Tag Archives: Movies

Eureka (1982)

Posted on January 8, 2024 | Leave a comment

eureka1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: He discovers some gold.

Jack (Gene Hackman) has been searching the Yukon for over 15 years in the hopes of one day coming upon some gold. Then one day he finds it and becomes super rich. 20 years later he’s living on his own island, married, and with a grown daughter named Tracy (Theresa Russell). Jack though has grown ornery through the years and has managed to alienate most of his family including Tracy’s husband Claude (Rutger Hauer) whom Jack can’t get along with and the two regularly argue to the point that it also affects his relationship with his daughter. Jack is also at odds with the local mobsters headed by Mayakofsky (Joe Pesci) who wanted to open a casino on the island and are willing to resort to any violent means necessary in order to get that done.

The film is based loosely on the life of Sir Harry Oakes who, like with the main character here, scoured many countries looking for gold for 15 years before finally laying claim to a fortune. He then retired to the Bahamas and ultimately was found murdered in 1943 in a crime that has remained unsolved. The studio though did not know what type of audience to aim the film to and thus shelved it for a year only to release it to limited theaters where it managed to recoup a paltry $123,572 out of its initial $11 million budget making it one of the biggest box office bombs in history.

As a visual exercise, given its director, its a spellbinding ride. Director Nicholas Roeg approaches it as a fable-like tale and creates the artic in a surreal type of way giving it an almost outer-worldly look and feel. To an extent this works and there’s a few memorable scenes including a barefoot man lying in the cold who blows his head-off, via a loaded gun, in one very unexpected, shocking moment that’s very realistically grisly. The death by blowtorch, which happens a bit later is effectively vivid as well. However, there’s other metaphysical elements like a mysterious stone that gets handed to Jack that alludes a bit too much to a magical quality and takes away that this is actually based on a true story and instead makes it seem like it’s all just a made-up metaphorical fable, which starts to have a pretentious quality.

The plot is too thin and the second act labors badly. Joe Pesci is a dynamic actor, but here his part is boring and he doesn’t come-off as threatening enough to give his scenes the proper tension. There’s also no insight given to why the gangsters choose to pick-on Jack, as this is a man who is quite rich and could hire his own protection and enforcers and not someone you’d think could be easily intimidated. So why bother with him at all and just find another island to build a casino on? In the real-life incident Harry Oakes went out of way to try to ban casinos from the entire island nation as he did not approve of gambling and thus caused the ire of the criminal underworld, but the movie doesn’t bother to explain this and thus makes the motivations of the bad guys confusing.

Acting-wise its a joy to watch especially Hackman. He has played so many heroes in his film career that it’s fun seeing him be a jerk and he does it well particularly when he gets on his alcoholic wife about ‘laying off the sauce’. Ed Lauter, who’s usually a heavy, is entertaining with this constant nervous look on his face as he ends up being the reluctant middle-man who gets played by both sides. Rutger Hauer is brilliant as usual giving each of his moments a creepy finesse as only he can do. Two of his more memorable bits are when he swallows a small piece of gold while in Jack’s presence and when he has a meltdown at a formal dinner party and angerly, even frighteningly, demands they all must go home.

Of course being that she’s the director’s wife you get ample visuals of Theresa Russell with and without clothes on. The two became a couple while filming Bad Timing a few years earlier and despite a nearly 30-year age difference got married. I’ve often think it’s odd though when a husband directs a movie in which she’s in bed naked with another man, in this case Hauer, who’s also sans clothes. Don’t know if many other husbands would like that idea as the erotic scenes weren’t necessarily needed though I kind of wonder if it’s not another case of the trophy wife syndrome where the old guy wants to brag to the world: look at this hot little number I get to go home to and you don’t and thus the nude scenes are just there to make all the other guys jealous.

Spoiler Alert!

The climactic court room scenes, in which Hauer is placed inside a cage during the proceedings, aren’t effective. Mainly because he acts as his own lawyer and questions Russell on the stand who goes on a long, teary-eyed, rant about her father and his perceived psychological motives, that ceases to be the proper question/answer decorum that would be expected in a regular court setting. It’s unlikely that any judge would let this go on the way it does, or that the jury, or other attorneys would be so captivated as they are and not begin rolling their eyes after awhile, or objecting to the histrionics. Having Hackman killed off doesn’t help things as he was the guy the viewer most connected with while Hauer was a creepy guy who behaved erratically and expecting the audience to suddenly emotionally side with him at the end was an overreach.

Released: May 20, 1983

Runtime: 2 Hours 10 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Nicholas Roeg

Studio: United Artists

Available: DVD-R, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Court Drama, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity

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Strange Shadows in an Empty Room (1976)

Posted on January 5, 2024 | Leave a comment

strange

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Cop’s sister dies mysteriously.

Tony (Stuart Whitman) is a tough-as-nails veteran cop who gets the shocking news that his younger sister Louise (Carole Laure) is found dead at a party she had attended. Initially he presumes it’s George (Martin Landau) a middle-aged doctor whom she’d been having an affair with and who gave her a injection at the party, but later he realizes there might be more to the story than he thought and begins investigating other avenues that leads him to a wild and completely unexpected conclusion.

