Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979)

 'Rock 'n' Roll High School' is an exuberant, spofish musical/comedy from director Alan Arkush and Roger Corman's New World Pictures. Dey Young wants Vincent Van Patten, Vincent Van Patren wants PJ Soles, PJ Soles wants Ramons tickets and principle Mary Woronov hates the Ramons. Featuring The Ramons, exploding mice, ticket winning nuns and Clint Howard as Eaglebauer, perhaps his greatest role ever. ***

American Fiction (2023)

 Some Spoilers

In 'American Fiction' Thelonious "Monk" Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) is a university professor and author of respected but not commercialy successful fiction. Having trouble getting his latest serious work published and frustrated by the success of a stereotype ladden novel called 'We's Lives in the Ghetto', Monk quickly dashes off his own clichéd work of black fiction and submits it to publishers under a pseudonym as a kind of "F You". To his surprise the intentional trash he wrote really takes off, a publishing phenomenon that has Hollywood after the movie rights. This in short is the movies satirical set up and what is emphasized in the advertising. However...

One of the themes of the film is that the publishing industry, movie makers and audiences eschew serious writing about the black experience in America, in favor of derivative, stereotypical crap. 'American Fiction' presents its self as a satirical critique of that situation, it was what I was expecting and what I went to see. But like a Trojan Horse 'American Fiction' the satire has within it the kind of serious work of black fiction that is considered non commercial and generally ignored, but is in fact of high quality. 

It is around a third to 40% into the movie before Monk writes his work of rage literature, at first called 'My Pafology' but later something more vulgar. Before that Monk has a conflict with a student leading to some forced time off, during which he travels from California to Boston where he grew up in a well to do family. There he has to deal with the sudden death of his  sister (Tracee Ellis Ross), his mother's (Leslie Uggams) worsening dementia and a perspective romance with a lawyer neighbor (Erika Alexander). Much of this narrative has more in common with the complicated well to do families of a John Updike or Michael Cunningham novel, then with "stereotypical black fiction." This is a work of "American Fiction" and to me the family drama was even more engaging then the satire, which its self is extremely on point. 

I found 'American Fiction' to be a real surprise, first rate all around and probably the most original movie of last year. A frank film, a character study, that has a timelessness to it while also being extremely now. I loved the ending. ****

Smoke Signals (1998)

 In 'Smoke Signals' childhood frienemies Adam Beach and Evan Adams, travel from the Coeur d'Alene Indian Reservation in Idaho to Phoneix, Arizona to pick up the remains and belongings of the formers estranged father. Sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, a rare filmic portrait of contemporary Indian life. ***

 

Dirty O'Neil (1974)

 'Dirty O'Neil' is 'Dirty Harry' explotation. Morgan Paull (yes two L's) plays small town California cop Jimmy O'Neil, he fights crime, sleeps with beautiful ladies and still finds time to coach the high school women's basketball team. Largley episodic film in which Jimmy will gladly sleep with women on duty, but at least he draws the line at drinking on duty. The first hour of the film is largely aimless wandering, but the last half hour when it grows a plot and decides it wants to go for some real grit, well I liked that part, raising this from ** to **1/2

Vampyr (1932)

 A vampire movie from the great Danish director Carl Theodore Dreyer, an approate subject given his preoccupation with the supernatural. 'Vampyr' was filmed and set in France, however the best surviving cut is the German one, I watched that with English subtitles.

I appreciate that this isn't another telling of the Dracula story, rather the narrative was inspired by mid 19th century short story's by the Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu. Allen Gray, a young man studying the occult, comes to a small French village recently subject to vampire activity, there he studies and learns how to fight them with the help of an elderly local Lord (Maurice  Schutz). Gray is played by Nicolas de Gunzburg, a producer on the film and not a professional actor, in fact there are many non actors in the cast. The leads performance is minimalistic but that works here; de Gunzburg, who was gay and never married, was perhaps most famous in life as an editor at Vogue and other classy American magazines.

