#boy do I miss Roger Ebert
Note
Good morning/ evening! My name’s Sam and I’m currently a film student hoping to get into freelance writing. I’ve got a couple questions if you don’t mind (hoping you haven’t already answered them and I just missed them).
When you first starting making your own films, did you have already have thick skin for any critics/ bad reviews? Or is that something you grew over time?
Also, for your production company, do you hire interns and PAs or do you prefer filmmakers with more experience?
Thank you!
To your first question, I do not have a thick skin in that area AT ALL and never have. I don't know many people who do.
I'm often approached by fans who will talk about what a project of mine means to them, or I find a review or think piece online where the author really connected with my work. I want to let that feedback in, because it's validating. But letting it in means letting ALL of it in, even the negative. I don't really get to pick and choose. Once I decided to let myself react emotionally to other people's feedback, those gates are open I've got to accept whatever comes through.
I take my work very seriously, and tend to pour my heart and soul into it. We make these things because we love them. It can literally take years of daily work to do. When people love it, it feels great. When people don't, it hurts. There's really no way around that.
Film criticism has, like a lot of things, devolved over time. I was a massive fan of Robert Ebert, who was thoughtful and sophisticated in his critiques (most of the time), and tried to approach each movie he watched on the film's own terms - from the perspective of "how successful was this at achieving what it set out to do?" I see a lot of criticisms today that don't do this, and instead are lamenting what a movie is or isn't, saying things like "I wish this was more..." or "This isn't good because I wanted it to be something else."
"I wanted a ________ and what I got instead was ______ so it sucks."
The other issue is that loud, sensationalized vitriol gets more clicks. Negative reviews, especially brutal and callous ones, get more attention than positive ones. I've gotten to know and befriend some professional critics over the years, who have all told me that the positive reviews don't generate the audience reaction quite like the negative ones. People enjoy watching things get beat up. We reward the wrong kind of discourse, and that isn't unique to film criticism - it's everywhere. That's just a symptom of our culture.
One of my great frustrations is how we assert our opinion as objective truth. There's nothing more dangerous than tweeting "I liked ______ movie!" The comments flood in about how you're wrong, how it sucks, blah blah blah. People think their own taste is somehow factual. If someone says "I had a fantastic steak dinner last night and I loved it," we don't say "you're wrong, steak sucks". We understand the concept of taste when it comes to other things we consume, but when it comes to entertainment each one of us thinks we're the ultimate authority.
For myself, my producer and my wife have long discouraged me from reading reviews. I still can't help it. It's not healthy though. I can scroll past a dozen positive ones, and they evaporate in my mind, but I read one scathing thing and it sticks with me for days. There is one particular review of MIDNIGHT MASS that is one of the most baffling and frustrating things I've ever read, as the author appears to have misunderstood just about every aspect of the series, and drawn the angriest, most misguided, most erroneous conclusions. I read it with my jaw on the ground... "but they're objectively wrong. That isn't what happens, and that isn't what the show is even about." But what can I do? Who am I to say their experience of the show is invalid? They feel how they feel, and that's fine. That's okay. It has to be.
So your skin doesn't get thicker, it is a bizarre emotional experience to put something personal out there into the world and see the gamut of reactions. But at a certain point you have to remind yourself that it's impossible to please everyone, and that these projects don't belong to the filmmaker - they belong to the audience, and each and every one of those experiences is unique and valid. Perhaps there are lessons to be learned, and perhaps the critique can help you grow as a filmmaker.
I have similar feelings when I see someone trashing someone else's work I happen to love - for example, I remain baffled by people who didn't like EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE, but that doesn't mean anything. It didn't work for them, that's all. Nothing works for everyone.
I have found over the years that I respect and appreciate analyses and criticisms that take this more personal point of view, and talk about their own interaction with the work as opposed to just dismissing it outright. When someone says "this movie didn't work for me," or "I didn't connect with it," or "It just wasn't my cup of tea," I have a much easier time taking it seriously. It's changed how I talk about my own reactions to movies or shows that I didn't respond to. And I found that it's made it much easier for me to enjoy things even if they aren't quite for me. Instead of being reactive and saying "it sucks" or "I hate this," I've gotten better at realizing it's not a binary experience - I can look at what DOES work for me, and I can appreciate it, even while other elements might not.
It makes for a much more nuanced discussion, and helps me grow. Sometimes, though, it's just the wrong thing to watch on the wrong day, and that's fine too. Maybe that makes it a little easier. If I step out of something and just really don't enjoy it, it helps remind me that it's not personal. Clearly, other people DO enjoy these things, sometimes I'm very much in the minority. And when that happens, I can say "oh, it's not so bad if someone hates a movie I made, or a show, or whatever. Life's too short."
But I long ago decided I'd never say anything negative about someone else's work in public. I know too much about what it takes to make a movie, and I'm not a critic. I'm a filmmaker. This town is too small, and there is zero upside in dragging another filmmaker's efforts. On the rare occasions when I do see another filmmaker indulge in that behavior, it is always a terrible look. And it can have real-world consequences - there are a few filmmakers who I've seen publicly slag off other people's work, and I quietly decided never to hire them. Like I said, it's a small town... and most of us read what people say about our work.
We should get back to that work, remember how lucky we all are to do this for a living, and leave that kind of thing to the critics.
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South Park Song Tournament!
[also check out @votemattrey’s South Park 25th anniversary concert tournament on their blog!! <3]
I am aware the creators made an official song tournament, but i didn’t hear about it until after it was already over so I have decided to make one of my own!
This is very self-indulgent and there are a lot of south park songs to think of, especially if you include covers (which i have decided to do) so I am likely very biased in which songs i have chosen.
I have narrowed it down to 128 songs to start to give an easy number for a tournament, but if I haven’t included your favourite song feel free let me know in the notes, reblogs or tags and I will make sure to add it to the list.
Please don’t worry about whether requesting songs will interfere with the tournament numbers! I have plans to give second chances to the closest losers to ensure that there is never an odd number of songs going into the next round :)
The songs I have decided to put in the tournament are as follows:
South Park Theme Song
I'm Gonna Make Love to You, Woman - Cartman Gets an Anal Probe
Hot Lava - Volcano
Love Gravy - An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig
Make Love, Even When I'm Dead - Pinkeye
The Lonely Jew on Christmas - Mr Hankey the Christmas Poo
Waitin' On a Woman - Cartman's Mom is a Dirty Slut
Simultaneous - Summer Sucks
Chocolate Salty Balls - Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls
Cheesy Poofs Theme Song - Roger Ebert Should Lay Off the Fatty Foods
Underpants Gnomes Work Song - Gnomes
Getting Gay With Kids - Rainforest Schmainforest
I Hate You Guys - Jakovasaurs
Sexual Harassment Panda - Sexual Harassment Panda
Shelly, Shelly - Cat Orgy
Turds! - Cat Orgy
Mr Hankey the Christmas Poo - Mr Hankey's Christmas Classics
Carol of the Bells - Mr Hankey's Christmas Classics
Christmas Medley - Mr Hankey's Christmas Classics
O Tannenbaum - Mr Hankey's Christmas Classics
Christmas Time in Hell - Mr Hankey's Christmas Classics
Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel - Mr Hankey's Christmas Classics
I Saw Three Ships - Mr Hankey's Christmas Classics
Merry Fucking Christmas - Mr Hankey's Christmas Classics
O Holy Night - Mr Hankey's Christmas Classics
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - Mr Hankey's Christmas Classics
Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld - Timmy 2000
Fingerbang - Something You Can Do With Your Finger
Wendy's Audition Song - Something You Can Do With Your Finger
Third Grade Memories - Fourth Grade
The Prostitute Song - Fat Camp
Circle of Poo - A Very Crappy Christmas
Why Can't I Be Like All the Other Kids - Here Comes the Neighbourhood
It's Butters! - Butters' Very Own Episode
Montage - Asspen
Sea People and Me - The Simpsons Already Did It
The Ballad of Lemmiwinks - The Death Camp of Tolerance
My Future Self n Me - My Future Self n Me
Poo-Choo Train - Red Sleigh Down
Bleeding Heart Rock Protest Song vs. Pro War Country Song - I'm a Little Bit Country
Make a Run for the Border - Fat Butt and Pancake Head
Taco Flavoured Kisses - Fat Butt and Pancake Head
Jesus Baby - Christian Rock Hard
Faith + 1 Album - Christian Rock Hard
Casa Bonita - Casa Bonita
Joseph Smith Was Called a Prophet - All About Mormon
Cigarettes All Hidey Lidey Day - Butt Out
Follow the Only Road - It's Christmas in Canada
French Canada - It's Christmas in Canada
Let's Fighting Love - Good Times with Weapons
My Robot Friend - AWESOM-O
My Wishing Tree - The Jeffersons
The Future Begins With You and Me - Goobacks
Vote or Die! - Douche and Turd
I've Got Some Apples - Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset
Christmas Time is Once a Year - Woodland Critter Christmas
Make It Right - The Death of Eric Cartman
Love Lost Long Ago - Follow That Egg!
We Can Live Together - Ginger Kids
Trapped in the Closet - Trapped in the Closet
Hey People, You Gotta Drive Hybrids Already - Smug Alert!
Who's Got the Greatest Mom In The World? - Tsst
Dawg's Crew Theme Song - Miss Teacher Bangs a Boy
Hippitus Hoppitus - Fantastic Easter Special
California Loves the Homeless - Night of the Living Homeless
I've Got a Golden Ticket - Le Petit Tourette
Imagination Song - Imaginationland
Canada on Strike - Canada on Strike
My Internet Done Up and Went Away - Over Logging
Super Fun Time - Super Fun Time
You Gotta Do What You Wanna Do - Elementary School Musical
Burn Down Hot Topic - The Ungroundable
I've Got a Ring on My Finger - The Ring
Queef Free - Eat, Pray, Queef
Gay Fish - Fishsticks
Somalian Pirates We - Fatbeard
Poker Face - Whale Whores
Minorities at my Water Park - Pee
Lake Tardicaca Hula Gal - Crippled Summer
You and Cthulhu - Mysterion Rises
Cafeteria Fraiche - Crème Fraiche
Vunter Slaush Kapushkuh - Crack Baby Athletic Association
Work Mexican Work - The Last of the Meheecans
Lemmiwinks vs Wikileaks - Bass to Mouth
Put That Heart to Work - Broadway Bro Down
Out of My Shell - Broadway Bro Down
I'm Not the Poorest Kid in School - The Poor Kid
The Jewelry Polka - Cash For Gold
Make Bullying Kill Itself - Butterballs
Jackin' it in San Diego - Butterballs
I Swear - Cartman Finds Love
The Ballad of James Cameron - Raising the Bar
It's a Beautiful Day - World War Zimmerman
A Chorus of Wieners - A Song of Ass and Fire
Princess Kenny Theme - A Song of Ass and Fire
My Bitch Ain't No Hobbit - The Hobbit
Push (Feeling Good on a Wednesday) - The Cissy
The Tale of Craig's Mom's Bush - The Magic Bush
PC Chant - Stunning and Brave
Where Has My Country Gone - Where My Country Gone
The Yelper Special (Boogers and Cum) - You're Not Yelping
In My Safe Space - Safe Space
The Ballad of Tweek and Craig - Tweek x Craig
Let's Come Together As a School - Douche and a Danish
Give Life A Try - Put It Down
Put It Down - Put It Down
They Got Me Locked Up In Here - Hummels & Heroin
Barbershop Quartet - Hummels & Heroin
A Witch Pursuit Thing - Sons A Witches
Faith In Christ - A Boy And A Priest
Unfulfilled - Unfulfilled
Colorado Town - Bike Parade
Go Strong Woman, Go - Board Girls
I Love You Social Distancing - The Pandemic Special
Mountain Town - South Park: Biggger, Longer & Uncut
Uncle Fucka - South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
It's Easy Mmkay - South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
Blame Canada - South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
Kyle's Mom's a Bitch - South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
What Would Brian Boitano Do - South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
Up There - South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
La Resistance - South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
I Can Change - South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
I'm Super - South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
Mountain Town (Reprise) - South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
We Are Living in the Future - South Park: Post Covid: The Return of Covid
We Missed You Randy - South Park: The Streaming Wars
I Got Cred, Bitches - South Park (Not Suitable For Children)
Hope you all enjoy the tournament and may the best south park song win!
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RANKING SOUTH PARK EPISODES FROM uh BEST TO WORST BUT ONLY RANKING SEASON 1-15 because those are the only ones i watched
season 1:
Cartman Gets An Anal Probe (best)
Weight Gain 4000
Cartman’s Mom Is a Dirty Slut
Damien
Volcano
Mecha-Streisand
Pinkeye
Death
An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig
Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo
Big Gay Al’s Big Gay Boat Ride
Starvin’ Marvin
Tom’s Rhinoplasty (worst)
season 2:
Spookyfish (best)
Merry Christmas, Charlie Manson!
Cow Days
City on the Edge of Forever
Chickenlover
Cartman’s Mom Is Still a Dirty Slut
Terrance and Philip in Not Without My Anus
Chef Aid
Roger Ebert Should Lay Off the Fatty Foods
Chickenpox
The Mexican Staring Frog of Southern Sri Lanka
Clubhouses
Summer Sucks
Chef’s Chocolate Salty Balls
Ike’s Wee Wee
Conjoined Fetus Lady
Gnomes
Prehistoric Ice Man (worst)
season 3:
Cat Orgy (best)
The Succubus
Mr. Hankey’s Christmas Classics
Two Guys Naked in a Hot Tub
Chinpokomon
Jewbilee
Tweek vs. Craig
Hooked on Monkey Fonics
Rainforest Shmainforest
Spontaneous Combustion
The Red Badge of Gayness
World Wide Recorder Concert
Are You There God? It’s Me, Jesus
Sexual Harassment Panda
Starvin’ Marvin in Space
Korn’s Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery
Jakovasaurs (god i hate this episode)
season 4:
Fat Camp (best)
Cartman’s Silly Hate Crime 2000
The Wacky Molestation Adventure
A Very Crappy Christmas
Do the Handicapped Go to Hell?
Probably
4th Grade
Trapper Keeper
Helen Keller! The Musical
Pip
Cartman Joins NAMBLA
Something You Can Do with Your Finger
The Tooth Fairy’s Tats 2000
Quintuplets
Cherokee Hair Tampons
Timmy 2000
Chef Goes Nanners (worst)
season 5:
Butters’ Very Own Episode (best)
Scott Tenorman Must Die
Super Best Friend
Kenny Dies
How to Eat with Your Butt
It Hits The Fan
Cartmanland
Towelie
Terrance and Philip: Behind the Blow
Osama bin Laden Has Farty Pants
The Entity
Here Comes the Neighborhood
Cripple Fight
Proper Condom Use (worst)
season 6:
My Future Self ‘n’ Me
Jared Has Aides
Red Sleigh Down
Free Hat
The Biggest Douche in the Universe
Asspen
Red Hot Catholic Love
Child Abduction Is Not Funny
The Return of the Fellowship of the Rings to the Two Towers
Fun with Veal
A Ladder to Heaven
Freak Strike
Professor Chaos
Simpsons Already Did It
The New Terrance and Philip Movie Trailer
Bebe’s Boobs Destroy Society
The Death Camp of Tolerance
season 7:
Raisins
Butt Out
Fat Butt and Pancake Head
Casa Bonita
Toilet Paper
All About Mormons
Lil’ Crime Stoppers
It’s Christmas in Canada
South Park Is Gay!
Christian Rock Hard
Red Man’s Greed
I’m a Little Bit Country
Grey Dawn
Cancelled
Krazy Kripples
season 8:
Woodland Critter Christmas
The Jeffersons
Good Times With Weapons
Pre-School
Goobacks
The Passion of the Jew
Cartman’s Incredible Gift
Awesom-O
Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes
Up the Down Steroid
You Got F’d in the A
Quest for Ratings
Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset
Douche and Turd
season 9:
The Death of Eric Cartman
Ginger Kids
Marjorie
Follow That Egg!
Die Hippie, Die
Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow
Erection Day
Trapped in the Closet
The Losing Edge
Best Friends Forever
Free Willzyx
Mr. Garrison’s Fancy New Vagina
Wing
Bloody Mary
season 10:
Tsst
Smug Alert!
ManBearPig
Make Love, Not Warcraft
The Return of Chef (god i miss chef)
Cartoon Wars Part II
Go God Go XII
Go God Go
Miss Teacher Bangs a Boy
Mystery of the Urinal Deuce
Cartoon Wars Part I
A Million Little Fibers
Hell on Earth 2006
Stanley’s Cup
season 11:
Imaginationland Episode II
Imaginationland Episode III
Imaginationland Episode I
Le Petit Tourette
Night of the Living Homeless
Cartman Sucks
The List
With Apologies to Jesse Jackson
Guitar Queer-O
More Crap
D-Yikes!
The Snuke
Lice Capades
Fantastic Easter Special (not even a bad episode, it’s a 7.5/10 honestly)
season 12:
The China Problem
Super Fun Time
Elementary School Musical
Tonsil Trouble
The Ungroundable
Over Logging
Pandemic 2: The Startling
Pandemic
About Last Night…
Eek, a Penis!
Canada on Strike
Major Boobage
Breast Cancer Show Ever
Britney’s New Look
season 13:
W.T.F.
Fatbeard
Dead Celebrities
Dances with Smurfs
The Ring
The Coon
The F Word
Margaritaville
Fishsticks
Whale Whores
Butters’ Bottom Bitch
Pee
Pinewood Derby
Eat, Pray, Queef
season 14:
It’s a Jersey Thing
201
200
Coon vs. Coon and Friends
Crème Fraiche
Mysterion Rises
Coon 2: Hindsight
Insheeption
Poor and Stupid
Crippled Summer
You Have 0 Friends
Medicinal Fried Chicken
Sexual Healing
The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs (not even a bad episode, gets a 7 from me)
season 15:
1%
Ass Burgers
City Sushi
Crack Baby Athletic Association
You’re Getting Old
The Last of the Meheecans
The Poor Kid
A History Channel Thanksgiving
T.M.I.
