The Guilt Trip (2012)

Sometimes your in a mood for something not very demanding, and for me The Guilt Trip fit that bill. A mother son, road trip, buddy comedy with Seth Rogan and Barbara Streisand as the leads. Rogan is a young bio chemist who has quit his job at the EPA and invested most everything he has in a new environmentally safe cleaning solution he invented, which he calls Scioclean and which for some reason most everybody has a real hard time pronouncing (Sci-O-Clean), this is suppose to be funny, though its really not that funny. Anyway Rogan flys out from his home in California to visit his very Jewish mother in New Jersey before embarking on a cross country trip to try and sell his product to various retailers, including Kmart, Costco, the Home Shopping Network, and other companies presumably desiring of a cinematic plug. Before departing from Jersey however Rogan's overbearing mother confesses to him that he was named Andy after her former lover, from before she met his now deceased father. Anyway Rogan gets curious and through the power of Google decides to look mom's old flam up, he quickly discovers that the man appears to be alive, well and single in San Fransisco, and helpfully working for a major advertising company. Rogan then decides to invite his mom along on the road trip with him, hilarity ensues, okay more like largely predictable amusement, but hey I wasn't in a picky mood.

Mother and son travel cross country in a compact car, listen to the novel Middlesex on tap, a recurring joke, and one gets increasingly on the nerves of the other, guess which? Anyway its predictable, but comfortingly so. I will readily admit this movie is not very creative, its rather obvious really, but its exceptionally well crafted in a journeyman carpenter kind of way. It has a balanced screen play, it hums along, hits it predictable marks, the directions is capable, the supporting cast is good, and there's a surprisingly satisfying emotional arc. What carries the film though is of course the performances of Rogan and Streisand, they a very likable, have good chemistry, and elevate the material from C to B level. Streisand finds out the fate of her former lover, and Rogan finally figures out how to use humor (surprise) to actually sell his product, its all mildly heartwarming. Anyway I'm going to part with the critics and say this movie is everything it could have possible been, not ambitious, but well fulfilling its potential. A little bit of guilty pleasure. **1/2

The Organization (1971)

The third and final film in which Sidney Poitier plays Virgil Tibbs, the character her immortalized in the 1967 Oscar winner In the Heat of the Night. Like the second film in the series They Call Me Mr. Tibbs, The Organization is somewhat inexpiabley set in San Fransisco, even though a point is made in The Heat of the Night that Tibbs is from Philadelphia. The reason the last two Tibbs films were set in San Fransisco was probably based on a desire to do location filming there, something both films do but I think this one does more, San Fransisco is very much a character in this movie.

The films title The Organization can be read as referring to two groups, one of course being the mafia, and the other being a small group of ethnically diverse concerned citizens, many of them once engaged in the drug world, that has united to fight the mob. At the beginning of the film the vigilante group pulls of a daring heist of four million dollars worth of heroine from a safe in a furniture business that is an "Organization" front. The vigilantes, lead by a young Raul Julia, want to use the heroin as a bargaining chip to flush out bigger members of The Origination, but they know they will need some help, so they seek out Tibbs, I guess because he has a reputation as an honest cop (there is also a small sub plot in the movie about allegations of working with the mob by a recently suicided narcotics cop). Anyway after some hesitancy Tibbs agrees to work with the group as long as he calls the shots so as to keep them safe and his hands clean, unfortunately some of the groups members don't always follow Tibb's rules, and some of them end up dead.

In the end this is all pretty standard blacksplotation era fair, this movie, like it immediate predecessor lacks a plot of sufficient depth to measure up to the 1967 original. Disappointing. *1/2

Edison, the Man (1940)

As was typical of the bio-pics of its time, and to a lesser extent those of today, Edison, the Man is more concerned with conveying a mythic sense of its subject then with historical accuracy. This movie covers the life of Thomas Edison from roughly the late 1860's to the early 1880's (plus a framing story set in 1929) all with a focus on the inventors pursuit of viable electric light. Edison's development of an improved stock ticker, as well as the phonograph are depicted in this film, and many of his post light bulb inventions are mentioned in montage at the end, but the focus is on the light bulb, Edison's most iconic, and arguably most important invention. Spencer Tracey plays Edison, and sells the part as a benevolent, quirky idealists.

