Category Archives: Movies with Nudity

Best Friends (1975)

Posted on August 6, 2020 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Road trip turns nightmarish.

Jesse (Richard Hatch) and Pat (Doug Chapin) have been best friends since childhood. Now both are ready to enter into young adulthood. To celebrate they decide to take a road trip via a camper across the American southwest along with their two girlfriends: Kathy (Susanne Benton) and Jo Ella (Ann Noland). As the trip progresses the differences between the two men become more pronounced. Jesse is ready to settle down and get married while Pat remains a free-spirit wanting to party with no limits. Pat also resents the presence of Kathy who he feels is getting in the way of his friendship with Jesse. He tries different tactics to get them to break-up and when that doesn’t work he resorts to a more drastic measures.

The film is interesting to a degree and goes against most other road pictures that usually show the bond between two people growing as the trip progresses while here it devolves. The low key approach allows for a certain diversion including a wonderfully majestic bird’s eye shot of the camper driving along the highway with a beautiful mountain range seen in the background. The pace is slow and the scenes could’ve been trimmed, but first-time director Noel Nosseck manages to at least have some drama flowing in each segment and thus enough to hold a modicum of interest.

Most will be intrigued to see Hatch in his film debut and while his performance is adequate it’s actually Chapin, who’s last film this was to date, that comes off better in a portrayal of a ticking time bomb ready to go off. Although I couldn’t help but notice his severely scarred right hand, which is not a part of the story and only seen briefly in one shot, that looks like the pinkie finger was severed off at some point in an accident and then surgically reattached.

The film’s downfall comes with Pat’s dissent into psychosis, which  needed more context. Friendships ebb and flow and a person could be best friends with a certain individual at one point in their life, but not in another one. When one friend gets married and the other one doesn’t then the single person finds other friends whose lifestyles remain more similar to his. Rarely if ever does it resort to the friend trying to kill the other’s girlfriend. To simply write this all off as being Pat’s inability to adapt to change or his jealousy is not enough. His behavior is too extreme and more of a background on his life and upbringing needed to be shown for us to make sense of it.

It would’ve worked better had it started with the two friends meeting in childhood and showing the good times they had throughout the years before even getting to the road trip, which should’ve been pushed back to the second act instead of right at the beginning. The two talk about their past, but in film it’s better for the viewer to see this for themselves instead of only being told about it. There should’ve also been some explanation for why Jesse didn’t see any red flags to Pat’s psychotic tendencies years earlier as they were so close you’d think he would’ve noticed the imbalanced much sooner instead of it all becoming a shock to him like everyone else at the end.

The ending is weak and offers no resolution. Jesse’s response to Pat’s behavior becomes almost as bizarre making it seem like he’s just as crazy as his friend, but since the characters are so poorly fleshed-out it’s hard to tell if that was the intention or not.

The film’s promotional poster seen above is quite misleading as it implies that’s it’s all about a confrontation between the 4 and a group of Native Americans. It is true there is a scene where a fight breaks-out between them at a bar, but it is brief and does not have anything to do with the main story.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: May 29, 1975

Runtime: 1 Hour 23 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Noel Nosseck

Studio: Crown International Pictures

Available: DVD (Savage Cinema 12-Movie Collection)

Leave a comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Low Budget, Movies with Nudity, Road Movies, Thrillers/Suspense

Tagged , , , , ,

The Man with Two Brains (1983)

Posted on August 1, 2020 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Brain in a jar.

Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr (Steve Martin) is a world famous brain surgeon who accidentally hits Dolores Benedict (Kathleen Turner) one day while driving his car. He immediately does surgery on her and during the recovery the two get married. However, Dolores is only interested in Michael’s money and continues to see other men behind his back. Michael on-the-other hand  meets with Dr. Alfred Necessiter (David Warner) who keeps live brains in jars in his condo. Michael (Steve Martin) begins communicating with one of the brains (voice of Sissy Spacek) via telepathy and decides it is she that he really loves. When he becomes aware that the brain will not survive much longer on its own he desperately tries to find a suitable body to transplant it into.

This Steve Martin/Carl Reiner production, which is their third project together, certainly has its moments and I particularly liked the the mysterious elevator killer although once his identity is finally revealed viewers today will have no idea who that person actually is. However for the most part the film is highly uneven. Having it centered as a horror movie parody would’ve given it better focus and the jokes more of a point-of-view instead of just throwing in any haphazard gag it wants many of which have nothing to do with its already paper thin plot.

