QuikReview: Ondine (2009)

So sometime during the weekend I watched Ondine, a 2009 film starring a young/er Colin Farrell, Colin Farrell’s eyebrows, some actress as the titular character, and a cute kid as the cute kid in a wheelchair. It’s directed by Neil Jordan, who has also directed a number of other movies you may have heard of but not seen because they sound dumb, like Interview with a Vampire. Ondine is, however the plot description may take you, a worthwhile little movie in itself: just a little bit grounded, just a little bit mysterious, and with just enough aplomb to wrap everything up in just a satisfactory enough way.

I’m not sure how many entries this particular genre has besides The Secret of Roan Inish, but so far it seems to be a worthy one. Selkies also feature in a couple of The Dragon Knight books, though. Hm.

Anyhow, Farrell is Syracuse (nee Circus), a fisherman who pulls a mysterious woman out of the ocean in his fishing nets. She gives her name as Ondine, wants absolutely nobody to know of her existence, and Syracuse hauls in weirdly good catches when she sings her mysterious, haunting songs in an unknown language. Syracuse’s disabled but precocious daughter immediately concludes that Ondine is a selkie (and never mind that selkies are Scottish, this movie is Irish, “Ondine” is French, and the actress playing her is “Mexican-born Polish.” Nice.) In a manner which makes subsequent twists crucially obvious to students of the genre, Ondine fails to deny this, and in fact recruits young Annie’s help to conceal her seal coat, washed up to land in the form of a bundle of seaweed. Syracuse himself isn’t totally convinced, but…what if this beautiful, wonderful woman is one of the seal-women who come to land only for love of the men they have chosen and can also grant wishes….?

Annie is, y’know, eight or nine. Syracuse just isn’t very bright.

I don’t have a lot to say about this movie and probably won’t watch it again unless The Mother of Skaith has a hankering for Irish accents, but it caught my interest and held my attention. The actors have great chemistry and the script is never embarrassing.

That’s not actually damning with faint praise, I swear.

Rated: So if the Coast Guard had them surrounded, why didn’t they arrest….?

The Mother of Skaith Reviews – Tombstone (1993)

“I am very sleepy! I watched that movie you gave me all the way through last night! It is very violent! But I watched it. I even started to watch that other thing. The Director’s Commentary. That man in it was very good! He was funny. No, he is not Sam Elliott! I know Sam Elliott! He was Virgil Earp. What was the last Earp man? There was Wyatt, and Virgil, and who was the other? Morgan Earp.

“Who played him? Don’t give me that, I know people! I just don’t know their names. Who was he!? Oh. No, I don’t know that person. Well, who was the other man? The funny man. The other bad man did the spinning thing with the gun, he did this and that and up and down, all fancy thing. And then the other fool man, he did the same thing with a cup! Doc. He was just mocking the man! I was laughing so much. How do you come up with that sort of thing? I tell you what, it was very good writing. How did they come up with that ? Like that man doing that, and Doc doing that to mock him. You have to really appreciate how good the writers are who come up with that sort of thing. I mean, real authors.

“How did Doc become a Doc? Was he a real doctor? Why did he go west if he was a doctor? How do you become a gunfighter if you go west? Oh, he had TB? What is TB again? Well, how did that make him decide he was going to become a gunfighter? You have TB and you gonna be a fighter?

“So when that Wyatt said, he sees the sash, which is what the Cowboys wear, he’s gonna shoot the man wearing it, and that Ike Clanton–was Ike Clanton the leader? Or was the man in the red shirt the leader?

“–so Ike Clanton, he out there running away and they’re running after chasing him, and he takes off his sash and throws it away. Did they still shoot him after that? The man is not wearing a sash any more! That’s what I said, it is very violent. There is a lot of running around and shooting and fighting. And those men were bad! The bad men in The Magnificent Seven, they just go there to rob the people, they don’t kill the people! Unless, you see the man come running out to kill you. He just wants to steal from the people. But these in this one, they go and they just be killing for no reason! Oh, were they stealing too? What were they stealing? What were they doing with cattle? I didn’t see any cattle in the movie.

“And was that opium? When the man in the red shirt comes out and he’s all shooting the moon. It was opium! The Director’s Commentary said so. You could just buy it back then, like over the counter medications today. But it is so addictive! And that girl, Wyatt’s wife. She was addicted to it! That’s very sad. What happened to her? No, in real life, I want to know, what happened to her?