Broadway Bro Down
HUMANCENTiPAD
Royal Pudding
Funnybot
Bass to Mouth
#.souloftheintrovert#i was bored#south park#not trying to get notes#i just dont wanna lose this post lol
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Review of The Blair Witch Project
The Blair Witch Project is not like anything I have seen before. Seconds into the film, it immediately sets an ominous tone beginning with a black screen stating, “In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland while shooting a documentary. A year later their footage was found.” The implication is immediate. The three students’ fate must still be undetermined.
The film was written and directed by University of Central Florida film school classmates, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez. The story revolves around the protagonists, three college age filmmakers, who decide to investigate a myth about a witch in the small town of Burkittsville, MD (previously known as Blair). To begin their documentary, they do some interviews in the town which fuels the folklore they have already heard related to a local witch, the Blair Witch. Yet, there are some who don’t believe these stories, and this provides realism and authenticity to the film.
After the interviews, they head into the woods to begin their investigation of the Blair Witch. Their expectation is that this will be a short excursion. However, this is not the case. Their interpersonal relationships go south as they get lost in the woods, hear noises at night, start losing important items, and people start to disappear. This triggers an apology video from one of the two survivors. Needless to say, this investigation does not go as planned.
The film is character-centered on the three college students and is shot as a documentary with the use of two low-end cameras, one with black and white film. The cinematography is as if they are shooting all the footage themselves on the go so the camera is shaky, not in focus or without images due to the various situations the characters are in (and they are). This heightens the verisimilitude, the appearance of being true or real, of the film. Not only does the style of the film support the fact that it is a real documentary but so does the strategy of its production. Myrick and Sanchez do this by using the true names of the actors as their character names. This was such a success that the families of these actors actually received condolence cards after the release of the movie.
The film is about as indie as it gets. First off, it uses unknown actors. It is low tech and has no special effects or music. It is a low budget film with a production cost of approximately sixty thousand dollars. Based on this information you may not expect much. Boy, would you be wrong. This movie is unnerving. There are lots of rumors, folk tales, superstitions, and false memories that give backstory to the movie. The scariest part of the movie actually develops from the seeds that are planted in your mind. Your imagination. There is minimal blood and gore compared to movies like Nightmare on Elm Street or Halloween. There is no eerie music. No jump scares. No knife attacks. No theatrical techniques to build suspense. Just the bare bones natural and real setting of the forest.
Yet, it still feels like a horror film. It is really up to your imagination as to what is really happening. It is up to you to determine if it is all real or not. The missing map, the piled-up stones, and the stick bundles that are found all contribute to our thinking there is something wrong going on here. It is a mystery and we, along with the protagonists, are trying to figure it out. Through Myrick and Sanchez’ immersive style, they created a film where the viewer is more of a player trying to understand what is happening. This engagement is an example of ‘form is a game.’
The late Roger Ebert raved about this movie, stating, “At a time when digital techniques can show us almost anything, The Blair Witch Project is a reminder that what really scares us is the stuff we can’t see. The noise in the dark is almost always scarier than what makes the noise in the dark. Any kid can tell you that. Not that he believes it at the time.”
While the purpose of indie films is not necessarily to make a small fortune, this movie did. It made nearly two hundred fifty million dollars worldwide. That is an impressive return on investment.
I definitely recommend this film but make sure you can afford not to sleep that night!
-Ryan McCormick
#sundance#sundancefilmfestival#sundance 2024#independent#theblairwitchproject#horror#horrorfilms#filmreview
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Put On Your Raincoats - A Leisurely Detour Through Vintage Erotic Cinema
Fucking. Making Love. Intercourse. Rumpy-Pumpy (R.I.P. Roger Ebert). Doing the Deed. The Horizontal Mambo. These are things people do, sometimes in front of a camera. But once upon a time these acts weren’t just filmed for the contents of our most shameful browser tabs, but for actual motion pictures by people trying to make art.
The Golden Age of Pornography, or the “Porno Chic” era, was a brief period during the ‘70s and ‘80s when hardcore pornography carried a certain amount of mainstream cachet. Deep Throat made a shit-ton of money and was discussed on talk shows. The Devil in Miss Jones was reviewed by respectable critics, and positively (R.I.P. Roger Ebert). I won’t feign to hold much more in-depth knowledge, but will humbly gesture in the direction of The Rialto Report, a podcast that explores these films and filmmakers, some of whom they manage to interview, with an admirable level of enthusiasm.
Given my love of genre cinema, often of the less reputable variety, it was a given that I would be interested in golden age hardcore, and have managed to see a handful over the years. Some of these (*cough*Behind the Green Door*cough*) have been challenges to get through. But others have been quite good: funny (The Opening of Misty Beethoven), stylish (Neon Nights), intense (The Image) and moving (The Devil in Miss Jones... R.I.P. Roger Ebert). Like my Video Nasty project, this is not an exploration that will be undertaken with any level of rigour or serious academic interest, but lazily, with me stumbling across films with no real deadlines or goals other than hopefully getting some non-prurient enjoyment (okay, some prurient enjoyment too) out of them. And like that project, I will likely be hazy with the definitions and tackle some films that fall outside but are adjacent to the movement.
Put on your raincoats, we’re going to the movies.
Films Reviewed:
Memories Within Miss Aggie
Skin Flicks
Naked Came the Stranger
A Woman’s Torment
Her Name Was Lisa
Corruption
Indecencies 1930
Perversion of a Young Bride
Exquisite Pleasure
Sex Hunting Adventures
The Return of Marilyn
The Hidden Vices of Eva Blue
The Story of Prunella
The Taming of Rebecca
Angel in Distress
Daughters of Discipline
Savage Sadists
Oriental Techniques in Pain and Pleasure
Den of Dominance
Dr. Bizarro
Kamikaze Hearts
Taboo
Taboo II
The Pink Ladies
The Violation of Claudia
Hot Honey
New Wave Hookers
Black Throat
White Bunbusters
The Devil in Miss Jones 3: A New Beginning
The Devil in Miss Jones 4: The Final Outrage
Trilogy of Lust
Trilogy of Lust II
Cafe Flesh
Nightdreams
Dr. Caligari
Nightdreams 3
Party Doll A Go-Go!
Necromania
For Richer For Poorer
Divine Atrocities
Divine Atrocities 2
Momma’s Boy
True Crimes of Passion
Squalor Motel
Desperate Women
The Young Like it Hot
Sweet Young Foxes
Body Girls
Let’s Get Physical
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How Double Dragon’s Abobo Became a Beat em up Legend
https://ift.tt/2F8DPGk
In the late ’80s, video games started featuring over-the-top, meaty musclemen. Metro City had Mike Haggar, a shirtless former wrestler who became mayor and decided that being “tough on crime” meant ridding the streets of criminals with his bare hands, his girlfriend’s psycho boyfriend, and a ninja in Nikes. Circus strongman Karnov scoured the world for adventure and treasure, fighting all kinds of mythical monsters. Bald Bull was trying to dominate both the boxing ring and the arm-wrestling circuit. Gutsman was a jacked construction robot who was later rebuilt as a 40-foot-tall tank centaur.
And then there was Abobo, the gigantic antagonist from Double Dragon. He wasn’t THE antagonist. Hell, in the first game, you fight him within the first two minutes. Despite his low-level status, he’s still far more fondly remembered than the main Double Dragon bad guys like Willy and the Shadow Master. There’s just always been something about this random brute that’s made him special.
Abobo’s journey begins in the original Double Dragon, Technos’ 1987 arcade hit. The game’s story is very simple. A dystopian, lawless, post-nuclear war version of New York City has been overrun by a gang called the Black Warriors or Shadow Warriors or Black Shadow Warriors. (They kind of workshop that name from game to game.) Billy and Jimmy Lee are two martial arts brothers whose mutual friend Marian is captured by gang members. Off they go to lay out everyone in that gang with their bare fists and occasional barrel/whip/knife/baseball bat.
While the cannon fodder is mostly made up of normal-sized guys, out walks Abobo, who makes his entrance by punching his way through a brick wall. From the moment he appears on screen, it’s clear Abobo is meant to stand apart from the rest. He has longer reach, takes more hits, can’t be thrown, and is able to throw Billy and Jimmy like ragdolls. The only guy more dangerous than Abobo is Willy, the final boss, who brings a machine gun to a fist fight.
Weirdly, Abobo has various forms in the game. His initial form is as a bald, pale guy with a mustache. Soon after, we fight Jick, an Abobo clone who closely resembles Mr. T. Later, we face off against an Incredible Hulk version of Abobo. This is post-nuclear war, so I suppose this tracks.
But it was NES port that really delivered the ultimate form of Abobo, whose appearance was seriously altered for the 8-bit console. With orange-brown skin, Abobo is still bigger than everyone else, but also looks inhuman. He has a giant, bald head almost the size of his bulky torso, and a black arch on his face that is apparently a mustache merged with a frown! While the NES version had its own quasi-fighting game mode with everyone redrawn with a bigger and better sprite, Abobo looked exactly the same. You just can’t mess with perfection!
Abobo sort-of-but-not-really appeared in the sequel, 1988’s Double Dragon II: The Revenge. In a game filled with giant enemies, there was a guy named Bolo who looked exactly like Abobo, but with long, black hair. Actually, in retrospect, he looks a lot like Danny Trejo.
Huh.
Abobo sat out of the next few Double Dragon games, as the Lee brothers busied themselves fighting mummies and chubby clowns. But he returned in a very unexpected crossover: 1993’s Battletoads/Double Dragon: The Ultimate Team. The game featured a bizarre team-up between the Dark Queen from Battletoads and the Shadow Warriors. As Double Dragon didn’t have too many memorable boss characters that could stack up to the likes of a giant rat in a singlet, they went with what they could get.
As with the other bosses in the crossover gamer, Abobo was depicted as an absolute giant compared to the Lee Brothers and the Toads. He was also very generic-looking, appearing as a shirtless, bald guy with no ‘stache. Due to the sci-fi nature of the crossover, his storyline ended with him getting booted off a spaceship and sent spiraling through space itself.
1993 also gave us the Double Dragon animated series. Somehow, this thing ran for two seasons (26 episodes) and Abobo was there from the beginning. The first episode was a weird Saturday morning-style retelling of the NES game’s plot, down to Billy Lee having to fight his “evil” brother at the end. Abobo acted as a henchman, alongside a very colorful take on Willy.
In the cartoon, Abobo was a bald muscleman with blue skin, meaning he has the same mysterious complexion situation as Captain N’s King Hippo. Abobo was also strangely competent on the show, all things considered, although the only fighting he ever did was throw oil drums at Billy and miss every single time. He spent more of his time annoyed at Willy, who was depicted as a psychotic cowboy with a laser gun — one-half Yosemite Sam and one-half the Interrupter from Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
The second episode introduced the Shadow Master, who immediately showed disgust at his underlings’ failure by magically bonding Willy to a giant mural of punished souls. Abobo tried to run for it, but succumbed to the same fate. The two would remain in that mural for the rest of the series.
While there was a fighting game released based off of the Double Dragon cartoon, Abobo wasn’t part of the roster. It was just as well. Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls was a really bad game and Abobo had bigger things on the horizon.
Abobo was about to go Hollywood!
In 1994, Imperial Entertainment Group released the Double Dragon movie, a total cheesefest that couldn’t make back its $8 million budget. But Robert Patrick’s scenery-chewing main villain made the movie almost watchable. The story takes place in a version of Los Angeles that’s a cross between The Warriors and No Man’s Land from the Batman comics. Billy and Jimmy are teens who get roped into a plot that involves two dragon-shaped necklaces that form an all-power medallion when put together.
Initially, Nils Allen Stewart plays the gang leader Bo Abobo. As head of the Mohawk Gang, he’s there to act all intimidating in a goofy ’90s bully sort of way, but he really doesn’t actually do much. He takes part in a car chase and teases a fight scene, but nothing happens.
Then, the villain Koga Shuko transforms him into a literal steroid freak with some experimental machine. From there on out, Abobo is played by Henry Kingi in a bloated, rubber suit. Despite being a muscle golem at this point, Abobo STILL doesn’t actually fight anyone and is instead kidnapped by Power Corps.
Abobo eventually sees what he looks like in the mirror. Broken over what he’s been transformed into, he turns on Koga and…still doesn’t fight anyone. He just gives Power Corps some advice to help turn the tide against the bad guys. At the end of the movie, he asks the Lee Brothers if they could be buddies and recklessly drives their car.
Yeah, it’s…almost something. Not the awfulness of Super Mario Bros, but not the good-for-the-time quality of Mortal Kombat. It’s also not quite as fun-bad as the Street Fighter movie, but it does share one major similarity to it.
Much like Street Fighter, the Double Dragon movie had its own fighting game spinoff. Rather than a one-on-one fighter featuring digitized actors (which was the original idea until it wasn’t deemed viable for the deadline), Technos put together a Neo Geo animated fighter that isn’t so well-known these days due to how run-of-the-mill it was. It looked like your average SNK fighting game, with no real identity of its own. The game was released for arcade, Neo Geo CD, and PlayStation.
The 1995 fighting game was loosely based on the movie’s plot and featured some FMV clips. Showing up from the movie are Billy Lee, Jimmy Lee, Marian, Shuko, and Abobo. The rest of the roster is made up of original characters, though Technos did redesign Burnov, the Big Van Vader-looking boss character from Double Dragon II: The Revenge. Abobo more closely resembles his initial, more human-looking form from the movie, complete with mohawk, although he’s cartoonishly big in the game. Fortunately, he occasionally transforms into his blobby, tumor-like mutant form during certain moves and winposes.
His ending in the game features him eating a lot of meat at a restaurant, demanding to eat meat so rough that it’ll make his teeth bleed. Heh. And Roger Ebert said video games aren’t art.
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After the inexplicable crossover, animated series, failed movie, and fighting game tie-ins, Double Dragon as a franchise was finally spent. As the arcade scene died down in the late ’90s, the side-scrolling beat ‘em up disappeared for a time, and it would be a little while before nostalgia for it would kick in.
Fortunately, there was still some juice left in the fighting game genre, and in 2002 the Neo Geo had just enough time left before SNK’s hardware line was discontinued. The company Evoga developed what was, for a time, meant to be a Double Dragon fighting game, but ultimately the team wasn’t able to secure the rights and was forced to make the game with a knockoff cast of characters. The result was Rage of the Dragons, a tag-team fighting game featuring Billy Lewis, Jimmy Lewis, and Abubo…
Abubo does not have a tag partner and is instead a mid-boss so powerful that it takes two opponents to stop him. He’s depicted as a low-level mob boss with a ponytail, sunglasses, pink tank top, and overly-long, muscular arms. It’s a decent enough redesign of the original, but…Abubo? That’s the best they could come up with?
As for the official Double Dragon, it made its comeback a year later. Double Dragon Advance for the Game Boy Advance took the original arcade version, updated the graphics just enough, added more stages, enemies, and attacks, turning this installment into a souped-up take on the classic. This of course meant the return of the real Abobo!
2012 would be a banner year for the musclebound henchman. Since 2002, I-Mockery’s Roger Barr had been trying to develop an Abobo-based fangame, and in early 2012, the free-to-play masterpiece Abobo’s Big Adventure was released to the public and we were better for it.
Using 8-bit graphics, the game follows Abobo as he searches for his kidnapped son Aboboy. Each level is based on a different NES title and features a dizzying amount of Easter eggs. There’s a Double Dragon level, underwater Super Mario Bros. level, Urban Champ, Legend of Zelda, Balloon Fight, Pro Wrestling, Mega Man, Contra, and finally Punch-Out. The game is an absolute blast, especially for anyone who grew up with the NES and features such whacked out moments as:
Abobo mating with the mermaid from Goonies 2, which gives him a forcefield powerup made up of Abobo/mermaid hybrid babies, one of which begs for death!
An Abobo vs. Amazon wrestling match that includes the summoning of Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, Roddy Piper, and Undertaker assists in the form of Pro Wrestling sprites.
Taking on Krang’s giant robot body with Kirby in the abdominal area.
An incredibly long and over-the-top ending that gets extremely and laughably violent. If you’ve ever wanted to see a muscular child drink blood from the Shredder’s dismembered arm, this game is for you!
In terms of OFFICIAL nostalgia, 2012 also saw the release of Double Dragon Neon for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (and later PC). Using 3D graphics, the game was a modern update of Double Dragon’s playstyle while playing up the 1980s aesthetic. It was a lot more ridiculous than the original series. In fact, it’s more in line with the Battletoads crossover since this game also lets you launch Abobo into the deep recesses of outer space to die.
This game also gave us the first – and, as of this writing, only – polygon Abobo. This time a towering, hunched over brute with lots of spiked armbands. All that AND the mustache!
But of those two 2012 releases, Abobo’s Big Adventure is surprisingly the better game in terms of its portrayal of the big man, as it solidified his status as nostalgic beat em up icon.
In 2017, Arc System Works put together Double Dragon IV for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Rather than emulate the arcade original’s aesthetic, the game took its art style from the NES games. That meant the return of the classic NES Abobo as not only a recurring enemy but an unlockable playable character. Double Dragon IV actually lets you play through the story mode as various enemy characters, but honestly, who else would you pick in that situation? Well, maybe Burnov.
Sadly, playing as Abobo in Double Dragon IV leads to a non-ending. I know you can’t improve on “Abobo punches Little Mac’s head off so hard it transcends time and space,” but at least TRY!
