revenge for the slight to their pride. There's no indication those likely radiation-addled crank jockeys have any clue they're up against the guy that killed their pal. Hell, I'm not sure they even know he's after them for killing his baby and running over his wife. I'm not sure they ever even saw Max up at the farm. Johnny doesn't recognize him at the end, since he's convinced Max is executing him for stealing a dead man's boots.

And while Goose's death is the impetus for Max's decision, according to Max, what he's afraid of isn't death, but going round the bend. Ending up just like Toecutter and his bunch, roaming the highways, leaving wreckage and ruin behind him, the only difference being he's got a badge to excuse it all. Got some bad news for you there. . .

Of course, maybe it makes sense the story doesn't work like an action flick. Miller shoots certain scenes more like a horror movie. The extreme close-ups on the bugged-out eyes of a character right before they pancake against the grill of a big rig, wouldn't have looked out of place in a few years in Evil Dead or something similar. The scene for Jessie in the woods, the voices coming from everywhere, the mutilated dog hanging from a chain. The blue lighting as Max slowly ventures into Goose's hospital room, where you can only see an arm outlined against the sheet over top of him. As the arm drops off the side of the bed into view and Max can only stare horrified, the image seems to waver, like he passed through a translucent curtain or veil.

A threshold's been passed, whether Max knew it or not. One way or the other, he wasn't a cop any longer. He tried to run away from it all, and when that fails, takes the V-8 Interceptor meant to be the shiny toy that kept him there. And he follows the captain's order to do whatever he likes on the road. But he's not worried about paperwork being clean, any more than he's worried about being the hero his captain thinks the people need. He's something else entirely now.

Then, in other ways, it very much is an action movie. The high speed chases with so many moving parts. The spectacular car wrecks, where vehicles go flying like they were punched by the Hulk in a comic drawn by Sal Buscema. (That one poor stuntman who wipes out on the bridge and his bike cracks him in the back of the helmet as they both skip across the pavement.) The camera shots from right in front of the bumper of a speeding car, or taken to suggest the viewer is barreling right towards something. A baby, an oncoming truck. Once Max sets out for revenge, he's apparently relentless, hounding Toecutter and his guys for days at a time, ignoring a bullet wound to the leg and his arm getting run over.

Which could be that horror vibe, Max becoming something different. Especially the bit where Toecutter leaves the mechanic's shop and finds the photos of Jessie and Goose in his helmet, with no sign of who left them. That's some vengeful spirit stuff right there, but action heroes tend to be almost superhuman, so there's not a huge divide from that to a supernatural terror, especially depending on whose point of view you're watching from.

OK, the revenge on Goose. The thing about the attack on Goose is not that they kept him busy with the cabaret singer so Johnny could tamper with his bike. It's that, having caused him to wreck in the middle of nowhere, all alone, they wait until the mechanic drives out and loans him his truck to haul his motorcycle back. Then they throw something through the windshield to cause him to wreck, then ignite the gas. That's more steps than was really necessary.

Was that for plausible deniability purposes? Because I can't see these guys caring about that, and even if they did, if you run him over on an isolated strip of road while he's all alone, you don't have to worry about plausible deniability then, either.

Maybe it was just to set up what Max does to Johnny at the end. Poetic justice, ironic punishment, that sort of thing. Which, I will admit I did appreciate. Of all the bikers, Johnny's the one I dislike the most. Nightrider's a loon, and I'm not sure his brain is even on the same planet as his body. Toecutter sees himself as some leader of a wayward flock, and makes a big show of himself, but also makes certain gestures that demonstrate he feels some loyalty to his guys. Presumably he made the arrangements to pick up Nightrider's body, and they give it an entire procession, carried in the back of the pick-up with Toecutter as he sits on his lawn chair throne.

Meanwhile, Johnny's just an annoying little shit. As soon as he's got someone to hide behind here comes the tough talk, but at any other point, he's a sniveling coward, full of excuses for why nothing that happens is his fault. Quite why Toecutter wastes time and energy on protecting him I don't know. I guess because he regards Johnny as one of "his", and therefore only he has the right to punish him.

The movie says it takes place 'a few years from now,' and civilization, though mostly recognizable, is clearly on a downward swing. All the towns we see look mostly deserted, the locals worn and weary. The kind of people you'd see in the beleaguered town of a spaghetti western, where they wear every year they've lived on their faces. The mechanic tells Jessie the ice cream shop will be glad for the business. Of two people, one of them a baby, buying at best one cone apiece. That's pretty dire. The roads are empty, save the cops, the bikers and the occasional fuel tanker.

