Category: Movies

When I picked this DVD up last month at an estate sale, I said that my beautiful wife and I saw it in the theaters. Not so, gentle reader, as the barest Internet research would have led me to this post from 2004, “Lessons from The Last Samurai“, where I clearly indicate that we watched the film at home. Twenty years ago. We must have seen it on cable as I don’t think we have it already–although perhaps I should look more closely when dusting or, heaven forfend, organize something.

At any rate: Tom Cruise plays Algren, a calvary veteran who fought against a variety of Indians in the west but who is haunted by some of the things he did in the military, particularly punitive raids on Indian villages. The film starts with him, drunk, doing a presentation for Winchester Rifles at a fair. His old commanding officer finds him and has an offer for him: Come to Japan and help to train the westernizing army there. He does, but when the poorly trained and inexperienced conscripts are pressured into a battle with samurai and break and flee before them, Algren with a death wish makes a valiant stand, and instead of killing him, the warlord in charge of the samurai take him prisoner to learn what they can from him. Algren starts to appreciate the idyllic ways of the peaceful village where the samurai and their families live, but that all comes to a head when the new restored emperor is weak and lets the business interests of Japan attack the samurai with Algren’s former commanding officer leading the other side.

It’s a nice little period action film, pretty to look at, and it romanticizes the samurai way of life, but thematically, of course it does–stories like this always romanticize the past.

Here’s what I said in 2004, lessons from the film:

• An all-volunteer army is better than a conscript army. Ergo, it’s against the mock draft proposal being floated around by those who want us to fear the militarization of the Republican police state.
• Apparently, Sun Tzu was not translated into Nihongo until sometime after 1877. I mean, when you’ve got 500 men with swords and bows against two regiments with cannons and machine guns, Sun Tzu would have pointed out that narrow mountain passes that completely block in winter might present better terrain to your strengths than open fields.

In the 20 years since, I’ve read Japanese culture and history intermittently, and I appreciated some of the things that the film got correct. In the obligatory sepukku scene at the beginning, the samurai leader allows the Japanese general to commit suicide and, as they were friends, acts as the one who decapitates him after the seppukku (I was surprised to learn that happened when I read Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai). When the samurai come to Tokyo for a parley, guards harrass one and take his topknot. Which was a thing. And the samurai charging machine guns sort of happened in the Battle of Nagashino (although far earlier than the Meiji restoration).

And, yeah, the life in Japan prior to the Meiji restoration was not as pastoral as depicted in the film. But it’s a movie, not a history book, and I liked it well enough to maybe watch it again. Maybe in 20 years.

This sequel to the 1993 Harrison Ford film The Fugitive came out five years later with Tommy Lee Jones reprising his Academy Award-winning turn as a United States Marshal on the hunt for a fugitive. I am not sure if we saw the film in the theaters–I maintained we did, but I’ve been mistaken before (and since, as you will see). I do know I saw The Fugitive at least once in the theater–the Marquette Theater on campus, after which my campus crush who was walking out with our group spun and said to me, “You liked Gerard!” As though then as now that would come as a surprise.

At any rate, this film centers on a plot where some someones are in a parking garage shooting at each other in the darkness. Then, Gerard and team take down a fugitive whilst Tommy Lee Jones is in a chicken costume. Then, a car accident involving a tow truck driven by Wesley Snipes leads authorities to discover he is wanted for the two murders shown choppily before the titles. He’s being sent back to New York on a plane containing Gerard and the fugitive that he captured. An assassin tries to kill Snipes with a zip gun which Snipes thwarts, but the bullet punctures a window and causes the plane to crash. Much like after the train derailment in The Fugitive, this puts Snipes on the run to clear his name.

This time, though, Gerard’s team gets an outsider, a member of the something something government something something, played by Robert Downey, Jr. Snipes (I guess his character’s name, after all the aliases drop, is Sheridan) was a state department “kite”–an asset that they can cut loose, something something secrets to the Chinese…. Wait, what? The Chinese were bad guys? How old is this film?