Around the same time, another game tried to play up Abobo’s ironic/iconic status. River City Ransom: Underground was released for the PC in early 2017. The River City Ransom series has always had ties to Double Dragon, but this high school brawler goes the extra mile by putting Abobo on a big pedestal. First off, he’s the school principal. If you attack any of your teachers, you’re sent to Principal Abobo’s office to suffer a serious slap on the wrist, shoulder, jaw, spine, etc. Sometimes he’ll even enter classrooms by punching holes through the brick walls, all while shirtless and talking like the Hulk.
Even better than that? Abobo’s not only the school principal but the Mayor of River City! No wonder everyone’s always kicking the shit out of each other! God bless Mayor Mike Haggar for being a true trendsetter.
The Double Dragon/River City connection only grew stronger when 2019 brought the absolutely must-play River City Girls. As the story goes, River City Ransom heroes Kunio and Riki have been kidnapped, so their badass girlfriends Misako and Kyoko go on a violent rampage to save them. Early in the game, while Misako and Kyoko fighting in a classroom, there’s a projector playing a short film about a boy learning about puberty.
It just so happens that the kid in the video is being taught by Abobo, who thanks puberty for his monstrous size and strength. This, my friends, is foreshadowing, as Abobo shows up later in the game as a boss.
Misako and Kyoko confront Abobo about their missing boyfriends, and Abobo admits that he isn’t sure whether or not he kidnapped them since he kidnaps a LOT of people. They throw down and we’re treated to the most powerful take on Abobo yet, considering the length of his life bar. Once defeated, Abobo admits that he has nothing to do with the missing boyfriends, but gives the heroes a lead by talking about his side job as security for an upcoming concert.
In 2020, Arc System Works released a collection for PS4 and Switch called Double Dragon & Kunio-Kun Retro Brawler Bundle. It collects 18 8-bit games, including the three NES Double Dragon games, River City Ransom, and all the old spinoffs from the River City Ransom universe. And who’s on the cover?
Yes, despite technically being in one game out of 18, and not even being the final boss of any of them, Abobo gets a major spot on the cover of this huge collection among the games’ hero characters. Finally, the world understands that Abobo is a star. Now we just need Abobo to appear in Guilty Gear Strive and then we’ll really be cooking.
The post How Double Dragon’s Abobo Became a Beat em up Legend appeared first on Den of Geek.
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D-Views: Muppet Treasure Island
Hi, everyone! Welcome to another installment of D-Views, my on-going written review series for films that fall under the Disney umbrella, as well as those that were influenced by those films! For more reviews for movies like Mary Poppins, Treasure Planet, and The Prince of Egypt, please consult my “Disney Reviews” tag and, of course, if you enjoy this review or any of the others, please consider liking and reblogging!
Today’s film is one of my childhood favorites, starring a cast of some of my favorite people, as well as frogs, pigs, and even whatevers. This is Muppet Treasure Island! (Thank you for your votes, @the-alexandrian-alchemist, @silvvergears, @extremelybears, @livinlifelikeishould and @karalora!)
Ever since 1976, the characters of the Muppet Show have been American pop culture icons. The show itself won a total of 21 Emmy nominations and four television awards over its long run, and by 1990 its cast had also starred in several critically acclaimed films (The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, and The Muppets Take Manhattan) and the very popular animated TV show Muppet Babies. And all of that wouldn’t have been possible without the Muppets’ creator, Jim Henson.
Like at the Walt Disney Company, the loss of their leader in 1990 hit Jim Henson Productions very hard. One silver lining, however, is that just like with Walt Disney, Jim Henson was memorialized not just by the characters he created, but by his many achievements and the many friendships he’d made in life. He received a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame alongside Kermit the Frog; was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame; earned a memorial in his hometown Hyattsville, Maryland; was posthumously named a Disney Legend; was the focus of the heartfelt TV special The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson; and was laid to rest with two formal funeral services complete with performances of some of his favorite songs. And just like the Walt Disney Company, even after the death of someone who meant so much to them, Jim Henson Productions got back up and promised to do more in the memory of their lost leader. Jim’s son Brian Henson took the reins and directed the Disney-co-produced Christmas movie The Muppet Christmas Carol in 1992, before he moved on to their next project and today’s subject, Muppet Treasure Island.
So, here’s the thing -- I have a LOT of nostalgia for this movie. I will be upfront about that. But even with that acknowledged, I was sort of stunned when I found out how lukewarm the reaction to this movie was, when it was released in theaters. Sure, I knew it hadn’t broken the bank, but even if it earned about $34 million worldwide, it received no honors or awards, only hit third at the box office opening weekend behind the movies Broken Arrow and Happy Gilmore, and even now only boasts an average 73% rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Critics at the time criticized how it was more “Treasure Island” than “Muppet”, with Roger Ebert calling it “less cleverly written” and Gene Siskel even more coldly deeming it “boring.” Although I’ll readily acknowledge that reading those reactions makes me want to run outside and scream “FUCK YOU, GENE SISKEL” at the top of my lungs, I promise to give a more rational review of this movie instead, one hopefully that acknowledges any possible shortcomings, but also will celebrate this film and how completely NOT boring it is.
One of the best things about this movie hits us in the face right off the bat -- the music, written by scoring giant Hans Zimmer and Nick Glennie-Smith. As much as I enjoy a lot of Muppet musicals, I attest that Muppet Treasure Island has the most cohesive score overall of any Muppet production. The Muppets were always creatures of the short, sweet vignette -- of the variety show -- of many disparate pieces sewn loosely together into a whole like a patchwork quilt. Even though The Muppet Christmas Carol’s soundtrack comes very close in its cohesion and I would say The Muppets (2011) -- my personal favorite Muppet movie -- is truer to the spirit of the Muppet Show in its music while also paying tribute to old-fashioned movie musicals, Muppet Treasure Island just paints a full-bodied picture from the off-set, building on refrains that return and morph over the course of the picture. From the very beginning, we get that this venture is NOT a standard Muppet movie. Like The Muppet Christmas Carol, the Muppets’ humor will only be part of the story told -- in TMCC, it takes a backseat to sincere emotions like love and redemption, while here in MTI, it takes a backseat to adventure and swashbuckling action.
The score also seamlessly flows into our first song, “Shiver My Timbers,” which just screams “pirate!” I’ve loved pirates ever since I was a little kid, and Muppet Treasure Island was one of the main reasons why. I was okay with Peter Pan, but Muppet Treasure Island was what really got me excited about pirates. They were rough, ruthless, and dangerous, but it was exciting to face off against them in an epic musical adventure, even if your only weapons were a couple of artfully thrown starfish. In the 90′s, pirate films weren’t really “in” -- it wouldn’t be until 2003 with the release of Pirates of the Caribbean that they became popular again -- but I think Muppet Treasure Island, through its music, really embraces the fun, action-packed thrills that Disney would later capitalize on in the Pirates films.
After our prologue, we meet Billy Bones (played by the perfectly cast Billy Connolly) and, of course, our hero, Jim Hawkins, played by newcomer Kevin Bishop. Kevin was the very first of a hundred kids who showed up for the audition to meet the casting agents, and he was selected for the part then and there. Sadly post-Muppets he moved on to stage and television, but for what it’s worth, I quite like Kevin in the role of Jim. He’s distinctly depicted as a boy, complete with a pre-puberty “boy soprano” singing voice (which I acknowledge is an acquired taste, but I personally enjoy), but that characterization only serves to accent how large of an arc he goes through over the course of the film. He starts off as smart, sincere, honest, and dreamy, but also very innocent and trusting, and over the course of the story, he learns to ground himself in who he is and what he believes in, to the point where he has to sever ties with someone he once considered a friend and mentor. Accompanying Jim in his journey are Gonzo and Rizzo, who largely serve as comic relief but do still serve as good friends and companions to Jim, as evident by the three characters’ “I Want” song, “Something Better.” Yes, Gonzo and Rizzo are sidekicks, but they’re still distinct personalities that bounce well off each other and “straight-man” Jim. Originally the filmmakers had considered simply having Gonzo and Rizzo being two characters called “Jim” and “Hawkins” respectively (splitting the part in two, not unlike what they did with Statler and Waldorf in The Muppet Christmas Carol), but due to concerns that the choice would result in a lack of heart in the finished product, that idea was scrapped. I think it ultimately was the better decision to leave the drama to the humans -- it’s not that the Muppets can’t conjure sincere emotion (just look at “Pictures in my Head” or “Man or Muppet”), but I still think having any of the existing Muppets fulfill the “coming of age” narrative the original Jim Hawkins goes through would’ve been a bit of a stretch. Even in The Muppet Christmas Carol or non-Muppet-show Jim Henson production Labyrinth, the main characters with a story arc are played by human actors who are able to ground the picture despite the cast of colorful, irreverent characters.
One of the main criticisms that critics of the time lobbed at this movie is that it feels more “Treasure Island” than “Muppet”, and in a way it’s a decent point, if not phrased very badly. Unlike in other Muppet projects, the humor plays second fiddle to the plot and the characters are not the characters we know from the Muppet Show with their Muppet Show backstories and consciousness. In The Muppet Christmas Carol, the film could very easily be seen as a “production” being put on by the Muppets, even if it’s never overtly stated as such, thanks to Gonzo (as Charles Dickens) constantly breaking the fourth wall. In Muppet Treasure Island, however, Gonzo and Rizzo have their own non-Muppet-show history as friends of Jim Hawkins way before ever meeting the other Muppets like Kermit and Sam the Eagle, and Kermit and Miss Piggy have a whole soap-opera romance that involves a wedding and getting marooned by pirates (we’ll get to that later). So yes, this is more “Treasure Island,” but it’s not less “Muppet” -- it’s less “Muppet Show.” These Muppets have different histories, but they’re the same characters despite this. Gonzo is an eccentric thrill-seeker -- Rizzo is a cowardly cynic -- Kermit is a soft-spoken pacifist -- Fozzie is a lovable dimwit -- Piggy is a self-centered diva. Think of Muppet Treasure Island as a Muppet AU fanfiction -- these may not be exactly the characters you know, and yet...they are! They’re the exact same big personalities with the same quirks, strengths, and weaknesses, just in an alternate universe. And honestly, I think it’s really cool, to see these sorts of characters so exclusively used for comedy in a world that’s not flat-out comedic -- one that’s kind of dirty and rough around the edges, with swashbuckling action and real danger around every corner.
The nice thing is that although yes, the comedy isn’t the central focus anymore, there is still really good humor in this film, a lot of it thanks to the shift in tone. There’s just something so very, very funny to me about Billy Bones’s death scene being followed up by Rizzo, Gonzo, and Jim just flat-out freaking out and dashing out of the room screaming like stupid kids, or the tense action scene where the pirates storm into the inn being punctuated by Rizzo trying to help Gonzo load the gun, only to spill the bag of bullets, or the epic entrance of the illustrious Captain Smollett’s carriage ending with the tall, solemn coachman stepping aside to reveal the Captain himself, played by Kermit the Frog. I think it plays into the ideas of subverting expectations and building up a punchline properly before delivering the joke -- as each scene is built up, we’re left constantly unsure if the film’s going to play things straight or just be completely irreverent, and the contrast is what can make a joke much funnier than in a purely, solely humorous scenario. There are a few points where the contrast can become a bit labored, but I laugh so much more during this movie that I ever have watching my favorite reruns of the Muppet Show, no matter how much I enjoy them. It’s something that, again, the Pirates of the Caribbean films would capitalize on much later. (Too bad they couldn’t incorporate that humor into any catchy musical numbers! Disney, where’s my Pirates of the Caribbean musical?)
Aha, and now we come to the brightest of the shining stars in this film -- our villain, Long John Silver, played by the amazing Tim Curry. I’m sorry, it’s an incontrovertible truth that Curry is a unique, magical ingredient that, when added to any movie, just elevates the cinematic dish to a whole new level and leaves you drooling for one more scene with him. I remember someone once saying that Curry is sort of like a Muppet in human skin thanks to his outrageous, yet likable acting, and...yeah, it makes it so that he fits perfectly in this movie, where he has to interact so closely with the Muppets. The nice thing is, though, that he also has a lot of chemistry with his human co-star Kevin Bishop, to the extent that you sincerely feel for the relationship that forms between Jim and Silver even if you know Silver’s intentions from the start. I particularly like their exchange in the ridiculously catchy “Sailing for Adventure,” as well as their scene at the front of the ship where they discuss their fathers and the stars.
Just as the adventure is getting going, however, it stops dead with the wind’s abandonment of the Hispaniola. Out of nowhere, the ship breaks out into the most ridiculous, most “Muppet” of all of the musical numbers, “Cabin Fever.” The song was one of my favorite parts when I was little and it’s always made me laugh, but it’s definitely the biggest detour of the movie that up until that point lived in its own pirate-centric world. It’s a very short-lived detour and as I said, it’s ridiculously funny, but it doesn’t have any bearing on the plot and I could see how people might find it kind of pointless, particularly since it doesn’t even feature three of our main characters, Jim, Silver, or Smollett. One other critique I will give the film is that some of the effects nowadays don’t look very real, like the Hispaniola being composited over still matte paintings -- there are points where the production values remind me a bit of the old Wishbone TV series, where they have to angle the shot just so or get creative just to try to make the ship look as big as it should be. But honestly, there were points where Wishbone impressed me with those same sorts of layering and green-screen effects despite its limited budget, and those cheaper effects don’t look tacky or out-of-place, so I personally don’t mind them that much.
Because this is a Muppet movie, it’s unsurprising that our Mr. Arrow (played by Sam the Eagle) isn’t really killed, instead just being tricked off of the ship by a manipulative Silver, but it says something that, even with that softened plot turn, the stakes are not completely dismantled. We still see the pirates as a legitimate threat when they kidnap Jim and take over the Hispaniola, even when they burst into song. Tim Curry’s “only number,” “A Professional Pirate,” is a perfect expression of his expert, charming showmanship, which in my mind truly can’t be matched by any other performer in Hollywood, past or present. No one gives a performance like Tim Curry. It makes it so that even when I was a bratty kid getting irritated about Silver calling privateer Sir Francis Drake a pirate and using “buccaneer” as a synonym for “pirate,” I would sing this song at the top of my lungs, trying to even reach 75% of the energy Curry put into his vocals.
At long last, Miss Piggy makes her grand debut as “Queen Boom Sha-Kal-a-Kal,” a.k.a. Benjamina Gunn. Although the diva doesn’t end up getting much screentime, she certainly gets a grand entrance, complete with an elephant steed decorated with flowers and a full musical number complete with a tribal chant and ethereal vocalizing. And true to form, when she lays eyes on her one true love, Kermit...she smacks him so hard that he’s thrown backwards off his feet and into a gong. What’s particularly interesting about Piggy in this movie is that although she and Fozzie are voiced by Frank Oz as always, both she and Fozzie were actually puppeted by Kevin Clash, as Oz was unavailable during this film’s production, and Oz’s vocals for both characters were added in post-production. Despite the difference in puppeteer, however, both characters are just as likable as ever -- I’d honestly had no clue that they weren’t performed by the same person! The film even got to use the full-bodied remote-controlled puppets for Kermit and Piggy for the love duet “Love Led Us Here,” which is kicked off by an Evita joke I never got as a kid but as an adult makes me grin like a friggin’ idiot. Fortunately the duet is inter-cut with Silver and the pirates finding the treasure, rather than it being chock-full of romantic flashbacks or prolonged looks between the two lovebirds, giving it a lighter tone than it would’ve had otherwise.
With a much reduced crew comprised only of Rizzo, Gonzo, Squire Trelawney, Dr. Honeydew, Beaker, and the newly returned Mr. Arrow, Jim comes to Benjamina and Smollett’s rescue and returns to Treasure Island to face Silver and the pirates. The action scene is full of humor, but because of the world established in the rest of the film, I would argue it still has stakes. The blows still hurt and there’s still a threat of defeat and danger, most notably when Long John Silver prepares to fight. Even if you don’t think the Muppets are going to die persay, you still feel the suspense in wanting to see what’s going to happen next. And when Silver surrenders, he himself can see the real treasure Jim found on his adventure -- a family...a group of people Muppets who will support him and encourage the very best in him.
Silver’s escape scene is a beautifully heart-wrenching scene -- one that could only have been earned by two excellent performances over the course of the film by Kevin Bishop and Tim Curry. Even though both Silver and Jim know that they’re different people and they could never walk the same path, it doesn’t mean that they don’t still greatly esteem and care about each other. In Jim’s case, it’s especially difficult, given that in parting ways with Silver, he has to cut loose of a very poor potential father figure who would’ve only dragged him down in the long run, but who was so likable in his own damaged way. It proves to be a very bittersweet scene sprinkled into a very happy, cheerful ending, complete with the chipper island-inspired end credits bop “Love Power.”
Muppet Treasure Island is -- in my opinion, at least -- one of the best Muppet movies ever made. It broke away from quite a few Muppet conventions, like the characters breaking the fourth wall and being aware of themselves being in a movie or TV show, and embraced a much less humorous tone in both its writing and cinematography. Yes, it reimagined a classic book like The Muppet Christmas Carol did, but this movie took the next step, embracing the world of the original novel as well as the set-up and immersing the Muppets’ cast of characters in it. Although I can see why some people would be more partial to the original Muppet movie formula and love it a lot myself, I really, really respect Brian Henson and the rest of this film’s crew for taking the Muppets in such a different direction. It was an entertaining, action-packed, funny pirate movie before those sorts of movies became popular again, and it remains my favorite “pirate” movie of all time, as well as my personal favorite incarnation of the Treasure Island story (barely beating out Treasure Planet). I know childhood nostalgia can play a role in what media can give you joy as an adult, but I truly don’t think it’s the only factor here -- it’s also just a really good movie, and I can only hope that more people will consider giving it a chance and have just as much fun Sailing for Adventure as I did!
