Movie, Movie (1978)

'Movie Movie' is a little like 'Grindhouse' from 2007 where an effort was made to reconstruct film types of an earlier time, it's also a bit like 'American Horror Story' in telling several separate stories largely with the same 'stock company' cast playing different parts, it's also not very much like either of those things. Produced by Lew Grade, who was principally a television producer known for things like 'The Muppet Show' and the Patrick McGoohan series 'The Prisoner', 'Movie Movie' is a mini double feature tribute to the films of the early 1930's. There is an introduction by George Burns, and in the middle a fake trailer for a WWI fighter pilot film called 'Zero Hour'. On either side of 'Zero Hour' there is a "movie" the first 'Dynamite Hands' is a boxing morality play, the second 'Baxter's Beauties of 1933' a behind the set musical comedy. Both films star George C. Scott and Trish Van Devere, a real life married couple who really liked to work together at this point in their carriers. The surprisingly solid cast is supplemented with Eli Wallach, Red Buttons, Art Carney, and Barry Bostwick. As stories the two tales are pretty true to the types of films they are trying to reconstruction, in basic plot outline both would be completely believable as movies from 1933. However both films are just chock of full of bad jokes, such as a letter containing the phrase "by the time you read this I will have written it" or a character uttering the sentiment "Sometimes cruelty an be unkind." So this a cheesy film, but so were the films it is trying to, rather affectionately, send up so it works better then maybe it should. An odd curio of a film, almost entirely forgotten of, but if you're at all curious its probably worth seeing. **1/2

Sorrowful Jones (1949)

Bob Hope is a bookie who is saddled with taking care of a little girl (Mary Jane Saunders, who is everything this kind of part requires) after her father stumbles upon a scheme to fix a horse race. Lucille Ball plays the love interest, William Demarest the best friend. A remake of a Shirley Temple film, based on a Damon Runyon story, the latter aspect was played up in the adverting. Runyon having then semi recently passed. This film is adequate. ** 

The Paleface (1948)

Another film that I principally watched to mark another Oscar winning song off my list, in this case "Buttons and Bows" by Livingston and Evans. 'The Paleface' was (according to the text based special features on this old school DVD) the biggest box office hit of star Bob Hope's career. It spawned a sequel four years later 'Son of Paleface', as well as a remake starting Don Knotts, 'The Shakiest Gun in the West' which I had previously seen so their weren't a lot of surprises in this for me, though I'd say this is the better version of the story. Said story is about a bumbling frontier dentist, who is seduced into acting as cover by a female sharpshooter serving as a secret government agent to rout out gun runners to the Indians. Here the agent is played by Jane Russell, and for most viewers this movie served as their introduction to her, for while she starred in Howard Hughes notorious western 'The Outlaw' back in 1943, that movie received only spotty release at first because of censorship issues, her next movie 'Young Widow' (1946) Bombed at the box office. The next 10 years or so would be the high point of Russell's carrier, she wouldn't have much of one after that, at least not in film. 'The Paleface' is a fun movie, but very much one of its time, the Indian humor is pretty dated, at best, but Hope rings all the humor he can from his part and Russell would have been quite the novelty at the time. Likable. ***

Reign Over Me (2007)

I talked about this movie in detail on an episode of the podcast I'm on (Rob and Nate Record a Podcast) so I won't go into much detail on it here. 'Reign Over Me' is a dramady from 2007 where Adam Sandler plays Dr. Charlie Fineman a dentist who lost his family in the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and as consequence went into a long, denial laden mental breakdown. By chance Fineman's collage roommate Dr. Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle) runs into Charlie on the street, and by virtue of his being someone who knew him from before he had his family, the two are able to connect, and eventually help each with difficulties in their respective lives.

There is both some effective comedy and some effective drama here, and the whole thing is better then I thought it would be which left me a little frustrated, because I simply can not quite get beyond the fact that this is Adam Sandler's 9/11 widower movie and that simply shouldn't exist. Perhaps more conventional casting may have allowed this movie to work better for me, though the very fact of Sandler's being in the movie is the chief thing that makes it memorable, though Don Cheadle is quite good in this. The film has a surprisingly good supporting cast including Liv Tyler and Donald Sutherland, their is some solid stuff in it, particularly one scene of Sandler breaking down in the presence of Cheadle, however Sandler still does a variant on his 'Waterboy' voice through the whole film and I just can't get past that. There is also a subplot here involving Saffron Burrows that is a memorably odd narrative choice, why did writer director Mike Bender put that in here? Better then in it has a right to be, for the most part rather well constructed, ultimately I enjoyed it but still feel a little conflicted about that. **1/2