At any rate, as it would happen, it works out in the end. The U.S. Marshals find out who is really selling secrets to the Chinese, Gerard reconnects with his team after seeking revenge for the death of one of his team, and Snipes’s character walks a free man with his Starbucks barrista girlfriend played by Irène Jacob.

To be honest, I liked The Fugitive better. I don’t know why, but the Gerard-out-for-revenge bit kind of diminishes the character a bit.

Did someone say Irène Jacob? If so, hopefully they pronounced it correctly. I would not; I’m not sure what that accent mark does to an e.

Continue reading “Movie Report: U.S. Marshals (1998)” →

I must be on an Emily Mortimer kick, as I just saw her in The Pink Panther, and Facebook immediately informed me of her upcoming turn as a director. And she stars in this film, based on the Penelope Fitzgerald book in in 2021 (and picked up the DVD in 2023). This will likely end my Emily Mortimer kick, such as it is, because most of her work is on smaller English films or television.

Okay, so, to recap the plot: In the late 1950s, a war widow wants to open a book shop in an old building that has stood vacant for seven years, but a wealthy woman has planned to use it as an arts centre but never acted on it until the the widow opens the book shop. The wealthy woman then uses a variety of means to drive the woman from the building and eventually succeeds.

I seem to remember the sale of Lolita was a bigger deal in the short book, but perhaps I am mistaken. It could have followed the book pretty closely as the book itself was 123 pages.

It’s a very British film: slowly paced, focusing on the slightly quirky characters of the village. It’s a period piece, set in the 1950s, and it has an extra bit of distance for those of us across the pond. It’s interesting to look at, but it’s not the kind of thing that I seek out. So not my bag.

I think I’ve been seeing a lot of talk on the Internet about the movie recently, but it might have only been the post on the Librarian of Celaeno’s substack last October which prompted me to watch the film right away (for Nogglestead variations of immediacy) after having bought the first two films last August (before LoC’s post, actually). I was kind of hoping to watch it on a movie night with my boys, as the first film’s cultural references still echo today, but maybe that’s amongst us Uncs and not among the actual kids. Oh, but no: As it stands, they both have jobs now, and at the same fast food restaurant, so they often work on alternating nights. And when I proffered the opportunity to watch the film to my oldest, he demurred as he generally does these days–I guess forty-year-old two-hour-long action movies are a little slow compared to the scrolling of the modern Internet. So I’ll be watching films alone mostly from here on out, and here on out began a while ago.

I won’t bore you with too much about Predator: It’s almost archetypal for an action flick of the era, with big unapologetic Americans fighting South or Central American bad guys until they discover they’re fighting something else: an alien that hunts men. You know, “The Most Dangerous Game” but with that twist. It’s a solid piece from its time, and it holds up well, although I cannot tell you what (My) Kids These Days would think of it since they did not partake (the older said he has been frightened by seeing the chest bursting scene when he viewed it on some other kid’s device at the dojo when he was much younger, and I had to point out that Xenomorphs from Alien are different from the Predators, although their paths have crossed cinematically from time to time).

I’d seen that film a time or two in the past. But apart from a scene towards the end that I caught on cable at some point or another, I had never seen Predator 2, but I had seen commentary on it that it was not as good as the first. But it’s a little like comparing Alien to Aliens. The moviemakers and writers took the story in a different direction instead of trying to do Die Hard, but in an airport! On a boat! On a bus! with it.

Predator 2 is set seven years in the future–the film came out in 1990, but it is set in 1997–and downtown Los Angeles is sweltering under a heat wave and it’s a battleground between the Colombians and the Jamaican posses (Jamaican posses as baddies were very big in 1990, recent evidence suggests). When Danny Glover, playing a detective named Harrigan in the police department, and his team pursue some gang-bangers into their drug house, they find the heavily armed men have been killed by someone…or something… else. And Glover’s detective is reprimanded for not following orders. A team of Feds, led by Gary Busey, is investigating the killings with their own agenda. Basically, they know it’s an alien with advanced technology they want for the US Government. Harrigan and his team investigate, trail Busey’s team, and Bill Paxton gets killed by a Predator, completing his trifecta. It leads to a confrontation between the Predator, Busey’s team, and Harrigan in a slaughterhouse (which I’d scene part of some years ago). Then it’s Harrigan and the Predator in a chase scene, hand-to-hand combat on a large Predator ship, and…. finis? No, of course not.