MPF headquarters look like a building that ought to be condemned. Broken windows and rot in the walls. I've seen better maintained police buildings in movies where a zombie apocalypse is in full swing. A V-8 engine is treated as some rare treasure, a miracle anyone could find one and get it running. But the MPF patrol on the edge, where things fall apart first. It was once a frontier, and it's becoming one again. We never get a good look at a big city, the most populated place is either the cabaret or that roadside diner Goose is at, where the tow trucks are faster on the ball than he is. Their trucks are in pretty good shape, shinier and newer-looking than the MPF's cars. The only business still doing well is one dedicated to salvaging the remains of tragedies.

The Set-Up (1949)

Robert Ryan plays a boxer. Not a great one, not a title holder. A small-timer, who fights once a week in a cramped gym, with a ring so small it sometimes looks as though a fighter could stand in one corner and connect with their jab when their opponent was in the opposite corner. His wife (Audrey Trotter) wants him to stop, but he won't. Not yet. But tonight he's facing an up-and-coming boxer, Tiger Nelson (Hal Baylor), and Ryan's manager and trainer each took money for him to lose in the 3rd round.

We missed the first 30 minutes finishing up Something Big. With this movie coming in at 73 minutes, that's a considerable chunk. By that point, Ryan's in the tiny locker room the collective group of challengers for the night are sharing, and his wife is roaming the neighborhood with a ticket to the fight, silently debating what to do.

The film switches between those two threads as each of the other fighters heads to the ring. We don't see their fights, just the aftermath. One fighter comes back bruised and with a swollen eye, shaken and being harped on by one of the trainers or medics. Another is carried in unable to remember who he is. Through it all, Ryan's sitting and watching and trying to prepare himself. Telling the trainer needling the loser to knock it off, nodding along with the fighter who is sure he can win, because all it takes is one chance. 

Meanwhile, Trotter is moving, seeking a distraction but finding reminders of what she's avoiding everywhere. She doesn't talk much, just walks, and wrings her hands, and the longer she walks, the fewer people are around. Until she's alone on a bridge, watching trolleys pass by on their way someplace else. Does she stick with a guy who keeps going out to get his brains pulped, or leave? Ultimately she's got to make that choice.

The fight is a wild thing. Ryan ignores his trainer's advice to stay and at a distant and wades in, throwing (and taking) punches like Rocky Balboa. It doesn't look good. The kid is landing a lot more punches, though my dad noted that when Ryan lands a hit, it always staggers the kid. But the ref is either bought, or just uninterested in enforcing the rules. Ryan takes at least two low blows, with no reaction. The kid rakes at his ears at one point, and later, when he's sent Ryan to his knees, doesn't retreat to a neutral corner. Instead he hovers, and throws another punch as Ryan starts to stand.

Sometimes when Ryan's knocked down, the camera maintains its position outside the ropes, but at least one time when he's flat on his back, it switches to looking down at his face, like it's the ref counting him out. Although the shot I really liked was right before the start of either Round 2 or 3. His trainer and manager have stepped back, but Ryan's still on the stool, leaned against the corner post, solid black background. He's all alone, more than he knows, and the only way out is forward. The view switches to looking over his shoulder at his opponent, already up on his feet, hands raised, corner full of people that have his back.

During the fighting, the camera also keeps showing us certain members of the crowd. A blind man who has someone describe the action, and at one point is cheering for the kid to closer Ryan's other eye. A middle-aged woman shouting for someone to "kill him!" She doesn't care who gets killed, as long as she sees it. A younger guy that gets really into it, throwing jabs and flinching like he got punched. A heavyset guy who is eating something different each time we see him. Early on, most of them are scornful of Ryan - we hear someone in the crowd call him "grandpa" - but they're ultimately just as happy to see him lay out the kid.

(I joked with my dad the middle-aged woman was really yelling at the vendor, telling him to keep feeding that guy until he popped.)

And there's the gambler, with his irritating lady who makes big bets because she knows the fix is in. Too bad for her nobody told Ryan until the fight was already going. Too bad for Ryan, the gambler won't accept that explanation. It's a quick shift, Ryan back in the locker room, getting congratulated by the medical staff, all weary smiles as he wonders where his guys are. And then the gambler walks in, the medic leaves, not in a hurry, but he won't meet Ryan's eyes.

Which is when it all starts to hit Ryan how bad this is going to go. He was ready to walk into the ring and face a boxer who was supposed to be younger, faster, stronger, better than him, but he's not ready for this. Now he tries to run, but just like in the ring, there are no other exits. He's got to walk forward into another fight he's not going to win.

Something Big (1971)

Colonel Miller (Brian Keith) is a cavalry officer about to retire, and his wife Mary Anna (Honor Blackman) is on her way to the fort to make sure of it. Unfortunately, there's Joe Baker (Dean Martin) to contend with. He's a dude from Pennsylvania that came out West to do "something big," which really means he's been having fun playing outlaw. But the woman he's supposed to marry (Carol White) is tired of waiting and on her way.