I realize this is all meant to be a very silly comedy, but having two victims get hit by a vehicle, once with Turner and then later on with Stephanie Kramer, in her film debut, where neither victim shows any sign of blood, scratches, or bruising is a bit ridiculous. This is where if it had been approached as a horror/comedy then they could’ve thrown in some gore, but in an over-the-top goofy way, that would’ve allowed a new dimension for laughs while also given it just a smidgen of reality to it, which otherwise is lacking.

Martin’s ability to have a conversation with a brain in a jar without any special apparatus connecting the two is equally ridiculous. The excuse is that it’s ‘telepathy’, but why is he able to communicate with just the one brain when there are many others that are also in the room? What special ability does this brain have over the others and why is Martin the only one that can hear it and no one else?

Having Martin hear Spacek’s voice as her thoughts come into his brain doesn’t make sense either. The definition of telepathy is the  communication of thoughts and ideas other than the known senses, but nothing to do with voices. Thoughts in themselves don’t have a distinct voice connected to them unless the brain is attached to a voice box, which this one isn’t.  It is true that thoughts going on in person’t own head may have that person’s voice, so Martin should actually be hearing his own voice as his brain deciphers the messages being sent to it from the other one much like if he were reading out loud a note that had been written by someone else.

This also marks an odd career choice for Turner who burst onto the scene with her sexy performance in Body Heat . I realize that in her effort to avoid typecasting she wanted to do something that was completely different from her first film, but her character is too campy and one-dimensional and she ends up getting completely upstaged by Martin in every scene they’re in. The role also has a creepy foreshadowing as her character gains a lot of weight much like she has in reality due to her rheumatoid arthritis. In real-life it’s the drugs and chemo that caused the weight gain while here it’s created through make-up and a body suit and intended for comical effect.

There’s also an interesting behind-the-scenes story dealing with a scene involving a 5-year-old girl, played by Mya Stark, who must verbally repeat back to Martin from memory a very complicated set of directions that he had just told her. Since she was too young to read no cue cards were used and director Reiner figured it would take all day to film the scene convinced that many retakes would inevitably be required for her to finally get the lines right, but instead to his shock she repeated the lines back correctly the very first time. Then 30 years later in 2012 Reiner was standing in line at a store when a female business executive approached him and introduced herself. She stated that they had met many years before, but Reiner didn’t recognize her until she told him that she was that little girl now all grown up.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: June 3, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 31 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Carl Reiner

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Campy Comedy, Movies with a Hospital setting, Movies with Nudity, Romance, Sci-Fi

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Pennies from Heaven (1981)

Posted on July 6, 2020 | 3 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Escaping from the depression.

Arthur (Steve Martin) is a struggling sheet music salesmen during the depression, who’s looking to escape his dreary existence by becoming a songwriter, but finds that no one including his wife (Jessica Harper) cares about what his dreams, which leaves him feeling lost and alone. He then meets perky schoolteacher Eileen (Bernadette Peters) and the two begin an affair despite her not knowing that he is already married. When she gets pregnant and loses her job because of it Arthur is nowhere to be found and instead he gets unjustly tabbed for committing rape on a blind woman (Eliska Krupka) that he did not do.

The film is based on a 6-part miniseries that aired on the BBC in 1978 and starred Bob Hoskins. Martin saw it and was so enamored with the story that he became compelled to have it remade here and the studio even hired the same writer, Dennis Potter, to pen the script although the studio forced him to do 13 rewrites before they finally accepted it. Despite the extravagant musical numbers, which are pretty good, and positive critical reception, the filmed failed to achieve any success at the box office where it took in a paltry 2 million that barely made a dent in its 22 million budget.

A lot of the blame can be placed on the casting of Martin. While I admire him for not allowing himself to be typecast, and for dying his hair brown here, he still comes off as misplaced. You keep waiting for him to say something goofy and absurd like his character in The Jerk would and when he doesn’t you start feeling bored and frustrated. For his part he lashed out at those that didn’t like it calling them ‘ignorant scum’ while anyone who did enjoy the film he labeled ‘wise and intelligent’.