Basically, a couple minutes in, I wondered if this was an off-label Lethal Weapon movie. Not only does Danny Glover play a cop just a couple of “I’m getting too old for this shit”s short of Roger Murtaugh, but Steve Kahan, who played Lieutenant Murphy, appears as a uniformed police officer early in the movie, and of course, Gary Busey played Mr. Joshua in the first Lethal Weapon. So part of the game within the game was watching for others like maybe Mary Ellen Trainor. But no such luck.

As I mentioned, the film is part of its time in having Jamaican Posses as the new urban gang antagonist.

And it was reminiscient of Highlander 2 in a sequel to a film set in the 1980s is set into a darker future which did not come to pass; 1997 (Predator 2) and 2024 (Highlander 2) have come and gone without being as bleak as predicted. Maybe that would be lesson to learn about the future from now about which we sometimes feel bleak.

At any rate, I don’t think Predator 2 was bad. It just wasn’t the first, and that would have been hard to top.

Not long after watching The Pink Panther, I thought I’d watch the second Steve Martin Pink Panther movie which I was sure I had. So I got myself into the mood for it, and then I looked for it and I could not find it. Well. When I want to watch a particular movie, if I find we don’t have it (or, sometimes, we do have it and I cannot find it), well, my movie watching for the evening is done, and I fall back to reading or something. So it was only another night that I popped in this film for some reason. I don’t know where I picked it up–or if I picked it up at all–this might have been something my wife grabbed, or I might have bought it a long time ago indeed as it was wrapped in cellaphane and had a Best Buy price tag on it.

So, to briefly lay out the plot: Daniel Day-Lewis plays Hawkeye/The Deerslayer/Leatherstocking/Natty Bumpo, a frontiersman who is friends with Chingachgook and Uncas, a father/son pair who are the last of their tribe. But I get ahead of myself.

During the French and Indian War (where, unlike other wars, the French and Indians are on the same side against the English), a Colonel in the British army sends his daughters to a distant fort for safety. They’re lead into an ambush by a treacherous Indian played by the Sphinx from Mystery Men (Wes Studi, whom I could have sworn I’d recently seen in something else). Hawkeye and the Mohicans rescue the daughters (and another British officer) and lead them to their destination which turns out to be a fort under French seige whose letter seeking reinforcements and warning the colonel not to send his daughters was carried by the treacherous Indian and never delivered, obviously. The Colonel had promised the American militia that they would be released to defend their homes from marauding Indians, but the commander of the fort alters the deal. Hawkeye helps them to escape the fort but is smitten with Cora, the oldest daughter, so he remains to face justice for what he’s done. That’s hanging, by the way–it’s a bold strategy, Cotton. But the fort surrenders and the British are allowed to leave, but the Huron fall upon the leaving train and slaughter it but treacherous Magua (Studi) ambush that, too, and steal away the women and the British officer. Whom Hawkeye and the Mohicans try to rescue, but end up having to settle for revenge.

I read the book in college (and have picked up a couple more in the series since then), and I’ve got to say that the book really gives short shrift to the Mohicans and instead focuses on the spectacle and sweep of the film. It’s more historically accurate than the later (both in release and in time period) The Patriot, but the story keeps the protagonist at a bit of a distance, perhaps because of how much had to be trimmed to make it into a single film and not a trilogy.

I must have seen this on home video in the 1990s, and I can probably go another twenty or thirty years before seeing it again. Maybe if I have grandchildren who are into history. I do have another Daniel Day-Lewis film, There Will Be Blood, atop the movie cabinets, so maybe I will see that soon (wherein “soon” might be the next five years).

