Category: Movie Reviews

Another Youtube Treat REPRINT

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From March 16, 2014

We’ve been watching Thriller–free of charge on youtube–a 1961 TV series hosted by Boris Karloff.

This is about as good as TV has ever been, or ever will be. It was an anthology series with a very broad format. As long as the story was a “thriller,” be it a tale of mystery, intrigue, irony, or the supernatural, it fit.

What made it so good? For one thing, most of the screenplays were adapted from short stories or novels by some of the very best writers in the field–Robert Bloch, Charlotte Armstrong, Margaret Millar, and others. Sometimes the original author also wrote the screenplay.

For another, Thriller employed the best actors they could find. The likes of Brandon DeWilde, Susan Clark, and Boris Karloff himself are not to be found anymore on American TV. And then they hired top composers like Jerry Goldsmith and Pete Rugolo to write original music for each episode. Finallly, Karloff’s introductions to each story are a treat.

With all that going for it, Thriller just had to be great.

My favorite outing, so far, has been Pigeons from Hell, starring Brandon DeWilde, based on a story by Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian. This was one corker of a scary story! My wife’s favorite is Rose’s Last Summer, starring Mary Astor, from a novel by Margaret Millar, a mystery-writing genius who was married to another award-winning author, Ross MacDonald.

I don’t know about you, but when I watch this stuff, it flushes out my mind like an outboard motor, so I’m ready to take up my work again the next day. Yes, that’s escapism. And yes, my little grey cells need regular doses of it. And I’ll bet yours do, too.

Can’t Read the Holdup Note? REPRINT

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From December 29, 2024

A man walked into a bank a few days ago in Loveland, Colorado, and tried to rob it,,, but the teller couldn’t read his holdup note. As the teller struggled to decipher it, the would-be robber lost patience and walked out empty-handed. Police are still looking for him.

But dig this scene from Woody Allen’s 1970 comedy, Take the Money and Run. Art anticipates real life!

And they said a nice legible handwriting was a luxury…

Two More Gems REPRINT

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Here are two more good old movie classics you can watch on youtube. This, by the way, is how I have a vacation.

Sullivan’s Travels (1941) is Preston Sturges‘ tale of a Hollywood film director (Joel McRae) who wants to make a serious movie about poverty, after becoming rich and famous by making musical comedies. Because Sullivan doesn’t know anything about poverty and hard times, he decides to find out, first-hand, by hitting the road as a hobo.

Now I hate musicals. All that singing and dancing–I mean, what would happen if you were out on a date, and you started singing to her instead of talking? But Serious Mainstream Films are worse. A high school pal of mine once said, “You only watch movies, but Wild Strawberries is a film!” It turned out he’d never seen the blasted thing.

Hey, if you want to produce great art, tell a great story… and the art will take care of itself.

Which is exactly what Preston Sturges succeeded in doing with Sullivan’s Travels. Oh, it’s a comedy, all right. But prepare to be surprised, big-time.

In An Inspector Calls (1954), Alistair Sim (Scrooge!) is a police inspector who shows up unexpectedly at an engagement dinner at a rich family’s house, to ask these posh individuals what they know about the horrible suicide of a certain young woman. It turns out they each had a connection with her that doesn’t do them credit. And then–

But you gotta see it for yourself. Really. I guarantee the ending will surprise you right out of your socks.

 

New! Racial Glasses for Your Racist Eyes! REPRINT

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Silly Glasses Images, Stock Photos & Vectors | Shutterstock

 

From  May 13, 2021

Why go to all the trouble to make a black Superman movie (https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/dc-black-superman-jj-abrams-clark-kent) when anyone can just put on a pair of glasses that lets you see anyone in any color you please? Besides which, who goes to the movies anymore? There’s nothing to see.

Ah! But imagine you’re watching a Superman movie and just burning up inside because Superman is white. What do you do?

You put on a pair of Co-lor-Spex from Pdgaa Products–and presto! Everyone in the movie, even in the crowd scenes, is black! No more whiteys anywhere. Buy a different pair of Spex for every color!

And they work with pictures in books, too. And TV broadcasts. And for stuff streaming on your computer. Even the nooze!

With Co-lor-Spex you will never again–never!–have to see people who aren’t the right color. But wait, there’s more!

Pdgaa’s crack research team is working on All Day Co-lor-Spex so that every person you see in public or in private will be in the color that you want to see! You’ll never again see anyone who’s in the wrong skin color!

And they’re only $1.99 a pair! Order yours today!

 

Smearing a Hero REPRINT

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From June 27, 2012

As long as I’m reviewing movies that are several years old, let me say a word about the hatchet job director Robert Zemeckis did on Beowulf (2007).