The movie is pleasantly short at about an hour and fourteen minutes. Dreyer employs some subtlety disconcerting visuals, which help compensate for a slow narrative. The film was not a hit on initial release but gained a cult following in subsequent decades. ***

The Tuxedo (2002)

 'The Tuxedo' is a 2000's action comedy and like most of its brotheren pretty bad. Jackie Chan is the driver for James Bond like secret agent Jason Issacs, who after Issacs is severely injured in the field, ends up in possession of a super-powered tuxedo which he decides to use to complete the mission. This involves teaming with junior agent Jennifer Love Hewitt, who thinks he's Issacs, to stop bottle water magnet Richie Costers plot to poison the world's water supply. 

It's pretty awful, very little of this works. Chan's natural charm and material arts skills are there, but the script is a mess and the film never uses Chan's physical abilities to full effect. For some reason it was decided to make Jennifer Love's character rather unlikable. The film is also obsessed with Ms. Hewitt's, in its own words, "nice rack". This is pretty much crap, though Chan has a few moments and Jennifer Love's costume designers understood their assignment. *

For the Boys (1991)

 Story of the fraught relationship between comedian Eddie Sparks (James Caan) and singer Dixie Leonard (Bette Midler), who tour together in USO shows from World War II through Vietnam. Not a rosey movie, its Sometimes a little too spot on, director Mark Rydell brings out the gloom and sentimentality, but struggles some with rendering the joyous moments. Midler is strong, it's a perfect part for her, while Caan is not bad he feels miscast, I'm thinking Elliot Gould or Alan Alda would have been more fitting. Still movie has plenty that works and carries its nearly 2 1/2 hour run time reasonably well. A holiday 1991 release the film got genrally poor to middling reviews and failed at the box office, making back $23.2 million of its $40 million budget. ***

The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959)

 Hey, this is technically a film literacy movie. Relassed without the production code seal of approval, 'The Immoral Mr. Teas' inaugurated the "nudie-cuties" sub genra, a type of lightly comic film that was essentially an excuse to look at the naked bodies of beautiful women, but without any other sexul content.

 The plot of 'Mr. Teas',  to the extent that there is one, has the titular Mr. Teas, a mild mannered California dental appliance salesman, go about his days, encounter alot of cleavage and imagine some of the women he sees naked. That's it. The film was shot without sound, adding some music and a comic narration in post production; it is not all that dissimilar from, and likely modeled after, Jacque Tati's Monsieur Hulot films. 

 Shot in color this movie might be the greatest return on investment in cinema history, taking in over $1.5 million off a $24,000 budget, making at least 625 times what it cost to make. The film was made possible by a 1957 Supreme Court decision that weakend obscenity laws, the fadding power of the production code and slow and subtle changes in socitial mores. The film would spawn a host of imitators and launch the career of its director Russ Meyer. Today it plays as kind of boring. **1/2

Cult Killer (2024)

 When her boss, mentor and AA sponsor (Antonio Banderas) is brutality murderd, PI Alice Eve sets out to avenge him. Banderas's Mikhail Tellini had been working as a consultant for an understaffed rural Irish police department, on a similarly brutal murder of a wealthy local. Soon Eve's Cassie Holt and local sergeant Rory McMahon (Paul Reid) are looking into a secretive group of wealthy locals, while trying to outsmart a serial killer whose begun to pick them off. Trauma in Cassie's own past and a mysterious young woman (Shelley Hennig) also play heavily into the plot.

While not well reviewed and certainly overwrought and clichéd at times, this worked for me. Part of me thought I was better then this movie and it's tricks, but the characters are solid and I found myself invested in the story. Most of Eve and Banderas's scenes together are told in flashback because he dies so early in the film, at first I was uncertain about the narrative usefulness of this storytelling device but it won me over by the end. The film also indulges in something of an expectation subverting cheat, yet still manages to make it feel like it's earned and not a cheat. With bad guys worthy of hate and some reasonably effective catharsis, this is solid pulp which I'm giving an arguably better then it deserves ***

Also I wish this movie had a better name.

