Category: Movie Reviews

A Gloriously Silly Movie REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

From July 14, 2013

Looking for something to take your mind off bad news? Not that you’re going to ignore it, but if you’re like me, you need a break sometimes. Well, here’s a classic film that just might do the trick.

For pure inane tomfoolery, you can’t beat Beat the Devil (1954). Starring Humphrey Bogart, with Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Peter Lorre, and Robert Morley, directed by John Huston, with a screenplay by Huston and Truman Capote, this film is living pr0of that it takes a lot of talent to create something truly ridiculous. Which, by the way, Huston and Capote were trying to do on purpose. Which is one reason (besides losing a lot of money on the deal) Bogart disliked the finished product and called it “phony.”

But it’s the army of goofy characters in the background, actors you never heard of, who turn this movie into a triumph. Whether it’s the enormously fat, self-important chauffeur, or the drunken, apoplectic sea-captain, or the bewildered bartender, these bit-players are riotously funny. As great as the regular cast is, the nobodies practically steal the show. They are most emphatically not phony.

A good laugh is medicine. And boy, if you don’t need a laugh these days, you’ll never need one. If it was Robert Morley and Peter Lorre trying to steal our country out from under us, we wouldn’t have so much to worry about.

I’m not going to bother with the plot of Beat the Devil because it’s really not important to your enjoyment of the movie. Just sit back and enjoy the daft thing. It’ll do you good.

The Rolls-Royce of Doctor Shows REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

From December 6, 2014

One of the great things about the Internet is that you can watch TV shows that you missed the first time around.

And so we find ourselves watching House, a series that ran for eight seasons (2004-2012) and 177 episodes, winning cartloads of awards and consistently posting high ratings.

Okay, it’s a doctor show. Like Dr. Kildare and Ben Casey, from my youth. But this one is different because it’s focused on the title character, Dr. Greg House, medical genius, master diagnostician, and total pain in the butt,  played by Hugh Laurie. You’d never guess he was an Englishman. If his face looks familiar, you probably saw him a while ago in some episodes of Blackadder.

Why focus on this character? Because he’s so weird. He won’t obey hospital rules, he doesn’t like anybody, he will freely insult anyone at any time, he’s addicted to pain pills, and he’s brilliant. The show’s creators patterned him on Sherlock Holmes: and if you see a similar quirkiness in Laurie’s Dr. House and Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes, it’s probably intentional.

Now my wife finds this show richly entertaining because she’s into medical stuff. I’m not. In fact, I don’t even like to think about hospitals and such. Sometimes it seems there are more diseases than there are people, each of ’em just itching to get a crack at you. And when House and his colleagues get to yakking about what’s wrong with the patient, my eyes kind of glaze over. They might as well be talking backwards. Meanwhile my wife is enthusiastically nominating all sorts of diseases that I never heard of as candidates for whatever’s threatening the patient with a quick demise. It’s not unlike watching a football game with an avid and very knowledgeable fan who keeps predicting what play will be called in the huddle and what the defense will try to do about it.

I can’t get into the disease part of the show. But the performances are top-of-the-line and the characters are compelling. Every now and then a patient’s loved one has more than he can take and punches House in the nose. I’m surprised his underlings have never tried to poison him, or at least drained the brake fluid from his car. It makes you wonder why no one ever belted Sherlock Holmes.

Meanwhile, amazon has most of my books for sale with serious discounts. Surprised you with that, didn’t I? Just the kind of nervy thing that House might do. But it’s true–big discounts on the paperbacks, just in time for Christmas.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just click “Books” and see covers, blurbs, and sample chapters. They’ll speak for themselves.

Before It Evolved into Twaddle…REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

See the source image

From March 27, 2019

My wife and I like watching videos of prehistoric animals. Usually we can just tune out the Evolution just-so story that accompanies the video, if the visuals are cool enough.

So we settled down on Youtube to watch Morphed: Before They Were Bears.

Apart from the initial absurdity of declaring that life arose from non-living materials, purely by chance, it rained on de rocks and de rocks come alive, doo-dah, doo-dah, we were treated to unbearable nonsense about… bears. It seems that whenever prehistoric bears encountered some kind of environmental challenge, they wisely considered what they would need and then proceeded to evolve it.

Oh, boy! Whoever said there’s no quality control on Youtube wasn’t kidding!