So it's now or never for the something big, which involves robbing the treasure hoard of Mexico's most famous bandit. For that, he wants to acquire a Gatling gun. The guy who has the Gatling gun (or will have it) wants a woman. You see where this is going. Baker is holding up stagecoaches, looking for a woman he feels would be appropriate according to the Scriptures, and eventually meets Mary Anna. I'm not aware of the Bible speaking of trading a person for a Gatling gun, but maybe it's a different edition. The Sleazy Bastard Edition. Meanwhile, Miller and his chief scout (Ben Johnson) try unsuccessfully to figure out what it is Baker's planning, beyond "something big."

My dad had autotuned his TV to turn to this because he'd never heard of it. He was not impressed, with any of it. It's more comedy than action movie - the first real action is over an hour in, when Miller catches up to Baker and beats the crap out of him for abducting Mary Anna - but it's not funny. There are some odd characters, but the movie is content to coast on the existence of their quirks, rather than have anyone do something that might prompt laughter. Here's a two-woman gold mine operation, and they're really horny! Baker's future brother-in-law walks around playing bagpipes and dressing like a Scotsman (while his sister speaks with what sounds like an Irish accent)!

The movie starts with a, I think bounty hunter, complaining to Miller that Baker killed his partner (for kicking Baker's dog.) When Miller makes it clear he doesn't care and won't do anything, the cranky guy vows to find someone with a 'fine, delicate hand', to write him a letter to Washington D.C. about this. The guy reappears only at the very end of the movie, still vowing to write the letter. He doesn't try to hunt down Baker, he doesn't try to hamstring Miller, nothing.

Baker has this whole convoluted plan about getting the gun, but he's also hijacking whiskey as a bribe to a local tribe to join his attacking force. Then he rides into town in broad daylight, the brother-in-law playing the bagpipes the whole time. But, having tossed the element of surprise (which it turns out he didn't have to begin with) in the garbage, he keeps the Gatling gun under cover, and half his guys are dead before he gets it into action. Fortunately, none of the bandit's men know how to duck.

Dean Martin expends no particular effort, all lazy charm, easily punctured. Keith seems to be trying to talk without moving his lips for some reason. Honor Blackman's carrying a high-class sensibility and ego, but is somehow taken by Martin's bullshit enough to encourage her husband to let him take the Gatling gun and try his stupid plan. That didn't make any sense whatsoever. He's been exhibiting the same sleazy, Gambit-esque "charm" since he held up her stagecoach, and she wasn't impressed then. And Keith agrees, but not because he's got some plan to recover the gun, arrest Dean Martin and the bandit all at once, just because she asked, I guess.

I'm legitimately disappointed. There were enough elements for either a good comedy Western, or a good action Western. The potential was there, I think the actors had it in them, but what they were given to work with was just kind of trash, and they didn't or couldn't elevate it. 

Action in the North Atlantic (1943)

A cargo ship is sunk by a U-boat in the north Atlantic. To add insult to injury, the U-boat crew takes footage of the survivors huddled in their lifeboat, but when the survivors act defiantly, the U-boat rams the lifeboat, leaving them adrift on what looks like a giant pallet, but is apparently a raft.

The crew subsequently sign on to another cargo ship, the Sea Witch, but at least this one is crossing in a big convoy. 73 ships! Military escort!! What could go wrong? Well, they could run into an entire wolf pack of U-boats. The convoy could receive orders to disperse. The Sea Witch could find itself hounded by the U-boat that sank their last ship. Just a few examples!

Raymond Massey plays the captain of the two cargo ships, with Humphrey Bogart as his first officer. I guess so the captain can be wounded in the latter stages of the film, pushing Bogart into command, where he can come up with a way to trick the U-boat and get some poetic revenge. Bogart's character also punches out a guy in a bar that's blabbing about all the ships he saw leaving the harbor, then marries the lounge singer, but that never goes much of anywhere. Massey's character clearly thinks she's a gold digger, until learning they got married. Then he's OK with it, but there's no payoff beyond that one scene.

There's a handful of the crew that get a lot of lines. A guy who complains all the time, a guy who says there are subs around when his corns hurt, an older guy (Alan Hale) that's had several wives, that sort of thing. They bicker with each other, or with the regular Navy guys who man the ship's guns, and are probably meant to be the comic relief, but they're just kind of annoying.

The cat-and-mouse between the Sea Witch and the U-boat has a lot of twists and turns of fortune, rather than sticking to the formula of the cargo ship trying to dodge torpedoes or anticipate where the next attack will come from. Even when the cargo ship manages an escape via trickery, it's only a temporary reprieve. Likewise, the battle scene when the wolf pack falls upon the convoy is appropriately chaotic. Ships are blowing up, destroyers are dropping depth charges and blowing up subs, there's no sense of where anything is happening in relation to anything else, all the cargo ships are just looking for a way out.