#d-views#disney reviews#muppet treasure island#the muppets#reviews#opinion#analysis#oh boy here i go#brian henson#tim curry#kevin bishop#billy connolly
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Top 10 Movies of this Decade –– A Biased Reflection By Conner Miller
As this hellish decade draws to a close it only felt right to list the ten films that made it a little better. Do not expect to find all critical darlings on this. This is a place for my personal top 10 –– not Joker. Lettuce Pray:
10. Short Term 12 (2013) dir. Destin Daniel Cretton
Chances are you’ve seen Captain Marvel, Atlanta, Booksmart (more to follow), Brooklyn 99 or Bohemian Rhapsody. There’s almost no chance you’ve seen this intimate 2013 SXSW selection. Before Brie Larson was terrifying alt-right women haters and winning Academy Awards she portrayed Grace, a supervisor at a group home for troubled teens. Typically in indies like this one mid tier star is all the budget can afford. Director Destin Daniel Cretton took chances on barely known actors who used this film as a launching pad to stardom. Between Brie and Rami Malek alone there’s Academy Awards for Best Actress and Best Actor. Add in LaKeith Stanfield of Atlanta and Someone Great fame, Kaitlyn Dever of Booksmart and Unbelievable and Stephanie Beatriz from Brooklyn 99 and you’ve got enough to make a Knives Out sequel.
The shocking thing is with the immense talent featured the film’s budget was under a million dollars. Larson’s performance as Grace is layered, empathetic and revelatory. She is one of the few actresses that lets you in without words. You can see the grief and longing to help her kids she mentors in her eyes. The relationship between her and troubled teen Jayden (the magnificent as always Kaitlyn Dever) forms the film’s emotional core. Grace and Jayden lean into each other and find their tribulations aren’t dissimilar. Cretton shows a deft touch in letting the actor’s play to their strengths and allowing the camera to be still and messy allowing the group home to become a character. The film crackles with humanity and everyone involved shines bright.
There’s not an excuse to miss this one. Hop on Amazon Prime and catch it!
9. The Social Network (2010) Dir. by David Fincher
Before their ill-fated runs as Lex Luthor and Spider-Man, Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield headlined this snappy masterpiece about your grandmother’s favorite app to share slightly racist boomer memes. While Facebook has aged like milk, the film has only grown more relevant. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s whiplash paced dialogue is the highlight here. There’s not a day that goes by I don’t try to work my “fuck you flip-flops” into casual conversation.
For a film about such a now mainstream app, there’s more weird shit to shake a stick at. Brenda Song (withholding calling her London Tipton) as a crazy ex who likes to burn trash! Justin Timberlake with a strange haircut as Napster founder Sean Parker! Not one, but two Armie Hammers! Early career Dakota Johnson! All of these welcome turns are grounded by Sorkin’s bubbling script. Even in limited screen-time each character’s dialogue is so unique they feel lived in and real.
For all of David Fincher’s acclaimed films, I find this one the most accessible. This isn’t Fight Club or Se7en. His most human film by far TSN takes everything great about Fincher and condenses it into one highly enjoyable package. Sometimes his films become meandering and Sorkin’s dialogue helps dial this in. The result is a film that feels dangerously ominous considering its 2010 release date. In some ways it feels the film that defines and bridges the distinctly different presidential administrations this decade brought.
8. A Star is Born (2018) Dir. by Bradley Cooper
On paper this film looked like a dead on arrival disaster. Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut? A fourth remake of a classic movie? David Chapelle in a dramatic role? This movie rose above the memes and truly kicked me in the teeth. There’s so much to love so hey let’s get another look at it!
Blistering hot take, but the cinematography in this film by Matthew Libatique might be the best of the fucking decade. When he shoots scenes with Cooper’s Jackson Maine the camera is frenetic and unsteady. As he begins to let Lady Gaga’s Ally into his life the camera grows steadier and symbolic of their bond. Nearly every wide shot in this film looks like a painting. The concert scenes are slathered in lights that make the viewer feel like they’re on stage with Jackson and Ally. Exhibit A:
Elite framing aside the songs in this film are eternal and will always loom on my Spotify waiting to strike. “Shallow” is the ultimate karaoke song and I will always attempt to howl Lady Gaga’s eternal AHHH AHHHHH AHHHH until I am lowered into the ground.
Parks and Recreation fans will be pleased to see Hippie Ron aka Sam Elliott in an utterly dominant supporting role as Jackson’s older brother. I still write angry letters to the Academy asking why he didn’t win Best Supporting Actor. I am very PASSIONATE about this film and it is on HBO. Grab a six pack and prepare to sob.
7. “The Spectacular Now” (2013) Dir. by James Ponsoldt
This originally was going to be Whiplash, but Tyler needed to take the floor on that as a young student living in Manhattan. We do stick with Miles Teller for number seven with one of god tier studio A24′s first hits: The Spectacular Now. Admittedly any film that features Brie Larson and Kaityln Dever already has me interested, but bias aside this truly is a beautiful ride.
Late film critic Roger Ebert famously gave this film a perfect 4/4 in one of his final reviews. I’ll do Roger one more and give it a 5/4. Between the grainy film stock, the small scale stakes and the authentic characters this film just feels achievable. There’s no beam in the sky or city to save, but the stakes feel just as dire. As the main character Sutter navigates alcoholism, love and trying to understand his parents you feel for him. He’s a proxy for which everyone in high school else felt. There’s a gentle innocence in how sweet the movie is. If it is ever taken off Netflix I will be ready to storm their server room.
6. “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (2018)
You thought you were going to escape without a Marvel film and you were almost right. The various reboots and remakes of Spider-Man this decade all featured high and low points. This animated tale, however, was transcendent. Moving the character into animation and featuring a Spider-Man of color in the lead injected much needed life into the character. I never thought i’d see the day that Spider-Man won an Academy Award, but lo and behold deviating from a cis caucasian Spider-Man brought it home.
Between the film’s electric soundtrack, unique frame rate and snappy animation it truly is the closest thing to living in a comic book. Miles’ first swing sequence is by far one of the greatest scenes in cinema – animated or non-animated. The voice acting is superb and without a doubt this film will be heavily played when I have kids over Frozen. Another one right there on Netflix waiting for you to check out!
5. “Waves” (2019) Dir. by Trey Edward Shults
One of three 2019 selections on this list (it has been a hell of a year for cinema) Waves is by far the hardest film to find on this list. Despite an extremely limited release last month I was able to catch it in cinemas. I haven’t experienced a film that better captures the dynamic of a family. The vibrant colors of South Florida evoke shades of Moonlight as the viewer is introduced to son Tyler masterfully played by newcomer Kelvin Harrison Jr. We see him navigate his senior year of high school amidst the pressures of a girlfriend, competitive athletics and the constant weight of his overbearing, but layered father (a brilliant Sterling K. Brown of This is Us fame).
To say much about the plot is to spoil the film, but it is powerful to say the least. The film’s soundtrack is simply a miracle. The brilliant hues of neon and ocean pastels burn images in you mind as Frank Ocean, Kid Cudi, Tyler, The Creator and numerous other beloved artists weave in and out. This film literally has more than five Frank Ocean songs in it. If that isn’t convincing enough you’re on the wrong blog.
4. “Uncut Gems” (2019) Dir. by Josh and Benny Sadfie
Infinitely rewatch-able, this film is the closest simulation to living inside a pressure cooker. Adam Sandler plays the neurotic Howard Ratner with the conviction of man of his hair on fire. Even in the scenes he isn’t present his gravitas is felt in every frame. There’s really something here for everyone. Howard owes people money from his diamond store in Manhattan. As he ramps up his debt with a series of increasingly risky bets the viewer follows him night and day. Each time he seemingly as a way out the stakes only increase.
The frantic and gritty way the film is shot paired with its masterfully tense score have the film dialed up to 120 the entire runtime. It is the film equivalent of “Why are you so sweaty? I was watching Cops.” in Stepbrothers. This one just went wide release on Christmas so get out there before it leaves theaters.
3. “La La Land” (2016) Dir. by Damien Chazelle
Don’t let the infamous Best Picture swap with Moonlight fool you about the quality of this film. In his follow up to Whiplash, Chazelle takes command from the opening musical number on the overpasses of the 405 in LA. This love story of ambition between aspiring musician Seb and actress Mia has heart that few films have. It isn’t about boy meets girl. Similar to A Star is Born it is about finding the person you need to reach your dreams.
There’s few films with this level of direction. Each camera movement, lighting choice and story beat is tactile and purposeful. Emma Stone delivers a career defining performance and the Academy thankfully awarded her Best Actress. Every song on the soundtrack is an absolute banger and there’s really no excuse for not watching this one. A true gem even on my twelfth rewatch and four papers/presentations I gave on it in film school.
2. “Booksmart” (2019) Dir. by Olivia Wilde
These final two movies on the list exist on their own personal Mount Olympus. Olivia Wilde, in her directorial debut no less, creates an honest coming of age movie that’s actually a love story. Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and Amy (Kaityln Dever) are honor roll students on their final day of high school. When they realize the kids who partied and didn’t study religiously also got into Ivy League schools they set out to correct that over one crazy night.
You really won’t find a sweeter or more hopeful film. Dever and Feldstein bring electricity to their roles and won’t fail to make you laugh and cry. In a news cycle filled with hate and fear, films like this are needed. A film that’s sexually, politically and morally progressive without getting on a soapbox is nearly impossible and that’s exactly what Wilde achieved with this instant classic. I literally only have a Hulu subscription to rewatch this endlessly. I also own two different shirts of Amy and Molly. Enjoy.
1. “Lady Bird” (2017) Dir. by Greta Gerwig
If you’re still reading this far you likely know me and know what’s number one. Gerwig’s Lady Bird is nothing short of perfection. A riveting and relatable story of titular Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson’s journey navigating her senior year of high school in Sacramento at surface, but really about parents and children. Between Sam Levy’s grainy cinematography that makes the film feel like a memory, Jon Brion’s understated score and Saoirse Ronan’s dynamo performance as Lady Bird there’s so much to love. You’re this far. You don’t need to read anymore. Take a breath, pat yourself on the back and let’s hope the next decade is even better. Also Lady Bird is on Amazon Prime. Don’t forget that.
(P.S Larry McPherson is the best movie dad of all time –– fight me.)
-Conner
IG and Twitter: @connerjmill9
#moviesofthedecade#easybreiseymovies#ladybird#booksmart a24 uncutgems lalaland moviereviews waves spectacularnow spiderman starisborn
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#watching under the cherry moon
“Once upon a time in France, there lived a bad boy named Christopher Tracey. Only one thing mattered to Christopher: Money. [...] Somewhere along the way, he learned the true meaning of love.”
Aw man, that’s some Jean Cocteau La Belle et la Bête shit right there. Will Prince truly be cured of his pencil mustache by true love?
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*Tricky’s note* ‘She’s thirsty. Pour it on!’
We’re watching a film about Prince as a for-hire gigolo, I think it’s safe to say we’re all thirsty.
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I like how they threw in a ballerina behind Prince, just to class it up. Now he can make all the sex faces he wants. Or at least he could if Tricky wasn’t distracting him with those notes about how they’re behind on rent and desperately need money, hence why Prince is a gigolo, plot stuff...
Now, movie, I love you, I do - But i’m not exactly watching for the plot.
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A Film By Prince - It really couldn’t have been from any other.
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Five minutes in and we have our butt shot. See, this is why UTCM is the classy Prince picture. Graffiti Bridge gave us shirtless Prince less than a minute in, UTCM makes you wait for it.
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“Mirror, mirror, seventeen fold, who’s the sexiest dressed in gold?”
*Tricky not wearing any gold* “You must be talking about me, cousin!”
*Christopher to Katy, who is not naked* “Smile, Katy, you’re naked!”
Hmmm, the dialogue makes no sense and the whole scene is meaningless - WOW! UTCM really is an art film!
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So Tricky (and possibly Christopher also) are sexing up the landlady Katy... but they still have to pay rent? Seems like they only get slight increases in their delays between paying - Perhaps they should try renegotiating their arrangement?
Or give her them Bela Lugosi eyes, sure.
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“I guess it takes a certain amount of courage for anyone to allow himself to be photographed that way. My advice to Prince is; be a coward the next time.” - Roger Ebert.
... he’s not wrong.
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*Christopher drowns a bath toy*
“Fascist!”
See, this is why the movie flopped; people weren’t ready for such frank and brutal criticisms of Reagan-era government, and his oppression of many minority groups during the 80s - steadily turning America from a capitalist culture of greed and gluttony, to a quasi-fascist regime, hell bent on eradicating certain groups (like the LGBT) through unfair legislation and willful neglect.
Viva la revolution! Prince is ready, willing and able to lead us!
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Prince in the bath, naked, wet, phonesexing it up - truly, the content we all came for.
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*bathroom sign* chantier interdit au public = public access not permitted. BOO. Cockblocking bathroom.
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Oh look, it’s the british actor that played Foot in The Beatles Help! - A movie whose plot revolves around Ringo being chosen as a human sacrifice because he’s wearing a very special ring that he can’t seem to take off...
And yet despite that being the plot, it has a rating of 92% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, while UTCM has a rating of 33% rotten. The moral here? No matter how stupid and terrible your movie, people will mistakenly thinks it’s brilliant if you’ve got someone in there with a British accent.
British accents! Classing things up and making them seem better than they actually are since always! (Disclaimer from this British person: No. They really don’t, we’re not better than Americans, not by a long shot.)
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This movie has Elephants. It is officially the best movie ever made. Prince and Elephants, you can’t top that. Shut down the studios, it’s over for everyone else.
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Mary’s first scene is more than a little weird given the character traits and personality she has throughout the rest of the film -
*here* Wild, shameless and unabashed partygirl, life of the party, no filter, happily flashes a large crowd that includes friends and family, openly flirts with stranger Christopher, is a real livewire.
*the whole rest of the film* Cold, calculating, chip on her shoulder, trust and intimacy issues stemming from a strained relationship with her father, overly serious, fun sucking killjoy.
Consistency! 👍
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It really is a shock to watch a Prince film were the leading lady can actually act.
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I’m weak.
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So Mrs. Wellington is sleeping with Christopher and Mary’s dad? + Her husband? Though he never shows up in the film so he might be DOA.
“You aren’t seeing another man, by any chance? Because if you are, i’ll kill him.” Ah, so this is the real reason he had Christopher killed, not because he cares about his daughter, we see throughout the rest of the film he doesn’t, but what he does care about is his married mistress daring to see another man.
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Mary spends all night and all morning obsessing over comebacks she could have given during a conversation she had the day before? She takes the time to track down where Christopher is, and goes there just to deliver the ‘perfect’ retort? Ok, Mary, ok. I feel you.
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Jabs exchanged over an intimate dance? YASSS, you better give me the enemies to lovers trope I live for UTCM.
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“I’m in the mood for drawers!” Prince’s lyrical genius knows no limits.
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*Christopher sees a stranger’s car*
‘Welp guess i’m just gonna hop in and play pretend i’m driving it!’
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“Oh, no! I don’t know him! He said what, officer? My brother?! Oh, no! We definitely have different fathers! Check it out; butterscotch, chocolate. No way.”
Prince doesn’t get enough credit or praise for how damn funny he is.
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Wrecka Stow - The sole enduring legacy of UTCM.
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Mary’s got that Neon Telephone.mp3 (I want it).
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And another shirtless Prince scene. How can anyone not love UTCM?
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Climbs up the wall with a ladder, breaks into her house through the window, calls himself a pizzaman - Romance; nailed it!
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Funniest scene in the whole movie. *guard dogs start barking* “Oh, fuck it!”
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I wish they’d included Love Or Money on the Parade album.
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A shopping montage? YES. Though they missed the opportunity to have Prince come out in a bunch of different ensembles while Jerome shakes his head.
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Now, I love Prince, I especially love Parade-era Prince, and you know I love this movie, but... that kiss in front of the car... was he trying to kiss her or eat her? And not in the fun way, no, in the: I’m going to rip your lips off with my teeth - kind of way. Red Dragon is not what I want to be thinking about when i’m enjoying a vicarious fantasy of making out with Prince, mkay.
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Chases her down, tackles her to the ground and pins her so she can’t escape. Romance; nailed it!
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“I must have that disease? What’s the name of it?” “It’s called ‘stupid’.”
I freakin’ love this movie.
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“As a matter of fact, it’s not so hot; you bit me once!”
I told yall. If he starts lifting weights and refusing to look at his own reflection, i’m outta here.
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Oh, Prince is making sex noises, moans and all that? Ok, i’m staying.
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“Jesus Christ, shut up? I’m calling your Daddy, this instant. Be quiet, maybe, yes. Pipe down. But not ‘shut up’. Oh, no! I won’t allow that!”
I just...
“I’ll come kick your face off!” “... did you say kiss my face off? I’d like that real well...”
... I love this movie, so much.
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“You rich folks always taking from people like me. That says what? That says now i’mma take something from you.”
The Socialist hero we need (and want). Again, no wonder this flopped:
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One the great things about Kristin Scott Thomas being a great actress is that not only does she elevate the scenes she’s in, it encourages Prince to step up and play off her really well. UTCM is the best Prince ever was, acting-wise.
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I love the shot of Mary’s hand cradling the two lovers superimposed on it. People really need to give Prince more credit for his skills as a director, and of course, the late, great Michael Ballhaus who provides the film’s gorgeous cinematography. UTCM, if nothing else, is a stunningly beautiful picture.
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... these, these kisses between Mary and Christopher are just some of the most awkward and unsexy i’ve ever seen. PRAAANNCCE stop trying to consume her.
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“Because it’s a full moon, and i’m a werewolf, bitch!”
I would be interested in a movie about Jerome Benton becoming a werewolf.