Oh, and the film soundtrack/score: My beautiful wife loves it. But I dunno. The parts used in the film, which generally is the first number of seconds or minute from each piece/movement, basically sound the same. Maybe it’s a motif or theme repeated, but the whole movements or pieces vary enough to make it listenable as a whole. But I was not impressed.

Well, I am possibly on a Steve Martin “kick” since I’ve had watched three of his movies in the last year (Shopgirl, The Man with Two Brains, and The Out-of-Towners). And since I also just watched a Peter Sellers Pink Panther movie (The Return of the Pink Panther), it was inevitable that I would eventually come to watch this film. As it so happens, I bought it last year about this time–since the Lutherans for Life Sale is next weekend, almost to the date. And since I have watched four films over the last three weeks, I should definitely go to that sale and buy a dozen more.

At any rate, after a big soccer match, someone kills the French soccer coach (played briefly by Jason Statham) who owns and wears the Pink Panther, a diamond that’s the source of French pride and good luck for the soccer team. The chief inspector, played by Kevin Kline, wants to bring into the investigation the most incompetent gendarme in the country to “lead” the investigation–that is, to be the focus of the media attention while Kline and his team work behind the scenes to solve the crime. He (Kline’s character named Dreyfus) selects Clouseau and has a loyal Parisian police officer (played by Jean Reno who had the only real French accent for the film) to keep an eye on the suspects which includes the American pop star fiancee of the coach (played by Beyonce).

So we get a set of fish-out-of-water bit of slapstick with set pieces where Clouseau bumbles about Paris, he makes outlandish mistakes, but with the help of his assistant played by Emily Mortimer, they dramatically make the correct arrest at a big party held at the Presidential mansion before Dreyfus can mistakenly arrest a Chinese official whom his team believes is the real killer.

You know, from his writings (such as Pure Drivel and Shopgirl) and some of his movies such as Bowfinger and the aforementioned Shopgirl, one might get the sense that Martin is a thinking man’s humorist, and he does have that capacity. But he’s also made a career on being a wild and crazy guy, and his biggest films have been more slapstick than Twain.

At any rate, an amusing enough film, and I laughed at a couple of things. One turn from the Sellers films: Instead of his man attacking him to keep him fresh, Martin’s Clouseau says he’s going to keep Reno’s character on his toes by attacking him unexpectedly, and he does this several times in the film and Reno’s character offhandedly deflects it.

So the film includes Emily Mortimer…. Continue reading “Movie Report: The Pink Panther (2006)” →

After picking this film up at an estate sale, I popped it right in. After all, the dumb comedies move to the head of the line here at Nogglestead on evenings when a modern action film seems too heady. And its only because I’m familiar with the film makers (I watched Epic Movie last year), a couple of Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker knock-offs, that I chose this over the National Lampoon-badged film with Paris Hilton. Which I will probably watch by-and-by.

At any rate, this is basically a spoof of 300 with side bits poking fun at contemporaneous things like American Idol, America’s Top Model, and other reality shows. It’s got some off-color humor to it, a bit of making fun of the homosexual tropes of the buff men in leather, and whatnot. Amusing in spots but it is what it is.

It has Kevin Sorbo several years past his Hercules days (and Kull the Conqueror) playing the lieutenant and Carmen Electra playing the wife of Leonidas. You spot some other people whom you think you should know, or I did, but I didn’t know them. And the collection of people portraying other famous people were so spot-on that I thought Paris Hilton actually appeared in the film making light of herself. But it was Nicole Parker instead.

I know, I know: Usually when I mention an actress by name, I post photos. But I’m too lazy today to go hunting for photos.

So: Here I am, at Rotarian or Knights of Columbus age, watching dumb comedies. I don’t know if that’s keeping me eternally youthful–doubtful–or if it means I’m a man-child who needs to grow up. Probably the latter.