That said, you can feel the movie grind to a halt each time a character has to give an Important Speech. When the guy who complains a lot explains he keeps passing up jobs on convoy ships because he's got a wife, with a kid on the way, the 4th guy in their little group goes into some spiel about whether the guys in Poland or Czechoslovakia were just thinking about staying safe when their countries got invaded. Or something like that. It was so obviously thrown in to appease the War Department - there is no way I believe that character would make that speech - I tuned it out.

There's a few scenes like that in the film, or like the one where the Sea Witch arrives in Halifax to join the convoy and we see how many different countries all the ships are from. Which, yes, it's nice to acknowledge it was a multinational effort to whip the Nazis' asses, but it's not what the movie's about, in terms of the characters or the plot. In those terms, it's about these civilians surviving getting sunk and being willing to go back out there and run the gauntlet again. And in the process, earning a shot at the guys who felt like it wasn't enough to sink them, they had to humiliate and then terrify them.

Overdue Movie Reviews #13 - Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

Fleeing from a botched robbery in toy store, Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.) stumbled into an audition to play a private investigator in a movie. Grief-stricken that his friend got shot by some lady determined to defend the sanctity of a toy store's Christmas product, he gave a bravura performance and won the role. Now he's in Los Angeles, getting tips from a real private investigator everyone calls Gay Perry (Val Kilmer), and running into Harmony (Michelle Monaghan), a childhood friend he had a huge crush on.

The case Harry accompanies Perry on ends up with a car in a lake, a dead body in the trunk. Harmony's sister turns up dead, an apparent suicide, though Harmony is convinced otherwise, given she was the one who hired Perry for the case with the body in the trunk. A body which soon turns up in Harry's hotel bathroom.

Harry reconnects with Harmony, fucks it up, tries to to fix it by lying, pisses off Perry, loses a finger, gets it back, sort of fixes things with Harmony, loses the finger again, fixes things with Perry, and ends up shooting a lot of people.

Harry is a creature of the moment. Part of that is he thinks he's clever, although this movie is full of people who think they're constantly making the wittiest comments imaginable. Sometimes they're even right. But he really just acts, in whatever way his emotions seem to dictate that moment. This is a guy who thought trying to rob a toy store to find a particular gift for a kid was a good idea, and when it went wrong, hid in an audition without knowing that's what he was doing.

He throws Perry's gun in the lake without stopping to check whether that's a good idea or not (it isn't.) He's got a lot of bitterness about women, and unleashes a spiel about how women who fuck a lot of guys all have fucked-up pasts, saying this to Harmony, who does, in fact, have a fucked-up past. He's impatient for answers, so he's tries the Russian Roulette interrogation technique on a hired killer, without being able to do basic math.

The, 'It was like an eight percent chance. Eight percent?! Who taught you math?!' exchange was one of those bits that I found as clever as the movie surely thought it was. Point is, Harry never really thinks before he does anything. The thinking comes after, when he has to reflect on how he's messed things up again. And maybe it works out. The final shootout, stationed on and under an overpass, involving a coffin, feels like a situation where Harry is simply reacting. He didn't really plan anything, because there was no time. He just did things, and it worked out. Maybe because it was actions and not words. He didn't have time to say something stupid that could ruin everything.

So it's a pretty good role for Robert Downey Jr. He can play a glib smartass in his sleep, but he's also good at the grief-stricken moments, and these moments of mostly impotent rage. Where's he mad, but he can't really do anything except spout more shit which is likely only going to make things worse. Or he has to backpedal instantly, as when he gets angry enough at Perry to snatch his sunglasses, but picks them off the ground and returns them the moment Perry tells him to.

Monaghan plays Harmony as simultaneously more grounded than Harry, but also more prone to getting blinders on. Harry tends to judge, quickly and harshly, off first impressions of what he thinks is happening. Harmony has actually lived in L.A. for a while, so she actually knows people and what they're like. There's a weary acceptance to her, except when it comes to something personal, like her sister. She has a dry wit, more controlled than Harry's. She picks her spots. She's not grief-stricken over her sister constantly, because she's angry, and she's also trying to decide what to do with Harry. The banter is easy between them, until Harry lets the wrong impulse control his mouth.

But she's also the one most likely to charge ahead without thinking. Harmony's the one that drives the plot, because she's the one convinced her sister was murdered. Harry plays along because he wants to stay close to her, presumably in the hopes he'll get out of the Friend Zone this time. His digging, done to impress Harmony, combines with the work she's doing, to drag Perry back in, largely against his will.

Kilmer's the alternately composed and frustrated center the other two whirl around like untrained puppies on leashes. He actually knows this work, knows how things usually work, knows what things a person should and shouldn't do, as well as what people are likely to do. Like, if they put a murder victim in your bathroom, they probably also phoned in a complaint to the cops. It makes him a bit of an exposition device at times - albeit one delivering exposition with biting commentary - but also keeps the plot moving forward at points the other two would hit dead ends.

