Category: Movie Reviews

Blog visitor “LadyWiz” and I have shared fond memories of a bygone avenue of pleasure known as “Million Dollar Movie.” The way things are going with our country, someday fond memories might be all we have left.

When I was a kid, we had only seven TV channels: the three major networks, Public TV, and local channels 5, 7, and 9. Channel 9 was (and still is) WOR-TV, and from 1955 through 1966, one of their showpieces was “Million Dollar Movie.”

Twice a night on weekdays, and twice a day on Saturdays, except during baseball season, “Million Dollar Movie” ran classics from the RKO movie library. The theme music was from “Gone With the Wind” (“da-da-da-DUM, da-da-da-DUM”), and there was an announcer who regularly reminded the audience, “If you missed any part of [Title], or wish to see it again, the next showing is at such-and-such a time.”

Ah, how wonderful it was! “King Kong,” “Son of Kong,” and “Mighty Joe Young”–a thrilla with a gorilla. “Gunga Din.” And such beloved classics as “Attack of the Crab Monsters,” “Prehistoric Women,” and “Queen of Outer Space” with Zsa Zsa Gabor and poor Eric Fleming, the star of “Rawhide.” Not to mention “Godzilla,” “Gorgo,” and “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms.”

All right, I was a 10-year-old boy. I wasn’t going to sit around watching a lot of kissing movies, was I? They did show a “Blackbeard” movie (with William Bendix in a supporting role) which scandalized me because I had just read all about Blackbeard the Pirate in one of those glorious old stamp-and-coloring books–remember them?–and the story told by the movie wasn’t a bit like the real thing. I was fit to be tied! My mother tried to explain, “That’s called poetic license,” but I wasn’t buying it. Little did I dream that eventually poetic license would be taken with history, current events, and the economy, too. I guess Solon was right when he predicted that would happen… circa 500 B.C.

I don’t know about anybody else, but my imagination was ignited by those hokey movies and the fire still burns today.

I’ve got to stop writing about public education and politics for a day or two. It’s playing the devil with my blood pressure. In a bid to unfrazzle myself, I offer this list of five favorite science fiction movies.

1. The Time Machine (1960), one of George Pal‘s best efforts, has always fascinated me. I don’t know what aspect of it I like best: the introductory scenes, which never fail to arouse my imagination; the eerie sets and scenery; the acting, in which we encounter tenderness, of all things; or the story itself. A time traveler hurls himself 800,000 years into the future to find what looks like a world given over to Obama-ism run wild. He finds the Eloi, a race of passive, no-information nebbishes totally dependent upon an elite class of monsters, the Morlocks, for all the necessities of life. In return, the Eloi get to be lunch for the Morlocks–literally. The only thing the screenwriters got wrong was their estimation that it would take the human race 800,000 years to reach this point.

2. Jurassic Park (1993). Overlooking the fact that I’m a dinosaur freak, what tickles me about this movie is its treatment of the illusion that scientists and businessmen “know what they’re doing” and are “in control” at all times. As events roll out, we soon see that they haven’t got the foggiest idea of what they’re doing and have no control of it whatsoever. The sooner the rest of us wake up to that truth, the better.

3. Forbidden Planet (1956). I watched this many times on “Million Dollar Movie” (“If you missed any part of Forbidden Planet, or wish to see it again, please tune in at such-and-such a time…”). This was another one to ignite a young imagination. I’ll never forget Walter Pigeon, once the mystery of the planet has begun to be unraveled, shaking his head and lamenting, “My poor Krell!”

4. The Blob (1958). Seeing this again, fifty-odd years later, this movie is a lot cooler than I remembered it. Steve McQueen became a star, for his work in this unassuming little thriller. You’ll be surprised at how good The Blob still is.

5. Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965) Betcha never even heard of this one! One of Roger Corman’s early films, it features an aged Basil Rathbone in a minor part and supposedly rips off a Soviet science-fiction classic I never saw or heard of. The story is about the first expedition to Venus (this was before we knew that underneath all those clouds, Venus is considerably hotter than a sauna). The special effects are as cheap as you’d expect, but never mind–in what can otherwise be called nothing but a clunker of a movie, the payoff comes at the very end. It’s worth waiting for, trust me: surprisingly poetic, unexpectedly beautiful and oddly moving. You won’t forget it.

OK, I’ve left a lot of great movies off this short list–but only so that you, dear readers, can nominate some of your own favorites.

I think you’ll find some surprises in this list.

1. Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948) stars William Powell as a Boston man in a mid-life crisis who falls in love with a real, live mermaid (Ann Blythe). This movie is just chock-full of witty lines and preposterous situations: like when Mr. Peabody enters “The Wee Shop of Intimate Things” and tries to buy “half a bathing suit.” Or when a nosy P.R. man spots him bending over a fish pond and whispering heart-felt words of love to… a fish, it seems. They just don’t make ’em like this anymore!

2. Jason and the Argonauts (1963), in which Ray Harryhausen created some of the greatest, most eye-popping special effects ever, using clay models and his trademark stop-motion techniques. To this day, in spite of all our technological advances, no one has ever surpassed Harryhausen’s rendition of the giant bronze statue of Talos coming to life, and his battle between the Argonauts and a platoon of homicidal skeletons: two of the greatest special effects scenes ever, in one movie.

3. The Princess Bride (1987), William Goldman’s “bent fairy tale,” featuring pro wrestling legend Andre the Giant in his one and only movie role. But it’s Mandy Patinkin who steals the show, with his immortal lines, “Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” You’ll never see a movie with a sprightlier, more creative screenplay.

4. One Touch of Venus (1948) Ava Gardner is a statue of the goddess Venus who comes to life and falls in love with department store clerk Robert Walker, and turns his humdrum life upside-down. This film is another festival of wit: song lyrics by Ogden Nash, and Eve Arden in a supporting role, delivering a fusillade of droll one-liners. Compared to this, movies today are made by cavemen.

5. Ugetsu (1953), directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. Many of you probably have never heard of this one. It’s a grim little tale of two idiots, a potter and his clod of a brother-in-law, who get caught up first in a civil war and then in supernatural events. Watch what happens when the potter thinks he has become the lover of a princess of a noble house. Sweet dreams!

All five of these movies have one thing in common: they are fantasies that thoroughly succeed in carrying you away for an hour and a half or so–and I do mean far away. But don’t worry. You can always come back.

Here’s another movie you’ve got to catch on youtube, free of charge: Poirot’s Christmas, a feature-length murder mystery starring David Suchet. Patty and I watched it last night, and it blew me away.

Against a background of beautifully-sung Christmas hymns (no “Frosty the Snowman” or anything like that), Hercule Poirot navigates his way through a complicated mess of crime, cruelty, murder, vengeance, and injustice–one of the nastier cases he’s ever had to investigate. Watching it had a strange effect on me: I found myself tearing up when the Christmas music started, and even praying silently. (I won’t tell you what I prayed, except to say I asked the Father to give Christmas more power in this poor, fallen world.)

Why this odd juxtaposition of crime and Christmas?

I can’t read Agatha Christie’s mind, but I can read my own. To ponder the crimes against the Christmas background was to me a very powerful reminder of why Our Lord Jesus Christ had to come here in the first place–a reminder that yes, He did come, and yes, He has saved us who put our trust in Him.

Not a bad achievement for a murder mystery.

Well, folks, here’s another one for you to avoid: The Happening (2008), M. Night Shyamalan‘s first R-rated film. Rated R for ridiculous. (Yikes, they think my name is hard to spell…)

Amazon customer reviewers have hanged this turkey from a lamppost. They don’t like the story, the acting, the directing–they don’t even like the music.

But I say that if you could make this movie starring Laurence Olivier and Judith Anderson, directed by Otto Preminger, written by Ben Hecht, with music by Beethoven, it still wouldn’t save The Happening. In a spirit of humanitarianism, I’ll try to spoil this movie for you so you won’t have any reason to watch it.

OK–for no apparent reason, everybody in New York starts committing suicide. It spreads all over the Northeast. We are shown one guy feeding himself to the lions at the zoo, and another feeding himself to farm equipment. It’s all supposed to be scary, but before very long, it’s just slapstick.

Why is this happening? Because Mother Gaea is really cheesed off at us, dude! Like, this disaster is only a warning of what’s gonna happen if we don’t learn how to be good little Greenies… Barf bag, please. You see, all these different plants have suddenly “evolved” this neurotoxin that makes human beings kill themselves. The plants release it into the air and it spreads on the wind. There is no defense. This is all laid out for us by a talking head at the end of the movie, in case we didn’t catch on earlier. You know your screenplay stinks when you have to plug in a talking head to tell your audience what happened. Then again, maybe Mr. Shyamalan doesn’t know that.

“Gee, mister–if this movie is so bad, why did you watch it?” I plead temporary insanity. I had no idea it’d be that awful. Leave me alone.

