Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Since I just bought a Jesse Stone book (Colorblind), I popped in this film which I bought on DVD in May. It doesn’t look like it’s based on a novel nor has been made into a novel. So there’s parts of the Spenserverse that are not in print. Well, aside from Spenser: For Hire and A Man Called Hawk. But I really have moved on from Parkerania collecting since Stranger in Paradise, a Parker Jesse Stone book, inverted the whole idea of a moral code amongst the characters.

However, I guess I still dabble based on what Parker once meant to me.

But I digress: In this film, Stone (played by Tom Selleck) is on thin ice with the town council because he’s acting as a lawman and not just a source of revenue writing tickets for the town’s coffers. And because his busts are sometimes violent (see also the preceding television movies). The film starts with Stone and Healy on not-a-stakeout in Boston where Healy is being coy about what they’re doing. An unknown gunman shoots them in their car, leaving Healy near death but only grazing Stone. So Stone makes it a priority to discover why Healy was watching that address. Healy eventually claims that it was to watch a nephew who was having a tryst with his saxophone teacher, but Stone eventually uncovers a pimp running a string of underage prostitutes. In Boston, which is not Paradise, which does not please the town council.

The second strand is a woman who comes to Paradise because she received a letter that said, “Your child is loved.” Her newborn had been reported as dead seven years earlier, but the mother maintained that the decomposing body with her baby’s hospital wristband was not actually her child. The letter had been postmarked Paradise, Massachussetts, two years earlier (her now ex-husband had not shown her the letter then), and she hopes that the Paradise police can investigate. Stone demurs, but Rose (the white Rose), takes up the investigation and eventually uncovers the who, but a tragedy will likely not lead to complete satisfaction for the real mother. Spoiler alert: The kidnapped child fell through thin ice two years ago and died. The movie ends with Stone on the bus to New Mexico to talk with the real mother about what she wants to do, I guess. Probably prosecute, but that’s not shown.

So: A decent television movie with the two-plot structure that seems to permeate a lot of series books. The movie also handles some series business with Stone and Jenn, his ex, along with working things out with his shrink (played by William Devane, last seen at Nogglestead in Payback). We also get interactions with Gino Fish (played by William Sadler, last seen at Nogglestead in Die Hard 2 last Christmas) who obliquely helps Stone. So it’s definitely written with an eye to long-standing fans of the films and/or books.

I’ll probably pick up others in the set as I come across them cheaply. As much because I like Tom Selleck as I like Parker/Stone/Brandman.

Of the Hanks/Ryan romantic comedies which also include Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail. As I noted in the report on the former film, this is the first of their team-ups; the others were 1993 and 1998.

And this film feels like an 80s film for sure (more like The Burbs or The Money Pit than a 1990s film). It starts out with Hanks’ character, a functionary who manages the advertising catalog library for a medical device company coming to work. It’s quite a brutal little bit, trying to get a little Metropolis or Kafka feel with dim, flickering lighting and a boss on the phone repeating himself over and over. He has to take a long lunch to go to the doctor, who tells him he has six months to live, and he will be symptom free until he dies. Joe Banks, that is, Tom Hanks, is a bit of a hypochindriac who knew it. He goes to his job, quits, tells off his boss, and asks his coworker, played by Meg Ryan, out. She’s impressed by his new fire and intensity, but when he reveals he has six months to live, she cannot handle it and leaves.

The next day, an industrialist played by Lloyd Bridges approaches Joe. He knows about Joe’s lonely life and diagnosis, so he has a proposition: On a remote Pacific island, the tribe has a tradition of sacrificing a volunteer every hundred years to propitiate the god in a volcano, and he (the industrialist) needs a mineral from the island. He hopes to trade Joe to the natives as a sacrifice and convinces Joe to go along with it since he is doomed anyway. Live like a king for a month or so of his remaining time and then jump into a volcano.

So the film is a five paragraph essay with five bits or movements, essentially. The aforementioned first bit. The second bit is a shopping spree in Manhattan outfitting himself in nice clothing and apparel for the voyage, including a very high-end set of steamer trunks. During this bit, he is counseled by his driver played by Ossie Davis who asks Banks who he really is. In the third bit, he goes to L.A. and is met by the industrialist’s shallow and vapid daughter who is an artist (played by Meg Ryan) and writes poetry but mostly lives off of her father’s money. They spend the evening together, but not the night together. She takes him to the small yacht (it’s a sailboat–was that a “yacht” in 1990? We expect more from yachts in 2025) where the industrialist’s other daughter (played by Meg Ryan) is to sail with him to the island. The fourth bit is their voyage where Banks and the good daughter get to know one another and fall in love, which happens despite a typhoon that sinks the vessel and leaves them adrift on a raft made from the steamer trunks. The final act is their arrival on the island, his decision to go through with it, and the coup de grâce ex machina where Banks and Ryan3 are spit from the volcano as it erupts, destroying the island and leaving them adrift on the steamers again. And finis!