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Billowing curtains during the night, as our main character struggles with confusion and despair? In France?! This really is some Jean Cocteau La Belle et la Bête shit right here.
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This trippy “Christopher, I miss you!” scene... so... artsy.
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I like how the maid in the background is dabbing her, presumably tearfilled, eyes, over Mary’s frustration of her situation. We’ve missed a whole other movie about how the maid practically raised Mary, and is more of a mother to her than her actual mother. She’s even reflected in the mirror, outright crying.
“I hurt real bad.” Maid’s like, me too, baby, me too.
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Nice of Mrs. Wellington to tell Christopher what’s happening with the plot.
“Good luck, Christopher.” She’s weirdly supportive of her former gigolo going after the daughter of the man she’s having an affair with. What’s up with Mrs. Wellington, I feel there’s a lot there we kind of need an explanation of.
And I feel like, ‘well, she is French...’ isn’t a good enough answer.
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This race to the airport/abduction scene is made by having it set to Anotherloverholenyohead. It’s weirdly thrilling and suspenseful.
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“I need a lifetime!” “I’m not giving it to you!”
*the craziest of all crazy eyes*
“Oh yes, you are.”
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This whole scene in the car, again, just great direction, framing, composition... this is such a beautiful film.
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Whipping off his sunglasses exactly as Kiss starts up? Perfection.
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The hobos agree.
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So... why was Christopher aimlessly wandering around the docks after dropping Mary off at the grotto? At first I thought he had sent for Tricky, but no, he’s surprised to see him there, so... what’s happening?
You’d think Christopher would lay low and hide out since the police and Mary’s dad are trying to find him, but... err, nope. This is why you end up shot, idiot.
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“Hold them off, i’m going to get Mary.” But... but... but you already had Mary! You had her and a getaway vehicle! Why did you drop her off, come back to land, and aimlessly wander around?! Movie, I have so many questions.
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Wait... Tricky and Katy make it to the grotto on foot, before Christopher made it by speed boat? So it would have been quicker to just walk there, rather than drawing attention to himself by using the speed boat? Movie, I swear to God.
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“Christopher, run!” He’s in a boat!
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“I’m not going without you.” You already went without her!
“There’s no time to wait, go!” Lady, they’re after him because your father said he abducted you, the best chance he has is to remain with you, while you explain the situation. Idiots, the both of them.
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He’s shot... because of his own poor planning and stupidity. Hmmm.
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Well, Tricky seems more broken up about it than Mary. Guess we know who truly loved him.
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So Christopher’s dead, Mary depressed and refusing to move on, but HEY Tricky’s doing good! He’s landlord of his own apartment complex and Katy’s with him now... I guess she sold the property she owned in France? And Tricky’s threatening to put her out on the streets... hmmm. Well, I guess everything’s come full circle, not, like, in any of the ways we wanted, but, err MOUNTAINS.
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Apart from the slight ball drop at the end, this is honestly a great film, and easily Prince’s best. I love it as is, but I do hope one day we get the original colour print version and the alternate ending that was apparently shot but not used.
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IYO, which Golden Age stars had the most interesting "will make degrading cameo for food" phases?
Sorry this is so late, but whoa boy that’s a loaded question. Honestly, a lot of silent and classic Hollywood stars had money troubles in their later years because residuals weren’t really a thing until the 50s. Before the television market nobody thought there was a way to consistently make money on old movies so everyone was content to be paid upfront. Then add on a lot of stars grew accustomed to lavish lifestyles and never learned responsible spending and most of them had some degree of financial difficulties after their careers declined. Some of them had a sense of humor about it, for others it was humiliating and there can be a vague sense of exploitation about the whole thing that makes some fans reluctant to talk about these periods.
We should probably begin with Orson Welles, who made what was/is considered the greatest movie of all time, and yet had to take some pretty demeaning work to pay the bills. Like, he really did do a frozen peas commercial. That’s not something the writers of The Critic made up. It exists, it’s on youtube!
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Bette Davis famously placed an ad in Variety asking for work when parts dried up. She spent most of the 60s starring in horror movies of declining quality, primarily because she needed money to support he family, but also because she was desperate to work. By the 70s though the Hag Horror fad had passed and she became even more desperate. A 1971 film Bunny O'Hare had her playing an elderly woman who dresses up as a hippie to rob banks on a motorcyle, it was so bad she sued the studio claiming it had damaged her future employment prospects. During this time she also filmed 4 sitcom pilots, and not good ones either. they were for Aaron Spelling, the man behind “Jiggle-TV” (although Davis herself did not jiggle, she still had some pride). The tv show Feud treated this as a sort of tragic time where the woman who once sued Jack Warner for better scripts was so desperate for work she stopped caring about quality. I look at it more as Davis realized that no matter how much dreck she did the public would always consider her a Hollywood Legend, so she was free to stop worrying about her image and just take whatever paid work she could get while playing the movie queen in interviews.
Another low point was the Disney-sequel Return From Witch Mountain in 1978 where she and Christopher Lee (who took the part just to work with her) played the villains intent on using mind control devices on two super-powered alien kids. To say Davis’s character was as flat as cardboard is an insult to cardboard. She finally got a decent script in the 1980s with The Whales of August opposite Lillian Gish, so she was able to remind everyone how good she could be a few years before her death. Not every star would be so lucky.
Joan Crawford, who must be discussed alongside Davis by Hollywood law, has become, along with Welles, the poster-child for late career humiliation. Like Davis, Crawford spent the 60s doing low budget horror shlock, but somehow her movies always seemed shlockier. She teamed up with William Castle twice, for his Strait-Jacket he let her act like the movie queen she’d once been and she took full advantage. She demanded a limo to drive her to set each day, a role be given to a vice-president of Pepsi (she was on the board) and refused to let him be fired even when it became obvious he couldn’t remember his lines. She insisted on portraying her character as in her 40s despite turning 60 the year it came out, and also played the character as a 20-something in flashbacks. The air conditioning on set was cranked obscenely high because she believed cold air kept her skin from wrinkling.
In 1968 Crawford guest starred on The Lucy Show as a version of herself who liked being out of the public eye (Ha!). Lucille Ball by this point was a terror to work with and she bullied Crawford relentlessly over everything from her dancing to her drinking (which of course just made Crawford drink more). Later that year her daughter Christina was hospitalized, meaning she wouldn’t be able to film her scenes for the daytime soap opera she was in. Crawford, 64 years old, convinced the producers to let her fill in. And they said yes, so for four whole episodes Crawford appeared as a 24 year old girl. And on top of that, she was so drunk she could barely remember her lines. A year later Crawford had what I think is her most interesting TV role. For Rod Serling’s Night Gallery she played a ruthless, blind heiress who will stop at nothing to be able to see. It’s a standard Serling morality play right down to the ironic twist. What so fascinates me is that it marked the professional debut of one Steven Spielberg, although by his own admission he shot the thing like a European art film and had it taken away in editing so it could be re-worked into something presentable on network TV. So you have Crawford, who started her career in the silent era, came to embody the studio system, and remained a movie star into the 1960s, being directed by Spielberg, one of the key directors of the New Hollywood era who went on to create the era of the blockbuster tentpole we live in today. It’s such a fascinating meeting in the middle moment of the woman who ebodied the first half of Hollywood’s history, and the man who embodied its second half.
From there she went on to her final film, 1970′s Trog. She played a scientist investigating a ape-cave man hybrid believed to be the missing link. She was so drunk she had to use cue-cards to read her lines. The movie was so low-budget she had to wear her own clothes and change in an old van. Roger Ebert once said that the difference between Crawford and Davis was that Crawford would agree to make Trog. He wasn’t wrong. She made a handful of TV appearances after that, but then the tabloids published some unflattering pap photos. In the 1930s when she’d been the most beautiful woman in Hollywood she famously told an interviewer “I never go out of my house unless I look like Joan Crawford the movie star, if people want the girl next door they can go next door.” Decades later she lived up to her words, convinced she could no longer look like the glamorous movie queen she cancelled her public appearances and spent the last years of her life in Norma Desmond-like isolation. She died in her New York apartment in 1977 with only her maid and a loyal fan by her side.
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This is getting long, but I have to mention Aldo Ray, a big macho man action hero of the 1950s who made a porno in 1979 and spent the 1980s working mostly with cult exploitation filmmaker Fred Olen Ray (no relation). Ray Milland was a hunky leading man in the 40s, spent the 1970s alternating between genuine A-list hits like Love Story and shlock like Frogs and The Thing With Two Heads where he played a racist whose head is grafted onto a black man. Yeah:
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Bela Lugosi’s fall from grace has been much covered. He had a huge hit with Dracula but feuded with the studio and soon found himself confined to B-level shlock, eventually finding himself a member of Ed Wood’s stock company. Fan still debate if Wood was exploiting him or helping him. Boris Karloff fared better. He made plenty of low budget dreck for Roger Corman, but he also endeared himself to younger audiences, most notably in How the Grinch Stole Christmas and went out on a high note with Peter Bogdanovich’s directorial debut Targets.
Lastly, we must speak of Veronica Lake. She was a glamour queen of the 40s, famous for her hair style where her long blonde locks were styled to cover one eye, studio publicists dubber her “The Peek-a-Boo Girl.” She made one genuine 4-star must-see classic, Preston Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels, and some well regarded noirs and comedies, but she was washed up by the 1950s. She was discovered working a a waitress in the 1960s and subsequently told her story on the talk show circuit and later in an autobiography. She decided to use the money she’d earned from various public appearances to produce a comeback vehicle. For some reason, perhaps known only to her, she decided the best movie to relaunch her career was Flesh Feast. A no budget Grade-Z catastrophe where she played a mad scientist developing a breed of flesh eating maggots while moonlighting for an underground organization of escaped Nazis in possession of Hitler’s body. She is charged with reanimating their Führer so they can take over the world. Turns out though, Lake is only doing this to avenge her mother who was subjected to Nazi experiments in the concentration camps. Once old Adolf is alive and kicking again, she throws her flesh eating maggots in his face and laughs maniacally as he dies a second, painful death. Honestly, Lakes delivery of the line “Don’t you like my little maggots?” deserves to go down as one of the all-time camptastic line readings in the history of cinema. But seriously, this movie raises so many questions I can’t even start. Like, if she just agreed to star I could understand, but she was a producer on this, she went all-in on this project, why? Why this of all things?
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John Prine, a wry and perceptive writer whose songs often resembled vivid short stories, died Tuesday in Nashville from complications related to COVID-19. His death was confirmed by his publicist, on behalf of his family. He was 73 years old.
Prine was hospitalized last week after falling ill and put on a ventilator Saturday night, according to a statement from his family.
Music Features
John Prine's Songs Saw The Whole Of Us
Even as a young man, Prine — who famously worked as a mailman before turning to music full-time — wrote evocative songs that belied his age. With a conversational vocal approach, he quickly developed a reputation as a performer who empathized with his characters. His beloved 1971 self-titled debut features the aching "Hello In There," written from the perspective of a lonely elderly man who simply wants to be noticed, and the equally bittersweet "Angel From Montgomery." The latter song is narrated by a middle-aged woman with deep regrets over the way her life turned out, married to a man who's merely "another child that's grown old."
Bestowing dignity on the overlooked and marginalized was a common theme throughout Prine's career; he became known for detailed vignettes about ordinary people that illustrated larger truths about society. One of his signature songs, "Sam Stone," is an empathetic tale of a decorated veteran who overdoses because he has trouble readjusting to real life after the war. (Prine has said he based the protagonist around friends who were Vietnam War veterans, and also soldiers he encountered during his own two-year stint as an Army mechanic.)
Tiny Desk
John Prine: Tiny Desk Concert
Like "Sam Stone," many of Prine's songs also had an uncanny ability to address (if not predict) the societal and political zeitgeist. The understated 1984 song "Unwed Fathers" illustrates pernicious double standards pertaining to gender: The titular group "can't be bothered / They run like water, through a mountain stream," while the young women they impregnate are shamed and face consequences. Recorded for John Prine, "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore" criticizes people who use piety and patriotism as a cover for supporting an unjust war — a theme he'd revisit on 2005's "Some Humans Ain't Human," which pulls no punches slamming both hypocritical people and the Iraq War started by George W. Bush.
John Prine: In Memoriam
But like fellow songwriting iconoclast Shel Silverstein, Prine also cloaked his pointed commentary within whimsical wordplay. "Some Humans Ain't Human" claims that inside the heart of these turncoats is "a few frozen pizzas, some ice cubes with hair and a broken Popsicle," while "Dear Abby" has a lilting, rollicking rhythm to its verses, as it gently chides advice-column complainers to count their blessings. "Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)" uses both absurdity (an altar boy struck by a train) and the mundane (a bench makeout) to encourage people to stay positive and have gratitude.
And "Christmas In Prison" boasts one of his best lyrics — "She reminds me of a chess game with someone I admire" — while embodying his quiet irreverence. "It's about a person being somewhere like a prison, in a situation they don't want to be in, and wishing they were somewhere else," he wrote in the liner notes to 1993's Great Days: The John Prine Anthology, adding that "I used all the imagery as if it were an actual prison. ... And being a sentimental guy, I put it at Christmas."
Prine was born on October 10, 1946, to parents with strong family ties to Paradise, Kentucky, a place that later served as the backdrop to "Paradise," his cautionary tale about a coal country town destroyed and discarded by corporate interests.
Raised in Maywood, a suburb of Chicago,, the young Prine devoured 45s from Buddy Holly, Johnny Cash and Little Richard, and soaked up the country music his father loved, such as Hank Williams Sr., Ernest Tubb and Roy Acuff. More crucially, Prine learned rudimentary guitar skills from his oldest brother, Dave, a folk fan who memorably gifted him a Carter Family LP. "I learned all those songs," he told NPR's Terry Gross in 2018. "And not too long after that, I started writing when I was 14. And my melodies always came out like old-timey country stuff." Around this time, Prine also started to learn finger-picking by playing songs by Elizabeth Cotten and Mississippi John Hurt, he added: "I'd sit in the closet in the dark in case I ever went blind, to see if I could play."
Although Prine also started taking guitar lessons at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music starting in fall 1963, he still wasn't considering pursuing music as a full-time career. In fact, he was working as a mailman and playing gigs at night on the side when a generous live review from critic Roger Ebert in late 1970 boosted his reputation in Chicago's nascent folk scene. A record deal with Atlantic Records came in early 1971, after then-executive Jerry Wexler saw Prine perform three songs during a Kris Kristofferson set at the Bottom Line in New York City.
John Prine, hanging out at Georgia State College in 1975.
Tom Hill/WireImage
Prine received a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist in 1972, on the strength of his debut, and started turning out records at a brisk pace for the rest of the 1970s. Almost immediately, his songs were covered by other artists: Bonnie Raitt did a version of "Angel From Montgomery" (as did John Denver and Tanya Tucker), while Bette Midler, Everly Brothers, Swamp Dogg and, later, the Highwaymen also recorded Prine-penned songs.
Being in the spotlight didn't come naturally. "I had a difficult time listening back to them because I was so nervous," he told Fresh Air about his early records. "I didn't expect to do this for a living, be a recording artist. I was just playing music for the fun of it and writing songs to ... that was kind of my escape, you know, from the humdrum of the world."
But Prine's early success allowed him to start approaching his career on his own terms. With manager Al Bunetta, he formed the independent label Oh Boy Records in 1981, launching it with a Christmas single, "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." Prine slowed down his output in the '80s and '90s but expanded his sonic purview, co-writing "Jackie O" with John Cougar Mellencamp for the latter's hit 1983 LP Uh-Huh and collaborating with members of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers for his 1991 album The Missing Years, which won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. (Prine also won in the same category for 2005's Fair & Square.)
Starting in the mid-'90s, Prine also dealt with several serious health issues. He had a cancerous tumor in his neck removed in 1996, successfully beat lung cancer in 2013 and had a heart stent implanted in 2019. In 2018, he admitted to NPR's Terry Gross that his 1996 cancer surgery changed his voice.
"It dropped down lower, and it feels friendlier to me," he said. "So I can actually sit in the studio and listen to my singing play back. Before, I'd run the other way." He debuted his new voice — which did feel a bit rougher of comfort, like a rock swathed in moss — with 1999's In Spite of Ourselves, which featured duets on covers with female artists such as Iris DeMent, Patty Loveless and Lucinda Williams. He released a kindred-spirit sequel in 2016, For Better, or Worse, that also featured DeMent, in addition to duets with contemporary artists Miranda Lambert, Kacey Musgraves and Morgane Stapleton.
John Prine at the Edison Hotel in Times Square, 1999.
New York Daily News Archive/NY Daily News via Getty Images
Prine's career received another boost more recently, too, after his work was championed by modern Americana acts such as Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires — two artists with whom Prine collaborated — Sturgill Simpson and Margo Price. In 2019, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, the year after releasing The Tree of Forgiveness, his first album of all-new original songs since Fair & Square. The album featured co-writes with Dan Auerbach and long-time foils Pat McLaughlin and Keith Sykes, and debuted at No. 5 on Billboard's Top 200.
The Tree of Forgiveness ends with a song called "When I Get to Heaven," a detailed look at what Prine said he intended to do after he dies: start a band, see dearly departed family members, order a cocktail, shake God's hand and encourage rampant forgiveness. (In a nod to his usual wry streak, he also said he'd enjoy a cigarette that's "nine miles long.") The lyrics are sentimental and freewheeling, making it clear that Prine planned to keep the good times going up in heaven. It's likely that the song was intended to be a winking bit of foreshadowing about his own mortality, although now, perhaps it's better interpreted as Prine providing a blueprint for how to live life with gusto while you're still here.