First Monday in October (1981)

I had wanted to see this movie for years, it had been sold to me as a romantic comedy set in the supreme court, and it kind of is only the leads don't end up together romantically (sorry spoiler, but that's not really the point of this movie). Walter Matthau plays Associate Justice Daniel Snow, an avowed liberal, something of a grump, been on the Supreme Court for decades. Snow is at first very leery of Justice Ruth Loomis (Jill Clayburgh) a conservative jurist from Orange County, California just named as the first woman appointed to the supreme court (I think an opportunity was missed by not including Jack Lemmon in a cameo as the president who nominates Loomis). The two butt heads, but learn to respect and even become fond of one another, and in the end they uncover some corporate fraud pertaining to a case the court is considering hearing.

The movie came out in 1981 the same year that Sandra Day O'Conner became the real first woman appointed to the nations highest court, that probably helped at the box office some (a more then respectable $12+ million in early 80's money). The film is based on a play of the same name from about three years earlier by the writing team of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, best known for Inherit the Wind. First Monday in October is a solid, smart, somewhat tonally unusual film, well acted and well written, though the ending seemed a little off to me for the most part I liked it. Matthau and Clayburgh have good chemistry, and its a treat seeing them go at each other in verbal joust, the whole thing is reminiscent of a Hepburn/Tracy picture, had this been written some decades earlier those two could have stared in it together. More then a little hard to find, but it was worth waiting for. ***

The Sandpiper (1965)

I watched 'The Sandpiper' principally for two reasons, one to count towards my goal of watching 12 films this year I had not previously seen featuring Oscar winning songs (in this case the rather beautiful "The Shadow of Your Smile") , and increasing the number of 1965 theatrical releases I've seen (I determined last year that 1965 was the most under represented year in my film knowledge post the 1920's). This movie was co-written by Dalton Trumbo and stared two of the top actors of its time, the husband and wife pair of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Combine that with the Oscar winning song and I just assumed that this film was well regarded. I was in fact moderately impressed with its quality while watching it, until about the half way through mark when I paused the movie to check something online. There are so few sets and characters in the thing that it occurred to me that it may have been based on a stage play.

In checking online I found that it was not in fact based on a play, and appears to be an original composition for the screen. The movie cost $5 million to make and made more then $13.5 million at the box office. So that's a pretty big hit for the time, I assume the production cost was as high as it was principally to accommodate its stars salaries. However I also found that I was dead wrong as regards the movies general perception of quality. This movie was pretty well hated by critics at the time it came out, and subsequently seems not to have enjoyed a critical reappraisal. It's Rotten Tomato's score is an embarrassing 10%. After looking briefly at some critiques I saw online, upon resuming the film I could see it, the movie is a trite, clichéd melodrama, and in a number of ways rather ridicules.

It is the story of a free spirited artist living on The Big Sur in California (Taylor), who is forced as part of court plea deal to enroll her 9 year old son in a an episcopal boys school in Monterey. She and the boys head master, an episcopal priest (Burton) fall in love, despite their differences including her atheism (a little wild for the mid 60's) and the fact that he is married, to Eva Marie Saint no less. It's an intense love affair, but also a doomed one, life imitating art I suppose. Despite seemingly all the bad things said about the film being basically true, I still rather enjoyed this movie. Somehow it works, and that somehow it principally the chemistry between the leads. They are so good I didn't even notice had "bad" the movie was until it was pointed out to me, they really carry this picture and earn their money here. 'The Sandpiper' is a kind of 'high trash', and that's something I find myself oddly hypnotized by. One other weird thing I learned in relation to this film is that Morgan Mason, the actor who plays Taylor's son, would go on to work in the Reagan White House and marry Belinda Carlisle of The Go-Go's, that couple has been together for more then 30 years, which is better then we can say for Taylor and Burton. ***

Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990)

'Tales from the Darkside: The Movie' is a feature film adaptation of the syndicated 'Tales From the Darkside' horror anthology series that ran from 1984 to 1988. I was vaguely aware of both the series and the movie but my desire to see this film arose principally from a recent episode of the online series 'Welcome to the Basement' which both examined and riffed on the film, which is what that show does. Like the series on which 'Darkside' is based this film is an anthology, three short stories, in this case with a framing device modeled loosely on '1001 Arabian Nights'. A young boy (Matthew Lawrence) is being held prisoner and prepared for cooking by a suburban witch (Debbie Harry) and reads her stories from a 'Tales from the Darkside' book in an effort to distract her and slow down his impeding death. The stories are mostly of the darkly comic variety, none fully works, the whole movie doesn't, but its intriguing enough to be entertaining. 

