More Updates

I'm going to try and update more here.

My goal is to have a book or film review every week. A goal I will probably not accomplish but let's see.

TCM Weekly Highlights (November 30-

Those with asterisks are ones I have seen. It will be updated as the week progresses.

Saturday November 30

2pm: The Time Machine(1960). The 1960 technicolor production of H.G. Wells' Sci-fi classic.

4pm: Golden Voyage of Sinbad(1973): "Sinbad battles a fiendish magician and monsters" -TCM. Looks silly but it features a pre-Doctor Who Tom Baker as the villain so, who knows?

8pm: The Searchers(1956)*. Considered by many to not only be the best movie John Wayne did but the best western ever made. After his brother's family is massacred John Wayne begins a search for the only survivor, his niece.

10:15pm: The Wrong Man(1956). Henry Fonda plays a priest wrongfully confused of a crime in this Hitchcock thriller. The good news is he knows who did it, the bad news is

Sunday December 1

5:45pm: Imitation of Life(1959). I think the plot here is about a black mother and a white mother becoming friends. Leonard Maltin gave it a good review so I might take a look.

8pm: Point Blank(1967): A famous Lee Marvin action revenge flick.

Weekend at Bernie's Review

Director: Ted Kotcheff
Starring: Andrew McCarthy, Jonathan Silverman, Terry Kiser, Catherine Mary Stewart
Writer: Robert Klane

Weekend at Bernies is a movie with an interesting premise: Two guys have to pretend that a man who died is still alive by parading the man's corpse around his summer beachfront home over the course of a weekend. Obviously, in order for this to work, the movie has to take a large degree of license when it comes to the decaying nature of dead bodies. Fortunately, the movie is funny enough that you are probably going to forget about that plot hole.

The plot involves two losers, Larry Wilson (Andrew McCarthy) and Richard Parker (Jonathan Wilson) who work at an insurance firm and, after discovering possible embezzlement, are invited by their boss Bernie Lomax (Terry Kiser) for a weekend getaway at his beach home. The two are excited. Unfortunately, the boss was the one who did the embezzling and asks his mob buddies to take them out and they agree. The mob boss then decides to kill Bernie because Bernie has been screwing around with the mob bosses girlfriend. And at the beach, the mob hitman (Don Caulfa) kills Bernie and when the two guys find his body they fail to suspect anything because of the drugs in his shirt pocket. They soon realize their best chance of living out the weekend (while enjoying the sight of beautiful women in bikinis) is to pretend that Bernie is alive.
As you might suspect, there are some plot holes but that is not a problem. The movie has no grand designs and the plot is simply there to give the movie an excuse to force Larry and Richard to lug around a dead body. You'll probably be too busy laughing at the sight gags and the joke that nobody  on the island seems to realize the guy is dead. And I mean nobody. People constantly walk up to him, talk to him, berate him for not talking, and never realize he is dead.

If you turn it on expecting high quality art then you will be disappointed. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy the dead body jokes.

The movie is Rated R for some adult situations and language. I recommend it. Its a fun weekend movie.   If give it a B.

Twilight Zone pilot mini-review

I might do some mini-reviews from time to time. Not full length reviews of a movie but short and sweet reviews, instead it will usually be of some TV episode I watched where there is not enough to fill a full-length review.

Twilight Zone - "Where is Everybody?"
Written by Rod Serling
Directed by Robert Stevens
Starring Earl Holliman as The Pilot
Air Date: 2 October 1959

This first episode of the classic anthology series The Twilight Zone involves a US Air Force pilot who walks into a small town with no memory of who he is. And to make matters worse, there is no one in the town, yet lights strangely flicker on or off and ovens start for no reason. What follows is a look into the effect of loneliness and isolation on the human mind.

The episode is incredibly well-written and well-shot, especially the night-time climax which brings to mind the noir-ish climax of It's a Wonderful Life. Its the kind of scene that would've been nowhere near as good if it was in color. Black and white is perfect for the scene.

The acting by Earl Holliman as the Pilot is quite good. He does a good job not only winning us over with a certain amount of Air Force pilot cocky charm but also, and this is important, subtly portraying the slow creeping madness caused by his isolation in the deserted town. So much so that by the time he finally does crack at the end, its perfectly believable.

So, what's the grade? A.
Especially good first episode. It and the rest of the classic Twilight Zone are available on Netflix Instant right now and I highly recommend viewing this episode.

I might review some more Twilight Zone episodes later, but I can't say when.

Movie Review: 42

42 Review

Director: Brian Helgeland

Writer: Brian Helgeland

Starring: Chadwick Boseman (Jackie Robinson), Harrison Ford (Branch Rickey), Nicole Beharie (Rachel Robinson), Christopher Meloni (Leo Durocher), Ryan Merriman (Dixie Walker), Lucas Black (Pee Wee Reese), Andre Holland (Wendell Smith), Alan Tudyk (Ben Chapman).