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The 10th Annual L.A.O.K. Awards
Wow. Ten years of the Layokies. What a trip. I would like to give my heartfelt thanks to all five of my faithful fans for your readership over the years. In my first ever Layokies post, I named it the “1st (Possibly) Annual L.A.O.K. Awards.” I had no idea how long I’d be working at the Academy, let alone living in LA, but here we are. I bragged about seeing 180 movies that year. I just checked my Letterboxd stats for this year and it turns out I watched...180 movies. However, this year I hit a new personal best for new releases: 125. While this is about half as many as some people I know, some of the first Layokies were based on a field of 60 or 70 movies, so I’ve doubled up on my old self. Funny thing is, I can still look on other year-end lists and find many films I haven’t seen, and even some I haven’t heard of, so the field of films I’ve added are probably in the middle to bottom range of the pack. But someone out there has to watch Tolkien, Gemini Man, The Goldfinch, and Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, so it might as well be me.
In all honesty, my absolute favorite thing about living in Los Angeles and working at the Academy is access to watching movies and being around the general cinephile community, and even a bad couple of hours in a movie theater beats a lot else. Over Christmas break I saw Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in Shawnee, OK’s own Cinema Center 8.
It was quite a trip going back to this theater after so many years and to think of the love of film that was fostered there. Alas, the picture was pretty muddy, and I’m almost positive they showed it in 2k. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Now, in penance for naming The King’s Speech Best Picture in my first year (lol), I give you five real good’uns for 2019:
Best Film
The Farewell
The King
Little Women
Parasite
Uncut Gems
Sometimes I touch on a year being good or bad for film in general. Not sure about the whole, but I’ll call 2019 a real SEC year (aka stacked at the top and mediocre to poor the rest of the way down). While I would probably only give one title on this list must-see status (Parasite), these are all definite should-sees. The Farewell made me laugh and cry and cringe. One might even go so far as to say it “gave me all the feels.” The King gave me actual siege warfare and period-accurate haircuts. Little Women hit me with that structure, and at first I was all “hol up,” but then I was all “OK I see you.” Little Women also made me cry because I cry in movies now. (A quick aside, because while I absolutely loved Little Women, it’s not really going to come up again. If you liked the movie and haven’t read the book, please do yourself a favor and make it the next one on your list. You can’t know how great this movie is unless you know how good Beth is. Beth kind of got lost in this one, and you need to know Beth.) Parasite blew me away through its normality (who, having seen The Host, Snowpiercer, and Okja could have guessed that it wasn’t about some actual alien parasite??). And Uncut Gems was exactly as perfect as I expected it to be.
And the Layokie goes to...
The King
Faithful readers will know that one of my absolute favorite genres is ‘discreet conversation behind castle walls,’ and The King absolutely nailed it. It has everything: leadership position foisted on a worthy but flawed character who doesn’t want it, conversations in tents about battle tactics, love built on almost nothing but mutual respect, and most of all, Robert Pattinson doing a funny accent (it’s just a French accent, but he makes it quite funny). I would have already watched this again five times on Netflix, but I’m hoping and praying for an Oscar nomination that will never ever in a million years come in hopes that I can see it again in the theater during nominations screenings.
The Next Five Six
1917
Honey Boy
The Laundromat
The Lighthouse
Marriage Story
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Best Actor
Timothée Chalamet - The King
Adam Driver - Marriage Story
Paul Walter Hauser - Richard Jewell
Joaquin Phoenix - Joker
Adam Sandler - Uncut Gems
Another super stacked category this year. You might even say they’re *puts on sunglasses*...Stacked Actors. (<-- This is a really good joke for anyone whose favorite band from 7th-8th grade was The Foo Fighters.) These are all kind of obvious, so I’ll take a second to comment on Paul Walter Hauser and the fact that I gave out a very specific award last year titled “Refuse to Watch - Any More Clint Eastwood Movies” after trying and failing to watch The 15:17 to Paris on a plane (one of the worst pieces of filmmaking I’ve ever witnessed). Then this year Richard Jewell was getting such good buzz, and it seemed like such a good cast, and it was such a low-risk watch (on my second screen at work while doing spreadsheets), that I decided to shamefully renege on my earlier pronouncement and give it a shot. And...it was great pretty good! What is the deeal with Clint Eastwood?? He’s made some of my least favorite movies of the decade (Gran Torino, Invictus, Hereafter was a particularly awful stretch, Sully was pointless, and even parts of American Sniper, which was otherwise tolerable, were absolute cringefests). Anywho, I was very impressed by Paul Walter Hauser’s understated but perfect performance, in which he gets one good chance to blow up and yell at people--which you know I love. I hope he gets nominated, because it would be a great Oscar clip. (My ultimate dream job would be to pick the acting Oscars clips and I would be very very good at it.)
And the Layokie goes to...
The Sandman (love that everyone is calling him the Sandman again)
I touched on Adam Sandler “A” in the Best Supporting Actor section of my 2018 Layokies post regarding his performance in The Meyerowitz Stories, lamenting that he hadn’t taken more dramatic roles after Punch-Drunk Love and hoping that good writer/directors would keep casting him. One more wish granted by the Safdie brothers. Adam Sandler’s talent is undeniable. He is truly one of the Great Actors of his generation. I really hope this is a respected-actor-making turn for him, but the upcoming roles on his IMDd--Hubie Halloween and Hotel Transylvania 4--don’t give much hope for the immediate future.
Honorable Mentions
Taron Egerton - Rocketman (but only for the phone booth scene)
Shia LaBeouf - The Peanut Butter Falcon
Noah Jupe - Honey Boy
Robert Pattinson - The Lighthouse
Jonathan Pryce - The Two Popes
Best Actress
Ana de Armas - Knives Out
Scarlett Johansson - Marriage Story
Elisabeth Moss - Her Smell
Florence Pugh - Midsommar
Saoirse Ronan - Little Women
Found out last night from my resident celebrity expert Bridgette Smith that Florence Pugh is dating Zach Braff and it absolutely crushed me.
And the Layokie goes to...
Elisabeth Moss - Her Smell
Her Smell was the last 2019 film I watched before writing this post, and I was really just looking for something to pass the time. I had been wanting to see it for a long time and noticed it was on HBO, so I pressed play and planned to work on this post while I watched. I couldn’t. I was riveted. The writing, score, and sound design are incredible, but it’s all tied together by Elisabeth Moss’s performance. She’s excellent at being revolting but still has all of those qualities that made her Peggy. You can’t not like her, even though you fairly hate her.
Honorable Mentions
Awkwafina - The Farewell
Cynthia Erivo - Harriet
Lupita Nyong’o - Us (You know I love weird voices, you know I love actors doing weird voices and faces, but this was a bit much even for me. Reflective of Us on the whole, which I thought was interesting but really missed the mark.)
Charlize Theron - Bombshell
Best Director
Ari Aster - Midsommar
Bong Joon Ho - Parasite
David Michôd - The King
Benny and Josh Safdie - Uncut Gems
Céline Sciamma - Portrait of a Lady on Fire
And the Layokie goes to...
Benny and Josh Safdie - Uncut Gems
Wired: New directors
Tired: Old directors
Boy do I not understand the love for The Irishman and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I’m not totally against boring movies if there’s a good reason for it (Midsommar was actually quite boring), but these were some of the least compelling films I watched all year. On the other hand, you have these young directors coming out of prestige horror, Ari Aster, Robert Eggers, and to a lesser extent David Robert Mitchell and Trey Edwards Shults, making some of the most dynamic films out there. Reminds me of Roger Ebert talking about early Scorsese in Life Itself (which I can’t find a clip of). Then you have Benny and Josh Safdie doing Scorsese better than Scorsese with literally breathtaking shots like the one below. How they construct such amazing edits out of such disparate takes as the one in the still above is a wonder. They’ll go from five extreme close-ups in a row to a jaw-dropping shot of the inside of a jewelry store zoomed in from across the street. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg on what makes them the best filmmakers working right now.
Honorable Mentions
Noah Baumbach - Marriage Story
Robert Eggers - The Lighthouse
Claire Denis - High Life
Greta Gerwig - Little Women
Alejandro Landes - Monos
Sam Mendes - 1917
Alex Ross Perry - Her Smell
Joe Talbot - The Last Black Man in San Francisco
Lulu Wang - The Farewell
Best Supporting Actress
Laura Dern - Marriage Story
Lena Headey - Fighting with My Family
Lee Jung Eun - Parasite (The housekeeper)
Meryl Streep - The Laundromat
Shuzhen Zhao - The Farewell (Nai Nai)
And the Layokie goes to...
Laura Dern - Marriage Story
Here’s one for the Laura Dern stan accounts: There’s no question that Noah Baumbach is a talented director of actors, but Laura Dern makes so much out of seemingly not a lot in this role. She truly embodies a wholly unique and three-dimensional character that could have extremely easily been one-note.
Honorable Mentions
Lily-Rose Depp - The King
Florence Pugh - Little Women
Margot Robbie - Bombshell
Best Supporting Actor
Timothée Chalamet - Little Women
Willem Dafoe - The Lighthouse
Shia LaBeouf - Honey Boy
Al Pacino - The Irishman
Robert Pattinson - The King
And the Layokie goes to...
Willem Dafoe - The Lighthouse
For being all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xT7uR4wNMJs
Honorable Mentions
Bill Hader - It Chapter Two
Tim Heidecker - Us
Sam Rockwell - Richard Jewell
Song Kang Ho - Parasite (the dad)
Lakeith Stanfield - Uncut Gems
Best Original Screenplay
The Farewell - Lulu Wang
Her Smell - Alex Ross Perry
Marriage Story - Noah Baumbach
Parasite - Bong Joon Ho
Uncut Gems - Benny and Josh Safdie
And the Layokie goes to...
Parasite - Bong Joon Ho
Another genre we don’t get nearly enough of: comedies of errors. A script like this is as sophisticated as any mystery, political thriller, or...some other sophisticated type of script, like uh, I don’t know, they usually just say Chinatown or Witness. I did think it lagged a bit in the third act, but everything that came before it was so tight. Twist after turn after twist, so funny, so shocking. This is such a rare prestige crowd-pleaser that it really does harken back to Hitchcock; if a wide audience can get over watching subtitles, this has to have one of the lowest barriers for entry of any foreign film in a long time. Here’s hoping for a Best Picture Oscar nomination and a wide release. Uncut Gems played at Shawnee’s other theater (titled simply Movies 6), so it’s not that far out of the realm of possibility. But I know people in LA, even that work at the Academy, who won’t watch subtitled films, so getting people to actually go see it is another question.
Honorable Mentions
Peterloo - Mike Leigh
Best Adapted Screenplay
Jojo Rabbit - Taika Waititi
Joker - Todd Philips & Scott Silver
The King - David Michôd
The Laundromat - Scott Z. Burns
The Two Popes - Anthony McCarten
And the Layokie goes to...
The King - Joel Edgerton and David Michôd
It wouldn’t be the Layokies without me championing one film that no one else cares about. I just really really liked The King. Timothée Chalamet is so hot right now! How did this get so overlooked?? 😭
Best Documentary
Apollo 11
Honeyland
It’s a Hard Truth Ain’t It
Maiden
Mike Wallace is Here
And the Layokie goes to...
Maiden
As I’m in the process of producing a documentary right now, it pains me a bit that my top two picks in this category are almost entirely archival. I thought Mike Wallace is Here was so well done, and the director did some amazing things playing with aspect ratio. But Maiden came into port first. What is wrong with people who don’t appreciate sports? This xkcd comic (who I usually appreciate) makes me so angry. Tell the women who worked their asses off for years to claw their way into this male-dominated space and literally made the world a better place that their efforts were no more than a weighted random number generator on which to build narratives! Clearly the narratives are there, but it rarely has as much to do with the result of the competition as it does the effort that it took individual human beings to get there. See also: Undefeated (currently streaming on Netflix).
Honorable Mentions
Fyre
They Shall Not Grow Old
Satan & Adam
Best Foreign Language Film
Duh Parasite
Biggest Missed Opportunity
Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
(How the first live action Pokemon movie should have happened)
Not Even Close to Enough Monsters
Godzilla: King of the Monsters
Most Unbelievable Cosplay
Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers
Absolutely Crushing the Sensitive Dad Roles
Billy Crudup in After the Wedding and Where’d You Go, Bernadette?
Good in Everything
Too obvious, but Florence Pugh - Fighting with My Family, Midsommar, Little Women
Robert Pattinson - High Life, The Lighthouse, The King
Adam Driver - The Dead Don’t Die, Marriage Story, The Report, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Destigmatizing Fatness Award
Dolemite is My Name
The Laundromat
Skin
Almost Hustlers but then not (Lizzo got what, 30 seconds of screentime??)
#WasteYourAudience’sTime2019
The Souvenir
The Proposal
Didn’t Actually Deserve to be Driven into the Ground
Dark Phoenix
The Kitchen
Just Plain Liked It
Triple Frontier
Most Forgettable
Tie: Tolkien and High Life (not for me, but it took me a full 10 minutes to convince Becca that she watched this, and I had to describe the masturbation chamber aka fuck box in a lot of detail before she got it, and I’m still not totally convinced she remembers it)
The Something Award
Motherless Brooklyn
The Nothing Award
Judy
Worst Movies
1. Rambo: Last Blood
2. Between Two Ferns: The Movie
3. Abominable
4. The Lion King
5. Godzilla: King of the Monsters
6. Wine Country
7. Jumanji: The Next Level
8. Frozen II
9. The Goldfinch
10. Pet Semetary
Best Scenes
Avengers: Endgame - The hammer, the portals, all the nerdy/normie BS, what can I say call me a basic bitch but there were some genuine holy schmoly moments in this that made it a really fun movie to experience in the theater
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood - When Mr. Rogers uses the puppets on Lloyd
Captain Marvel - When she went full shit on ‘em
Climax - The opening dance sequence (the only thing that made this movie worth watching)
The Farewell - Too many to choose from, but I think my favorite moment in this movie was when they were taking photos of the fiances and another couple stumbled in on them, claiming they were lost. That couple leaves and we never see them again. These are the kinds of details that make movies come alive. Absolutely brilliant.
Gemini Man - The motorcycle chase (a rare scene actually made better by the high frame rate)
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum - The knife fight in the knife store
The King - The conversation between Hal and Catherine
Knock Down the House - When A.O.C. debated the incompetent proxy
The Last Black Man in San Francisco - Skateboarding into town
Little Women - The “break-up” scene between Jo and Laurie (not a spoiler)
Midsommar - The drug trip scene (not that I’ve ever done drugs but this was the most accurate drug trip scene of all time) and the Ättestupa ceremony. Also found out in the video linked above that Ari Aster pronounces it Mid-SO-mar?? I thought that was the dumb way to pronounce it but apparently I’m the dumb one. Also also, another amazing detail worth mentioning: I absolutely loved that every time they were in their community sleeping barn, there was a baby crying somewhere on the second floor that we never see. Such a perfect way to put the characters and the audience on edge and indicate that there’s something wrong here.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - While I didn’t care for this movie, the scene where Brad Pitt went to the movie ranch and when he fantasized about going to the film set were absolutely dripping with tension, which made them as just as riveting as the rest of the movie wasn’t
Parasite - When the other family comes home early
The Peanut Butter Falcon - The scene after they come out of the corn field and share one of their first genuine moments
Uncut Gems - *Sarah Palin voice* All of ‘em, any of ‘em. But seriously the finale with the Celtics game
Us - The initial home invasion and the visit to the Tylers’ home (Tim Heidecker and Elisabeth Moss)
The A.V. Club also does a best scenes list at the end of the year, and I love writing mine first and then seeing what they came up with. I’m always surprised at how many we match on. Just goes to show that a good scene is universal. I also enjoyed some of theirs that I overlooked here, including from Her Smell, Bombshell, Ad Astra (I almost included the moon chase myself and thought the baboon scene was equally compelling), and Portrait of a Lady on Fire.
Stupidest Scenes
Every other John Wick 3 scene
Deserves Discussion
The Dead Don’t Die
This movie was a lot of fun. But then it also completely sucked? Not really a Jim Jarmusch fan in the first place, but this had so many awesome elements to it: a great cast, great soundtrack, really fun and unexpected ways of breaking the 4th wall, but then it was also pointless and boring. I would love for someone to tell me why this is a good movie after all, but judging by its complete absence from the end-of-the-year discussion (or any discussion), I’m guessing no one cares enough to mount that challenge.
Best Visuals
Alita: Battle Angel
Aquarella
A Hidden Life
Honeyland
Midsommar
Monos
Many LOLs
It Chapter Two
Jojo Rabbit
Parasite
Best Song
Ready or Not - The Hide and Seek Song (why was this not submitted?)
youtube
Best Soundtrack
Waves - Never have I already known so many songs on a film’s soundtrack; it’s almost as if Trey Edwards Shults is another white guy around my age with the same interests as me...
Worst Accents
Midway
Started But Never Finished
Cats
Cold Case Hammarskjold
Genndy Tartakovsky’s ‘Primal’ - Tales of Savagery
The Highway Men
High Flying Bird
Queen and Slim
Spies in Disguise
Didn’t See
Ash is Purest White
Atlantics
The Beach Bum
The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (still really want to see this one)
Clemency
Diane
Invisible Life
Luce
Shadow
Synonyms
Transit
Woman at War
Absent on Purpose
Pain & Glory
Ford v Ferrari
I think these are the only two contenders that I’ve seen and haven’t mentioned. I actually liked both of these movies quite a bit. Just didn’t stand out for me in any one category I suppose. But then also:
Booksmart
Brittany Runs a Marathon
Just Mercy
The Mustang
Hah!
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Teen Titans Spotlight #12: Wonder Girl
All Donna has to do is pretend that her grip slip and she's done with this jerk!
Like I'm going to believe Terry Long has any friends!
Look how excited Terry is to show Donna proof that he has a friend! What a sad sack of potatoes! He's worse than Ross from Friends!