The film was directed by Alberto De Martino who had done other Italian produced films that were rip-offs of better known Hollywood hits with this one clearly being inspired by Dirty Harry. It was filmed in Montreal and Ottawa, Canada, but done by an Italian film crew making it seem more like an overseas production with very little Canadian elements to it. Overall the quality looks cheap and the story has a lot of twists that don’t make a lot of sense, or are believable.

Two that stood out right away to me is during the party scene where Louise fakes illness simply to get George’s attention to make him come over there and away from his wife. Then when he tries to help her she lets him know it was all a gag. A few minutes later she passes out for real and he responds in a worried way, but you’d think since he got taken advantaged of just moments earlier he’d presume this was just another prank and not take it seriously. Also, at her funeral Tony begins to suspect there’s more to her death than what is known and requests an autopsy be done, but an autopsy is standard procedure that should be done after any unexplained death, especially since the victim was so young, and thus seems absurd that he should have to request it only as her body is already in the casket and ready to be buried.

Whitman, who was nearing 50, looks too old for this kind of thing and it’s hard to imagine he would, in reality, be able to physically keep up with these much younger suspects who force him to chase them around in airports, along crowded city sidewalks, and even in hospitals. He’s not the most ethical guy either as he has no problem drowning one of the men he’s questioning in a sink of water as a method of interrogation, which should normally get an officer in trouble. There’s also no glimpses of his personal life, so we never learn anything about him, or see any other dimension except for his rough cop persona. Most other cop movies, or at least the good ones, do have a few scenes dealing with the policeman’s private side, but here there’s none, which makes the character flat and uninteresting. Having the victim be his sister didn’t make too much sense since she was clearly quite a bit younger than him and making her his daughter would’ve been more believable and more devastating when he has to come to terms with her darker side.

The supporting characters are, just like with Whitman’s, poorly fleshed-out. It’s hard to be intrigued who the suspects are when they all seem alike and say and do nothing that’s interesting. The film does have one long car chase, which has some impressive stunts, but it seemed unnecessary as the man driving away from the cops really didn’t have much to hide and is essentially not interrogated once Whitman catches up to him, and he offers only a little piece to the puzzle, so why tear up the city streets and completely destroy two cars if he’s not in dire trouble? Better to have saved this for the finale with the bad guy who really is the culprit than just some minor player who isn’t seen, or heard of again.

I did enjoy the foot chase through the hospital that comes at the end and even goes through a maternity ward and ultimately onto the roof of the place. The story does feature many twists and I did appreciate the way it shows how policeman can make the wrong guesses on who they think is guilty and go on many long tangents that don’t lead anywhere before they realize their mistake. However, more effort should’ve been made to create unique characters as the ones provided here are wooden and banal.

Alternate Title: Blazing Magnum

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: March 9, 1976

Runtime: 1 Hour 39 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Alberto De Martino

Studio: Fida

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

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cult, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Foreign Films, Italian Films, Movies from Canada, Mystery, Police Drama

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A Perfect Couple (1979)

Posted on January 2, 2024 | Leave a comment

perfect2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Meeting through dating service.

Sheila (Marta Heflin) is a singer in a traveling rock band run by Ted (Ted Neeley) who is quite demanding and openly berates and even fines members of the group who do not follow his orders. Alex (Paul Dooley) is a middle-aged Greek man still living at home with his domineering father (Tito Vandis) and extended family who berate him at every turn for not conforming to the family orthodox. Both are single and lonely and decide to join a dating service. From there they get connected and go on a first date at an outdoor orchestra concert where it rains and they both get wet. Despite the mishap Alex pressures Sheila for a second date, but miscommunication causes problems here as well. They eventually go their separate ways by dating other people they meet at the service, but Alex feels the need to try one more time to make it work and thus goes on tour with Sheila’s band as they hit the road, but finds their communal lifestyle is not for him.

The inspiration for the movie came while Robert Altman was shooting A Wedding and intrigued with the idea of what would happen if Paul Dooley’s character in that film started dating Sandy Dennis’ character and thus decided to write a whole movie about them. Problems though started right away during rehearsals when Dooley, who’s allergic to cats, could not handle being in the same room with Dennis, who was a major cat lover and would usually bring her pets to the reading, which would send him into a severe allergic reaction. Even when she quit bringing the felines with her it still caused issues with Dooley due to the cat hairs on her clothing. Altman then cut Dennis from the cast and had the part rewritten for Heflin, who was 33 at the time, but looked much younger like she was only 22 or 23 and thus accentuating the differences between the couple.

The film starts out with the two already on their first date instead of showing them viewing potential dates through the taped interviews that the service had available, which I felt was needed. As a guy I could see why Dooley would get into a young, semi-hot chick like Heflin as lonely guys, no matter their age, can instantly ‘fall-in-love’ with a woman from their looks alone, but both need to agree to the date before they go and I couldn’t understand why Heflin would to go out with a guy who was way older and didn’t seem to have much going for him. Maybe all of the other prospects were total duds and he was the best of the lot, so she decided to give it a try, or maybe she had some sort of father complex, but that’s something that still needs to be revealed and the fact that it isn’t leaves a big gaping logic hole.