Yet his character is also a problem as he comes off as arrogant and selfish the whole way through. He constantly antagonizes his shy wife pressuring her to submit to his kinky sexual fantasies and when she doesn’t he threatens to walk out. He then lies about his marital status to Peters and is cold and ambivalent when she gets pregnant making him seem like a true jerk and not the funny kind in his earlier film.

Jessica Harper I enjoyed much more. I think she gives her finest performance here and I was genuinely surprised she wasn’t nominated for an Academy Award. Her interpretation of a shy, sheltered Midwestern wife from a more innocent era is completely on-target and I came to sympathize far more with her than Martin. The line that she utters when the police investigators come to her house, after Martin gets accused of rape, is the best moment in the movie. Peters is good too, but I felt her character got in the way and the film would’ve gelled better had it focused solely on the dysfunctional marriage.

The dance numbers are well choreographed with the best one being with Christopher Walken who does a bona fide striptease that took him over 2 months to rehearse. The bit in which Martin and Peters find themselves transported inside a film starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers is quite cool too although Astaire himself tried blocking the footage from being used. He later commented that as a viewer ” I have never spent two more miserable hours in my life” and describing every scene in the film as being “cheap and vulgar.”

The story though starts out too slowly and for the first hour seems like there really isn’t any plot at all. It improves by the second half, but there needed to be more urgency at the beginning and many viewers may not be willing to stick with it.  Having the actors lip-sync the songs was a bad idea too. It gives the whole thing an amatuerish vibe making it seem like it was intended to be a campy comedy when it really wasn’t.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: December 11, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 48 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Herbert Ross

Studio: MGM

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

3 Comments

Posted in 80's Movies, Movies Based on Songs, Movies that take place in Chicago, Movies with Nudity, Musical, Surreal/Fantasy

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Sweetie (1989)

Posted on June 2, 2020 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Sister is mentally ill.

Kay (Karen Colston) has begun a relationship with Louis (Tom Lycos) and things seem to be going smoothly as they move into a home together, but it quickly unravels when he sister Dawn ‘Sweetie’ (Genevieve Lemon) shows up with her boyfriend Bob (Michael Lake). Sweetie has been institutionalized in the past and her wild mood swings and erratic behavior quickly cause turmoil particularly with Kay. She asks her parents (Jon Darling, Dorothy Barry) for help, but her dad refuses to recognize Sweetie’s tragic current state and instead continually hearkens back to her childhood years when she was a cute kid with budding talent who would perform songs and dances to the family’s entertainment and delight.

This is a hard film to critique  as it starts off as a quirky comedy, but by the midpoint it becomes more dramatic and filled with a lot of uncomfortable even cringe worthy scenes as Sweetie’s mental decline becomes achingly apparent. Not only do you feel sad for her, but also for how it causes such a severe strain for the rest of her family, which accurately illustrates how mental illness isn’t just a one person issue as their behaviors will adversely affect those around them too.

The fact that the film’s tone switches halfway through, which would be considered a major no-no by Hollywood standards, is part of the reason why it works as it replicates real-life where sometimes you can have a touching, humorous moment only to suddenly get thrown into a troubling one.  This also shapes what life is like living with a mentally-ill individuals who may seem ‘okay’, but can turn erratic sometimes without warning and this ongoing tension vividly comes through for the viewer until they feel the same way as the characters.

I found the father though to be the most entertaining and interesting. One minute he’s scheming to get Sweetie out of the family car, so they can leave on a trip without her and then the next minute he’s driving back to pick-her-up, so they can be ‘one happy family’ again. While this may sound overly contradictory to some I felt it brought out  the inner turmoil many parents feel in dealing with their grown children where at times they can’t stand them, for whatever reason, but at other points can’t stand to be without them either.

Director Jane Campion, in her feature film directorial debut, adds in interesting touches like having the camera frame the characters off-center where instead of seeing them captured in the center of the screen they are shown in the right-hand corner, which helps accentuate the tone of the subject matter. There’s also an odd time-lapsed cutaways detailing a seedling tree pushing its way through the dirt and above ground, which wasn’t exactly necessary to the main plot, but kind of cool nonetheless.