I hung in for a long ten minutes before I turned it off and read the plot summary by Wikipedia. This confirmed my worst fears for the movie.

Beowulf the hero, whose story has lasted some 1,500 years, is here presented as a horn-dog and a humbug who fornicates with Grendel’s mother (a monster) and then pretends he’s killed her, shamelessly reaping rewards and praise for it, all the while cheating with the queen behind the king’s back; and noble King Hrothgar is shown as a grotty old sot whose queen spits in his face in front of all his warriors… and so on.

Why are we so averse to heroes? Is it because our morally impoverished age can’t generate a hero? We build ourselves up by tearing down the past. Because we can’t find anyone but bums and scalawags to be our leaders, we insist that no one in the past could have been great or noble or wise. No one can be good! There’s no such thing as good!

Someday, a thousand years from now, people will still tell the story of Beowulf. And if we’re luckier than we deserve, they’ll pass over our benighted age in silence.

Dr. Phibes Meets Shakespeare REPRINT

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From December 28, 2012

Betcha didn’t know Vincent Price could do Shakespeare; but that’s what he does, in spades, in Theater of Blood (1973).

This won’t be everybody’s cup of tea because it’s… well, kind of bloody. It’s about a crazy Shakespearean actor taking revenge on drama critics: so the forms his vengeance takes are all lifted from Shakespeare’s plays. Think Julius Caesar, Richard III, The Merchant of Venice, Titus Andronicus (couldn’t leave out that one!), and so on. Please bear in mind that much of Shakespeare’s work contained some rather gaudy episodes of violence. And Price gets to recite soliloquies as he murders in the flesh the critics who murdered him in print.

If you don’t mind a bit of make-believe blood and guts, Theater of Blood is off-the-wall fun. You not only get Vincent Price, but also a terrific cast with Diana Rigg, Michael Hordern, Robert Morley, Jack Hawkins, et al. I promise you, you’ve never seen Shakespeare like this before.

Watching this film will not cause you to grow spiritually; nor will it make you wiser, nor even enhance your understanding of Shakespeare. But it’ll give you some 90 minutes of fun–I mean, really, a sword-fight to the death… on trampolines? Just try to find that anywhere else.

 

Shunning Movies Made by Immoral People

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People who know me know I love the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, and they’re always surprised to find out I’ve never seen the Lord of the Rings movies. Well, I don’t want to give any of my time or any of my money to Ian MacKellan, an unrepentant homosexual who brags about defacing Bibles. He plays Gandalf. That’s something I like to forget when I read the books.

So I can appreciate what some of you are saying when you say you don’t want to watch movies made by immoral people. We all have a suspicion, though, that that would rule out most movies. If you’re looking for virtue, Hollywood is probably not the place to start.

I do try to avoid movies that I know have been made by really sleazy people. But it’s not always so simple. In fact, God sometimes uses really sleazy people to do His will on earth. Can good things be done by bad people? I think we must admit they can.

Here at Chez Leester, we have a Thanksgiving tradition of watching two movies in particular: on Friday, Godzilla vs. Megalon, and on Saturday, Miracle on 34th Street. The one movie completely takes my mind off the dreary and disturbing news that I’ve been covering all year. The second never fails to remind me that there are truths that don’t–ahem!–lend themselves to factual analysis.

I watch lots of movies, including ones in which grossly immoral people may have had a hand in making. My calling in this life is to tell stories. To do it well, I must consume stories–lots and lots of stories. There are readers who say that reading one of my books is like watching a movie. Well, you can’t even guess at the number of hours I’ve put into achieving that effect. And I couldn’t do it if I didn’t watch as many movies as I can.

Don’t get me wrong. There is sleaze that I will walk a mile to avoid. And I’ll walk at least half a mile to dodge chick flicks, Serious Mainstream Dramas About Sophisticated People With Painful Personal Problems That They Can’t Solve Because They’re Pinheads, crime movies in which every character is rotten to the core, and several other kinds.

Anyway, I think we can all be thankful that God doesn’t require us to be absolutely perfect before He can make use of us. Serving Him in any way we can is both a glory and a privilege, and even sinners get a crack at it. Who knows? It might be habit-forming.

So I Went to See the Harry Potter Movie…

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First they clobber you with commercials, all of them featuring exceptionally bad music with the volume turned up so that your bones vibrate.