In a story about Barry Diller’s new autobiography, the New York Post provides illustrations.

Ay, who needs AI to garble things up when we have humans who can hallucinate things for free?

(For the uninitiated and the young amongst us, note that the image is from Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, a 2024 Netflix thing, not the first film. Or a real movie, actually.)

I cannot remember if I saw this film originally in the theaters–it came out right as I was finishing college, so I might have been fairly broke that summer or I might have been blowing my college graduation gifts at the time. However, this was not my first viewing of the film, although it had been some time. I’ve kind of thought about it since, and it’s one of those “Don’t we have that?” films where my beautiful wife is surprised that we don’t actually have a film in our library. But if we’ve watched it in the thirty years since its release (!), it could have been on cable or as a rental as we’ve had a television package for most of that time.

On Devil’s Night in Detroit, a group of thugs working for the local crime boss kill a woman who is protesting evictions in their building and her boyfriend. One year later, he claws his way from the grave and, guided by a crow, seeks vengeance on the gang and ultimately kills not only the gang but also the boss behind their actions and a lot of extra local crime figures to boot. So think a Goth Mack Bolan or a Gothier Frank Castle who is undead and whose wounds heal instantly. Oh, and the only people who know who he is are a tween skater girl whose mother is a junkie in the local gang’s orbit who knew Eric and Shelly and a local good cop, played by Ernie Hudson, who encounters the undead Draven on the job.

You know, it holds up well because it’s a simple movie with practical effects and heavily stylized film making. It’s almost black-and-white ate times (the source comic book was black and white), and even when it’s clearly color it uses chiascurro and darkness to great effect. A heavily Goth aesthetic, but it was 1994.

I have to wonder if it weren’t for The Crow, would there have been a Blade or The Matrix, both of which have a very similar look and industrial soundtrack?

Oh, yeah, and as a reminder: Brandon Lee, who played Eric Draven, died during the production of the film when he was accidentally shot with a prop gun. What would the 1990s have been with him as an action film star?

The film also had Bai Ling, but I just posted a photo of her in 2017. So let’s look at Sofia Shinas, who played Eric’s fiancée. Continue reading “Movie Report: The Crow (1994)” →

You know, I’ve seen ads in newspapers and online notifications for years about Jeff Dunham performances, probably both in St. Louis and Springfield and maybe reviews on the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Web site back in the day, but I had not actually seen him perform in television appearances or Web snippets before. Which is odd, because I knew something about his ventriloquist act and maybe I’ve seen snippets somewhere. I knew a couple of the dummies and their names, but I know a lot more about them now.

So: It’s a ventriloquist act. He does a couple of non-dummy jokes before getting the first one out of the box. It’s Walter, the curmudgeon, who has an acid tongue and a nasty attitude. We also get to see Bubba J., the hick that looks like Howdy Doody; Peanut, which was Dunham’s first dummy; and José Jalapeño on a Stick. We get some bits where Peanut and José Jalapeño argue a bit. Dunham interacts with the audience and has Walter answer written questions submitted to them by audience members before the show. It’s probably not as much improv as having canned jokes and selecting questions to fit the gags.

Still, the program is almost twenty years old, and one wonders how his act has changed to fit the zeitgeist these days. His humor, although not especially crass, does touch on the differences between the sexes and other more taboo in 2024 subjects. He did not have Achmed the Dead Terrorist in this show, though, so I guess his act has been ever-evolving.

Amusing in a few spots and, to be honest, since it was my first exposure to Dunham (I think), it was more novel to me than, say, Gallagher whom I saw over and over again in the 1980s or any of the members of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour and better than an R-rated comedy from the later half of the first quarter of the 21st century.

If I find another special of his for another fifty cents, I’ll buy it.