The characters are palatable to some extent, but behave in ways that makes them at times quite infuriating. Dooley is especially problematic. Granted he’s playing someone who is socially clumsy and not real slick with the dating thing and trying a bit too hard to make it all work, but still insisting that he enter her apartment even when she makes it quite clear that she’s more comfortable just saying goodbye at the door is creepy. Having him show up at her place unannounced and demanding she see him for a second date and not leaving until she relents makes it even worse. There needs to be someone to tell him that his behavior is out-of-line and this isn’t a way to ‘woo a woman’ and in many cases will justifiably scare them off. Unfortunately the Heflin character doesn’t do this. Even though everything he does makes her quite uncomfortable she never protests it and lets him keep having his way, which makes her as annoying as he is.

Their unique living arrangements brings up even more issues. For Heflin I could understand her situation and it made sense. Sure the band manger is a demanding jerk, but I could see her feeling the need to put up with it because she wanted to break into the rock singing business and felt this was part of the crap she had to get through while she works her way up. For Dooley, his living arrangements are just downright baffling as he plays a 50-year-old who’s still residing at home with his father who’s highly demanding forcing Dooley to become a pathetic, obedient simp when around him. I could understand if the guy was like 20 how this might be somewhat believable, but by 50 he should’ve broken away a long time ago and the fact that he hasn’t needs to be explored and explained as it’s highly unusual and seems to intimate that there’s a serious personality disorder of some kind that begs for analyzation that never comes.

The entire runtime has the two going through every bad date moment you could think of. They have absolutely nothing in common and repeatedly talk past each other, so there’s no constructive communication whatsoever and yet somehow at the end they ‘fall in love’, but how? To make a relationship work there needs to be a connecting bond, but the film fails to show what it is making it quite shallow. There’s also an abundance of music played by the band Heflin’s a part of called ‘Keepin’ Em off the Streets’, which gets way overdone. There’s 12 different numbers, which bogs down the pace and makes it seem like a band’s demo reel instead of a movie.

The only memorable bit is when Allan F. Nichols, who co-wrote the script, appears as Dana 115, one of Heflin’s dates for the night and he has a physical confrontation with Dooley, which ended up making me laugh, but that’s about it. Nothing else happens that is either amusing or insightful. A fluffy movie that doesn’t go far enough to be either compelling or memorable.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: April 6, 1979

Runtime: 1 Hour 47 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Robert Altman

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD

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Posted in 70's Movies, Dry Humor, Musical, Obscure Movies, Romance

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My Bodyguard (1980)

Posted on December 31, 2023 | 1 comment

my1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Hiring protection from bullies.

Clifford (Chris Makepeace) is a new student at a tough Chicago high school who finds himself at odds with the bullies who are headed by Melvin (Matt Dillion), who goes by the nickname ‘Big M’. He and his cronies want Clifford to pay them ‘protection money’ in order to defend him from Linderman (Adam Baldwin) who is a big, loner kid that supposedly killed his own brother. Clifford refuses and thus gets constantly hounded by them, so he decides to go to Linderman and offers him a deal where he’ll pay him some money each week and even agree to do his homework if he’ll become his bodyguard. At first Linderman declines, but eventually comes on board, which is enough to get Big M and his gang to leave them alone. Then a few days later Big M returns with his own ‘bodyguard’ named Mike (Hank Salas), a big muscular guy, who challenges Linderman to a fight, which he at first resists.

This teen movie is unusual in that it was not based off of a novel as its source material, even though you’d be convinced it was, and although a novel version of the story was eventually written after the film was released, it’s ultimately an original idea by screenwriter Alan Ormsby. Ormsby was at that point better known for writing low budget horror movies, with a couple of them he even starred in, and seemed the least likely to have penned something as good natured as this. It also stands out from other teen movies in that its music isn’t some pounding rock score, but instead soft classical that helps give it distinction and let it stand-out from just about all the other high school flicks out there particularly those from the 80’s.

Kids today may not relate to a school where every student doesn’t have an I-phone, a laptop, or piercings, but if you were a teen back then this movie captures that experience to a T. Everything from the bland school lunches where you had to drink milk out of a small carton to the creaky old school buildings (this one was filmed on-location at Lake Forest High) gets recreated. The teens are all realistically geeky and awkward, even Joan Cusack, in her film debut, looks nerdish especially as she smiles exposing a mouth full of metal. Many who see this, or see it again, it will bring back a fondness to their own school days to the point it may even make you feel you’re right back there.

Chris Makepeace is perfectly cast as a sensitive youth who must learn to ‘make connections’ or ‘network’ his way around the new environment and use what social skills he has to maneuver through the teen jungle. Dillon, in only his third movie, makes for a believable bully and Baldwin, in his film debut, is also excellent and while his character doesn’t say much he gives off a very effective almost creepy stare that proves memorable. In support I really got a kick out of Paul Quandt, who’s only film appearance this was, as a scrawny tyke who befriends Makepeace and always supplies funny side comments and reactions. You also get to see Joan and Jon Cusacks’ dad, Dick Cusack, as the school’s much put upon principal.