So, yeah, it feels like an 80s movie. I mean, it’s not bad, but I cannot imagine it’s on a list of personal favorites for many people, either, unless they have special memories involved with watching it, such as going on a first date with it or something. But as for me, it’s one more to lose in the library and maybe watch again if it comes up in blogversations.

Man, this film (and its sequel Any Which Way You Can) loomed large in my youth. Perhaps it was on HBO, and we saw it when staying with our friends who had HBO. Maybe it had made its way freshly to network television when I was ten years old and was in heavy rotation there. But it was part of the 1970s and early 1980s ape sidekick schtick, and maybe other things along the line blurred with this film. But forty-some years later, I still say, “Right turn, Clyde” sometimes (although that’s from the sequel, not this film).

At any rate: Eastwood plays Philo, a truck driver who does underground bare-knuckle boxing for extra cash, and he’s pretty good at it. He falls for a blonde country singer (Sondra Locke, whose character is not raped in this film) named Lynn with whom he thinks he has something going. But she disappears, presumably on her way back to Denver where she hopes to open a club of her own. But she’s traveling with her boyfriend; they have an open relationship of some sort, but he blasts Philo’s truck with a shotgun before they leave. Philo also runs afoul of a local biker gang after beating two of its members and then embarrassing others. Or the opposite order. And he beats up a police detective in the honky tonk who also plots revenge. So when Philo decides to follow Lynn east from L.A., his best friend Clint and Clyde come along, and the other parties have to find out who he is and where he’s going which lead to some humorous encounters with a trailer park manager and Ma, whose subplot is that she’s foul-mouthed and keeps failing to get a driver’s license.

When he gets to Colorado, he discovers that the woman and her “boyfriend” pick up men in bars and bowling alleys all the time for some sort of hustle, and she’s not really into Philo (is she?). He leaves her in Colorado. And Clint sets up a fight with Tank Murdock, a legendary bare-knuckle brawler who has lost a step or three. Clint starts making short work of him, but he hears how the Tank fans turn on the older, more portly fellow, so he takes a dive to keep the man’s reputation alive and so that he does not have to start carrying the burden of being the man who beat Tank Murdock.

So, that’s it. The protagonist does not win the fight at the end, and he does not get the girl–who might not be worth getting anyway (although I guess, from reading the synopsis, the sequel reverses this a bit). But it’s an ending of a nominal comedy that has a lot of pathos if you look at it in a certain light. As the group makes their way back to L.A., though, they pass the pathetic remnants of the biker gang and the defeated police detective, so I guess Philo overcomes some adversity. Perhaps the only thing that has changed is his perspective on women he meets in honky tonks and the glory and profitability of winning.

So as the film was moving into its dénouement, my beautiful wife passed through the room and said “Clint Eastwood and a chimpanzee.” I corrected her, of course, but she later said she was familiar with pair from her childhood even though she had not seen the films. They were really, really big at the end of the Jimmy Carter presidency, and they’re almost forgotten now. Perhaps overshadowed by what Clint Eastwood has done or a shift in the zeitgeist. But if I see Any Which Way You Can for fifty cents or a buck, I’m picking it up.

I picked this video up recently and was in the mood to watch something but not a full movie, so I popped it in. I’ve made no secret that I’ve been a fan of Cosby–see my book reports for his books (Love and Marriage twice, once in and once in ; Cosbyology in 2010; and Fatherhood in 2011). I might have one or more of his records around here, but, if I do, I don’t recall listening to them (although I do buy and listen to comedy records, I don’t spin them a bunch as they, like poetry records, require attention). And I see I also have his video Bill Cosby, Himself, an earlier special which I also bought earlier (2024) but have not watched yet (although the book report for Cosbyology indicates that I watched it in 2010 somehow.

So, with all that background and additional self-linkage out of the way….

All of the aforementioned books and videos come from the great Cosby burst of the 1980s, when he was the king of television with The Cosby Show. Thematically, it overlaps with some of the books. Cosby riffs on growing older, his body making different noises, and how his body responds to running these days (personified pain). He does a number on marriage and defense mechanisms therein, and how his marriage evolved over time so his wife has a bit more co-equal role in it, at least as far as winning arguments goes.

The video is just over an hour long, and I guess I’d rather read Cosby than watch him in any long form. I’m kind of that way with videos, too, and I really don’t like podcasts for information intake. But books on tape are all right if I’m driving; I don’t want to listen to them in my spare time at home.

At any rate, it’s all right. And a videocassette with the Kodak logo on it? You cannot be any more 1987 than that.

But you don’t need to find a copy of your own as it’s presently on YouTube in its entirety. For now.

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.