So once again the art of film is used to preach a load of pagan poppycock. I guess we’re supposed to worship The Planet, or else The Goddess will sic her plants on us. Better watch out for those plants, because they can magically evolve, at very short notice, one mean hombre of a neurotoxin. And then they’ll stop for a while to see if we’ve learned our lesson. Better trade in your SUV for one of those Government Motors electric doohickeys. And don’t use so much toilet paper! A dandelion might be spying on you.

 

As my wife was marveling at the latest “People of Walmart” on the ol’ computer, I couldn’t help asking, “Can I go back to Narnia now?”

The BBC treatment of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader came out in 1989. All right, some of the costumes are kind of hokey. But there is poetry here. It gets under your skin. It stirs the blood. When the voyagers come to Ramandu‘s island and meet the ancient, retired star–I mean a star brought down from heaven… This is among the most beautiful and emotionally moving scenes you will ever find on film. We have seen it many times, two tough old birds, and it never fails to bring up tears. Nor is it the only beauty in this movie. Best of all, it is all in the service of Jesus Christ Our Lord.

The new movie threw out all the poetry and underplayed the Christian theme. Fooey! Fools! Do you think beauty created by a human mind is cheap? Oh, we can create many things that seem to be beautiful… but they aren’t. The real thing is a gem of great rarity. And you threw it away. For all your gawdy special effects, for all the money that you spent, there was nothing–nothing!–in your Voyage that came within long miles of the poetry and beauty brought forth by C.S. Lewis and happily captured in this humble old BBC effort.

But then Christ is the fount of beauty. No one who is embarrassed to praise Him will ever create real beauty.

 

Everything outside wears a shining white mantle of snow, and icicles glitter from the eaves of all the houses. God has painted another beautiful picture.

Sometimes I am not able to follow the example of the Macabees, who laid off fighting on the Sabbath (unless they were attacked). If you’d like to see this morning’s set-to, go to the Chessgames.com website ( http://www.chessgames.com ), scroll down to “Chessforums,” click it, and then scroll until you find the “Playground Player Chessforum,” with the little green dinosaur for an avatar. That’s my forum. Click it and follow the discussion, in which I attempt to defend the right of a Christian baker in Oregon not to be forced to create a cake for a lesbian “wedding.” The state is flexing its muscles, trying to compel this man to do something abhorrent to his conscience. Sounds all too familiar, doesn’t it?

But that’s done for the time being, and we’re going to spend the afternoon watching the wonderful old BBC rendition of C.S. Lewis‘ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Part III of The Chronicles of Narnia. It’s vastly better than the fancy new 3-D movie version that came out a little while ago.

I love these stories because they never fail to remind me that, no matter how aggressive our statist bullies are today, Christ is King–and He shall reign forever and ever.

A dear and esteemed friend has privately objected to the strong language I used yesterday in reviewing The Grey. Well, what can I say? That movie really cheesed me off. In fact, I’m still angry.

Let us not forget that a movie is a story that is told, and nothing happens in the movie that the screenplay writers didn’t want to happen. In this case, I think it’s obvious that the purpose of this screenplay was to create a two-hour infomercial for atheism. The writers manipulated events so that, at the end of the movie, they could say to their audience, “See? There is no God! There’s only do0m, defeat, and despair!” And they took a great deal of trouble to set us up for this.

As a storyteller myself, I resent this abuse of the storyteller’s art. What kind of message is that–“It doesn’t matter what we do, there is no God, and we’re stuck”?

I’ll tell you what kind of message it is. It’s a lie. And it’s lies like this that are turning our Western civilization into a ruin. Shame on those who told it. Shame on Liam Neeson for prostituting his talent to it. Shame on all who are so in love with their own cleverness that they’re not clever enough to understand they’re serving Satan.

 

Hey, what is it with these movies in which everybody dies? My wife and I just watched The Grey, starring Liam Neeson, a 2011 survival story in which nobody survives. And along the way, the screenwriters give you an atheist message to go along with it–like finding half of a dead waterbug in your tainted potato salad.

A plane crashes in the Alaskan wilderness and Liam Neeson, a professional wolf hunter, tries to lead the crash survivors to safety. He needn’t have bothered. Nobody makes it. The ones the wolves don’t kill, the weather polishes off.

Well, you bunch of sophomoric movie-makers, I say “Piss on you!” And on your pathetic and defeatist message, too. Is this how you get critics to say you’re smart? Fooey! Boo! Hiss! I defy you. My cat empties her glands in your direction.

I think it says something about our civilization, that it produces movies in which all the characters die.

I think our civilization had better get its act together before it becomes more of interest to archeologists than to bloggers.