The only segments and characters that really don’t work are the scenes involving Makepeace’s home-life that are a bit unusual since he resides in a hotel that his father, Martin Mull, manages. He has no mother since she died in a car accident years earlier and Mull behaves more like a big brother, who is into looking at naked women with his son through their telescope, than any type of disciplinarian. Ruth Gordon plays Mull’s goofy mother and while Gordon is quite amusing her scenes go on too long and don’t have much if anything to do with the main plot. Mull’s moments don’t help either though one could argue that his scenes do have some outside connection to the theme as it shows adults have to deal with their own type of bullies in this case his crabby and demanding boss, played by Craig Richard Nelson, who is always threatening to terminate his employment.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending is different too in that it essentially says fighting may sometimes be necessary though many administrators of today try to persuade against the idea that violence is the answer and there are other more constructive ways to tackle conflicts. Of course watching Makepeace clobber Dillon while Baldwin handles Salas is quite satisfying especially since the whole rest of the movie is watching the kids, including even Baldwin, getting humiliate by the bullies, so the bad kids do ultimately get a much deserved come-uppance. However, just because one person ‘kicks some other person’s ass’ means only that they were the more skillful fighter, or just bigger physically, and not necessarily the moral superior.

Still it’s a very pleasant movie that has a rites of passage/ fleeting moment in time quality. The situation is portrayed as a growing pains issue and not a dire one. This is well before mass shootings and all of the ugliness you see happening in schools today where everything spews out into the adult world. Here it was still done at a time where these problems were contained within the school walls, which is the best thing about it.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: July 11, 1980

Runtime: 1 Hour 36 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Tony Bill

Studio: 20th Century Fox

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Movies for the Whole Family, Movies that take place in Chicago, Movies with Nudity

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The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother (1975)

Posted on December 29, 2023 | 2 comments

sherlock

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Sibling solves the case.

Gene Wilder plays Sigerson Holmes, the jealous younger brother of Sherlock, who is upset that his sibling is so famous for solving crimes while he sits in obscurity having not seen as much success though he feels he’s just as smart if not smarter. One day Sigerson gets a case that his brother doesn’t want to get involved in due to him desiring to lay low for awhile. It involves Jenny Hill (Madeline Kahn) who’s a beautiful music hall dancer who is being blackmailed by an opera singer named Eduardo (Dom DeLuise) over a lewd letter she sent him years ago. However, the document proves to be much more than just a letter and is in fact an important paper that foreign powers will pay high price to get their hands on. Eduardo agrees to sell it to the evil Professor Moriarty (Leo McKern), but will only hand it over to him during one of his operas, which Sigerson and his loyal partner Orville (Marty Feldman) plan to attend in order to intercept the paper before it gets into the wrong hands.

Gene Wilder was approached by producer Richard Roth to do a parody of Sherlock Holmes, but Wilder didn’t like the idea of poking fun of what he felt was an iconic character. Roth told him to think about it and then approached him a week later. By this point Wilder said he had come up with a better idea instead of it being about Sherlock it would focus on his jealous brother Sigerson. Roth found the premise intriguing and suggested Wilder begin writing the screenplay which he did while working on Young Frankenstein. Once completed he asked his friend Mel Brooks to direct, but Brooks declined saying he didn’t like working on projects that were not his own idea, so Wilder took the reins himself calling it a ‘terrifying commitment’.

While the movie has some good moments the Sigerson character is not interesting. For one thing he’s poorly defined. One minute he’s cunning and sharp and then the next he proves dimwitted and clumsy almost becoming another Inspector Clouseu. The comedy should feed off the character, but with it unclear whether he’s brilliant or buffoon it never catches its stride and for the most part the scenes with him in it are boring and the audience doesn’t care if he solves the case nor feel that there’s any redemption if he does. He’s also genuinely unlikable particularly with the way he snaps at Jenny Hill making you almost want to despise the guy and hope he doesn’t succeed. Also, if he really is Sherlock’s brother then I felt there needed to be some scenes with them together and the interplay between the two could’ve been amusing if done right, but this never happens.

Wilder directs the film the way most actors turning director do by having the scenes more extended and allowing the actors to drive the pace and momentum versus the editing. With a so-called ‘zany’ comedy like this that doesn’t work and there’s several segments that go on too long until it becomes dull and looking a bit amateurish. The biggest example of this is when Jenny arrives a Sigerson’s place to tell him about the letter. Their interplay doesn’t go anywhere and ultimately in order to get out of it the characters, for some unexplained reason, break-out into song and dance making it seem like its a musical, which it isn’t, but either way it’s dumb and not funny. During Jenny’s music hall show, which Sigerson and Orville attend, she sings a long song there too, which wasn’t needed and saps the comic energy.

There are though some offbeat moments much of which comes from McKern a usually serious actor who shines in his campy part and really plays it up to the point that he becomes the highlight. The part where he goes to a fortune telling machine, that he has inside his residence, is inspired and his visit with Eduardo in which the two strangely fondle each other and even go to bed together that gives off weird homoerotic vibes is good too in a sort of bizarre ‘what am I looking at’ type of way.

The best part though is when a giant saw blade cuts off the back of Wilder’s and Feldman’s trousers causing their bare behinds to be exposed. They then go to a formal dance party and shock everyone who sees their asses with them still not aware that they’re showing. What’s so interesting about this part is that they both have really good looking butts especially Feldman. You’d think with his freaking looking face that his rear wouldn’t be so hot either, but it amazingly is, so in keeping with our current male ass scorecard we still have Dabney Coleman, who bears his behind in Modern Problems, coming in first and Tim Matheson’s in Impulse, being a close second and then Wilder and Feldman tying for third place.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: December 14, 1975

Runtime: 1 Hour 31 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Gene Wilder

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 70's Movies, Campy Comedy, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Quirky

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Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)

Posted on December 27, 2023 | Leave a comment

crimes1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Threatening to tell wife.