Donna reads the letter and is all, "This sure looks like your handwriting, Terry." And Terry is all, "As Icki Mudd, I had to learn to write like Captain Midnight! For secret missions!" Donna fingers her lasso of truth while I get distracted from writing this dialogue because I used the verb fingered so here's there actual conversation which is practically the one I was going to write anyway.
Shit is going down!
This is really good Terry Long fan-fiction. Everybody reading comic books forever has always known that Terry Long is a piece of shit. But he's almost constantly written by Marv Wolfman, the one guy who thinks Terry Long is a fucking catch (if I don't say this in a parenthetical reference, somebody else will say it in the comments so "because Terry Long is totally Marv Wolfman"). Moench even makes a point of having Terry Long mention the book he's never going to finish because he keeps expecting Donna to help him with her knowledge of the ancient characters gained through personal relationships. I believe he even loses his professorship due to never finishing the book. And this is why! Because he was just using the idea of it as an excuse to go get drunk with an old friend and maybe jerk each other off like old times.
Arguments Over Breakfast Starring Donna and Terry. I could read an entire series of just this. It's delicious.
Donna walks over to Titans Tower to smash things in the Smash Things Simulator while thinking, "If this man I thought was a sensitive feminist is actually a fucking loser boy in a squishy man's body, what if all men are just as terrible?!" If Donna were a video game character, she would level up five times from this realization. Everybody is selfish but somehow men manage to be even more selfish than women. It's a pretty good feat and I don't know how they accomplish it. Being raised under the Patriarchy, I guess? "But not all men," think the men who are only thinking about themselves and how not selfish they are.
The problem is that Terry and Donna can spend a week fucking any time! But when is Terry going to get to fuck his old friend from childhood?! Practically never, that's when! How can Donna blame him for not wanting to miss this opportunity? Would she expect Terry to understand if she had to interrupt a blow job to go save the multiverse?! I don't know if the comparisons track logically but I don't have time to consider my words. Let's move on!
While Donna is away, Terry rushes off to El Salvador. I don't know how long Donna is working out her frustrations before she gets back home but it seems to already be too late. Somehow in that time, he's phoned a travel agent, purchased tickets, hailed a cab, got to the airport, waltzed through 1987 security, waited for the flight, boarded, waited on the tarmac due to engine trouble, had to deplane, boarded a new plane, and took off to El Salvador! Donna did have to spend a little time realizing there was a secret Captain Midnight message encoded in the letter that said, "Hey! Fuck up! Stop thinking about jerking me off, you gay! I've been kidnapped by drug lords! Send the Justice League!" but since she thinks, "Bingo! On the first try," after decoding it, I think she could have caught up with Terry at the airport.
Don't cancel me over the "you gay" bit in the message from Terry's friend. Remember that they were best friends and this is 1987. We're lucky the entire letter wasn't homosexual references!
Once Terry gets to El Salvador, he finds out that his friend, Dennis Heiman, hasn't been in his hotel for a week. So being the great explorer he totally knows he is, Terry marches off into the jungle to find his friend.
"Sure, it's almost certainly a path created by a dangerous creature or armed drug lords but on the super off-chance it is Denny's path, won't he be fucking surprised!"
Terry Long gets caught by some drug lords and now Donna has to save him. Oh man is she going to have some great ammunition for their next fight over breakfast!
Wait. Do they have a running argument about which one of them is most like Tarzan? I just learned more than I wanted about their sex life.
Terry runs for his life while Donna deflects bullets. She doesn't strategically let one that will hit him in the ass get by because she's a better spouse than I would be. But Terry still pays for his matrimonial crimes when he falls in a pit. The good guys with guns who are only running drugs and making their community a dangerous hellhole because they live in poverty run away when they realize that their guns aren't killing Wonder Girl like they're supposed to. What good is a gun if it can't kill the person who should keep minding their own business instead of ruining your livelihood?! Stupid assault rifles!
Now that all the people who love guns more than anything aren't reading this because I used the term "assault rifle," it's time for cupcakes! I wish I could pass out cupcakes online. Nothing would bring me more joy than denying people I don't agree with cupcakes. Oh, except maybe the cupcake!
Donna follows Terry down the hole and thinks, "Why is this pit here? Oh, I bet it was a secret passageway Mayan priests used to reach the temples and make their 'magical' appearances." So she already knows more about Mayans than Terry does. She realized Terry isn't going to be able to finish the book no matter what the subject is so she's already begun research on the new project he just proposed over that morning's breakfast. But what she finds at the other end of the tunnel is disturbing (but for Marv Wolfman only).
Is this what people online call "fan service"?
I just tore out the last eight pages of the comic book. Does that make the death of Terry Long canon?
Teen Titans Spotlight #12: Wonder Girl: A+! I can't believe it! The death of Terry Long! What a bold move to place in an ancillary Teen Titans series! This issue must be worth five figures! Mostly because I have the only copy. It really does read better if you stop at page fourteen. Because who wants to read page fifteen where Terry has to explain to Donna why he hid in the Mayan Beheaded Magic Trick Box? I mean Illusion Box. I bet he was thinking, "Just wait until Donna sees me dead! Then she'll be sorry for getting upset with my misogyny over breakfast! That'll show her! Man, I'm really hard right now!"
Notice how Donna destroys the guns after saying, "Murderers." Checkmate people who say guns don't kill people, people kill people.
Donna might also have killed the guys holding the guns. It's hard to tell because the coloring of the dimly lit cave might just be obscuring the blood and brains that are almost certainly leaking from their bodies. Maybe Batman couldn't kill Joker even after Joker killed Robin but Donna's no Batman. Of course, Terry Long is no Robin (even a Jason Todd Robin). So is he worth Donna killing for? It's a philosophical conundrum that most people will conclude "no" is the proper answer almost immediately. So I might have used the word "conundrum" too rashly.
Terry accidentally became trapped in the Mayan Illusion so I guess Donna can't be too angry at him.
Okay, now she can be mad at him.
It looks like Donna's flashing Terry in the above image and he totally frightened by what he's seeing. It is now canon that Wonder Girl's lady parts have blistered tentacles and maybe a small beak.
I don't understand Terry's line about girls wearing girdles. Is it a feminist saying? Maybe he just made it up in his terror at seeing her squawking nether regions?
The drama isn't finished even though I finished my review a few paragraphs ago. When it becomes so intense that Terry and Donna believe their lives might actually be in danger, the story gets really fucking disgusting.
Oh god. I did not need the image of Terry's boner rubbing against Donna's thighs as he smears his filthy facial hair all over her iron face.
I was being less disgusting than the actual panel by suggesting he was just rubbing his cock against her through their clothing. Upon rereading those narration boxes, I think they actually just fucked. "No time for tenderness" has to be code for a quickie, right? I think the next page is proof of that theory:
Terry puts his dick away as Donna thanks him for the "we almost died" sex. Of special note: Terry thinks you can start a campfire with a condom.
Donna kills a bunch of drug lords in a fiery explosion but she says "They probably all got knocked out by the shockwave!" to assuage her guilty conscience. She's definitely read Batman's best selling book, One Thousand Ways to Convince Yourself and Others That You've Never Killed Anybody. While a lot of the reasons are "If doctors didn't stop the internal bleeding in time, maybe the violent thug should have purchased better insurance that allowed for a better hospital with a more competent staff" and "Dying of complications from losing a spleen to a batarang are completely the fault of the person who didn't take the proper care for a person who is living without a spleen," quite a few of the reasons boil down to "Did you see anybody dead that couldn't have more probably been unconscious when you left the scene? Because I sure didn't and I have bat eyes!" Batman then had to release a follow-up novel due to the reaction of his book on Twitter. He called it, Contrary to Popular and Stupid Opinions, Bats Actually Have Great Eyesight.
Anyway, they save Terry's best friend who isn't imaginary at all.
While hanging out with Terry, Donna often entertains herself by thinking stupid jokes.
Teen Titans Spotlight #12: Wonder Girl Rating: F! Terry didn't die after all! Poop!
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Caught up on Twin Peaks, which I was worried to start for a bunch of reasons. (Silly reasons: like, it’s not the same thing, at all, but I couldn’t make it past that first episode of the X-Files return because that was just a solid hour of uninterrupted “oh shit, it’s not 1995 anymore” for me. And man, I liked Twin Peaks more at a more formative age than I ever liked the X-Files so I was really worried about feeling that “oh no I’m ollllld” feeling but with the power of 1,000 suns behind it). Anyways: that turned out not to be so, since it’s pretty strongly its own thing, which I was pretty happy about. I’m really loving how this has turned out so far. (It kinda helps that the new series is pretty wall to wall about death and dying, maybe and so itself is kinda about that feeling of time havine passed, more than ignoring it like other reboots/restorations have...)(I mean, I’m also glad that the Gilmore Girls wasn’t ”Gilmore Near-Death Girls’,” I guess, so maybe I’m being inconsistent but...).
One thing I’m particularly enjoying (besides the LA comedy deep cuts-- Stephanie Allynne! (A+) Josh Fadem! Blink-and-you-might-miss John Ennis! Gelman and Koechner and so on!) is I feel like the show is strong evidence for an ongoing argument I have with the world: which is that David Lynch’s merits as a filmmaker or “artist” or whatever really distract people from recognizing how horny David Lynch is and how he’s one of America’s horniest directors. (Maybe he can’t compete with, like, a Roger Vadim or an Adrian Lyne, like on a global stage, but, as Americans go?).
People talk about him like he’s this weirdo who meditates all the time, and doesn’t think like some normal dude. Meanwhile, he just 100% casts stone-cold foxes in his stuff, which obviously isn’t just some magical accident, 1,000 foxes into his career. “I just got done meditating for 20 hours and I realized we should hire a super-hot girl to tie a cherry stem with her tongue. Thanks, meditation.” Audiences and critics: “Very deep. Here is the Award for Best Art.” All you ever hear is like “surrealism blah blah blah themes blah blah blah” but maybe it just weirds people out too much to imagine Lynch just yelling “Hire Naomi Watts -- her head shot gave me an ERECTION” at the top of his fucking lungs. (If you like to do David Lynch impressions in your head while you’re bored, I highly recommend doing an impression of “Horny David Lynch spending an erotic afternoon looking at head shots at Bob’s Big Boy”).
Roger Ebert mostly hated David Lynch, and once said that “Russ Meyer invented the cinema of David Lynch 25 years ago, and did it sincerely and cheerfully, with robust good humor, not with Lynch's sneaky stylistic apologies”. I don’t really agree with Ebert’s take on Lynch, overall, and I find David Lynch: Hornball more of a thing to celebrate than he did I guess, maybe because Lynch’s horniness gave my childhood so much (see above, re: the cherry stem thing). But I just feel like generally, David Lynch being super-horny is something folks just don’t appreciate enough.
I’m scared about what’s coming though, just how dark it’s going to get before this all wraps up. Not someone I associate with happy, feel-good endings, the David Lynch. It’s weird seeing people on the internet all slap-happy about this show. We’ve ridden this ride before! I worry for the TV foxes.
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HOOK
Director;Steven Spielberg
Starring:Dustin Hoffman , Julia Roberts , Robin Williams
Summary : When Captain Hook kidnaps his children, an adult Peter Pan must return to Neverland and reclaim his youthful spirit in order to challenge his old enemy.
Critics;
Roger Ebert
The ads for Steven Spielberg’s “Hook” ask the question, “What if Peter Pan grew up?” but the answer, alas, is that then he would probably star in a lugubrious retread of a once-magical idea.
Robin Williams plays the harassed businessman, and Maggie Smith is the old granny who’s able to suggest the most wonderful possibilities when she whispers, “Peter, dear - don’t you know who you are?” Actually, he can’t remember a thing that happened before he was 12, but Hook can and kidnaps Banning’s two children because he wants to lure Peter back to Neverland for a rematch.
The sad thing about the screenplay for “Hook” is that it’s so correctly titled: This whole construction is really nothing more than a hook on which to hang a new version of the Peter Pan story. No effort is made to involve Peter’s magic in the changed world he now inhabits, and little thought has been given to Captain Hook’s extraordinary persistence in wanting to revisit the events of the past.
The opening of the film promises more. Spielberg sets the scene in modern-day America, where the executive lifestyle leaves no time for fathers to spend with children. Then Robin Williams takes his wife and children back to London to visit Granny Wendy, who adopted him as an orphan, and as the kids sleep in the very same bedroom where the original story began, we get the Spielberg visual trademark of the blinding light on the other side of the rattling window: The promise of magic, just outside.
After the children disappear and Peter finds Hook’s kidnap note and is told by Granny Wendy who he really is and why he must follow, I was poised for a breathtaking first view of Neverland , but what I got was a dreary disappointment. The long, long, long Neverland sequences take place in a cluttered rag-and-bone shop of art direction; there are too many characters, too many props, too many signs, too many costumes, bad traffic direction, and no sense of place or space. The whole thing looks like what it is, a movie set, right down to the unconvincing backdrops, and for some reason there’s a shift to red and brown in the color spectrum, so Neverland (which in my imagination, at least, is on a lush green island) looks as if it’s in the midst of a drought.The other key characters appear: Hook, played by Dustin Hoffman as if he were doing an imitation instead of a performance, and Tinker Bell, played by Julia Roberts more as a duty than a pleasure. There’s not much wit here. What exists is supplied by Robin Williams, who does the best he can to be amazed and enchanted by his shabby surroundings, and by Smee (Bob Hoskins), who is sort of Hook’s official sidekick.There’s also a large group of orphans in Neverland who are massed as if for group photographs and shunted here and there as if waiting for auditions for “Oliver!” The crucial failure in “Hook” is its inability to re-imagine the material, to find something new, fresh or urgent to do with the Peter Pan myth. Lacking that, Spielberg should simply have remade the original story, straight, for this generation. The lack of creativity in the screenplay is dramatized in the sword fighting sequences between Hook and Peter, which are endless and not particularly well-choreographed. They do not convince me that either Williams or Hoffman is much of a fencer. Has any Hollywood director ever given thought to bringing in a Hong Kong expert like King Hu to do second-unit work on the swordfights? The cheapest Asian martial arts movie has infinitely more excitement in its sword sequences than the repetitive lunge-and-shuffle that goes on here. Then comes the ending of the movie. Or the endings. One after another. Farewells.
Poignancy. Lessons to be learned. Speeches to be made. Lost marbles to be rediscovered. Tears to be shed. The conclusion of “Hook” would be embarrassingly excessive even for a movie in which something of substance had gone before. Here we get the uncanny suspicion that “Hook” was written and directed according to the famous recipe of the country preacher who told the folks what he was going to tell them, told them, and then told them what he had told them.
Entertainment Weekly
Peter Pan, who is now a 40-year-old attorney named Peter Banning (Robin Williams), has returned to Neverland, flying there on a cloud of fairy dust to rescue his two children, whom Hook has kidnapped. Hook is eager for a showdown, but Peter, who has no memory of his life as a puckish sprite, isn’t up to it. He’s flabby, anxious — the sort of careless, selfish father who has one ear glued to his cellular phone and who never shows up at his son’s Little League games. Hook has granted him three days’ grace, so that the Lost Boys can whip him back into shape. Can Peter regain touch with the wild child he once was?
It’s hard not to bring great expectations to Hook — Spielberg’s attempt, after nearly a decade of hyperkinetic roller-coaster rides (the Indiana Jones series) and misguided forays into the Real World (The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, Always), to return to the pure-hearted fantasy material he has brought off with more excitement and magic than any other filmmaker. Hook is jam-packed with ”entertainment value,” enough to give you your money’s worth, and to guarantee (in all probability) that Spielberg earns his. Yet something has clouded this director’s vision. Except for Hoffman’s performance, the movie is so frenetic, so bursting with movement and rowdiness and special effects, so drenched in gooey, mythic sentiment about the child within, that nothing in it quite gels. The problem isn’t that Spielberg has lost his gift for fantasy. It’s that he no longer seems to know (or care) about anything else.
When Peter arrives in Neverland, it looks like the set for some over-budgeted, cast-of-thousands musical from the late ’60s. Hook’s fantastically huge galleon dominates the local dock, and the whole place is teeming with grinning pirates and bathed in overly bright fake sunshine. Spielberg must have wanted everything to look cheesy on purpose, and as long as Hoffman is strutting up and down the deck of his ship, making juicy threats, it works. Peter and his two children (Charlie Korsmo and Amber Scott) seem to have entered a surreal Hollywood-backlot nightmare.
Peter goes off with the Lost Boys, which is when the movie should sweep us up into the wonder of Neverland. Instead, it turns into a fairy-tale aerobics workout, with Peter getting pummeled into shape at the Boys’ woodland hangout (which feels every bit as stagy and enclosed as the set for Hook’s galleon). Spielberg’s idea of childhood turns out to be a lot of noisy, macho roughhousing, which the movie inflates into junior — Robert Bly bonding. In one scene, Peter and his chief rival try to top each other with gross-out insults — a funny bit, until one of the boys smiles at Peter and says, ”You’re doing it, using your imagination!” Peter, in addition, has to discover his ”happy thought,” the equivalent of Billy Crystal getting in touch with the ”one thing” he loves in City Slickers. Except that the happy-thought business is repeated ad nauseam. Instead of letting his themes emerge naturally, Spielberg keeps punching up the mystical undertones. By the time Peter is reborn as Peter Pan, complete with green tights, a fawnlike stare, and what looks like an Elizabeth Arden perm, it’s borderline embarrassing, because this Peter has too little connection to the adult he once was. He’s so ”pure” he’s an airbrushed fantasy of born-again boyhood.