Source material here is good, including Japanese folklore and stories by Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle and Stephen King. We have a tale concerning a college student reanimating an Egyptian mommy and using it for revenge, a murderous cat with seemingly magic powers, and a deal with the devil that goes more then a little skewed. The most impressive thing about the movie is its cast, including both Steve Buscemi and Julianne Moore in their film debuts, as well as Christian Slater, William Hickey, David Johansen, and James Remar. It's an odd film, but not without the merit of being mostly entertaining. It reminded me of the strange extent of the anthology revival in the 80's, we had 'Darkside', 'The New Twilight Zone', 'Amazing Stories', ' The Hitchhiker'. Watching this movie makes me want to watch more anthology work. However I'm still only giving it **.

Child's Play (1988)

Child's Play is one of those films that scared me as child even though I didn't get around to seeing it until a few weeks ago. The trailers were enough, and I have a vague memory of watching a piece about it on a TV news program where they were debating the appropriateness of a horror movie about a children's toy. I also have memories of an episode of the Twilight Zone or something about a ventriloquist dummy that comes to life, terrified me. So as a child I took the conceit of Child's Play pretty straight, it was a movie about a possessed doll and it must be terrifying. Overtime I came to realize that there was a definite tongue-in-check element to the very premise, and that element would only grow over subsequent installments on what came to be a fairly prolific franchise, iconic enough to have been recently rebooted.

The film does, a bit to my surprise, play things fairly straight, though more so towards the beginning. Brad Dourif plays Charles Lee Ray, a serial killer who with the police closing in as he hides in a toy store uses a voodoo spell (and the voodoo priest who taught that to him will come to regret it before the end of the film) meant to cast his sole into another body, but with no living body's conveniently available he takes a chance transferring his living essence into a 'Nice Guy Doll', which is kind of a riff on "My Buddy" a popular children's toy back in the 80's. Said possessed doll ends up gifted by widowed mom Karen (Catherine Hicks, Doctor Taylor from Star Trek 4) to her six year old son Andy (Alex Vincent, who is a better actor then this part really requires, which was nice). Andy and the doll, whose name is Chucky, spend a lot of time together, Andy claims he is alive and talks to him, but mom just thinks he's pretending. Well he isn't. A series of weird things happen, including the tragic "accidental" death of Andy's babysitter. A police detective played by Chris Sarandon becomes involved and by the end of the movie four or so people left alive are aware of what Chucky really was, though the evil appears to be defeated the movie was too successful and writers would find ways of bringing him back.

This movie is rather better then I would have expected it to be. The acting is surprisingly good, the direction by veteran horror man Tom Holland is strong. The effects work, you get about half way through the film before you really see Chucky walk about and talk, its mostly hinted at before that point and I think it really works for the movie to slowly build to the revel. There are few moments of fairly legitimate peril, though the denouncement drags on too long. Kinda impressive, though like with A Nightmare on Elm Street I'm pretty confident it will be all down hill from here, quality wise with  this franchise. ***

A Nigthmare on Elm Street (1984)

Like my recent first viewing of the original John Carpenter Halloween movie from 1978, my introductory viewing of 1984's  A Nightmare on Elm Street was precipitated by a theatrical showing at a local cinema. Bot the Halloween and Elm Street franchises are ones I have long been interested in at least perusing, but they start out at very different levels of quality, with Halloween easily the superior product. Not that the original Elm Street isn't watchable, or intriguing, in fact the conceit of the killer Freddy Kruger stalking children in their dreams would have been almost strikingly original.

Things I liked about the film include that the leading cast of" teenagers" seem so young, slightly older in fact then they appear to be on screen but still convincing as actual teenagers. Especially  Heather Langenkamp as Nancy, whose not a tremendous actress but perfectly suited to this part, in fact if she had been a better actress it would not have worked as well, a certain nativity, uncertainty, and "rolling with the punches" quality was really needed here to pull this thing off. John Saxon plays Nancy's father and an investigating police officer, much as he did in the earlier horror picture Black Christmas in 1974. I liked that it appears that Saxon and Nancy's mom are separated and/or divorcing but the movie never really goes into that in much detail, such home life situations were increasingly matter of  fact for children in the 1980's. Robert Englund's role as Krueger would become iconic as well as carrier defining, and Johnny Depp, here with an "introducing" credit playing Nancy's boyfriend Glen Lantz, well it's probably the most "normal" character he ever played.