Down on his luck at the beginning of the film Edison travels to New York City to visit an old friend from his days as telegraph operator and secure financing for his efforts to develop electric light. His friend (Lynne Overman) proves a flake, but the man's uncle (Henry Travers) gets him a job as janitor at the firm of powerful financier Mr. Taggert (Gene "Exasperation" Lockhart). One day Edison helps fix one of Mr. Taggerts old school stock tickers, which secures him a meeting with the man and his associate General Powell (Charles Coburn) at which he pitches his idea for an improved ticker of stocks. The two set Tom up in a machine shop to do his work, there he succeeds in making a better ticker, earns the loyalty of a motley crew of fellow inventors who follow him to the new shop he opens with his ticker patent money, and has a pro forma generic romance with the future Mrs. Edison (Rita Johnson) who then retreats largely to the background for the rest of the picture.

Eventually Edison falls on hard times, is just not quite able to crack electric light and is on the verge of losing his Menlo Park shop, then he all about accidentally invents the phonograph over a long weekend. Anyway after much trial and error Edison creates a working light bulb and the movie is closed out with Tom's successful effort to electrically light a portion of Manhattan before an arbitrary deadline. It is of course Tracey who makes the movie, his Edison's a grown up Tom Sawyer with a knack for mechanics, a strong supporting cast of well known character actors and what looks to be a darn good budget add to this pleasant, to be taken with a grain of salt, but right in spirt tale. ***

Young Tom Edison, covering the inventors formative years was also released by MGM that same year, it featured Micky Rooney as Tom and includes a cameo appearance by Tracey.

Night of the Eagle (1962)

This British horror film is an adaptation of the 1943 novel Conjure Wife by the German-American science fiction writer Fritz Leiber. The conceit of the movie is an intriguing if dated one. Witchcraft you see is kind of an open secret among women, one that the men are oblivious too. I didn't fully understand that this was the point while viewing the movie, though of course I did notice the undertones and prevalence of witchcraft among the female characters, it was while doing a little research on the film after viewing that I put this part together. It now makes more sense why Tansy Taylor (actress Janet Blair, best known as Ann Ferries on TV's Marcus Welby MD) would use various charms, rites, and curious objects to ensure the continuing success of her husband Norman's (Peter Wyngarde) academic career.

As the movie opens up Norman Taylor is a sociology professor at a private English university whose star is quickly rising in the department, leading to resentment by faculty wives (while the faculty members themselves seem to like the guy). Anyway Norman is a very rational person, the movie even begins with him giving a lecture decrying superstition and the like, so its not a big surprise that when he discovers that his wife has stashed magical objects around their country home that he reacts negatively. Tansy tries to explain to her husband that she does these things (tricks she picked up from a shaman when the couple were living in Jamaica) to advance his career, and protect them from the attacks of their enemies, i.e. magic practiced by jealous faculty wives. Norman forces his wife to cease such superstitious practices, but she insists she is not to be held responsible for what happens to them if she does, Norman burns the objects in the fireplace.

The next school day Norman is almost hit by a truck, and a once admiring student accuses him of having a relationship with her, prompting a school inquiry and the jealous boyfriend to threaten Norman. Still Norman can't accept the things his wife alleges, that is until she leaves in the night to conduct a ceremony that she claims will cost her her life but will save his. Norman goes on desperate quest to save his wife, and he actually succeeds in preventing the completion of the ceremony, but now conflict with the schools head witch, faculty secretary Flora Carr (Margaret Johnston) is bound to ensue.

I liked certain things about this film, I liked its treatment of witchcraft, with witch's doing the kind of petty things through magic that got many women accused of witchcraft in the past. I liked its oddness, and the setting. I really liked the sequence with the eagle, neat visuals there. What I didn't like was the slow pace, and that to much of the film was obvious while other things that should have been made clearer never were, such as the reasons behind widespreadness of witchcraft. Unique, but clunky and uneven. *1/2

This film is also known by the alternate title of Burn Witch Burn.