Campion also wisely doesn’t insult the viewer’s intelligence with pat answers to a complex problem. Mental illness cannot be cured or even  always stabilized with medications, so leaving the viewer with a feel-good ending where everything works out and everybody is happy would be a cop-out and thankfully gets avoided here. Instead the we’re left pondering troubling questions, which stays with you long after it’s over and makes this a far better movie than most because of it.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: September 28, 1989

Runtime: 1 Hour 37 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Jane Campion

Studio: Filmpac Distribution

Available: DVD, Blu-ray (Criterion Collection), Amazon Video

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Foreign Films, Movies from Australia, Movies with Nudity, Quirky

Tagged , , ,

Heartland (1979)

Posted on May 10, 2020 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Life on the frontier.

In 1910 a widow named Elinore (Conchata Ferrell) and her 7-year-old daughter Jerrine (Megan Folsom) travel to Wyoming where she gets a job as a housekeeper to rancher named Clyde (Rip Torn). The two slowly fall-in-love, eventually marry, and have a baby of their own. Unfortunately the harsh winter and remote locale takes its toll causing tragedy to both their small family and to the ranch itself.

The story is based on the letters written by Elinore Pruitt Stewart to her former employer as she described her adventures working on a ranch as a homesteader to Henry Clyde Stewart during the years of 1910 to 1914. The film stays very faithful in tone and content to the period and some of the most fascinating moments are simply observing the different chores that they had to do back then and what now comes off as very archaic.  Shooting the film on-location in the Rocky Mountain region, substituting Montana for Wyoming, and capturing all four seasons helps add to the authenticity.

Farrell’s strong personality gives life to her character and reveals the inner strength required to endure and survive the hardships of frontier life and it’s amazing how closely she resembled the real Elinore Stewart as evidenced by an old photograph of her taken in 1913. Torn is also quite good, but his thick Scandinavian accent makes it difficult to understand everything he says. I also really enjoyed Folsom as the young girl, who doesn’t have much dialogue, but more than makes up for it with her expressive face. Lilia Skala is also good as Mrs. Landuer a headstrong elderly neighbor who goes by the nickname of Grandma.

While the soundtrack matches the period flavor I felt there was too much of it and would’ve enjoyed more silence as that is pretty much all you would’ve heard anyways on the frontier during that time. I would’ve also liked more of a backstory to Elinore, specifically showing why she was widowed, in real-life her husband died in a railroad accident before their daughter Jerrine was even born, and yet it would’ve helped the viewer understand Elinore better had this been dramatized, or at least touched on.

The ending is also too abrupt. It brings up all the challenges in maintaining the ranch, but no conclusion as to whether they were able to withstand them all or not. Several story threads get left hanging even though in real-life Elinore lived 19 years past when this story took place and Clyde lived for another 35 years, so having some denouncement at the end explaining where they ultimately ended up past what we see here was in my opinion very much needed and the fact that it doesn’t occur makes the film seem like only half-a-movie.

There’s also some scenes that may make certain viewers uncomfortable. Many of them deal with animals getting killed including a wild pig that gets shot at point blank range and then skinned and gutted. Since this was apart of the frontier life back then I didn’t have a real problem with it, but others might. The most disturbing scene though deals with a cow trying to give birth and requires both Torn and Farrell sticking their hands inside the cow’s vagina at the same time in order to turn the calf around, so that its head will come out first. They then tie a rope around the calf’s head and yank him out in extremely explicit fashion. While some may consider this the miracle of birth others may not be able to stomach it, but overall it does help to heighten the realism either way.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: September 22, 1979

Runtime: 1 Hour 36 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Richard Pearce

Studio: Filmhaus

Available: DVD, Amazon Video

2 Comments

Posted in 70's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies Based on Short Stories, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity, Westerns

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Scandal (1989)

Posted on March 12, 2020 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Politician has an affair.

Based on the Profumo affair that rocked the British parliament in 1963 the story centers around an exotic dancer named Christine Keeler (Joanne Whalley-Kilmer) who catches the eye of Stephen Ward (John Hurt) a doctor with a thing for attractive young ladies. She moves in with him and the two share an unusual relationship where he pimps her and her friend Mandy (Bridget Fonda) out to members of the conservative party. Her sexual affair with one of the high-ranking officials of parliament, John Profumo (Ian McKellen) eventually reaches the attention of the press and leads to far-reaching ramifications for all involved.

Part of why this movie didn’t work for me and may not for others is that politicians getting involved in a scandal is no longer a big deal. We’re living in an age where political figures have been caught having affairs, even while in office, and it isn’t enough to have them removed. Yet this film expects the viewer to be in jaw-dropping shock from the first frame to the last even though in this cynical age it would be more shocking if one actually lived a squeaky clean life.