I just watched some 1980s-era Stallone films (two of the three Rambo movies I just watched were from the 1980s), and one (meaning I) can forget the heirarchy of the action films of the day. Stallone and Schwarzenneggar were the top; Chuck Norris was no better than a B; and Steven Seagal was kind of a C-level. Just above direct-to-video or direct-to-cable fare. And eventually he would get down to that sort of level. I guess his biggest film, Under Siege, was in the future, but he had a stack of films right at the turn of the 1990s, and I tend to think of On Deadly Ground and Glimmer Man as past the peak. But that’s just me.

So: Seagal plays a DEA deep cover agent who loses a partner on a deal gone bad and he retires or takes some time off and goes home to find a former colleague coaching high school football. Jamaican posses are moving in with their crack and their brutality, displacing the Colombians and their cocaine. Although Seagal tries to stay out of it, he gets involved after a gangland massacre where he catches one of the Jamaicans, and the Jamaicans mark he and his family for death. With the help of a cop on loan from the Jamaican authorities and the football coach, they take down the powerful leader of the posse whom supposedly has strong magic, but the obvious twist is that he has a twin brother that nobody knew about even though he was always around and just out of sight.

So, yeah, it’s what you would expect: Seagal acting stoicly (or not acting maybe), some martial arts, and gun play. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a Seagal film–I’ve seen his 80s work, I saw Under Siege in the theater, and a couple of other things from the 1990s. But I am not a particular fan. And it might be a while before I watch another. Unless I find a boxed set for a buck or something.

Well, after picking these up at an estate sale a couple weeks ago, I thought maybe I would wait until I got a copy of First Blood to watch the series from the beginning, but I did not. I watched them not quite on consecutive nights, but enough to have them very fresh in mind as I moved to the next. I read the novels in 2008 (see First Blood and Rambo: First Blood Part II).

So: In Rambo: First Blood Part II, Colonel Trautman gets Rambo out of prison (for his actions in the first movie) on a covert mission into Vietnam to scout a prison camp that might hold American POWs. He is not to engage the enemy, though–only to confirm the presence of POWs, and a Delta Team will get them out. But while the government official running the op, Murdoch, expected the camp to be empty, the Vietnamese have rotated in prisoners, and Rambo liberates one and brings him to the extraction/exfil point. When Murdoch hears that, he aborts the mission before pickup, leaving Rambo to his fate. Rambo then breaks out with the help of his Vietnamese contact played by Julia Nickson and delivers the POWs of the camp to Murdoch.

The film would have been a scant decade after the end of the war, so it was still pretty fresh in the American zeitgeist (it was the topic of many films and television programs for quite some time). It had a couple of different acts to it and even a bit of depth to it. It’s not just jingoism; parts of the government (maybe all of it) are suspect and have their own agendas contrasting with that of the common man or soldier.

Rambo III, on the other hand–well, it lacks depth. It is a bit more….. jingoistic? It spends too much of its runtime explaining the gallant people of Afghanistan, those plucky guerrillas fighting against the Soviet menace. Trautman finds Rambo living in an ashram after the events of the second movie and stick-fighting for a little extra cash for the monks, and he invites Rambo to join him on an expedition into Afghanistan to find why one sector is particularly good at blocking arms shipments. Rambo demurs, but When Trautman is captured, he reconsiders and basically single-handedly invades a fortress. Well, he does have an Afghan guide and a child warrior for company, and the mujahideen do ride the rescue, but it’s overly simple and more comic-book/action movie than the others.

This film must have come on Showtime fresh right before we moved out of the trailer park, as I’ve seen it several times. But the only things that stuck with me were the opening scene and the cauterizing a wound with gundpowder scene. And my boys have not seen it, they have seen two films which parodied it: Hot Shots! Part Deux and UHF (which includes a parody of it in one of George’s daydreams).

Jeez, though, when you think that in a shorter span of time than the gap between Vietnam and the first (and second) films that the United States would be the target of those “gallant” freedom fighters. Life comes at you pretty fast especially in retrospect.