There is a scene early in the film where the character Tina is being attacked by Krueger in a dream and he's knocking her body through the air in 'real life' and its the most legitimately scary image in the film, though inspired no doubt by similar moments in the Exorcist movies. From a promising start the film gets increasingly more hokey and at times really ridicules. Much of it just don't make a lot of sense, and that's not even counting the films central conceit, if before his death Krueger has killed '20 kids' in the neighborhood  you'd think Nancy would be on some level aware of this, especially if a group of parents got together and killed him you'd be very hard pressed for some rumors not to get out. I also have to "harrumph" the films supper non committal ending, which smeared with ambiguity everything that came before. This movie is camp, but it struck a cord and cemented itself solidly in the 80's zeitgeist, though I'm sure its all down hill from here in terms of quality, this first movie at least had some originality going for it, and again is watchable at an efficient 91 minutes running time. So I'll be a little generous sand give it ***

Rocket Science (2007)

I was in policy debate in high school and while I have seen (The Great Debaters) and been aware of (Listen to Me) films about college debate I had never encountered a film before about high school debate before. That and the presence of Anna Kendrick made me curious to see Rocket Science, and while the film isn't just about debate exactly, though the parts that are were pretty accurate to what I remember from 20+ years ago, it is central to the story line, which could loosely be described as the efforts of a boy with severe stutter (Reece Thompson) to use debate as a means of getting close to a girl on whom he has a crush (Ms. Kendrick). Again that is a "loose" description of the plot because this is a film that does not want to be pigeon hold, in fact it deliberately mocks and misleads in its efforts to obscure simple answers or traditional dramatic narrative, especially those clichés and arch types we associate with "the 'high school movie.

 It is a comedy, don't get me wrong, and a smart one, I finished watching it the first time liking almost everything about it, but not quite liking it, enjoying the parts more then the whole. I am largely about structure in film, at least in the first sitting of any particular movie. This movie deliberately  misleads, telling you pretty flat out that things are going to go a certain way, and I kept waiting for them to go that way and they never did, it was frustrating but also kind of liberating. I had to watch it a second time a week or two later. The cast of odd ball characters, the quasi aimlessness of things, the stubborn refusal to conform to expectations, makes it kind of brilliant. But at the same time that aimlessness and the uncertainty of dramatic intent leave it kind of wanting as cinematic experience, structure again, it can be hard for me to get past it some times. Moore then anything though your ability to enjoy this film will depend on your tolerance for Reece Thompsons chronic stuttering, which he does well, but can be grating in its persistence. The film its self is sort of a stutter, you know there's more inside it but it has a hard time getting it all out, which is simultaneously why it works and why it doesn't. A second viewing concentrating on the 'moments' more then the 'whole' was more satisfying, but like high school itself awash in an inherent sense of frustration. ***

Dolemite (1975) & Dolemite is My Name (2019)

Recently I had the experience of seeing both the 1975 Blaxploitation flick Dolemite, and the brand new bio-pic / making of movie Dolemite is My Name at the Tower Theater in downtown Salt Lake. I had first intended to just see just the original film but after watching it and a retrospective video about it on YouTube, as well as seeing the very high rotten tomatoes score Eddie Murphy's Dolemite movie has received, I went back to the theater the next day to see that newer film. While I watched the films in chronological order as to when they were made, to better make sense I will be talking about the newer 'behind the scenes' movie before talking about the original finished product.

The Netflix produced Dolemite is My Name is being given a limited theatrical run in order to qualify for awards. The Ruddy Ray Moore (1927-2008) bio-pic is an unusually well received Eddie Murphy vehicle, at least by the standard of his 21st century work, and the star does seem to be having fun, which reportedly is often not the case on set for him anymore. Moore was the son of an Arkansas tenant farmer who left home in his teenage years in search of fame and fortune, he spent a lot of time more or less wandering, working various jobs and trying to get some kind of break in show business. After a stint in the army during the 1950's Moore eventually made his way to Los Angeles and became an assistant manager at a popular record store catering to black audiences. While working there he recorded some albums which he could hardly sell, and became a regular MC at a local club.

Though the film speeds up events some it was around 1970 that Moore first started to hear obscene stories about a character called "Dolemite" told by a local homeless man named Rico. The film indicates that these stories were circulating as a kind of urban folk tale and Moore made an amateur study of them, refinded them some and then decided to make what turned into a long series of comedy albums, and unlike his musical efforts these sold, though they the had to be kept 'behind the counter' at stores do to their obscene content and racy covers. Some of these albums even made the billboard charts and Moore had a new career as a sort low rent Richard Pryor or Red Foxx. He toured the country to some success but felt their must be an easier way to get his content to the masses, so he hit upon the idea of making his own movie.