It's a funny movie at times, but the plot's overly convoluted. You got daughters, fake daughters, assumed daughters. I didn't really even bother to try and keep track of everything. It's a film more about the style than the substance. There are multiple cases, they're connected. Everybody stands around saying clever lines, or trying to, and some people get shot. Harry's a little dazed the first time he kills someone, though that might be more about the person he let die just prior. By the end, he barely seems to notice how many people he shoots. They're just a body count.

Given that Harry narrates the story, I'd worry about an unreliable narrator, but he's so bad at it - forgetting to explain who people we see in flashbacks actually are - I don't think he could manage to embellish the truth if he wanted.

Black Moon Rising (1986)

Quint (Tommy Lee Jones) steals a cassette tape from a company the feds are about to prosecute for something. Tax-related, probably. It's not a quiet theft, so he hides the tape in an experimental, hydrogen-fueled car that's being hauled to L.A. Except the car gets hijacked by a top-notch car thief (Linda Hamilton), working for a sleazebag (Robert Vaughn) who doesn't respect her skills.

When the back of the DVD case described a futuristic car, I thought this was going to be sort of a cyber-noir thing. Low-budget Blade Runner or something. In my defense, the case made it look like the car was flying. It's actually just smashing through a window. From several stories up, and crashes through the window of a different building, also several stories up. Quint jumped so Dominic Toretto could fly.

Anyway, Black Moon Rising is a heist flick, with several moving parts only vaguely aware of each other. You've got Hamilton, growing dissatisfied with Vaughn's presumption that she owes him and looking for an exit. You've got the cars designers, who rebuff Quint's initial offer to team-up and try breaking in themselves. It ends in vehicular manslaughter and a reassessment of options. Neither of those parties are aware of the other, so Hamilton ends up being the ace in the hole that doesn't even know that's she is.

There's also a rival or competitor of Quint's, played by Lee Ving, who was security for the company Quint robbed and wants the tape back. He pops up maybe every 25-30 minutes to cause trouble for Quint. Mostly in the form of beatings or attempted murder. He's basically an element you're meant to worry about when things are going well. Is Marvin going to show up right now, when things are going well?

This is young Tommy Lee Jones, although I'm not sure he ever looked young, exactly. But that means he's not playing a crochety old man, but a, I hesitate to use "dashing", but charming? Yeah, charming thief. He has an easy smile, and Hamilton is playing Nina as someone frustrated by the lack of respect by her boss (Vaughn plays Ryland as someone who is probably charming, but has gotten so cocky the charm curdled into condescension), so you can see it as stress relief.

Hamilton's playing Nina as intelligent, skilled and professional. She's the one who actually steals the experimental car and out-drives Jones. She figures out the engine extracts hydrogen from water when the mechanics can't. One thing the movie doesn't explicitly state that I think is implied is that Ryland is getting complaints from his buyers about the cars they're receiving. The complaint focuses around damage to the cars, but I think there's an issue that they aren't getting any cars they couldn't get somewhere else. Nina steals a car that's literally one of a kind, and Ryland is annoyed because he can't see any value in it.

That wasn't really the point I was initially driving at. The point was, Nina doesn't abandon those traits once she tumbles into bed with Quint. As soon as she thinks he's asleep, she goes through his wallet, finding out how many i.d.s he has. She remembers he was at the bar where she stole the car, and she knows someone chased her, and Ryland told her someone found their hidden garage, so she's suspicious.

The Devil's Own (1997)

Rory (Brad Pitt) is an IRA soldier that travels to New York City to try and buy some Stinger missiles to deal with the British Army's helicopters. A friendly judge sets him up to stay at the home of Tom O'Meara (Harrison Ford), a New York cop.

While Rory is pretending to work construction and cleaning up the boat that'll be used to haul the missiles he's going to buy from a sleazy arms dealer (Treat Williams), O'Meara is doing the family man thing, going to work, trying to get his teenage daughter (early career Julia Stiles) off the phone, or score a little alone time with the wife, Sheila (Margaret Colin.)

We also see how Tom does things as a cop, where he tries to use minimal force, tells a guy stealing radios from cars to throw his gun away so he (meaning the thief) won't get shot. Except Tom stops to collect the gun, and his partner catches up to the guy and shoots him in the back. Tom doesn't agree, but ultimately lets his partner drop the gun next to the guy he shot.

(As there are several scenes where Tom runs, I was able to tell my dad my observation on how strangely Harrison Ford runs. I thought I mentioned it in one of my reviews of the later Indiana Jones movies last year, but apparently not. Point being, Harrison Ford runs weird, like he's trying to run without fully committing to it, or he's got bad plantar fasciatis. My dad's contention is it's not strange, Ford just runs flat-footed, and also never wears sneakers or other athletic shoes. He's always in boots or what I'd call dress shoes but my dad calls "proper" shoes.) 