In Cold Blood (1967)

Feature film adaption of Truman Capote's ground breaking true crime novel of the same name. It is the true story of Perry Smith (Robert Blake) & Richard "Dick" Hickock (Scott Wilson), buddy's and petty criminals who in 1959 massacre a family of four (the Clutter's) during a bungled burglary of there rural Kansas home. Produced in 1967 this a very late release for a mainstream black & white film ,but I think it was defiantly the right choice to make this movie sans color. The richness of the black and white cinematography along with the stark Kansas landscape, dark subject matter, and emotionally muted characters combine to great and powerful effect. This is a movie that makes you feel sick, sick for the Clutter family, sick for the cops, sick for the perpetrators families, and even sick for the perpetrators. Great performances by the two leads by the way, and I'll hold back from making a Robert Blake joke, though wait, Scott Wilson is Herschel!? Wow.

Now all I really knew about this story coming in was something of its reputation and what I learned from the movie Capote. I can only imagine how good the book must be, considering how much of the perpetrators complex characters and back story are communicated in the film. An interesting element of the film is the inclusion of Paul Stewart as Capote's surrogate, certainly quite different from Capote the man, but Truman was such an out sized person that I don't think the film makers wanted "the reporter" to serve as a distraction, besides which Capote's perspective on events of course gets presented in the eponymous film previously mentioned. Anyway this was a much better film viewing experience then I had anticipated it would be, a very sound, rather provocative piece of work. ***1/2

Young Adult (2011)

Re-teaming of Juno screen writer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman. Young Adult stars Charlize Theron as Mavis Gary, the divorced, 37 year old ghost writer of a series of young adult novels. While trying to work on what is to be the last of the to-be discontinued book series, Mavis becomes distracted when she receives a mass email announcement  advising her of the birth of the first child of her high school boyfriend Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson) and his wife Beth (Elizabeth Reaser). Mavis decides impulsively to leave her home in Minneapolis and drive to the small town of Mercury, Minnesota where she grew up and "rescue" Buddy from his wife and child. Once there Mavis runs into a partially crippled old high school classmate, Matt Freehuff (Patton Oswald) whom she barley knew, but to whom she confesses the intent of her visit. The two quickly become something of sparing/drinking partners, with Matt trying to talk her out of "ruining Buddy's life", and Mavis insisting that she is meant to be with her old flame.

Mavis undertakes concerted efforts to spend as much time with Buddy as possible, Buddy and his wife seem surprisingly fine with this, having actually taken pity on Mavis, whose life is a wreck. However Mavis of course misreads the situation, determined to see Buddy as trapped in his life and reaching out to her, not genuinely happy as he in fact is. The purpose of the movie is really to examine people who never grow up, an increasingly common phenomena in our present society. In such the film is kind of the flip side of Juno, which features a young women (Ellen Paige) who talks and acts like a hipster adult, here we have a grown, successfully, and beautiful women who acts like a high school bitch. I liked this movie more then I liked Juno, its not as ambitious or flashy, the comedy's okay but the drama sneaks up on you, its really a rather effecting piece. Kudos to Ms. Theron for committing so much to this flawed and self obsessed character. Also kudos to the team of Cody and Rietman for giving us a unique story, with some nice social commentary little touches such as Mavis's constantly watching equally self obsessed reality TV. Both of the creative minds on this movie always seem to come up with something worth seeing. ***

Count Yorga, Vampire (1970)

Where is the self respecting, high class, Bulgarian vampire to go for his blood and harem of undead wives circa 1970? Well Southern California of course. When we first meet Count Yorga, well when we first meet him we don't actually meet him, we see a stereotypically coffin shaped crate being hauled around L.A. and it implied he's in it. When we do meet him, in the second scene, he's conducting a seance with a group of yuppies. You see one of these yuppies (Donna Anders) is hopping to communicate with the spirit of her recently departed mother, she won't succeed then, but she'll be seeing mother later in the program. You see mom has become one of Yorga's vampire wives, and Yorga would like to add daughter as another, so its creepy on multiple levels. Yorga will pray on this girl and other guests, some for love, some for blood, including Michael Murphy, the only actor in this film who I recognize.