Judah (Martin Landau) is an eye doctor whose mistress of several years, Dolores (Anjelica Huston), is threatening to tell his wife (Claire Bloom) about their affair. Judah tries to persuade her not to, but she insists on going through with it unless he gets a divorce, which he refuses to do. Feeling he has no other option he hires his brother (Jerry Orbach) to do a hit on her in order to get her off of his hands. Once the job is done Judah then becomes wracked with guilt and though he had been a non-believer for many years begins to rekindle the fear of the wrath of God for what he’s done. Meanwhile Cliff (Woody Allen) is a struggling documentary filmmaker who gets a job filming a movie of a obnoxious comedian (Alan Alda) who’s highly narcissistic and difficult to deal with.

The film is unusual in that it has two correlating stories that go on at the same time with very little that links them. The only connecting thread is a Rabbi, played by Sam Waterston, who is friends with both Alda and Landau, as well as Cliff and Judah getting together briefly at a party to have a discussion near the end. Otherwise it’s like two separate movies with one being semi-funny while the other is made to be more like a searing drama and character study. While it’s engaging most of the way I felt the segment dealing with the egotistical celebrity wasn’t interesting or comical enough to be worth having especially since Alda didn’t seem able to convey an obnoxious jerk in a way that was amusing. The film also goes off on several tangents including Cliff counseling his sister about a date she had where a man tied her up and defecated on her that didn’t have anything to do with the main story and just taking up runtime for no reason. There’s also segments that I did find intriguing like the mysterious phone calls Judah gets late at night where the caller immediately hangs up when Judah answers that I felt should’ve been explored more.

A good way to have solved this and would also have tied-in Allen’s character better would’ve had him filming a documentary on Judah who could’ve been portrayed as this heroic eye doctor who saved the vision of underprivileged kids, or even gone to Africa for awhile to help heal the vision of the kids there and thus his efforts were considered a suitable material for a film. Alda’s character could’ve been cut out totally and not missed. Judah could’ve still be conniving behind-the-scenes about how to get rid of the other woman and thus the irony of him being lionized in front of the camera, but a complete jerk behind it would’ve been even more accentuated and interesting.

As it is the moments with Landau are still quite strong. His career during the 80’s had nearly tanked with him having to accept co-starring roles in low budget horrors just to keep busy only to finally get his name revitalized with his role in Tucker: A Man and His Dreams in 1987 that lead to an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor and helped him get better quality work including this one. Here his expressive blue eyes come into play particularly after the dirty deed gets done and he begins having reoccurring visions of himself as a boy going to synagogue and quarreling with his moral depravity, which is effective.

This is also the rare movie where Allen plays someone who is actually likable. Normally his incessant whining and misguided belief that he’s more sexually attractive than he is and can bed any hot women I’ve found annoying, but here he’s more of a ignored chump who’s still struggling to make a name for himself and this makes him endearing. Instead of aggressively coming onto women in tacky ways he instead shyly courts Mia Farrow who plays a sort-of nerdette here and their scenes together are cute.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending in which Allen and Landau meet briefly and he tells Allen about this ‘great’ movie idea in which a husband finds away to kill off his mistress, which is essentially what he’s really done, and feels no guilt afterwards doesn’t really work. For one thing it’s hard to believe that he’d wake-up one day, as he describes, and no longer feel any remorse and could just go on normally as he had felt so guilty about it earlier that you’d think it would’ve left some sort of lasting affect. The viewer should’ve also seen this realization play-out visually through the story versus having him just describe it.

I realize Allen’s whole point was to show that the universe doesn’t dispense justice and sometimes people really can get away with murder and can go on living happy lives unlike in the movies where it’s expected that the bad guy should suffer some consequence. Yet realistically I actually think Landau would’ve been caught, or at least been more of a suspect than he is. He was already questioned by the police earlier due to all the phone calls he had with the victim and I don’t think his flimsy excuse would’ve sufficed. Since he had been to her apartment many times including even on the night of the murder that most likely one of the other tenants would’ve spotted him coming and going and all the police would’ve had to do was show his picture around for him to be easily fingered by someone else living in the building. Thus watching Landau confidently leave his discussion with Allen thinking he could go on happily with his life only to have a detective there with handcuffs would’ve been funnier and in a lot ways ultimately more believable.

The film’s promotional poster, as seen above, doesn’t get the mood of the scene right. If you look at the poster it seems like Landau is the despondent one who’s suffering from inner turmoil while Woody is nonchalant, but if you watch the movie it’s Landau that is at complete ease while Woody is in turmoil over Mia getting married to Alda, so the poster is essentially misleading.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: October 12, 1989

Runtime: 1 Hour 44 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Woody Allen

Studio: Orion Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Movies that take place in the Big Apple

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I Love My…Wife (1970)

Posted on December 25, 2023 | Leave a comment

ilove

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: He’s bored with marriage.