All that's meant to contrast with what we see of Rory's life. Rory's father was shot at the dinner table by a masked man when Rory was a kid, just for having rumored Republican sympathies. When a team of plain-clothesed guys in cars can't catch Rory, the British military rolls in the armored vehicles and soldiers. One of his comrades is already dying of a gunshot, and when he won't give up Rory's location, an British Intelligence officer shoots him again, just because, basically. 

In Rory's life, being unarmed offers no protection. Relying on the honor of the people against you is a fool's bet. Even keeping a simple photo a friend took of Rory dancing with the sympathetic daughter of the judge that helped him ends up being a mistake, helping Tom pick up his trail. The only choice is to arm yourself and hit back.

And Tom, for all that the movie gestures at the potential for a surrogate father role towards Rory, doesn't get that. He decides to retire over covering for his partner murdering that guy, feeling dirty and unsuited to what he thinks being a cop is supposed to be. Rory's the one who has to retrieve Tom from the bar, and they talk a bit, but you can see Rory doesn't entirely get why Tom is so bothered. Tom's ancestors might hail from Ireland, but he's taken very different pieces from it. The beer, the food, the religion. Things you can take with you across an ocean, keep alive from a distance. For Rory, it's a place to fight for until its free, or die trying.

And then there's Williams' sleazy weapons dealer. Always smug, always trying some line on Rory, who he clearly sees as some dumb hick kid. Rory's got a cause and his anger. Tom's got his family and his own values. Williams just loves money. Tom doesn't want Rory to kill more people, doesn't want to kill Rory. Williams doesn't give a shit. He'd just like to get paid for the missiles more than once, if possible. If killing Rory makes that happen, then kill him. Violence has no meaning beyond getting him what he wants. 

I was a little surprised the movie didn't do more of Rory interacting with Tom's family, but I think it really wanted to keep the focus on Rory and Tom, their differing outlooks on life and violence and what's acceptable as shown through how they spend their time. We mostly see Tom's life during the day, and Rory's at night, though it seems significant the two almost always interact at night. They're traveling in Rory's world, whether Tom knows it or not.

Arabesque (1966)

David Pollock (Gregory Peck) is an American professor in Oxford who gets roped into figuring out a cipher written in Hittite hieroglyphs that a lot of people are interested in. The prime minister of a Middle Eastern nation who asks Pollock to infiltrate the billionaire Beshraavj's (Alan Badel) organization, which is tied to whatever the cipher says, and a general of a rebellion that dresses and talks like he wants to be James Dean. There are various menacing goons and vans following Pollock around.

In the middle of it all is Yasmin Azir (Sophia Loren.) Initially introduced as Beshraavj's mistress, we're immediately given cause to question that when she insists the house Pollock's being kept in belongs to her, though Beshraavj certainly acts otherwise. But she seems very close with the rebel general, and she helps Pollock escape Beshraavj, before going back to the tycoon with a story.

This is, thematically, a sequel to the Audrey Hepburn/Cary Grant movie, Charade, including having the same director, Stanley Donen. Supposedly, they wanted Grant for Peck's role, and Grant turned them down either because (mundane explanation) he wasn't acting as much by then, or (spicy explanation, per wherever my dad read it) Grant and Loren had a thing, but she turned down his offer of marriage.

So you get Peck, who outright told Donen he was no Cary Grant when it came to comedy. This is true. Peck is a little too stiff, the glib remarks don't quite roll out as smoothly. But he's also basically in Hepburn's spot, the ordinary one in the middle of all the duplicity and scheming. Loren is the one with the constantly changing backstory and uncertain allegiances. So Peck gets to be confused and frustrated and occasionally furious when he feels like Yazmin is stringing him along into danger.

Yazmin, meanwhile, is the one that has to try and keep plates spinning. She has to keep all these different men - Beshraavj, the general, Pollock - believing she's on their side, even as they also have to believe she's just pretending to help the others. Loren isn't Cary Grant when it comes to comedy, either, but she has the charm to make it believable, while offering just enough vulnerability to keep the audience from turning on her. You see it mostly with Beshraavj and the general, rather than Pollock, since they're more overtly threatening, the former couching all his threats in vague terms. Badel has this disconnected delivery, almost like he's quietly rehearsing threats or lines he's going to use later, and it just so happens someone else is actually in the room. He always wears sunglasses, at night, indoors, whenever, so he's not making much eye contact, either.

Of course, the movie takes a roundabout approach to eye contact anyway. Doren apparently brought in an additional scriptwriter to punch up the dialogue, and he would, in turn, punch up the visuals. He uses a lot of shots where we see characters via reflections. They talk to each other with their backs turned, watching each other in mirrors, we see them through some magnifying lens that flips the image upside-down.