There is, of course, lots of flying, and young kids will love this stuff. You’re always aware of the effects, though, because Spielberg hasn’t integrated the matte shots, storybook backgrounds, and other technical devices into the story; they’re held up for the audience to ooh and aah over. Julia Roberts, in particular, suffers from his obsession with technical bravado. Wearing a Lulu-style pixie hairdo that doesn’t flatter her (why does everything in this movie seem left over from the kitschy ’60s?), she tries hard to make Tinkerbell into a sharp-tongued, tomboy spunkette, but she keeps getting zapped in and out of the picture. The whole movie zaps you. Spielberg piles on flashbacks, sword fights, baseball games. It’s Peter Pan redone with a channel selector.
Spielberg once made us respond to the fantastic by revealing the hidden wonder in the world around us.What’s missing from Hook is any sense that Spielberg, as an artist, remains in touch with the essential current of everyday experience. His whole vision of what it means to return to childhood seems like some whiz-bang concept derived from the media. Like Michael Jackson, he has spent too many years cloistered with his gizmos, his empire, his blockbuster dreams. The loss is everybody’s.
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Every Rob Reiner Movie, Ranked
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Every Rob Reiner Movie, Ranked
Every director has his or her peaks and valleys, but Rob Reiner’s career has risen so high and fallen so low that you get vertigo just thinking about it. During his peak, he churned out intelligent studio smash hits like it was the easiest thing in the world; at his lowest, you wondered how in the world anyone thought it was smart to give this guy money to make a movie. Reiner could be called a journeyman director, except what kind of journeyman director could make a movie as confident as When Harry Met Sally, or as anarchic as This Is Spinal Tap, or one that juggles as many tones as The Princess Bride? Reiner’s career is so up and down it’s nearly impossible to classify.
Like Ron Howard, Reiner came out of television, and there’s a segment of the population that will know him forever as “Meathead.” There’s another segment that knows him as a bastion of liberal politics, which got him skewered on South Park a full generation ago. But for a stretch of nearly a decade, Reiner was part Frank Capra, part Billy Wilder. It all got away from him, but in recent years, he has shown a hankering to try different projects — projects that bring him at least a little closer to the star he once was.
With the release of Shock and Awe, his 20th theatrically released film, we look back at Reiner’s career. There’s plenty of debate about the top seven or eight films. Below those? Good luck if you can even remember any of them.
20. North (1994)
The rare movie in which a review of it — Roger Ebert’s infamous pan, which stated, simply, “I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it.” — has become more well-known than the film itself, and boy, is Reiner fortunate there. Nearly 25 years later, North is just as bad as Ebert wrote, an astoundingly wrongheaded concept executed in the most mealy-mouthed, limp way possible. Reiner attempts to combine whimsy, satire, and Capra-esque corniness here in a way that is nearly impossible to sit through, and if that weren’t enough, it has Bruce Willis as the Easter bunny that is worse than anything in Hudson Hawk. If anything, Ebert was being too nice.
In his later years, Reiner has focused on films about aging characters who have lost loved ones and are trying to decide what to do with the rest of their lives. After hitting commercial pay dirt with 2007’s The Bucket List, he reteamed with Morgan Freeman for this exceedingly maudlin comedy-drama about an alcoholic writer whose artistic muse has abandoned him. Confined to a wheelchair and grieving for his wife, he moves to a small town, where he is conveniently living next to the vivacious Virginia Madsen and her programmatically adorable three daughters. Cliché upon cliché, The Magic of Belle Isle rests heavy on the considerable charm of its actors and the utterly somnolent predictability of the storytelling. Older viewers have a right to complain that not enough Hollywood films address their reality — but they still deserve far better than this.
18. Alex and Emma (2003)
This was around the time when you began to wonder what, exactly, Reiner was even trying to do. This is a paint-by-numbers romantic comedy about a novelist (Luke Wilson) who has to finish a novel in 30 days to pay off a Mafia debt (…okay?), so he hires a stenographer (Kate Hudson) to write down his notes as the novel they create is acted out by Wilson and Hudson. This might have been an attempt to go after a nature-of-storytelling tale like The Princess Bride, but the two leads have zero chemistry and Reiner’s execution is clunky and disinterested. This movie will not make you miss the rom-com.
17. The Story of Us (1999)
With When Harry Met Sally, Reiner made a great romantic comedy about falling in love, but with The Story of Us, he set his sights on something perhaps far more ambitious and rarer at the movies: a story about a longtime married couple trying to navigate through a rough patch. Alas, this comedy-drama doesn’t just lack that previous film’s Zeitgeist-channeling observations about love — it also doesn’t have a compelling Harry or Sally. Instead, we have Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer playing a sitcom version of a married couple, their story told through flashbacks as we see how their relationship ebbed and flowed. Reiner had a Midas touch for years, but The Story of Us was the third of four clunkers in a row for him — and more proof that his once-formidable ability to tap into universal themes was starting to slip away.
Reiner’s first pairing with Michael Douglas was the utterly charming The American President. Their second was this painful rom-com in which Douglas plays a cranky, self-absorbed realtor who, naturally, only became such an SOB because of his beloved wife’s death. But after a series of lame, convoluted plot twists, he receives what every movie character like this gets: redemption, in the form of a granddaughter he didn’t know he had. Diane Keaton plays his neighbor, also a widow, who reluctantly helps him raise the kid — and, wouldn’t you know it, she starts to fall for this crab apple along the way. As generic as its title, And So It Goes strands two very talented actors in an irritatingly cutesy comedy that shies away from real pathos and insight.
15. Rumor Has It (2005)
If you are going to have your movie draw comparisons to The Graduate, well, you better put in the appropriate effort — and you shouldn’t have as many behind-the-scenes problems as this debacle accrued. (Famously, Rumor Has It’s original director, Ted Griffin, was fired by the studio and replaced by Reiner.) Jennifer Aniston plays an obituary writer for the New York Times who discovers her grandmother (Shirley MacLaine) might have been the inspiration for Mrs. Robinson — and then she has an affair with the man who might have inspired Benjamin Braddock. (Though in this version, he’s played by Kevin Costner.) All this Graduate talk might make you think this is going to be as smart and caustic as the original, but Rumor Has It has no actual interest in the Mike Nichols classic: It’s just an excuse for a pained “zany” comedy that wastes a terrific cast (including Mark Ruffalo back when Mark Ruffalo was making romantic comedies). You keep that Graduate out of your mouth, Rumor Has It.
14. Ghosts of Mississippi (1996)
It’s the movie that inspired Godfrey Cheshire’s brilliant observation about ’90s movies depicting the civil-rights era: “When future generations turn to this era’s movies for an account of the struggles for racial justice in America, they’ll learn the surprising lesson that such battles were fought and won by square-jawed white guys.” This is one of the worst of them, with Alec Baldwin bravely fighting to bring Medgar Evers’s assassin to justice while Whoopi Goldberg cheers him on and cries. It’s as lazy an approach to this material as you can come up with, and, as tended to be the case for him in this period, Reiner was late on the trigger: These sorts of movies were fading fast. One odd byproduct: Twenty years after the fact, James Woods’s dark performance as a virulent racist looks a lot like the real James Woods.
13. Flipped (2010)
It sure does take a long time going through Reiner’s filmography to get to the good ones, doesn’t it? This is actually better than some of the hackneyed rom-coms Reiner muddled through, a coming-of-age story about two kids’ pseudo-love story from grade school through middle school. The movie is so earnest you can’t really hate — so vanilla and cheerful that it dares you to be churlish about it. But Reiner has lost any edge he might have had in the Stand by Me years, and this childhood portrait feels safe and scrubbed. Flipped may not be terrible, but it’s instantly forgettable.
Abundantly worthy subject matter undone by unfailingly mediocre execution, Shock and Awe continues Reiner’s recent interest in true-life political drama. Like LBJ, this newspaper thriller stars Woody Harrelson, who plays Jonathan Landay, a Knight Ridder reporter who, alongside fellow journalist Warren Strobel (James Marsden), is determined to expose the lies that the George W. Bush administration were peddling in the buildup to the invasion of Iraq. The denigration of a free press, the uprising of a corrupt Republican regime, the distortion of reality: If you think Shock and Awe is as much about 2018 as it is 2003, then you’re on the same wavelength as Reiner’s virtuous film. But despite Harrelson and Marsden’s agreeably give-’em-hell performances, Shock and Awe suffers in comparison not just to All the President’s Men but to 2017’s The Post. (Reiner’s main characters even acknowledge their Woodward-and-Bernstein cosplay.) Cast and crew are emotionally invested in the urgency of the material, but the bland competency of the whole affair saps it of power. If anything, Shock and Awe mostly reminds you how futile living in the madness of a Fake News world can be.
11. Being Charlie (2016)
Without question Reiner’s most personal movie, this is the story of a rich Hollywood kid (Nick Robinson) with a substance-abuse problem who keeps escaping from rehab facilities before he (all together now) meets the Right Girl at one of them. Co-written by Reiner’s son, Nick, there are parts of Being Charlie that feel almost uncomfortable as Charlie struggles with an enabling mother and a father who is always away (running for governor of California in the movie, rather than directing movies in real life). It’s in those moments where the movie works, but inevitably, it shies away from them to focus on a love story we’ve seen a million times before. Still: You can see Reiner at least trying to shake himself up a bit here, and that’s welcome.
10. LBJ (2017)
In 2016, Fox Searchlight released Jackie, a nervy, subjective portrait of John F. Kennedy’s assassination told through the eyes of his shattered wife (Natalie Portman). Around the same time, Reiner premiered his own take, which starred Woody Harrelson as Kennedy’s vice-president, Lyndon B. Johnson, who felt underappreciated by his commander-in-chief and then had to live up to his shining example after the man was killed. LBJ didn’t finally hit theaters until almost a year after Jackie’s release, but they’re interesting companion pieces, both depicting how legendary supporting characters in the tale of Camelot reconciled Kennedy’s public persona with their own experiences. Unfortunately, LBJ is a pretty standard modern biopic in that it largely focuses on one specific period — Kennedy’s murder and Johnson’s attempt to ratify his predecessor’s Civil Rights Act — and although Harrelson imbues the 36th president with a lot of piss and vinegar, it’s never a fully compelling portrait. LBJ feels like it was made on the cheap — the period production design and makeup are pretty chintzy — and the movie has the earnestness of an instructional video geared to middle-schoolers. What saves LBJ, somewhat, is its inherently fascinating Lincoln-like investigation into how bills get turned into laws. But you’ll nonetheless wonder how anybody other than Reiner would have attacked this material.
9. The Bucket List (2007)
Proof that even Reiner at his most mawkish can work, though it really does help if you give him two of the most charismatic movie stars of all time. This sappy but effective comedy, about two men (Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman) diagnosed with lung cancer and crossing off as many activities from their “bucket list” before they die, pioneered the geezer comedy as we know it (if you’ll forgive the bypassing of Grumpy Old Men), for better or mostly worse. The movie has its moments, and again, you can’t go wrong with these two actors, mugging and charming their way throughout. Worth noting: Other than his near-cameo appearance in James L. Brooks’s 2010 comedy flop How Do You Know, this remains Nicholson’s last significant screen performance, 11 years ago now.
8. Stand by Me (1986)
For Stephen King — who wrote The Body, upon which this movie is based — Stand by Me was a personal one, with elements of the story drawn from his childhood. But it was also a labor of love for Reiner, who told Variety in 2016, “It was the first time that I did anything that was closely connected to my own personality. It had some melancholy in it and also had some humor in it. It was more reflective, and I thought, ‘If people don’t like this, they’re not going to like what I like to do.’” After delivering the comedies This Is Spinal Tap and The Sure Thing, Reiner seemed to respond to Stand by Me’s emotional nuance and nostalgic tone. Of his first three films, it’s fair to say that this wistful adaptation, about a group of young guys (Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O’Connell) in search of a corpse, proved truest to Reiner’s own temperament. There are better, wiser films about boyhood. But for kids who grew up in the ’80s, Stand by Me will always reside in a special corner of their heart — fitting, perhaps, for a film that’s so invested in looking fondly on the past.
7. The Sure Thing (1985)
One of the first ’80s sex comedies that showed you could bring some warmth to the proceedings rather than just gross Revenge of the Nerds crudeness, The Sure Thing demonstrated that Reiner’s heart was always going to be in the right place. He’s perfect here in the story of a teen (John Cusack, only 16 when he was cast) who travels to California for his “sure thing” yet ends up falling in love with his travel companion (Daphne Zuniga). It’s a simple, straightforward, heartwarming comedy, but Reiner was still ambitious enough at this point in his career to keep things from getting overly sappy. Cusack is the perfect fit here, too, the ideal actor to carry the Daphne ’80s romantic comedy into its next phase.
“I was already working on Misery when Harry Met Sally came out and not a day went by when someone didn’t say ‘Keep making those kinds of films,’” Reiner said in early 1990, just a few months before Misery’s release. “And I kept thinking, ‘Geez. What are they going to think when this movie comes out?’” After years of lighter fare, he decided to challenge himself with Misery, a very funny but also very dark Stephen King story about a successful novelist (James Caan) who tries to reinvent himself — and the homicidal fan, Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates), who won’t have it. This was the period where it really did seem like Reiner could do anything, breezily moving from one genre to the next with smooth, audience-friendly efficiency. Misery remains resonant in its depiction of the uneasy relationship between artists and their public, who are always demanding that their needs be served first and foremost. (See: all the modern-day Annies who’ve been liberated thanks to social media.) Bates’s witty, monstrous performance won her an Oscar — the only Academy Award bestowed on a Reiner film.
5. The American President (1995)
The movie that marked the end of Reiner’s golden age as a master of (well-made, well-reviewed) populist pictures, The American President found him reuniting with A Few Good Men screenwriter Aaron Sorkin to deliver an idealistic, grown-up romance about a widowed president (Michael Douglas) courting an impassioned environmental lobbyist (Annette Bening). This is the sort of expert hogwash that Reiner, for a while, did better than anyone: The American President is as much a fantasy about progressive politics as it is about the belief that love can conquer all, but it’s done with such intelligence and relative restraint that you believe in the film’s fantasy. Amid a run of portraying oily, morally suspect individuals, Douglas took time out to play the most charming, hopeful movieland president ever, and he and Bening radiate old-school Hollywood chemistry. As for Sorkin, his savvy, insider-y mixture of personal and political would help inspire his next great achievement, TV’s The West Wing — which promoted this film’s chief of staff, Martin Sheen, to POTUS.
Reiner had shown he could do mainstream comedies and even a dark Stephen King adaptation, but this was Reiner in perhaps his rarest role of all: the Hollywood craftsman, the guy who can give you a good old-fashioned yarn with big massive movie stars and a corny but deeply effective courtroom scene to wrap it up. There isn’t much in Aaron Sorkin’s script that rings the slightest bit true — this is a very movie version of the military — but Reiner is smart enough to simply hand the wild, showy moments to Tom Cruise and Demi Moore and (especially) Jack Nicholson and get the hell out of their way. This is total hokum, but what addictive, relentlessly watchable hokum it is.
During his ’80s and ’90s heyday, Rob Reiner had plenty of hits, but none of them so profoundly impacted the culture as When Harry Met Sally. Other Reiner films have great lines or memorable scenes, but this bittersweet romantic comedy seemed to speak to the eternal, universal insecurities of dating in such a way that many of Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally’s (Meg Ryan) debates still rage on. The film was famously inspired by the friendship of Reiner and late screenwriter Nora Ephron; she interviewed her buddy to hear his stories of romantic woe, incorporating elements of him and her into the two characters. Set in New York and filled with the witty, urbane back-and-forth familiar from dozens of Woody Allen movies, When Harry Met Sally felt like a sophisticated, wised-up love story amid a sea of teen comedies and emerging blockbusters. And it’s also an argument for what a director like Reiner could do so well: There’s no auteur stamp on When Harry Met Sally, but it’s an exceedingly buoyant, smart, funny, romantic movie that seems to know exactly what it’s doing at all times. If that looks easy, notice how hard it is for other filmmakers to pull it off — hell, look at how hard it became for Reiner after a while.
2. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
Four pages of outline, almost no dialogue: From such humble origins came Reiner’s glorious directorial debut, a movie born out of improvisation and a general sense that it would be fun to mock a fictitious metal band on its last legs. At this late stage, to explain why The Godfather of mockumentaries is funny is to waste everyone’s time — it didn’t just create a genre but also suggested a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants comedy style that, like it or not, has since overtaken Hollywood — so let’s instead focus on the film’s surprising depth and genuine pathos. If David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) were simply sexist jerks, This Is Spinal Tap would merely be spitefully humorous; it’s because they’re sweetly clueless, improbably entitled, and touchingly vulnerable that they’re grandly tragic figures. And as Marty Di Bergi, the nonplussed documentarian following Tap on their American tour, Reiner is the movie’s marvelous straight man. Next time you watch This Is Spinal Tap, pay close attention to his performance: He never winks or leans into the joke, making all the inspired idiocy around him that much more hilarious.
What Reiner does so well here is what he, for some reason, is unable to do in his lesser movies: Maintain a sincere, good-hearted view of the world, ride the edge of sentimentality, and ground it all in an ironic, seen-it-all nudge to the ribs. He’s the cornpone sentimentalist who grew up loving Bob and Ray. When he loses control of this instinct, the results are borderline unwatchable. But when he gets it right, like he did with The Princess Bride, it’s simply perfect. This is a movie about storytelling that both undermines and embraces the whole idea of storytelling, winking at the hokiness of fairy tales while still believing in them — a satire of the Happily Ever After story and also a prime example of the genre. That it happens to have about ten eternally memorable characters — including a truly touching performance from Andre the Giant! — is just one more aspect of its impossibility. Not having this be No. 1? Inconceivable.
Grierson & Leitch write about the movies regularly and host a podcast on film. Follow them on Twitter or visit their site.
Source: http://www.vulture.com/2018/07/rob-reiner-movies-ranked.html
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