Then come the previews, about a dozen of them. And they all look like the same movie! Is it my imagination, or are movies getting uglier? They previewed a new Stephen Spielberg film based on a video game, “Cowboys and Aliens,” and all the actors looked like they’d just crawled out of the gutter trying to find another drink. I guess they just don’t make movies like “Casablanca” anymore–you know: with smart dialogue, fascinating multi-dimensional characters, and an actual story line. Who needs that stuff, when you can base your movies on video games and comic books?

I’ll have much more to say about “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I,” in the review that I’ll write for Chalcedon (www.chalcedon.edu ). But here are a few short takes.

1. Why do some of the characters in this movie say “My God,” when there is no God in J.K. Rowling’s alternative universe? Correct me if I’m wrong, but what role would God play in a world where children and bad guys wield fantastic magic powers and function as gods themselves?

2. Is it my imagination, or does one of the female villains in the movie bear a striking resemblance to Hillary Clinton?

3. If there is no God in the Harry Potter world, and the good guys and the bad guys use exactly the same techniques to get their way (you can tell the bad guys from the good guys in this movie because the bad guys are even uglier than the good guys), what is the source of morality in this alternative universe?

4. Why do so many Christians, especially Christian parents, seem to have no problem with this stuff?

Once again we see that modern Christians seem perfectly content to take the culture as they find it, and make no effort to bring it under the dominion of Christ the King.

Maybe that’s why our culture is turning into a cesspool.

Missing Aslan: A Review of the Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

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You have to be careful when you try to improve a work of art. Sometimes when you gild the lily, you lose the lily.

I’m afraid this is what has happened with Prince Caspian, the second installment in the Disneyfication of C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. They’ve lost the lily, and only the gilt is left. It’s pretty, but it’s not enough.

Caspian has gotten off to a good start at the box office. But then it’s only competing with movies based on comic books and video games. Even with its flaws, it can’t help being better than these.

Where’s Aslan?
As Lewis wrote them, the Narnia tales are centered on the figure of Aslan, the Lion—and Aslan represents Jesus Christ the Lord. It is Aslan who gives life to Narnia and all its creatures, who draws children from our world into Narnia to carry out important missions: who, by sacrificing himself on the Stone Table and then rising from the dead, is Narnia’s redeemer. Without Aslan there is no Narnia, and no Chronicles of Narnia.

But you would never get that from this retelling of Prince Caspian.

If you didn’t see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe first, or read the books, you’d have no idea, from this film, who Aslan is or why he matters. You’d think he was just another fantasy creature in a fantasy world inhabited by fauns, centaurs, dwarfs, talking animals, river gods, and whatnot.

Aslan’s in this film, of course, but the filmmakers have played him down. This is where they’ve lost the lily they were at such pains to gild.

They should not have assumed that the audience, especially the children in it, already knows all about Aslan. Some will surely never have seen or heard of him before.

But even if that assumption were correct, Aslan is still the most important person in the story, and should have been treated as such. No direct mention is made here of his atoning sacrifice. If you didn’t know about it from another source, you won’t learn about it in Prince Caspian.

Continue Reading “Missing Aslan: A Review of the Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” →

Joe Collidge’s Movie Review

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Image result for images of idiot man dressed as woman

I seen This movie yestadday it “was” in Gender Studies class and it was jist apsolotely grate!! only i cant rebember what “it” was callled. Aslo i cant rember whoo was in it but It was abuot some guy he Got his self turned into A wimmin and al Her fammly thay got Mad at waht she done And “so” thay made a Lot “of” micro-gresions aginst Her! and thatt was becose thay al ware no-good stopid christins.

Wel “let me” tel yiu that storey it got me good and mad! Wen yiu get yore selff turned into a Wimmin evryboddy has got To afirm yiu and cellerbrate waht yiu done! Hear at Collidge us Interllecturals we has maid sure “that” noboddy even aloud to Say annything hatful wen “someboddy” thay gett a Gender Change and if yiu dosnt say It “is” goood yiu gets Put inta Diversity Training!!!

Gee i wish I culd rember Waht was the Tietal of “that” movie but when thay showed The tietal thare was Somthing rong with My Moth Antenners thay was itchin somthing feerce and i jist keeped scrachin and scrachin butt “it” wuldnt stopp!! Wel yiu cann fiend out More abuot “this” movie Iff yiu go to Collidge and sine up For Gender Studies becose fromm Now “on” evryone hear has got “to” see it and wee “wil” make It a “New Rule” that yiu has to say its Goood or else yiu bein hatful “and” Intollerent and we wil beet yiu up Until yiu larn How to bee “more” Tollerent and aslo Incluesieve!

So dont yiu Dare “miss” This movie!

And nowe My antenners thay stil ichin I got to gett Out “of” hear.

From 2016