Rambo (don’t think too hard about the series numbering and naming convention) takes place 20 years later. Rambo is still living in southeast Asia. The Burmese civil war is raging–we get some expository footage to start the film–and a group of Christians is hoping to go up river to deliver medicine and hope to a persecuted Christian village, and they want to hire Rambo and his boat to take them. He demurs, but the woman of the group convinces him to help. So he takes them up river and protects them from pirates on the way. After they disembark, they’re captured by the local warlord who razes the village in the manner of Ghengis Khan. Rambo learns this when another member of their ministry arrives and commissions Rambo to ferry a team of mercenaries up river to find them. And he ends up taking a more active role in the rescue despite the mercenary leader dismissing him as just “the boat guy.”

This film, too, has some depth to it. Rambo is older, a bit more jaded and tired, but he has some attraction to the woman in the group which cannot be returned because she is, apparently, the fiancee of the group leader. And at the end, when they’re safe, she runs to him while Rambo watches from a distance. And Rambo returns to his hometown at the end of the film to reconcile with his father and/or family.

The shots are more dramatic as well–the 80s oranges have been washed out by the darkness of 21st century filmmaking, but Stallone, also the director, put some thought into them. Its effects are more gory than the 80s spot of blood and belly clutching–one online source said it was to maximize the effects budget because fake blood is cheap–but comparing other similar films from across those decades (see also On All The Conan Movies–so far) shows that it’s just how movies are made these days.

One thing to note about the films: They have mostly or all male casts. Rambo: First Blood Part II has the contact in Vietnam; Rambo III has a couple of extras amongst the Afghan tribespeople. Rambo has the woman who is on the missionary team and some extras. Very male dominated films, and I only note it because I know you want to see photos of the pretty actresses in them, and all you get is Julia Nickson. Continue reading “Movie Report: Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985); Rambo III (1988), Rambo (2008)” →

As I mentioned in February, I wanted to pick up a copy of this film when Bob Uecker died because I’d never seen it. Apparently, also, the St. Louis Blues hockey club have picked up a “mascot” named Jobu for their late season push and playoff run which was a voodoo idol from this movie as well. So I had two reasons to watch it, and I was happy to find a videocassette copy of it last weekend.

So: It’s a comedy that tracks kind of with the plot of Bull Durham, almost. The characters anyway. The wife of the man who owned the Cleveland Indians inherits the team when he dies, and she wants the team to move to Miami, so she sets the GM to build a roster from nobodies and has-beens. The veteran catcher, played by Tom Berenger, is a few years past his prime and has bad knees. Charlie Sheen plays a convict who joins the team as a fireball pitcher with control issues caused by poor eyesight. A Cuban power hitter, played by Dennis Haysbert (whom I knew was in the film but did not recognize), offers sacrifices to Jobu. A veteran pitcher relies on foreign substances to continue playing. Corbin Bernsen plays the shortstop whose thoughts are on his investments more than baseball. Wesley Snipes plays an outfielder who is fast but rough. Etc. Rene Russo is Berenger’s former flame in Cleveland, planning to marry a Yuppie (as they were known in those days). The team muddles along, improving, until the GM relates the scheme to the manager who tells the players, which inspires them to make a run for the pennant.

An amusing more than laugh-out-loud comedy. A bit of a product of its time, but not too dated. Worth watching, but I’m not rushing out for the sequels. And note that this is a Tom Berenger movie: his name comes first above the title. Man, he was something in the 1980s and maybe early 1990s, and although he’s been acting continually since, you mostly think this was a Charlie Sheen vehicle, ainna? Corbin Bernsen, the L.A. Law star, is the third on the poster. Not Wesley Snipes, who was not hitting his peak yet.

And, you know, I could have been in the movie. I was in town in the summer of 1988 when they filmed the stadium scenes at Milwaukee County Stadium (I thought it was true, and the scoreboard shots all show television station WTMJ 4 to confirm it). I know that people I knew then went to the stadium and stood in line to sit in the stands while scenes were filmed, but I did not. But I did keep looking in the crowd for people I might have known.