At one point Pollock and Yasmin flee Beshraavj's chief goon and end up in an aquarium. They hide behind a pillar, but we see them via their reflection in a fish tank, so it looks like they're hiding behind some stone pillars in the tank. Yasmin and Beshraavj have a charged conversation in one of those infinite mirror set-ups, so you aren't ever looking at them as they talk, just an endless series of reflections.

Supposedly all the "punching up" was to disguise that the plot isn't so great, which I agree with. Charade had the advantage - or the foresight - to make the MacGuffin something concrete, an amount of money people found worth killing for. The information the cipher concealed was kept so secret, it could have been anything. I think we're meant to take it as given that, whatever it is, it's worth killing for, but I think the vagueness works against the movie. Pollock isn't really looking for anything, he just needs time where no one's harassing him to decipher the code. So the movie has to keep people on his tail so he doesn't get time, without the plot actually advancing in any way.

Overdue Movie Reviews #12 - Jaws (1975)

A large great white shark settles in off the coast of a New England beach town in the summer, as the townspeople are too concerned with losing tourist dollars to close the beaches in the hopes it'll move on to more favorable hunting grounds. After a handful - mouthful? - of people are eaten, the water-fearing police chief (Roy Scheider) sets out on a boat with a crazed shark hunter (Robert Shaw), and a cocky ichthyologist (Richard Dreyfuss) to kill the shark. The shark pretty quickly turns the tables and morale sinks faster than Quint's shitty boat.

Jaws ran all the time on cable when I was a kid/teenager, and I watched it almost every chance I got. When I was bored in various high school classes - which was often - I would make a list of my 20 favorite movies. The list was appalling (1995's Mel Brooks/Leslie Nielsen horror spoof Dracula: Dead and Loving It was usually somewhere around #18), owing to the limited amount of movies I'd seen, and my own, still-forming attitudes about what I liked, or what was good. That said, Jaws was usually either first or second, up against another of Spielberg's offerings this series will address one day.

The story that Spielberg only hinted at the shark for much of the film because the crew couldn't get the mechanical shark to work right is well known, but Spielberg does a lot with suggestion. We barely see the remains of Chrissie, the first victim. A sickly pale hand with a crab crawling over it in the sand, or Hooper picking up the arm, no longer attached to a body, during his autopsy.

Mostly though, we infer. From the panicked whistles that summon Brody, followed by the shot of the deputy turning away as he collapses in the sand, sobbing around his whistle. The way Chief Brody and the boy that was supposed to go swimming with Chrissie slow, and Brody makes the boy stay back. The tray presented to Hooper that contains all that's left of Chrissie is barely big enough for an infant.

Jaws owes some of its DNA to those '50s sci-fi horror flicks. Not just the ones where the populace are menaced by some everyday creature grown large by some method, but the presentation of the shark - again, out of technical necessity - reminds me of Forbidden Planet. The indentations in the soil that marked the Id Monster's footsteps. Tree being shoved aside, or brief bursts of ray gun fire lighting up a distant canyon, but getting steadily closer.

Here it's a tire with a roast hooked to it being taken away that tells of the presence of the monster, and half the dock going with it that speaks to its power. The yellow barrels Quint keeps harpooning into the shark, that never seem to actually wear it down. The tooth Hooper finds in a fishing boat that, like the Id Monster, vanishes before it can be presented to anyone as proof.

Once we do start to actually see the shark, it's blurred, partial views. Rolling onto its side beneath the water before it bites that one guy's leg off, the shark's body almost merges with the murky water around it. The dark eye is prominent, dull and black and lacking in anything we'd recognize as humanity or mercy, and the teeth it'll use to bite almost glow, but the rest is barely discernible. Like the ocean is annoyed by all these jabbering, splashing humans and concentrated part of itself into something to kill them.

I think years of watching Shark Week, seeing actual sharks, has somewhat dimmed the effectiveness of "Bruce" when he starts to reveal himself more often. Even for a stocky species like the great white, the body is stiff, the movement of the jaws awkward. It closes its mouth halfway, like it's chewing rapidly rather than biting great chunks from something, or it started to say one thing and then changed its mind. There's a sense of power, but not necessarily speed or force. Most of the time that's fine; the shark cruises with the confidence of a predator that knows there's nothing in the surrounding sea to challenge it.

It's the reactions of the people that help sell it. Brody's startled jerk when its head breaks the surface right in front of him, his dazed backwards shuffle into the cabin and murmured, 'You're gonna need a bigger boat.' I think the clearest sign of how dangerous it is comes after that, in two stages. First, when Hooper quietly asks Quint if he's ever had another shark act like this, and later, when Quint asks Hooper what he could do with his high-tech gear. These two have been at each other's throats since the moment they met. Quint sneering at Hooper's gear and college learning, Hooper rolling his eyes at Quint's sea tales and machismo. Now, each is scared enough to look to the other for an answer to the problem.