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

 A father, his young son and daughter are involved in a horrible boat accident, eight years later the surviving child and her cousin are sent by an evidently disturbed aunt to summer at Camp Arawak. Shortly after arrival a pedophile cook is severely burned, then a camper drowns, then more disturbing things happen, the emotionally distant Angela (Felissa Rose) and the protective Ricky (Johnathan Tiersten) seem to be at the center of things. An imaginative and effective varation on camp/slasher troops, this cult classic has a deceptively well thought out construction and is famous for its ending, which if you don't already know it, best to see it unaware if you can. ***

Paris, Texas (1984)

 We open with Harry Dean Stanton walking out of the Texas desert, parched and dusty in a worn suit, red baseball hat and deteriorating shoes that might be sandles. Upon encountering civilization he heads into a sort of bar/general store, greedily scarfs down some ice from the ice chest and then collapses. Medical authorities identify him as Travis Henderson Jr., they contact his brother Walt (Dean Stockwell) in California, who promptly comes out to retrieve him. We learn that Travis disapered four years ago along with his wife (Nastassja Kinski) leaving behind a then three year old son, who Walt and his wife Ann (Auorore Clement) have been raising as their own. The mystery of what happened to Travis and his wife is slowly reveled over the course of the film.

'Paris, Texas' is a beautiful movie. Beautiful in its story and the empathetic portraits of its characters. Beautiful in its visual composition, gorgeous to look at nearly every frame in this movie could be blown up and hung on a gallery wall. Beautiful in what its German born director Wim Wenders is able to suss out about America, things us natives may be too close to see clearly and really appreciate. It has one of the greatest endings I've ever seen and is quite possibly the best movie of 1984. A real achievement and a glorious and moving experience to watch, I was very invested.

While in hind sight some things strain credulity a bit, the pairing of Stanton and Kinski, while not exactly credible when I was watching it seems even less so on reflection. Not that this really matters, the emotional truth of that relationship is there and expertly rendered. There are moments of German weirdness, though they add to the charm. That something could be so esoteric and expressive, almost surreal, but practically documentary at the same time, that's really something. A rainy road, under an overpass, a hillside California home and a fadded Texas neighborhood, kentic in a way I've never seen. Also the kid, Hunter Carson, so good but so much a real kid at the same time. Sam Shepherd's source material, L.M. Kit Carson's screenplay, as strong as Wim Wenders direction and Robby Muller's cinematography. Everything really comes together in this, I can't praise it highly enough. Please see 'Paris, Texas'. ****

Rare Beasts (2019)

 'Rare Beasts' is the directorial debut of Billie Piper, who also writes and stars. Piper is a single mother of an autistic son, who must decide if she can really see herself marring the traditionalist guy she's dating (Leo Bill). This is kind of the anti-romantic comedy, everything is messy and compromised, but true. At first Billie thinks Leo is the last man she wants, but finds that maybe he's the man she needs, maybe.  Throughout the whole film I kept thinking about Jordan Peterson, to whom this movie is partly in sympathy and partly in critique. There are alot of interesting ideas here, they don't entirely coalesce, but its intriguing. **1/2

The Bounty Man (1972)

 While geneally speaking I am a big fan of 20th century TV movies, which I watch fairly frequently, I have made it a policy not review them on this blog; I make an exception here for 'The Bounty Man', as it is what came up next in the Tarantino Grindhouse Box Set.