And just saying Milwaukee County Stadium reminds me that I have never been to a baseball stadium that exists today. I’ve been to ball games at Milwaukee County Stadium, but not Miller Park, and I’ve been to games at Busch Stadium (II) but not Busch Stadium (III). It has been a while, and they do change them every couple of decades these days.

After watching Tropic Thunder, I popped this film in on the next night. I kind of have a bit of a goal now, to watch the films I recently bought at an estate sale, because the unwatched films are now overflowing from the top of the video game cabinet and onto the top of the (full) unwatched video cabinet. AND THIS CANNOT STAND.

Also, if you’re keeping track, this is the third time I’ve watched this film: The first, in the theater, maybe, with my beautiful wife (or on videocassette with my beautiful wife). The second, probably rented from the video store not long after I mentioned the film to my wife and she repressed the memory of it. And now, again, since I’ve bought it at an estate sale and want to clear that particular deck.

In it, Steve Oedekirk (more known as a writer) has digitally inserted himself in a 1970s martial arts flick by imposing his head upon the lead actor, and he’s rewritten/redubbed the dialog and has inserted a number of gags, including a brawl with a computer-animated cow. In the plot, he’s a wanderer whose parents were killed by a gang led by Master Pain, and he grows to learn to fight and to seek revenge from Master Pain and to liberate the countryside from the sinister machinations of The Council who is giving Pain the orders behind the scenes. The plot is not important, though, as it only serves to tie the gags together.

Like Tropic Thunder, it’s a bit self-indulgent and only has a couple of really funny moments. But maybe I’m just old and grumpy. Maybe 13-year-old Brian J. would have liked it better.

At any rate, a couple of days later, a couple of things have stuck with me. The main bad guy, Master Pain, and the love interest are dubbed in silly voices. Master Pain sounds like a cartoon character and the love interest sounds like the high parts of Miss Piggy’s voice (without the brass), and she is prone to saying “Wi-oh-wi-oh-wi.” I’ve found myself making those voices when I’m alone. Jeez, Louise, guys, the things I say, the voices I make, and to be honest, sometimes the animal noises I make when I’m alone. I would be frightened for the sanity of anyone else whom I knew did this. But I’m pretty sure I’m sane, ainna?

And now I own this film on DVD, and if history proves a guide to the future, I will likely watch it more than I watch most things I own. I don’t know why I am drawn to these dumb comedies, but I am.

Not to be confused with the 1987 television movie based on the book by Louis L’Amour (or the book itself). Which, to be honest, I did: I knew enough about the title when this film came out that I thought it would have been a bastardization of the book (or television movie). But it’s not: It’s a complete story of its own that uses the same title, perhaps to draw in the people who don’t know better. I knew better, but since I just picked this film up last weekend, I popped it in right away.

So: Sharon Stone plays a woman referred to as Lady who comes into town with a burnt-out marshal’s office and shows immediately that she is not to be trifled with. It’s right before a big, bracket-style quick draw competition run by the man who runs the town played by Gene Hackman. We get introduced to a series of colorful gunfighters including Kid, played by Leonardo di Caprio, and Cort, played by Russell Crowe, and a couple of red shirts who are just there to lose. Kid turns out is actually Hackman’s kid who is constantly berates. Cort was a henchman of Hackman’s who renounced violence and became a preacher.

So, yeah, that’s the story. A bit of Lady’s past is told in flashback: Hackman was responsible for her father, the former marshal’s, death, and she’s come for revenge but is not sure whether she can actually kill him.

I mean, I can see what the director and filmographer are trying to do here. It’s a bit of a throwback to some of the great old westerns as far as filming goes–a lot of closeups and eyes moving back and forth and other stylizations which indicate that Sam Raimi liked Sergio Leone. But: A bracket-based gunfight tournament for a bunch of money (too much really) which Hackman’s character runs every so often to eliminate his competition? C’mon, man. That’s so 1990s.

But it does contain Sharon Stone at the end of her Whoa! years.

Continue reading “Movie Report: The Quick and the Dead (1995)” →