The first hour meanders along from one racy sex scene to the next until it almost seems like a soft core porn flick with no story. I had no idea where any of this cavorting around was going to lead and wasn’t really all that intrigued in finding out either. First time director Michael Caton-Jones takes too much of a detached approach to his characters. They all come off like wild sexual animals unable to control their inner urges, but with no other discernible differences making everything that goes on seem like one giant frolicking blur with no point.

Hurt gives a great performance, but I didn’t understand the motivations of his character. Why doesn’t he want to sleep with Christine and instead get more turned-on listening to her stories about her having sex with other men? What about him makes him this way, which the film should’ve helped answer, but doesn’t.

Whalley is too old for her part as she was supposed to be playing someone who was 19, but in reality was already 29. Having a true 19-year-old play the part, and have a definite look of innocence about her, may have given the provocative material a little more bite.  Her character also has the same issues as with Hurts. I got how she wanted to get away from her impoverished surroundings and sleeping with rich influential men could help her do that, but I didn’t understand why she liked her Hurt, or their unusual relationship.

The film ends with the court proceedings, which like with everything else doesn’t have the impact that it should. While the attention to detail and accuracy is impressive it would’ve worked better had it began with the trial and then worked backwards through flashback showing how they all got there instead of the linear narrative that it does take, which is too plodding. Focusing on only one of two characters would’ve helped too instead of trying to encompass so many of them where none of them are all that interesting or distinct.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: March 3, 1989

Runtime: 1 Hour 46 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Michael Caton-Jones

Studio: Miramax

Available: DVD, Blu-ray (Region B/2)

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, British Movies, Court Drama, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies with Nudity, Sex

Tagged , , , , , , ,

That Cold Day in the Park (1969)

Posted on March 10, 2020 | 3 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Spinster takes in boy.

Frances (Sandy Dennis) is a rich, but lonely woman living a reclusive life inside her luxury Vancouver apartment with only her service staff to keep her company. One day she spots a teen boy (Michael Burns) sitting all alone on a park bench while it’s raining. She decides to invite him up to her apartment where she gives him food and a shower and becomes very attached to him despite the fact that he does not speak. Unbeknownst to her he has a whole other life with friends and family, but decides to exploit Frances’ generosity for his own gain only to learn that Frances has her own devious plans in mind.

The film’s only interesting aspect is Robert Altman’s direction, which is far different from the later movies that he did in the ’70’s, which emphasized conversations going on by secondary characters who weren’t always even in the scene, which here occurs only once when Frances goes to a doctor’s office, but is otherwise non-existent. Instead Altman successfully captures Frances’ isolated condition including the quiet apartment atmosphere where the viewer feels as trapped inside the four walls of the place as the character’s and the idea that there was an actual film crew on the set with the actors seems almost hard to believe. I also enjoyed the way the boy’s family life is shown by having the camera remaining outside and peering into the house’s windows to capture the action and dialogue going on inside.

The film fails though to be compelling as there is no reason given for why Frances feels so compelled to bring in this boy, or why this otherwise pretty, able-bodied woman should be so alone in the first place. One scene even has another middle-aged suitor propositioning her with a relationship, which she coldly refuses, but why? Is she more into teen boys and if so this needs to get explained and the reason given for it.

Dennis is an interesting actress, but isn’t up to playing characters with a sinister side and she’s a bit too young for the role. An older woman such as Ingrid Bergman would’ve been far better able to convey the age disparity between the two characters, but she unfortunately refused the part when offered. Burns is only adequate and the fact that he doesn’t initially speak makes the dynamics between the two interesting and the film should’ve delayed the fact that he could talk until the end, instead of revealing this in the middle part, which takes away any potential for mystery and intrigue.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending, which consists of Dennis trapping Burns inside her apartment makes no sense. The fact that she nails the windows shut is ridiculous as he would only need to pry the nails out of the wood, which he successfully does to a few of them anyways, in order to open the windows back up and get out. He is also physically stronger than her and the fact that she uses no weapon means he could overpower her if he wanted. Besides his family already knew where he was as his sister (Susanne Benton) came to visit him and would most likely come looking for him when he didn’t come home, so having it end by portraying him as a helpless hostage with no way of escaping is quite weak and unsatisfying.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: June 8, 1969

Runtime: 1 Hour 46 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Robert Altman

Studio: Commonwealth United Entertainment

Available: DVD, Blu-ray (Region B/2), Amazon Video

3 Comments

Posted in 60's Movies, Drama, Movies Based on Novels, Movies from Canada, Movies with Nudity

Tagged , , , , , , ,

There’s a Girl in My Soup (1970)

Posted on February 22, 2020 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Playboy falls for hippie.