Rated: PG-13

Runtime: 128min

Making a movie about racism or any other form of bigotry, even a historical drama about someone overcoming such bigotry, can be difficult. A filmmaker these days has to portray the evils of racism without coming across as preachy and turning off his audience. Stop the movie so you can give the audience a sermon they already know and have not needed in decades (Trying to tell most Americans that its wrong to segregate people by race, for example), and they tune out. That is not to say you can't have a character explain the evils of something, but it must move the story forward. Often such a balancing act is difficult, it seems. 

42 is a movie that accomplishes this balancing act. The movie is about Jackie Robinson's first season in the white-dominated professional baseball league. The movie opens with the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford), telling his two assistants that he is going to integrate professional baseball. When asked why he points out that there are lots of blacks in Brooklyn who will pay to see a Dodgers game "Dollars aren't black and white. They're green." (Hint: This ain't the real reason). So he chooses the talented young baseball player in the Negro Leagues, Jackie Robinson. When they first meet, Rickey tells him that if he wants to play he's going to have to be able to take the incredible amount of abuse he will receive stoically, saying "I want a player who's got the goes not to fight back."

And so he joins the Montreal Monarchs, which is where many Dodgers players are recruited from. And the abuse starts quickly on account of them training in segregationist Florida. When he is signed with the Dodgers, even more comes his way. A group of players even sign a petition against letting him join. Most of them are talked down by the manager Durocher, played here by Christopher Meloni in a great scene where he points out that Robinson is not the last and there are whole bunch of black players who not only have the talent to play but also, as he puts it "the drive" and if the white players want to keep their jobs they are going to have to be good enough not to lose their jobs. This is another sign of the movie's good writing, a lesser writer would have had Meloni give a long speech about the evils of racism. Here, he plays to their self-interest.

So, he's in the Dodgers and the rest of the movie is about how the other players, often reluctantly, not only become more comfortable with having a black player on their team but, inspired by his spirit even at times standing up for him in front of racist managers such as the Phillies' Ben Chapmen (Alan Tudyk of Firefly and the British Death at a Funeral) or angry whites in the stands. Not all the players do so, but when it happens, it nearly always made me want to cheer. 

As you can tell, there is some heavy-handedness, certainly, but given that it is dealing with the racism in early 20th Century America, some heavy-handedness is probably necessary. But that heavy-handedness never devolves into a sermon at the audience. The farthest it goes is when they are playing in Cincinnati and it features a boy watching his father shout racial epithets before slowly joining in. In fact, much of the heavy-handedness that occurs serves to tell us the  that Robinson faced and how he not only overcame those obstacles but, and I know you've heard this 1,000 times but it bears repeating, changed the game of baseball. Even the scene with the boy serves this purpose, but you'll have to see the movie to know how.

There is also the revelation from Branch Rickey about his true motivations for letting him play, which could have become a heavy-handed speech about the evils of racism instead serve to remind the racism that existed back then as well as, and this is why it works, reveal something about who Branch Rickey is and why he is doing this. 

So, all in all, a good movie. Now that is not to say it is without its flaws. The ending is a bit anti-climactic, perhaps a price of staying to close to history. There are also times the scenes between Robinson and his wife, though they serve to make him more likable, do come seem to stop the story.

So I give it between 3 1/2 stars and 4 stars. Not sure if it ranks as a great movie but its certainly a good one and worth the price of admission.

Note: There is a small treat for fans of the long-running TV show Scrubs where John C. McGinley, the abrasive Dr. Cox on the show, plays the ever calm sportscaster Red Barber. 

My Rating System

NOTE: Check my Political/Current Events blog for something on the bombing in Boston.

This is how my rating system of a movie's play's or book's quality works, as of now. This is not precise. I may change it and there may be some fluctuation but this is how I generally see it. Some movies I may be forced to put within a general area, especially those between 3 and 4 stars. For example, one movie I may be forced to say "somewhere between a 3 1/2 and a 4".

5 Star: Best of the Best. Above great. Examples include Casablanca, Dark Knight, The Exorcist, Toy Story Trilogy. Note: This does not mean "perfect". All movies have flaws and the best of the best are no exception.
4 Stars: Great. Highly worth watching. Examples include Iron Man, Avengers, Batman Begins,
3 Stars: Ok. Average. Good enough. Worth watching. For movies its probably a rental unless otherwise stated. Examples include Thors, Iron Man 2.
2 Stars: Not good, but usually still be enjoyable as long as you shut off your brain. Dumb fun. Example would be Transformers.
1 Star: Terrible. Near total crap w/ maybe one or two bright spots.
0-1/2 Star: Makes you ashamed to be a member of the human race.

Some half-stars.
3 1/2: Above average. Recommended for theaters. Examples include Dark Knight Rises, Lincoln,
2 1/2 Stars: Below Average. Not as bad as a two-star.

Happy Easter

Hope you all had a Happy Easter!

Now, here are Judy Garland and Fred Astaire!