Produced by Aaron Spelling for the American Broadcast Company in 1972, at first I thought this may have been intended as a pilot movie, but given the way it ends I don't think so. Clint Walker, star of the 1955-1962 ABC western series 'Cheyenne', plays the bounty hunter Kinkaid, who is after high value outlaw Billy Riddle (John Ericson). Kinkaid succeeds in apprehending Riddle, but the bad guys girlfriend Mae (23 year old Margot Kidder) insists on accompaing them on the journey to the authorities. Along the way rival, less scrupulous bounty hunters, attempt as it were to jump Kinkaid's claim.

Fairly unremarkable western is mostly of intrest in Tarantino's selecting it for the box set circa 2007. There is here alot of what would make its way into later Tarantino films 'Django Unchained' and 'Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood'. Walker is an easily analogous figure to Leonardo DiCaprio's Rick Dalton, a TV western star of the Eisenhower/Kennedy years still working in genra TV in the Nixon era.

This is reasonably enjoyable in an undemanding TV kind of way, its unexceptionalness kind of its chief virtue. It's like watching an episode of 'Bounty Law' or  'Lancer'. **1/2

Apartment Troubles (2014)

 Co-written, co-directed and co-staring Jesse Wexler and Jennifer Prediger, the duo play life long friends, struggling artist and actress respectively, who upon the death of their cat and eviction from their illegally sublet New York City apartment, travel to Hollywood to compete on an American Idol knock off. Also staring Megan Mullally, Will Forte and Jeffrey Tambor. Very indie, indie dramedy features a cameo by Bob Byington, one of my favorite indie directors playing a rather socially awkward man. This is one of those movies where you either embrace what it's doing or it's likely to piss you off, I embraced it and rather enjoyed.  ***

Any Gun Can Play (1967)

 'Any Gun Can Play' is a Spaghetti Western labeled in the Tarantino Grindhouse Box Set as 'Go Kill and Come Back'. I was waiting and waiting for that films listed American star Chuck Conners to show up, but he didn't and the plot varied enough from what I'd read it should be online, that it prompted further internet searching to find out what movie I was actually watching. Turns out that there are two different late 1960's Spaghetti Westerns that were relassed in some markets under the title 'Go Kill and Come Back'. That both movies concern train robberies further complicates things.

The story here features a banker (Ed Byrnes), a bandito (Gilbert Rolands) and a bounty hunter (George Hilton) double crossing each other over $300,000 in stolen gold. Once I knew what movie I was watching, rather then being confused by the lack of Confederates and Chuck Conners, I was able to enjoy this more. Easy going, occasionally comic, with a plot that seems intentionaly hard to follow, by the end of the movie there are at least five different factions after the gold and three after the beautiful Stefania Careddu. This might be worth revisiting knowing what it is. **1/2

Addicted to Fresno (2015)

 When Judy Greer gets out of rehab for sex addiction, her sister Natasha Lyonne gets her a job as a hotel maid. In short order Judy accidentally kills a guest, the bronze medalist in hammer throwing at the 2008 Olympics. The sisters try to dispose of the body but end up being blackmailed and then have to raise $25,000 in 3 days. An occasionally funny comedy with alot of cameos, Aubrey Plaza, Fred Armisen, Clea DuVell, Molly Shannon, Ron Livingston and Kumail Nanjiani. **

Satan Never Sleeps (1962)

 Based on the book by Pearl S. Buck 'Satan Never Sleeps' concerns two Catholic mission priests facing the communist takeover of China in 1949. Clifton Webb, in his final film role before retirement, plays the senior priest, while William Holden is his junior. Holden certainly was cast in alot of Asian set films, he was also in 'Bridge on the River Kwai', 'The Bridge at Toko-Ri', 'Love is a Many Splendord Thing', 'The Proud and the Profain', 'The World of Suzie Wong' and 'The 7th Dawn', I may have missed some.

An on going bit in this film has France Nuyen as a potential convert who is smitten by Holden, in fact this drives a fair bit of the plot; the rest of the plot is principally about Communist agitation and Clifton Webb's health. 