Richard (Elliot Gould) is a medical student when he meets Jody (Brenda Vaccaro) and the two quickly fall-in-love and get married. She then gets pregnant while he’s still in school and they don’t believe they have enough money to financially support a child, so they initially consider an abortion, but at the last minute Richard changes his mind and feels they should have the child. Jody though gains a lot of weight during the pregnancy, which Richard finds unattractive. Once the baby is born she’s unable to burn-off the excessive pounds causing their sex life to go even further into the tank. He has a few flings with some of the nurses before finally setting his sights on Helene (Angel Tompkins) a beautiful model who’s married to a baseball star (Dabney Coleman). At first she resists his advances, but the two eventually bed and then fall-in-love. She insists that Richard leave his wife, so that they can be together and no longer have to meet-on-the-sly. Richard tries to break-up with Jody, but because they have two kids finds that he can’t and instead begins lying to Helene as he plays both women at the same time, which soon turns into a losing situation.

The odd way this thing opens really hurts it and although it does improve a bit as it goes along some viewers may not be patient enough to stick with it. Having the opening credits deal with Richard’s relationship with his mother (Helen Westcott) and the sheltered way that she raised him isn’t funny and because the mother never appears again in the movie it wasn’t worth introducing her at all. Since the wife is the main focus I felt the opening scenes should’ve dealt with their dating period, which the movie breezes over too quickly. The clips from old movies, which get spliced in from time-to-time, add nothing and make it seem too much like Myra Breckenridge, which came out around the same time and best left forgotten. At least in that movie the clips came at predictable intervals, but here it’s sporadic making it seem, when they do get shown, as jarring and out-of-place.

Gould certainly excels at this type of role and he’s quite possibly the only actor who could play a shallow person and still manage to make it come-off as semi-likable. Vaccaro though is the real surprise as she’s usually best at drama and initially I felt she was miscast, but she comes through in making her character complex and even amusing as she goes through her tirades, some of it justified, at Gould. This is also the first movie to ever explore the issue of women who gain weight during their pregnancy, but can’t lose it afterwards and how this could affect their sex life, which I felt deserved kudos for being ground-breaking. The film makes the mistake though of showing too much from her point-of-view to the extent that we start to sympathize with her over the main character and almost start to dislike him in the process.

The introduction of Helene really does help as it’s her presence that gives the story a unique angle. Before this it comes-off more like your typical run-of-the-mill flick about a cad of a husband who can’t stay faithful, which has been done a lot and this movie doesn’t add anything insightful in that vein. However, the affair itself is interesting. For one thing she plays hard-to-get and doesn’t just jump immediately into the bed sheets at Gould’s beck-and-call, which is good as too much of the time, especially in 70’s movies, the women seem way too easy in a way that isn’t realistic. What I liked even more though is that the affair really doesn’t solve anything. Sure he finds her hot and sexy and they do get along, but she also has demands of her own and Gould finds himself in the same quandary as with his wife showing how extra marital flings really aren’t the ‘escape’ that they’re intended, but instead more of a problem.

Spoiler Alert!

The script by Robert Kaufman brings out many harsh truths about marriage and doesn’t insult us with any placid answers. Yet when the movie should go hard it goes soft instead. I liked how Vaccaro, who spent the whole time trying to win him back, finally gives up and starts seeing someone else, but Gould though upset and rebuffed, doesn’t learn anything from it. He goes back to the bar and tries picking-up an attractive stewardess he meets like he’s now making some sort of ‘fresh start’ when the film spent its entire running time exposing how this ‘cruising for chicks’ is a vicious cycle that just leads to more emptiness. Seeing Gould’s character change, or learn from his mistakes and display some regret would’ve been a far better way to have ended it.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: December 21, 1970

Runtime: 1 Hour 38 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Mel Stuart

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD-R (dvdlady.com, modcinema.com)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies

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The Wild Life (1984)

Posted on December 23, 2023 | Leave a comment

wild

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: One week before school.

The summer is winding down and the teens in suburban Los Angeles get ready to head back to school. Conrad (Eric Stoltz) has just graduated the previous year and is now planning to move into his own apartment, but finds it to be expensive and his salary working at a bowling alley doesn’t pay enough, so his buddy Tom (Chris Penn) volunteers to move in with him as his roommate and thus share the costs. The two though don’t see eye-to-eye on things particularly Tom’s penchant for wild parties, which Conrad fears will get them kicked-out. Conrad’s younger brother Jim (Ilan Mitchell-Smith) is fascinated with the Vietnam War and getting into trouble by smoking and underage drinking, which Conrad doesn’t like. Anita (Lea Thompson) is Conrad’s ex-girlfriend who’s having problems of her own as she’s still a teen, but having an affair with a cop (Hart Bochner) who is much older and also married.

The script was written by Cameron Crowe, who had great success with Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and took about trying to emulate that one. Instead of being all about crude jokes and pranks like with most teen flicks of that decade Crowe centered it more on studying the individual teen characters, but unfortunately they’re all rather banal and not that interesting to follow. The first half suffers from a lot of segments that go on too long and doesn’t help the pace. It moves along so leisurely that 20-minutes in I started to wonder when it was going to get on with the story and if there might not even be one though there eventually is. The humor, while amusing at times, is too soft and subtle and could’ve been played-up more to give the thing a much needed jolt. The word ‘wild’ is in the film’s title, but what we end up getting is just the typical teen stuff that hardly lives up to its name. I also could’ve done without the cigarette swallowing, which happens a few times with different people. To me it looked dangerous and enough to make somebody sick and was surprised the characters didn’t puke it out.