Robert (Peter Sellers) is a dashing playboy who enjoys having random sexual encounters with women, even having sex with a bride on her wedding day. Despite being in his 40’s he shows no signs of wanting to settle down and get married. Then he meets Marion (Goldie Hawn) a groupie for a rock band who finds out that its lead singer Jimmy (Nicky Henson) has been unfaithful to her. With nowhere else to go she lets Robert pick her up and take her back to his pad where he tries to seduce her, but without much luck.

Although the stageplay for which this film is based did quite well its translation to the screen leaves much to be desired.  Despite director Ray Boulting’s efforts to liven up the scenery by placing several scenes in exotic locales while also sprucing up Robert’s place by inserting his bathroom to have all mirrors in it that cover both the walls and ceiling, the film still ends up coming off like a filmed stageplay that lacks both energy and action. Even the dialogue, that usually helps  keep other plays that have evolved onto the big screen, lacks bite and becomes as stale as the rest of the proceedings.

The relationship is only funny when Marion rebuffs Robert’s advances and openly tells him how unsexy he really is, but when she foolishly ignores her better judgement and starts falling for the cad is when the whole thing goes downhill. There’s also confusion for why Robert, who openly enjoyed his single life and sleeping around with various beautiful women, which he seemed to have no trouble getting, would suddenly fall for a young woman that he didn’t have much in common with. For a relationship to begin both sides have to initially be looking for one and there is absolutely no hint that is what Robert wanted, so what about Marion got him to suddenly change his mind?

Sellers is okay although critics at the time complained that his performance was ‘lifeless’, which it is, but he makes up for it with his Cheshire cat grin. The role though doesn’t allow him to be inventive, or put on many of his different accents or personas, which he is so well known for. The character and situation are also too similar to the one that he played  in I Love You Alice B. Toklas, which he did just two years earlier.

Hawn is great and I enjoyed seeing her playing a snarky woman instead of the spacey blonde that she usually does, you even get a nice shot of her naked backside, but her character is too similar to one that she did in Butterflies are Free. In fact the two people that come-off best here are not the stars at all, but instead John Comer and Diana Dors as a middle-aged, bickering couple who should’ve been given more screen time.

Overall there’s just not enough laughs here to make sitting through it worth it. The plot has no point and the characters don’t grow or evolve making it a waste of time for its two leads whose talents are above this type of material.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: December 15, 1970

Runtime: 1 Hour 36 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Ray Boulting

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

Leave a comment

Posted in 70's Movies, British Movies, Comedy, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies with Nudity, Romance

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Children of a Lesser God (1986)

Posted on February 18, 2020 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Romance with deaf woman.

James (William Hurt) gets a job as an instructor at a school for the deaf. He’s brought in to try and teach the students to become less reliant on sign language and to speak more. It is there that he becomes infatuated with Sarah (Marlee Matlin) a 23-year old janitor who used to be a student there. She refuses to speak despite James’ efforts to get her to. Eventually they get into a relationship where James still insists that she must learn to speak, which creates a wedge between the two that could eventually drive them apart.

The film is based on the play of the same name by Mark Medoff, which in turn was based on the real-life experiences of deaf actress Phyllis Frelich  and her relationship with her husband Robert Steinberg. The play was quite successful and ran for 887 performances, but when it transitioned to film several changes were made most notably that in the play the Sarah character was a former student to James, but here that’s not the case, which to me didn’t make a lot of sense. It almost seemed like James became more obsessed with a janitor than his own students even though they suffered from the same fears of speaking as she did and the story could’ve been just as riveting had it stuck to his dealings with them, who otherwise end up getting seen only intermittently.

The whole romance angle comes off as forced especially since James blurts out the ‘I love you’ line before any relationship had even been established as they had  previously gone out to dinner as friends and not as a date. In many real-life situations when one partner says the ‘love’ statement too soon it can drive the other person away instead of bringing them closer and with Sarah being as defensive as she was that’s exactly what I think would’ve happened in this case.