“I know they died, Riders. It was a long time ago. Everybody in the movie is dead now in real life, yes, I know that. Thank you for telling me. I would not have known otherwise.

“Warlock? Who is in that movie?”

(Reposted from 2019)

Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD, pt. 1 – With My Mother

[A/N: still pretty mentally exhausted. Pls enjoy repost, thx.]

Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD (1998)–wait, yes, I can hear the mental brakes squealing, please finish the paragraph–may just be the best comic book movie ever. Yes, comic book movies existed way back in the dim days of the dawn of time–before the beginning of the Marvel Universe, before the X-Men came, when woolly mammoths roamed the Earth. Granted, most of them weren’t all that good, but when they were, you get a masterpiece like this one.

Masterpiece? Welllllll….yeah. It’s a word I will stand by. This movie has the all-to-rare blend of cheese, competence, gusto, earnestness, cool–and (attempted) depth that makes it genuinely watchable, enjoyable, and even rewatchable.

Most of all: it tried. It kept trying all the way through. And most of it? Hits the mark.

Hasselhoff is excellent as the cigar-chewing (…and smoking, I guess), gives-no-darns tough guy, leader, and Father to His Men. He goes whole hog on the role, gives it his all, growls, scowls, grins, menaces, and muscles his way through with enormous success. It also helps that he’s got the physical build to play a larger-than-life character. Hasselhoff is 6’4 and consistently paired off with shorter actors, his costumes emphasize his shoulders, and, yeah, he looks good. Just about everybody else is well-cast, too: from the scrawny but he’ll-grow-into-it Rookie to the utterly punchable supercilious bureaucrat, to the slavering villainess.

Conflicted divorce lawyer single mom? Or glamorous super-spy?

The only real weakness is the action sequences. They’re extremely small-scale, and pretty darned flat. A little more money and a few dozen more stuntmen would have done wonders. I’d also point out that Lisa Rinna, Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine, “an old hand at the sexpionage game” and second in command on the strike team, appears not to have been informed that she’s in a comic book movie. Oh well.

So, plot:

Opening in A Bunker, Somewhere,

“Ooo! He’s gonna shoot him!…who shot him?”
“Ok, so, that guy–”
“No, no, I know who got shot, it was that guy who was talking. Why?”
“Because the other guy is a traitor.”

HYDRA infiltrates and then attacks a SHIELD base to steal the corpse of Baron von Germanname, last of the global bogeymen. As to why there is a corpse on ice and not a pile of ashes in an unmarked urn somewhere, well, no clue. There is some slight resistance–

“Who this? Oh, the guy who was shot. Is he not dead?”

–a little bit of action–

“I don’t know what is going on.”

–Our first one-liner–

“That was a stupid saying. ‘Lets rock and let’s roll.’ For what?”

“What is going on? Still don’t know.”

–and a reveal of our female villain. The almost-dead-guy gasps out some dying words…

“What? What? He thought she was a boy? A man?”
“No, he was talking to Nick.”
“Huh?”
“Like, just in general. Like, his last words. Like, ‘Mama!’ Only, he says Nick.”

And we are introduced to Nick Fury, a retired badass who is for reasons known only to himself spending his days in an abandoned mine in the Yukon, whaling on a rock wall with a pickaxe. Hey…wonder if he knows anyone else up there….

However, duty calls in the shape of a slightly-gormless new recruit who doesn’t even mind that Fury’s first response to the intrusion is a rather resentful beatdown.

“Is that Nick? Nick Fury? Why is he doing that?”
“He didn’t know who it was.”
“He had no call to beat the man!”
“It could have been an enemy!”
“You look first, and then you beat people! You do not beat them first! This is not a good Nick Fury.”

Fury, it turns out, is rather bitter about having been put out to pasture, and isn’t interested, until he’s told about SceneOne McDeadGuy.

“They killed who?”
“That guy who said ‘Nick’.”
“Oh.”

After exchanging barbs with Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine, “an old hand at the sexpionage game,” and yes, that is a direct quote from the movie, matters proceed.

“What is this girl’s name? Pretty girl.”

“The eyepatch is not necessary.”
“He only has one eye!”
“Right. They didn’t have to have him that way.”
“He was that way in the original.”
“Hmph.”

Onboard the Helicarrier, we are introduced to PaleFace MindReader, an mind reader, who introduces herself by reading Fury’s mind.