My favorite character in this film however would have to be Dr. Hayes (Roger Perry). Hayes is a friend of the yuppies who examines one of them (Judy Lang) and discovers the suspicious looking, evenly spaced puncture marks on her neck. Brighter then the rest of the group he quickly deduces that they are dealing with a vampire, and is at first ridiculed for this deduction. But I mean the woman clearly has bite marks on her neck and has recently been in the company of a charming eastern Europen count, and subsequently killed a cat to obtain blood, so not a huge leap. Hayes also has a  thing for bimboish women which gives his character a self aware edge and results in a humors scene or two. This is a cheaply made B film that must have proved fairly popular because it got a sequel titled The Return of Count Yorga, which sounds like it should be difficult in that Count Yorga ends up turned to dust at the end of this film, sorry spoilers. Anyway I found it quite amusing. **1/2

Looper (2012)

Looper is a science fiction action film and hence it has a science fiction gimmick. In this case the gimmick, "Loopers", is kind of complicated and requires some unpacking. The present of the film is 2044 and at that time time travel has yet to be developed, but 30 hence it will be developed, and very quickly outlawed. Time travel persists however as a very niche method of body disposal. You see by the 2070's some unspecified technology will make it all but impossible to dispose of a body unnoticed in what is then the present, so organized crime hit upon a scheme of sending people they want whacked back thirty years, shackled and blindfolded, and then assassinated, the bodies disposed of in a more hospitable time. "Loopers" are the assassins, centred in what I take to be Kansas City they are supervised by Jeff Daniels, who was sent back into the past to oversea this work. When the victims are sent into the past to be killed they have the loopers payment, solid gold or silver bars, strapped to their torso. Eventually each looper will be sent their future self, provided the live long enough, to assassinate, closing their loop. They get a big payoff for this last job and then can go off and live out their remaining decades on the down low, waiting to be kidnapped and sent back in time to be murdered by themselves. It's convoluted, but in the movie it works.

Our protagonist looper Joe is both Joseph Gordon-Leavitt and Bruce Willis (did they do something to JGL's nose, because he really works as a young Willis). When the future Joe gets sent back he escapes his past self and sets out track down and murder a then five year old future crime boss who will be responsible for the death of futures Joe's wife whom past Joe hasn't meet yet. Past Joe tries to stop future Joe, and end up in hiding at the farm of Emily Blunt and her five year old who may or may not grow up to be the future crime boss. Also there is telekinesis. Anyway an intriguing film, it doesn't go to far out in the aesthetics it ascribes the future, in fact a big motif seems to be older technology retrofitted for future use, i.e. gas powered cars and trucks fitted with solar panels. Also the economy in the future doesn't appear to be that good and there is a lot of crime, wealth inequality, prostitution appears to be legal, ect. Like all good fictional futures its a commentary on the present. Anyway I quite liked this movie, it doesn't ask too much of you, but it keeps you entertained and provides just enough food for thought to make it intellectually respectable, for a main stream action sci-fi film. ***

Django Unchained (2012)

Like his last film Inglorious Bastards, Django Unchained is a historical genera film as ethnic revenge exploitation flick. Django (Jamie Foxx) is a slave in the late 1850's American south who at the beginning of the film is rescued from Texas slave traders by a German born dentist turned bounty hunter played the great Christoph Waltz, who here gets to play a 'good guy' as opposed to the Nazi he played in Tarantino's last film, and in everything I've seen him in this guy is just a joy to watch. Waltz's character, Dr. King Schulz, freed Django (in an enjoyable sequence of trademark Tarantino violence and cleaver dialogue) to help him track down three wanted men who happen to have been among Django's previous plantation over sears. Schulz doesn't know what these men look like but of course Django does, so he makes him a deal (in part of an extended sequence that also features trade mark Tarantino violence and dialogue) that if Django helps him track down and identify the men he will give him his freedom along with $75, not bad in antebellum money.

The two bond while tracking down their targets, and in fact once they have taken those three out elect to stay a team hunting bounty through the winter. Dr. Schulz even agrees, in fact he all but insists, on helping Django track down and rescue his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) who has come into the possession of Mississippi plantation owner, brothel proprietor and slave fighting enthusiast Calvin J. Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio having fun as an evil but elegant scum bag). Convinced that Candie won't just sell Broomhilda to them, and I'm not all together sure why though I think they try to explain it, Schulz and Django come up with an elaborate ruse in which they will purchase Broomhilda's freedom from Candi after ingratiating themselves with him by offering to pay $12,000 for one of his Mandinka fighters, and given the joy of the unexpected in Tarantino's films that is where I will stop my plot description.