'Satan Never Sleeps' isn't very good. A critical and financial failure, 31% on Rotton Tomatoes and $1.5 million box office on a $2.9 million budget. Also Holden sanctions the marriage of a woman and her rapist. **

Dreamboat (1952)

 Thornton Sayre (Clifton Webb) has been living comfortably for decades as a pompous professor of Latin and English literature at a small east cost college. Now a widower and with his academically inclined daughter Carol (Ann Francis) attending the college, his contented existence is thrown into turmoil when his past life finally catches up with him.

Decades before Thorton had, under the name Bruce Blair, been a celebrated lover of the silent screen. The films he made with co-star and then romantic partner Gloria Marlow (Ginger Rogers) have started showing on television and Thorton's students and his colleagues are in a tizzy. Thorton and Carol head for New York City in an effort to stop the films from being shown, high jinx ensue.

Clifton Webb, 62 at the time this movie was made, had in fact appeared in a number of silent films, though the ones shown here where made for this feature and use makeup and camera tricks to imply that Webb and Rogers are decades younger. The film also takes some amusing digs at television, a medium at the time much hated by the studios. This movie is legitimately funny, my favorite bit being when Webb ends up in a bar room brawl while a bar room brawl from one of his old movies plays on the television, he looks at it periodically for guidance in fighting. As with the other Webb comedys of the time this is targeted at a family  audiance, so it lacks the bite that someone like Billy Wilder could have brought to the project. Still ***

The Razor's Edge (1946)

 'The Razor's Edge' is adapted from the 1944 W. Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage) novel of the same name. In fact Maugham is a character in the movie, played by Herbert Marshall the author is used as a sort of narrative device, as he chronicals events in the life of "a fascinating young man" he had encountered a number of times over the years.

Said young man is played by Tyrone Power, a WWI air fighter who Maugham first encountered at a party in the U.S. shortly after the advent of prohibition. Restless, Power leaves fiancee Gene Tierny behind to "loaf" around France for a year. She tracts him down in Paris, they breakup, she heads back to the States and marries a man of good prospects. Power stays in France, eventually he ends up working in a mine where he meets a defrocked Catholic priest who encourages him to go to India and study with Holy men there. Tyrone does this, has profound spiritual experiences that change his life. 

Years later, were are in the Depression now, Power is back in Paris, meets Maugham and Tierney again, as well as a childhood friend Ann Baxter (who won an Oscar for this part). Ann lost her husband and baby in a car accident back in Chicago, became a drunk, and because she is a character in this movie ended up in Paris. Tyrone cleans her up, gets her sober, they fall in love and get engaged. Tierney, a jealous woman who never got over Power, facilitates Baxter's relapse into alcoholism, which unsurprisingly dosen't end well.

A somewhat awkward adaptation, even as a movie it feels like a book. A passion project of studio head Darryl F. Zanuck, he spent lavishly on it an it paid off, $5 million in the US and Canada off $1.2 million. The critical reaction was and remains mixed, the film most notable for Baxter's Oscar, Power's post war transition into more serious parts, as well as an unusually positive portrail of Hinduism for an American studio film of the time. The movie also boasts a nice chewy part for Clifton Webb as Tierny's rich uncle. ***

Nope (2022)

 'Nope' is the 3rd feature from comedian turned horror auture Jordan Peele (I loved 'Get Out' but haven't seen 'Us'). Daniel Kaluuye and Keke Palmer are brother and sister, the family business for generations has been training horses for the movies, with changes in the industry and the death of their father its unclear how much longer that way of life can be sustained. But strange happenings around the ranch may mean that a new, potentially more lucrative opportunity has arrived at their doorstep.

Kaluuye and Palmer are joined by gravely voiced cinematographer Micheal Wincott and  curious Fry's Electonics employee Brandon Perea, in a plan to capture footage of a increasingly agreesive UFO before it kills them or others beat them to it. Steven Yeun is their neighbor, a former child actor turned family amusement entrepreneur who also has his eyes on the phenomena in the local sky's. This seemingly disjointed bunch of characters are on course to startling encounters and lots of subtext.