“Did she know him?”
“No. She’s a mind reader.”
“She is?”

The Helicarrier set is quite a nice one. Yes, it’s a leftover from whatever submarine flick was released that year, but it has excellent set dressing and depth of field or whatever that sort of thing is called. And having background chatter, PA announcements, lots of extras moving around, so on and so forth, is also good for setting up verisimilitude. I mostly just like the fact that it’s not 110% CGI.

Notice the depth of the set on that second image: the heroes have already gone through one set of airlocks, the current space they’re standing in, and then the Contessa in the background is opening up the elevator, which they enter on camera in a single tracking shot. That’s cool!(Fury is grinning because he can’t hear the No Smoking sign over the sound of how awesome he is)

So Nick Fury, un-retired badass, gets straight to the butting of heads with his supercilious, obstructive, and petty supervisor. We know this guy is obstructive and petty because he tells Fury to put out that cigar.

“He shouldn’t be smoking! Breaking the rules is when you do good to break the rules. He is not a hero. That is an anti-hero….no matter how many people like him.”
“Nicotine is addictive.”
“That is not an excuse.”
“Look, he has to have the cigar when he says those lines, because they’d sound stupider if he didn’t have it.”
“What.”
“I bet it helps him keep a straight face!”
“….”

The standard debriefing/cool toys scene follows:

“James Bond! He is M…? Q, no, he’s Q.”

As does a quick one that spoke deeply to my ex-payroll preparer heart:

“Heh, heh, heh, did you get that? It’s his W4. They’re trying to get him to sign his W4.”
“And he should!”

We are also introduced to the Life Model Decoys, a concept which plays quite an important part in the comics and also (HINT HINT FORESHADOWIIIIIING HINT) in this very movie. We also get a pretty cool line: “I don’t know whether to congratulate you or put a stake in its heart.”

Meanwhile, The Rookie is asking leading questions so the senior agents can explain the plot to him. The scene is a bit on the nose, but it serves its purpose to a) provide exposition for the audience, b) make it clear that the senior agents know what they’re talking about….so it really isn’t Rookie’s fault he’s a bit gormless.

“This guy…is he gonna be a crook?”
“No!”
“He looks like a crook.”
“He’s a rookie. That’s why they have him chasing the W4s around.”
“Well then why doesn’t he know this stuff? This is important history.”
“Because he’s a rookie!”
“He’s an agent, isn’t he?”
“He just graduated from spy school! He’s not supposed to know anything!…heh heh heh, did you get that, spy school? High school? Heh heh. That was funny.”
“…”

To be continued later on account of my notebook went missing.

Raw Edge (1956 ) – Western Movie Review (rerepost)

[A/N: currently I have enough mental energy to work, work out, and eat food that isn’t the emergency pizza stash. Please enjoy this repost. ]

So I stumbled across this movie via Jeff Arnold’s Western movie blog). His review indicated, in short, that this movie is One Weird Puppy, but also that it starred Yvonne DeCarlo (she was in The Ten Commandments! And Criss Cross, and Brute Force. Really, IMDB, Brute Force? Huh.) Also, it has Rory Calhoun (Look, if you don’t watch 1950s B-Westerns, I don’t know what to say to you), and a couple of those other bit actors that you always can have fun spotting in the background going “sure, boss,” leering, and attempting the shoot the hero in the back.

IMDB: “In the lawless Oregon country of 1842, local magnate Gerald Montgomery decrees that any unattached woman belongs to the first taker. Dan Kirby is lynched, starting a stampede to claim his half-Indian wife Paca. Trouble starts with the local tribe, but worse is in store when Dan’s tough brother Tex rides in. The zeal of Montgomery’s men to protect him from Tex is tempered by their lust for Hannah, who’d be his widow.”

Soooo….yep, this is a weird movie all right. The person set up as the main villain does not have a big showdown with the hero; he’s absent most of the movie and the person whom the hero does confront and conquer is the two-bit thug we have been seen being a despicable lech the entire time. And there is the, uh, extremely weird setup for the plot to begin with.

(Quoth the Mother of Skaith: “Was that actually the law?” “No, mom. They made it up for the movie.” “Oh. Why?”)

What sets this movie apart from pure exploitation is the fact that all the characters–including the women–actively and intelligently work in their own interests. In both cases (yes, there’s only two women in the movie), their own interests prioritize: staying alive, protecting their loved ones, or avenging their loved ones, as well as conforming–or attempting to conform to–to standards of human decency.