So, ya see, the giant panda needed an opposable thumb so he could hold on to the bamboo while he was eating it, but the digits he already had were spoken for, so he just, like, went ahead and evolved one of his wrist bones into a kind of thumb… and what he was eating while waiting for his magical thumb to evolve, who knows? If it takes millions of years for revolutionary new body parts to evolve, how does the species last long enough to benefit by it? Or if it happens real fast, then how come no naturalist or farmer or zoo-keeper or pet owner has ever observed it?

This doesn’t even rise to the level of crapola. We couldn’t make it halfway through this video before we had to turn it off.

Darwinism wouldn’t last another ten days if there weren’t such a deep political investment in it by the Left.

TV Treat: Dueling Paganisms REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

From January 9, 2016

Patty and I have been enjoying Primeval, a popular British TV series featuring prehistoric monsters invading our modern world through “anomalies in time,” whatevuh they may be. It was created by Tim Haines, which is what attracted us to it. We love Haines’ trilogy of prehistoric life: Walking With Dinosaurs, Walking With Beasts, and Walking With Monsters. We dismiss the Darwinian fairy tales and groove on the special effects.

No one, not even the makers of the Jurassic Park movies, tops Haines when it comes to re-creating prehistoric critters. These look real! My favorite is the Gorgonopsian (see video clip), a saber-toothed predatory reptile structured more like a mammal and, it would seem, incredibly dangerous.

Okay, Primeval is not King Lear. Don’t go looking for depth of character here, or a lot of logical consistency. Enjoy watching the critters.

But I have also enjoyed the series’ theme of two competing versions of humanistic paganism.

In this corner we have Nick, the good guy, who views Evolution as a sovereign force and is dead-set against trying to tamper with it. To Nick, all good things about the world are the result of blind chance.

Over here, in the black tights, we have Helen (Nick’s estranged wife), who wants to control Evolution and change the outcome of history.

Nick’s god is Chance. Helen worships a pristine Earth Goddess devoid of human beings. Both visions are as far from Christ as it is possible to be. If you are easily influenced by what you watch on TV, it might be a good idea for you to steer clear of Primeval.

But if you’re interested in what makes God-less people tick, if you want to try to understand where they’re coming from, and how they manage to do such a bang-up job of screwing up our civilization–well, then, these shows may prove enlightening. I must admit to a experiencing a kind of sardonic amusement, watching pagans blunder around inside their ideological hall of mirrors, unable to get out.

Anyhow, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to spy out the enemy and try to analyze his plans, his outlook on reality–or, as the case may be, unreality.

We are spying out the Promised Land, to win ground for Christ’s Kingdom; and we can’t do it with our eyes closed.

A Wonderfully Scary Little Movie REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

From April 16, 2014

M.R. James was the best ghost story writer of all time, and among his very best stories is Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad. It’s been published innumerable times in various anthologies.

What’s it about? Well, I don’t want to spoil it for you. Let’s just say it’s one of the scariest ghost stories ever written.

You can also watch it on youtube. Whistle and I’ll Come to You is a 40-minute adaptation of the story, made in 1968. It stars Michael Hordern (he plays Marley in the famous Alistair Sim version of “A Christmas Carol,” Scrooge) as a university professor on a short vacation by the sea.

Hordern gives us a character who is the epitome of the academic fat-head–there’s no fool like an intellectual fool–so in love with his supposed intelligence, so convinced of his vast superiority over everybody else, that he can’t even talk straight. To display his own cleverness, he twists and mangles every straightforward question put to him by anyone.

His vanity leaves him totally defenseless against the horror that is to come.

On one of his rambles, he finds an old grave partially exposed by erosion, and in it he finds some kind of metal cylinder. When he cleans it, he discovers it’s a whistle with a Latin inscription on it that says, “Who is this that is coming?” So of course he blows the whistle, and finds out.

I mustn’t tell you any more of the plot. If you enjoy a really good scare, you gotta see this!

It’s a short film, beautifully shot in black and white. One version has a very nice music track added by a fan. The original does not. Both are excellent.

By the way, there’s no sex, no blood ‘n’ guts, no cussin’ and swearing, no bodies flying all over the place.

It’s a very quiet little film, and it will creep you out but good.

Another Youtube Treat REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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.