'Nope' borders on, but isn't quite, a horror parody, its much more. The movie has one of the strongest, most intricate screenplays I've seen in a long time, it is doing an awful lot. The movie is full of ruminations and has plenty of points it wants to make, it does an artful job of making them. 'Nope' reflects on genera trops of the sci-fi, horror, western and Hollywood navel gazing genras. It's about how Hollywood will chew you up and spit you out, how not all wild animals can be tamed, and the seduction of spectical and the prospects of easy stardom. It is about not learning your lesson, the ubiquity of cameras and the quest for "the impossible shot". It is about blood and found family and trying to save the dead. It is electric.

'Nope' sucked me in, offering a sense of awe and mystery of a most satisfying sort. I can't say enough about how well constructed this movie is, how it's many moving parts work together in  ways that at first seem halting and obscure, but which gain focus as they revel more and more. I  regret not seeing this on the big screen, though there is something to be said for watching it alone at home in the dark. As much as I enjoyed 'Get Out' you can really see Jordan Peele's growth as a filmmaker in this, he evokes flavors of feelings in his work that are idocenticly his own and yet made universal. Needless to say I am sold.****

Kiss the Girls (1997)

 I liked 'Along Came a Spider' enough that I rented 'Kiss the Girls' to complete the twology. Like its sequel this is also a satisfying thriller, it has twists but I saw more of them coming this time, I was aware. Watching them in reverse order I think I got more out of both films, processed the shared beats differently. (Something similar happened for me by accident years ago when I saw the Clint Eastwood / Clyde the chimp movies in reverse order.) Ashley Judd is rather strong in this and puting her and Morgan Freeman together as a team, well that's some real strike of lightning casting. ***

Along Came a Spider (2001)

 This is an Alex Cross movie, a James Patterson character, one of two in which he is played by Morgan Freeman. 'Kiss the Girls' came first, but this is the one that was free on Prime. Anyway a senators young daughter is kidnapped and Dr. Cross works with secret service agent Monica Potter to rescue her. Given the 32% Rotten Tomatoes rating this was alot better and smarter then I thought it would be. There were a number of twists I simply didn't see coming, I enjoyed being surprised. ***

The January Man (1989)

 Faye Grant, the socialite best friend of the daughter (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) of New York City Mayor Rod Stiger is strangled to death as the ball drops in Times Square ringing in 1988. Part of a string of murders the police can't solve, the Mayor pressures police commissioner Harvey Keitel to reinstate his effective, but unorthodox and enemy making brother Kevin Kline to solve the case. Kline and Keitel are estrangenged owing to Harvey's using Kevin as a fall guy in a corruption scandal, as well as the commisioners stealing and marrying his girlfriend Susan Sarandon.

Police Captian Danny Aiello is none too happy about having Kline back either, especially when he commanders the best office in the precinct, brings in his kitten, his parot, expresso machine and painter best friend Alan Rickman as his assistant. Oh, dose this movie ever want you to know it's quirky. It's also soapy and silly and a mess. Tone is all over the place, picture can't decide how serious it wants to be. 

Kline getting a grieving Mastrantonio into bed after a brief post funeral conversation is gross and creepy. People don't behave like normal people in this movie. I did like seeing Alan Rickman playing something of a beatnik like character, as opposed to his typical uptight types. Kline's Holmsian leaps of deduction strain credulity. Why is artist Rickman, against established character, also a computer expert, during the Reagan era when there weren't many of them and it was hard to become one? Why the killer's overly elaborate and obscure patterns of killing? Why does Bill Cobb have only one scene? Why so many good actors in service of one of the worst screenplays I've  ever seen a major studio put to screen? This movie is so bad, that I'm puzzled why its not part of the pantheon of famously bad movies. An at times painful watch. *

Edge of Doom (1950)

 A distributed young man (Farley Granger) with a (not entirely baseless) grudge against the Catholic Church, murders a less then sympathetic priest (Harold Vermilyea) and gets away with it, only to be acussed of a robbery he didn't commit. Dana Andrews is a sympathetic priest who trys to help, well everybody.