It would’ve been better, especially since film is a visual medium, had we seen the relationship go the next level through actions and not words perhaps by having James impulsively jump into the pool that Sarah is swimming in and then have the two playfully splash each other before ending up with a passionate embrace and kiss, which would’ve hit-home the same point to the viewer, but without the melodramatic dialogue.

The constant use of the sign language that the two used to communicate with each other I liked, but got annoyed with the way James had to not only verbally repeat everything he said with his hands, but everything Sarah communicates with her hands as well. I would presume that a conversation done with sign language should be in silence, much like at the party that Sarah goes to with her deaf friends where everyone speaks with their hands while saying nothing with their mouths. I realize that it’s to the viewer’s benefit that James verbally ‘narrates’ what’s being said, but it comes-off as unrealistic and using subtitles during these segments would’ve been better.

Matlin’s Academy Award winning performance is excellent and proves that great acting isn’t just about conveying lines, which she, sans one sentence, doesn’t have, but also about facial expression which she does brilliantly. The scene where she goes swimming in an indoor pool and the viewer hears nothing but silence is excellent as well and helps us get inside the head of a deaf person and sense what their world is like. The story though goes on a bit too long and never really confirms if their relationship permanently works out long term, or not and for having to sit through so many of the couple’s ups-and-downs that’s one question that should’ve gotten answered.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: October 31, 1986

Runtime: 1 Hour 59 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Randa Haines

Studio: Paramount

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

1 Comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Academy Award Winners for Best Actress, Adolescence/High School, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies with Nudity, Romance

Tagged , , , , ,

Hardcore (1979)

Posted on February 11, 2020 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: His daughter does porn.

Jake (George C. Scott) is a conservative businessman living in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who is raising his teenage daughter Kristen (Ilah Davis) as a single parent only to have her disappear while on a church sponsored road trip to California. Jake then hires a detective (Peter Boyle) to track down her whereabouts and after some searching he finds that she’s entered the world of porn, which compels Jake to go to California and pose as a adult film producer in hopes that he can get information from those working in the business that will eventually lead him to Kristen.

While the storyline has some potentially interesting aspects it gets handled in too much of an over-the-top way, particularly at the beginning, to be fully effective. The opening song sung by Susan Raye is too heavily tinged with a country music sound and the religious aspects of the citizens, who debate Bible passages even during a holiday dinner, gets overplayed. Having a brief scene showing Jake leaving church after attending a service was all that was needed to convey that the character was on the conservative end without having to throw in all of the other heavy-handedness.

The segments dealing with the porn scene are equally botched. For one thing with the advent of the internet the adult film business has changed drastically making what we see here quite dated and irrelevant.  We also learn barely nothing about the daughter, or how exactly she got into doing porn. The film implies that she meets some man on her trip who apparently ‘tricked’ or ‘drugged’ or ‘kidnapped’ her into doing porn and that could be the only possible explanation for why anyone would ever do it, which I suppose at that time was the answer most mainstream audiences would accept. However, there are many famous female porn stars from that era who insist they choose to get into the business and weren’t forced.

The film would’ve been far stronger had writer/director Paul Schrader actually done some research into the people who worked in the business, which I felt he hadn’t done as the porn producers are portrayed in the same broad caricature way as the religious people at the beginning. Having the daughter choose to get into the business and then cutting back-and-forth between her dealings inside the adult movie world and her father’s search for her would’ve made the movie more insightful.

I did however enjoy seeing conservative/small-town Jake get plunged into a dark, seedy world that he wasn’t used to and the many adjustments that he makes, including buying a whole new wild wardrobe in order to fit in. His friendship with one of the female porn stars, which is convincingly played by Season Hubley, is quite fascinating especially their conversations and an aspect of the film that I wished had been played-up more.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending, which involves a big shoot-out on the streets of L.A. gets too Hollywood-like and should’ve been avoided. Having Jake finally meet-up with his daughter and their subsequent stilted conversation, was equally dumb and really hurts the movie as a whole. Originally the script had the daughter dying in a car accident before Jake was able to find her and since her character remains pretty much an enigma anyways, that’s the ending that they should’ve kept.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: February 9, 1979

Runtime: 1 Hour 48 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Paul Schrader

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray (U.K. release) Amazon Video, YouTube

1 Comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Drama, Movies with Nudity, Sex

Tagged , , , , , ,