Estimates for the final cost on Dolemite range between $90,000 and $140,000. The money came from Moore's tour earnings and royalties on his albums, essentially mortgaging his rights to those albums to the record company, and ultimately he was able to swing some loans. Moore had no experience as a film maker, and almost none of his cast had appeared in a movie before. He was able to rope semi-successful black actor D'Urville Martin (in the film played by Wesley Snipes) to appear in the movie by agreeing to give him directors credit, something D'Urville felt would help his resume though he was openly contemptuous of the film he was directing on set. The film crew was chiefly made up of UCLA film student, including the son of the great silent screen direct Josef von Sternberg.

Due to its extremely low budget there was a lot of gorilla film making involved here, shooting on locations without permits, hiring a local junkie to play a junkie on film, and shooting most of the interiors in an abandoned art deco hotel that Moore was allowed to shot and live in by the property owners on the condition that he keep squatters and druggies out of the place. The crew even stole electricity for the building by hacking local power lines.

A very rough feature to put it mildly Moore had a hard time finding a way to market and distribute the film at first, but some early self financed screenings were unexpectedly very successful, thus finally attracting a distributer. In the movie there is an earlier scene where Moore is shown calling through a list of low rent distributers and crossing off their names as they turn him down, one such distributor was Crown International Pictures, a company with something of a reputation of not paying their film makers, even they turned 'Dolimite' down, it's pretty bad as I'll get to. However once a distributor was able to find the right audience the film did tremendously well. While we lack exact figures it is estimated the film made around $10-$12 million dollars at the box office in the mid 70's. That is easily at lest 100 times what the movie cost to make. Suddenly Moore was a movie star, a nitch movie star but a movie star, who would go on to make a half dozen or so other movies of his own and appear in film and television into the early 21st century.

The film is a fun watch, crude at times because Moore was crude, his humors not really my own, in fact I simply don't understand good portions of it. 'Dolimite is My Name' is in the tradition of other 'making of a horrible movie films' such as 'Ed Wood' with' Plan Nine From Outer Space' or 'The Disaster Artiest' with 'The Room'. Both those making of movies are I think better then this, but 'Dolimite is My Name' is a very well made film, unlike its source material, and well cast, Keegan-Michael Key and Craig Robinson are also in this, amongst others. You can't help but admire Moore's persistence, and Murphy's performance. ***

'Dolemite' is bad movie, but I found that it grew on me and I got more in sync with its rhythms as it progressed. It was kind of painful at first but by the end I was kind of enjoying it, it is just ridicules. The story doesn't make much sense, no one in it can act, there are at times jarringly bad edits, the lake of budget is evident throughout, the sets are often silly, that wardens office is a joke. There are a couple of times in the film when the action basically stops so that Dolimte can delivery, for little to no reason, some of his comedy routines, which are basically spoken word poems, which are apparently bawdy but which I couldn't understand enough to say for sure.

Dolemite is a pimp and a club owner who is sent away to prison for possession of drugs and stolen furs. Those items were planted in his car as a frame job, after two years in the joint he is released to go undercover to prove his innocence, when evidence, which is never explained, apparently surfaces to indicate he is innocent of those crimes, but not enough to just release him release him, but rather to conditionally release him so that he, not the cops, can further prove said innocence. He is told only himself, his right hand woman Queen Bee, the warden, an FBI man whose identify is secret, and the governor of California, who when this was filmed in 1974 would have been Ronald Reagan, are aware of the reasons for his release. I  just don't think governor Reagan would have passed off on this plan.

Anyway once released from prison Dolemite is picked up but several of the prostitutes who work for him, Queen Bee has been maintaining the brothel in his absence. In front of prison guards he openly changes into his pimp regalia, gets in a car with the ladies and within an hour has murdered several assassins sent to get him. Having lost the club in the intern Dolemite sets about getting it back and ultimately getting revenge on Willie Green (D'Urville Martin) the man who set him up, and the mayor of Los Angeles who was also involved, and who seems to Italian but is named Daley like the mayor of Chicago. Oh and while Dolemite was in clink Queen Bee made sure his "girls" were trained in martial artists so that he could have an "all girl kung-fu army", which can be helpful to have. Had I gone into this movie not knowing that it was considered a camp classic and that Eddie Murphy was going to be in a movie about its production, I don't know what I would have thought. Despite how crazy it is the film does have some real flat spots, but ultimately is saved as a viewing experience but how strangely "off" the whole thing is. Hard to rate this, I'm gonna give it **.