Mitchell-Smith has the face of a teen heartthrob, but his squeaky voice is a distraction and I would’ve considered dubbing it though I suppose funny sounding voices at that age as they go through the ‘big change’ may just reflect the reality. His character  is a bit over-the-top with his bravado and at one point challenges a guy who’s much bigger than him to punch him and in another segment he lies down on the street in front of a moving car. This type of behavior seems too reckless and brazen and isn’t normal. Teens are known to take some unwise risks, but it usually catches up with them, but never does here, which I found annoying. Also, when someone shows extreme bravery in one instance they can, as human nature goes, be amazingly scared about something else, but we never are shown that balance and thus making the character come-off as unrealistic.

Eric Stoltz has the same issue in reverse as he’s too clean-cut and responsible. Would’ve been nice and created a more three dimensional person had he been deviant at some point. Lea Thompson, who was already 23 at the time, looked too old to be playing a teen, and in fact just a year later got cast as the mother of a teen in Back to the Future, so I felt her appearance here didn’t work, I did however enjoy Chris Penn he’s definitely a doofus, but a lovable one and all his scenes elicit a chuckle. Robert Ridgely as the slick apartment manager, Hart Bochner as the corrupt cop with a mustache, and Rick Moranis as a preppy clothing store salesmen, with a puffy hairdo, are all funny too and help to give the proceedings a needed zing.

The third act does bring in a party, which gets out-of-hand, but not as much as it could’ve. Having all these people crammed into a tiny apartment should’ve created some fist fights when a boyfriend would catch another guy touching his girlfriend by accident due to having such little space between them. Spraying beer and food fights should’ve also followed, but never do, which makes these party goers too docile and well behaved. Having the guys break down the wall and evade the apartment next door and shock the neighboring couple (Ed Berke, Jessica Rains) was inspired, but we should’ve been shown these neighbors reactions the next day when the apartment manager surveys the damage. Overall though there’s just not enough here that stands-out especially from all the other teen flicks from that era and thus it’s easily and quickly forgotten.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: September 28, 1984

Runtime: 1 Hour 36 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Art Linson

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD-R (Universal Vault Series)

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Crude Comedy, Movies with Nudity

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Cold Turkey (1971)

Posted on December 20, 2023 | Leave a comment

coldturkey

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Small town quits smoking.

To commemorate the passing of Norman Lear last week at the ripe old age of 101 we decided to review the one film that he directed and was shelved for two years by the studio who didn’t think it would be a hit with any audience and only decided to eventually release it once Lear had success with the classic ‘All in the Family’ sitcom. The story revolves around a small town in Iowa named Eagle Rock. The Reverend Clayton Moore would like a bigger congregation in a more prestigious area as he feels trapped in what he considers a ‘dying’ town with limited employment opportunities. He then hears about a contest that a giant tobacco company is sponsoring where they try to see if there’s a town in America that will make a pledge to agree to quit smoking for 30-days and if they succeed will be awarded $25 million. Merwin Wren (Bob Newhart), who works for a tobacco company, bets that there isn’t a place that would be able to make this pledge, but Clayton, figuring this may be his ticket out and onto greater things, pushes the citizens to sign the pledge, which will then put Eagle Rock on the map.

The location of the film shoot was Greenfield, Iowa, which I traveled to in 2009 and was amazed how similar it still looked after 40 years. The opening sequence showing the town from the south end still had many of the same buildings and the courthouse along with the gazebo in which the reverend makes his fiery speech are all still there and looking almost untouched.

The town itself is really the main star. Lear does a terrific job of showing the people who live there as they really are versus in some idealistic, or romanticized way. Too many other Hollywood productions seem to suffer from the Mayberry effect where the citizens are portrayed as simple and content ‘God Fearing’ folk who are devoid of any complex personality. Here they are frustrated individuals who secretly dream of moving away, or ‘hitting it big’ in some way, but because they don’t have the means to achieve this ultimately find themselves stuck and just trying to make the best of it. The people are no more immune from temptation, or corruption, than the ones living in a big city and if anything are even more susceptible since they haven’t been put in that situation much, but when they are, as evidenced when the place gets spoken about all over the media and everyone from all over descends on it including Lottie (Gloria Leroy) a prostitute under the guise of being a masseuse who services all married men.

Beyond the on-target satire the film also scores with its fabulous ensemble of character actors, many of whom would later star, or guest star, in many of Lear’s TV-shows. Each actor plays a distinct personality from Barnard Hughes the fidgety and nervous doctor who resorts to lollipop sucking, or Graham Jarvis the head of a far-right organization, who preaches about the evils of ‘big government’, but then readily accepts for his group, which is mainly made up of senior citizens, to become a voluntary gestapo-like militia that arrests those who are caught smoking and forcibly search all in-coming vehicles. Pippa Scott though, as Clayton’s much put-upon wife, was my favorite. She encompasses what I think a lot of small town people can feel especially those that weren’t originally from the area, who are stuck in a dead-end marriage and perennially forced to ‘put on a happy face’. Her primal scream, which happens during a dream-like segment on the rooftop of one of the houses while neighbors stand around watching I felt was one of the film’s defining moments.

In the lead roles Dick Van Dyke is terrific mainly because he plays against type. Part of what I felt killed his movie career was that he took too many roles that were just an extension of his Rob Petrie persona in his famous TV-show. Here though he’s the opposite playing an egotistical, narcissists who cares about nothing other than his own career ascension, but manages to do it in a way that’s quite amusing. Newhart plays an unusual role for him as well. Typically he’s a buttoned down, strait-laced guy commenting on the insanity around him, but here he is the nutty one and does a trick with his eyes that gives him a psycho appearance.