Granger is so whiney in this it gets rather annoying, which unfortunately overshadows an otherwise pleasantly different idea for a film noir. **

Movie contains a clip that used to be used in TCM's night time bumpers. After seeing several clips also so used from 'Killer's Kiss' the other week, this is something of a streak.

Support the Girls (2018)

 Various happings over the course of one day at a Texas breasturant. There is an attempted robbery, a thrown together car wash fund raiser for a troubeld employee, a cable outage and problem customers. Regina Hall is the capable den mother of a manager, Haley Lu Richardson, AJ Michalka, Dylan Gelula some of the servers and Lea DeLaria a lesbian regular. The drama inherent to the young, the poor and working in the food service industry. It's a real slice of life, sweet and sad. ***

Emergency (2022)

 Three college roommates, two of them black and one brown, find an unconscious white girl in their apartment on the biggest party night of the year. Starts as rowdy college comedy then crosses with Jordan Peele infused racial horror. More awkward then funny, I have a sense of what it was aiming for, but the film didn't start coming together for me until more then an hour in. There are parts of this that I thought worked, some really worked, but it was just too uneven, tone all over the place, lose threads that never pay off. Disappointied. *1/2

Status Update (2018)

 Moving from California to Connecticut for his senior year Ross Lynch hates his life, until a magic, wish granting social media app teaches him what really matters. Gimmicky, Disney-esque fantasy romance is saved by likable characters and good music. Also staring Olivia Holt, Harvey Guillen, Brec Bassinger, Wendi McLendon-Covey, John Micheal Higgins, Famke Janssen and real life social media personality The Fat Jewish. **1/2

Pretty Maids All In A Row (1971)

 Southern California high school physiologist and football coach Rock Hudson, takes to killing the co-eds he sleeps with, can sexually frustrated student John David Carson stop him? 'Pretty Maids All In A Row' has been described as a perfect example of the "willing to try anything" attitude of the desperate film studios of the time, in this case MGM. Movie is a hodgepodge, a script by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, alot of sensuality, some nudity and a theme song by The Osmonds. In addition to Hudson cast includes two other 70's TV police officers, Angie Dickinson and Telly Savalas. This movie is a mess, but a watchable one. **

Mulholland Falls (1996)

 'Mulholland Falls' is essentially a remake of 'Chinatown' with shades of (the then forthcoming) 'L.A. Confidential' thrown in. Nick Nolte is with "the hat squad", plan clothed cops who skirt the law to uphold the law. Nick's ex mistress Jennifer Connelly turns up dead, sending him on a journy into a world of high end corruption. I side more with Siskel then Ebert on this one, couldn't get past the cliches and the better films this reminded me of. **

 Best of 2023

10 Dumb Money/Air

9 To Catch a Killer

8 Asteroid City 

7 Eileen

6 Napoleon 

5 Priscilla 

4 Barbie

3 Godzilla Minus One

2 Oppenheimer 

1 The Holdovers 

Drinking Buddies (2013)

 In 'Drinking Buddies' Olivia Wilde is Jack Johnson's work wife (at a brewery), which causes complications with respective love interests Ron Livingston and Anna Kendrick. Joe Swanberg film from the year before 'Happy Christmas', which this is a little more serious then. Not much happens plot wise, the point is to have fun spending time with these characters. I prefer the 'Happy Christmas' characters but these folks are all right. **1/2

Deadline U.S.A (1952)

 Editor Humphrey Bogart takes on a mobster while trying to keep his paper from being sold and shuttered. Warm newspaper movie goodness. ***