Dreyfuss and Shaw both play guys who are right, and wrong, and kind of arrogant jerks, albeit in different ways. Hooper is much chattier, ready with glib remarks about the mayor lining up to be a hot lunch, or muttered comments that the guys loading too many people into a boat are going to die. He's condescending, but Dreyfuss does it with a smile and a lighthearted tone that says he's amusing himself, that nasal cackle as he strides away after the mayor proves more concerned with a defaced billboard.

Quint doesn't say much, outside the monologue about the Indianapolis that Shaw apparently gave drunk, but most of it he says with a graveness to his tone expressing the person he's speaking to is a fool, or just not worth his time. He dismisses the island for having 'too many captains,' or his curt dismissal of Brody's suggestion that Hooper spend a while tossing chum with, 'Hooper drives the boat, Chief.' He doesn't dress it up, simply states the facts as he sees them. He's survived, he knows what's what, he doesn't care what you think.

Neither is really that concerned about the welfare of the people. Quint, certainly, wants to kill sharks and get paid for it. Revenge for what happened to his crewmates in WW2. Hooper sticks around because he wants to study sharks, and why go to Antarctica if there's a giant-ass great white shark right here? Consider that when the shark finally makes itself known to the trio aboard the Orca, Quint goes for his weapons, while Hooper goes for his camera. Quint's getting paid to kill the shark, no time like the present to start. Hooper wants to document evidence. He laughed at the mayor's insistence he wants to get himself in National Geographic, but he didn't deny it.

And in the middle is Brody. Scared of the water, no knowledge of seamanship. He can't help with the damaged engine, can't tie knots well enough to rig the barrels for Quint. When Quint hands him the fishing reel, Brody holds it like a first-time dad who's about to drop the baby. He can't even get in on the scar-comparing contest. He brought his service revolver, which might be helpful if a mermaid tries to mug them, but is useless against a 25-foot-long shark. Pretty much all he can do is chum bloody fish chunks into the water.

That's his penance, chief of police turned chore boy. He had the chance to cut this short, or at least try, and he let the mayor - never listen to a man who wears suits made of a Captain D's wallpaper - bully him out of closing the beaches until after a second fatality, and even then, only for a few days. He fears what will happen as a result of his cowardice enough to ask his son to take his new boat into the estuary, but he's not stopping anyone else from going into the ocean. He says he left New York City and came to Amity because, 'one man can make a difference,' but what we see of his usual day is he fields complaints from old men about their picket fence getting karate'd, or has guys pushing him to make the street in front of their house a "No Parking" zone. There hasn't been a mugging or a murder in decades, presumably spanning the tenures of multiple police chiefs and deputies. Are you really making a difference if anyone can do it?

He's a man afraid of water, living on an island because, 'it's only an island if you look at it from the water.' And you know he's going to have to go out there, and maybe he knows it, too, long before it happens. In the celebration of people thinking the tiger shark those goobers killed is the man-eater, the mother of the second victim arrives to slap Brody and blame him for her son's death, while the mayor stands off to one side, looking like he'd rather be anywhere else. After, as the crowd disperses, Brody walks down the pier, towards the ocean.

Of course, once they're on the Orca, Amity's no longer an island, it's invisible. There are lots of shots of just the boat, the sea, and the sky. I think, up through the first evening once they've found it, leading into Quint's story about the USS Indianapolis, the shots keep getting longer. The boat gets smaller, the sea and sky get larger. The shark could be anywhere in that vastness, the three men's isolation absolute given Quint's control (and eventual destruction) of the radio.

After that, once the shark takes it upon itself to smite these fools that challenged it, the camera starts moving back in. There's no place to go, the Orca is the only remotely safe harbor they have, and that's about like hiding in an outhouse during a hurricane. Everything around the boat, is controlled by the shark. The only thing the barrels accomplish is letting them see the shark's gaining on them as they run. Hooper climbs into his little shark cage and descends beneath the surface, the knight challenging the dragon in its lair, and his cage is destroyed in seconds. This is not his place, but he survives where Quint doesn't. Luck, or maybe because Quint wanted to die, the stubborn, contrary guy (love that as soon as Hooper tells him the engine can't handle high RPMs, Quint immediately pushes the throttle harder) that's been challenging sharks for 30 years, ever since 800 of his friends got eaten.

So it falls to Brody, with Quint's rifle and Hooper's compressed air tank, to kill the shark as the boat sinks around him. He's resting on the mast, but it's so low that it looks like he's actually floating or laying on the surface of the ocean. If part of the sea solidified into the monster to test him, test his fear of the ocean, his belief he can make a difference, another part of it has given him a bit of solid ground and said, "OK, let's see what you can do."