While not as ingenious as Bastards, Django is cleaver and fun, also violent and witty. The film includes a number of fun cameo appearances, often by actors best associated with western roles, as well as Jonah Hill of all people. The subject matter being what it is of course will make some people uncomfortable or strike as inappropriate, but its a Tarantino movie, so you should be expecting what you'll get, none of it struck me as beyond the pale. Like all Tarantion films, well worth seeing with an audience. ***1/2

Panic in Year Zero! (1962)

Ray Milland, in career decline, entered a prolonged sci-fi/horror phase of which this is an early example. Milland actually directed as well as stared in this film about a suburban California family who are out on a fishing trip with there trailer (convent) when a nuclear war starts. Now this isn't any ware near The Day After, or Threads in terms of a realistic depiction of nuclear horror, but for its time its respectably grim. Milland's character is just the kind of guy you'd want leading you in a survival mode situation, he's preternaturally good at it. Milland knows just what to do when the family sees a bright flash and a giant mushroom cloud arising from Los Angels. First they fill up on gas, making sure not to inform the station attendant whats going on, next its to a roadside dinner to try get more information and maybe establish communications with the wife's (Jean Hegan) aging mother back home. The dinner is crowded with people, and price gouging has already begun, so they decide to go off the beaten path until they find a little town some distance from the freeway. Nobody in town knows what is going on yet, this is a different time, communication was not so instant and intensive, its possible you could go hours without hearing about a major world event. The family wakes up the local grocer, buys lots of supplies, and then goes to do the same with the local hardware store. Things go fine there until its ill fated owner doesn't want to let them take the guns until he finishes the paperwork, they don't kill the owner, but they incapacitate him and take the guns they need, he will turn up again later.

Milland's son (Frankie Avalon) proves quite helpful in everything that is going on, his daughter (Mary Mitchell) not so much. The family makes way for an isolated fishing ground they know, are briefly accosted by some punks, and then take up residence in a cave to wait out the chaos. Milland is confident that civilisation will come back, they just have to keep safe and isolated until it does. You see communication is not entirely down, there is improbably as days go by still a government broadcasting at regular intervals on the radio. For some reason the war seems to be a series of strikes on major cites, not an all at once nuclear Armageddon, instead it goes on for weeks, even months. In fact in the end there is still a president and secretary of state to negotiation things out, even a 'reconstituted United Nations' which decrees that from then on the year of the great nuclear conflict will be known to posterity as The Year Zero (it was defiantly worth spending time on that United Nations, nothing else you could have been doing).

In the coarse of the movie the family rescues a potential love interest for Frankie (Joan Freeman), and have several run-ins with the gang of young punks from earlier, there is even a surprisingly frank, though still veiled, implied rap of the daughter by the delinquents, who again it is implied did similar things to Joan, leaving her not instantly smitten with Frankie's good natured advances. The film ends with the family coming back into contact with national guardsmen and the reemerging presence of government and civilisation, there's even a rather quaint episode with a small town doctor who stays at his post waiting for his people to come back. This is a pretty good little flick, you really couldn't expect much more from it then you get, obviously it's dated, but intriguing, and with scattered hints at depth. I enjoyed it much more then I thought I would. **1/2

The Postman (1997)

Not learning from Waterworld Kevin Costner decided to star in The Postman, released two years later. This time at least its a land based post apocalyptic "thriller", and one with decent conceptual bona fides as its based on whats is actually a pretty good book by David Brin. Brin's book is at heart a novel about the dangers of extremism, and that survives in a watered down form in the movie version, though very little else from the novel does. Like in the book Costner is a lone wanderer in a post apocalyptic America where umpteen years ago society largely collapsed in an unspecified war. With no centralized government what law and order remains is largely administered in a village by village basis, with a group of ideological militarized zealots known as "Hollinists" marauding around and making post industrial life just that much more difficult. In the coarse of his travels the Costner character happens upon a crashed postal truck and takes the dead occupants uniform for warmth, and his sack of mail as reading material. Costner inadvertently hits upon a scheme of passing himself off as a representative of a fictional "Restored United States Congress" out to reestablish postal routs in the pacific north west. He does this, because it means villages will feed him, but it also awakens a long slumbering hope in many people and his tall tale takes on a life of its own, and of course eventually, gains the notice of the Hollinists. The first half of this movie is very slow and blah, the second half is better as the 'postman movment' really starts to take off and Costner finds himself, much to his dismay, to have become a kind of cult figure. It's been a while since I read the book, but there was much more to it, both in form and in substance, while The Postman movie is little more then passable genera fair. *1/2