Spoiler Alert!

The one flaw is the ending in which all three leads (Van Dyke, Newhart, Hughes) get shot in the middle of a crowd of people standing in the town center. The shootings look fake as they show no bullet hole in their clothing, or blood even just a little bit for authenticity. One shot shows people in the crowd holding the heads of the victims as they lay there in an effort to comfort them, but then in the next shot has the three lying all alone as the crowd essentially abandoned them, which seemed unrealistic that absolutely no one would care. Having an ambulance driver trying to drive-in through the mob, but then maybe stopping to run out and grab the cigarettes that rain down on the town from a helicopter, would’ve been amusing and better explanation for why the three didn’t get the help that they needed.

There’s also one shot showing Newhart sitting up and laughing, but what is he laughing about and why would he be doing this when he’s been injured with a bullet? There’s no answer to this, which makes it come-off as a cop-out ending and like Lear had written himself into a hole that he couldn’t get out of.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: January 20, 1971

Runtime: 1 Hour 41 Minutes

Rated GP

Director: Norman Lear

Studio: United Artists

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

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Cult, Movies with a rural setting, Offbeat, Satire

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O’Hara’s Wife (1982)

Posted on December 17, 2023 | Leave a comment

ohara2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 0 out of 10

4-Word Review: Wife turns into ghost.

Bob (Ed Asner) and Harriet (Mariette Hartley), whom he affectionately calls ‘Harry’, share a special bond and have been in a marriage for over 20 years that has produced two children, Rob (Perry Lang) and Barbara (Jodie Foster). They plan for a second honeymoon, but just before they’re ready to leave Harry suddenly dies. The grief-stricken Bob feels he can’t go on, but manages to stay focused due to the love and support of his children. Then one day, about a month after he death, she suddenly reappears in the form of a ghost. At first Bob runs away from her thinking he’s gone crazy, but then eventually settles to the idea that she’s going to be around wherever she goes and in return she helps him to understand that life is about more than just working hard and if he doesn’t learn to relax he too will soon be dying as well.

Feeble attempt at a ghost comedy, which has been done many times before in a far better way in such classics as A Ghost and Mrs. Muir and Topper just to name a couple. Right off the bat though this thing falls flat with a long drawn out song segment sung by Billy Preston, Billy’s a good singer, but just not here, that happens not once, but twice. A movie should not slow-up the pace with a droony song especially when that’s just ‘telling us’ through its lyrics what we already know is happening to the characters visually.

The second thing where this movie really gets dumb is when the wife just falls over dead for no apparent reason. One second she’s perfectly healthy and joking around with her hubby and then in the next instant she just literally falls over dead in the corniest way possible. The doctors diagnose it as a brain hemorrhage of some sort, but normally healthy, middle-aged people don’t just ‘fall over dead’. A better, more gripping and believable way would be to have her die in a car accident, or have her diagnosed with something early on, or at least complain about certain symptoms that will eventually lead to her demise, but to just croak instantaneously without any warning or set-up is about as stupid as it gets.

The ghost angle is just as poorly thought-out. I realize having ghosts appear and disappear and go through walls may seem cliched, but at least that had a logic to it and this thing doesn’t. Here we have her opening and closing doors to get through them as if she’s a regular person. Her husband can also feel and touch her and she can even use her body to stop his movement, but if she’s just a spirit then shouldn’t she be a vision only and not able to do those other things? She also panics when she sees her husband’s medical chart and realizes he has a serious heart condition and may die, but since her ghostly existence proves there’s essentially ‘life after death’ then why should she care? She acts like death is some sort of ‘end’ even though her appearance literally proves the opposite, so why not celebrate his impending doom as that will mean they’ll be in a ghostly existence forever and thus death will be a happy ending and not a sad one like her character seems to believe.

Hartley is certainly perky, she always seems perky no matter what she’s in, but her character is one-dimensionally nice, and not fleshed-out enough to be interesting in any way. Asner has some funny bits particularly when he must deal with this ghost wife when someone else is around who can’t see her and thus making his behavior look pretty weird, but overall he’s a bit too old for her, almost like he could’ve been her father, and a younger actor more age appropriate to Hartley would’ve been better. Mary Jo Catlett, as Asner’s much put upon secretary as some endearing moments, but ultimately it’s Foster, who gets billed as having a ‘special appearance’ though she’s in a good chunk of it, that comes off best though I didn’t initially recognize her as she has darker hair here and on a bit of the chubby side  and I could only tell who she was at first by the sound of her voice.

I did like how it attempts to tackle family drama and how as children age and become adults may not see things eye-to-eye not only with their parents, but siblings as well. This becomes especially apparent with Rob who doesn’t agree with his father quitting his job and the two share a couple of raw moments, which is good because these things do occur in real-life families, but then the film glosses over this issue by having the two magically reconcile a little bit later, which like with everything else in the movie is too shallow.

My Rating: 0 out of 10

Released: December 3, 1982

Runtime: 1 Hour 27 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: William Bartman

Studio: O’Hara Cinema Group

Available: DVD-R

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Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy, Ghost Story, Obscure Movies

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