Plot: So after the lynching of the guy who is going to be avenged by a handsome stranger with a gun, Mrs Montgomery/Hannah attempts to get his widow, Paca, to safety with her tribe. This doesn’t work; Paca is claimed by one of Montgomery’s men. She isn’t happy with the situation, needless to say, but sticking with the guy who can protect her is the only way to stay alive. She sticks with him, until the time comes when she can safely turn it around and…well….it’s not really a satisfying revenge, because it’s over too quickly. Meanwhile, Mr. Montgomery is absent (doing stuff. What stuff? The kind of stuff that keeps you out of the house when a handsome mysterious stranger with a gun arrives after you’ve lynched his brother), Mrs. Montgomery is not, and a handsome stranger mysterious stranger has just showed up with a gun.

You can kind of guess what happens from there on out. And even if you don’t, it’s unpredictably fun to watch happen.

Mrs. Montgomery is the damsel in distress of the movie and as such, given the expectations of modern audiences, is, well, actually slightly annoying. I kept yelling for her to get a freaking gun of her own. However, she is a genuinely likeable character regardless, and moreover, she’s consistently written. She remains ladylike and resourceful throughout all. You buy her personality and don’t want her to be hurt. She’s a loyal wife who loved (past tense) her husband, and is also semi-aware that the entire situation is his and partly therefore her fault. Still, Lady, get a freaking gun. (She does, however, attempt to brain a thuggish lech [Neville Brand, flashing his best teeth for the camera] with a candlestick in the final shootout. Which is something.)

The Indians are also given a treatment rather unusual for early westerns. They don’t whoop, they don’t shoot arrows, and they don’t get mowed down by the white men. They react to the murder of one of their own in a measured, reasonable way, and it’s quite satisfying.

The photography and acting is also very good; color is nicely used, scenery is lush, sets nice, etc. Yvonne looks spectacular and Rory is more than adequately handsome. I’m also out of time, so,

Rated: Four ornamental bull’s heads out of five.

Quik ReReview: Fort Bowie (1958)

Fort Bowie is a 1958 Western movie that stars Ben Johnson and a bunch of other names I don’t recognize. Probably no one else will, either. Anyhow:

– NO I AM NOT OBSESSED WITH YOUNG BEN JOHNSON BACK WHEN HE WAS FINE.

– Heh, he mentioned Mangas Coloradas (AKA, Lex Barker in the Barker-Johnson vehicle War Paint. Or War Pony. Or something like that. Previously reviewed on this blog somewhere.)  (Do I watch too many ’50s Westerns? Nooooooo of course not.)

– I’d watch a movie called War Pony.

– Well, you can’t say that this movie isn’t quick and to the point as far as characterization and plotting goes. We’re at 6 minutes flat and we know who is who and what’s what. Ben is Tomahawk Thompson, the Good Captain. The Bad Major is a Washington stooge who shoots Indians under a truce flag. The wishy-washy Colonel isn’t going to like this. (Neither are the Indians, but really, who cares?)

– Mind, the writing is pretty clunky. But it’s still fast-moving and fast-moving cheese is the best kind of cheese.

– OK, the Colonel just said he wanted his wife…alive, in one piece, and with her hair still on, three separate times in one conversation. If that isn’t a code for “murder that b*tch please” I don’t know what ain’t.

– Heh, “The woman of Victorio” was cast out by the Apache, who don’t trust her. Quoth Ben: “Seems to me you’re in a bad spot, lady. We don’t trust you, either.”

– Wow, that was direct of her.

– Oh, OUCH.

– You’d probably get in trouble for beating up a civilian.

– Wow, Ben is a magnet for forward women in this film, ain’t he. (…even though it’s hard to tell at bootleg resolution) (still not obsessed).

– Wow, Ben gets lucky a lot in this movie. Mind you, this is not a good idea. It’s not even as though the Colonel is particularly bad: he’s even resisting the Political Officer’s insinuations about genocide.

– The Colonel even dotes on her, she’s just a witch!

– Why are we spending so much time watching this witch?

– OH NO SHE THREW HIM UNDER THE BUS! WHY? SHEESH!

– YIKES SHE CAME RIGHT OUT AND SAID IT?! (Ben, we told you it was a bad idea!)

– CROCODILE TEARS LADY.

– So Ben gets what’s probably a suicide mission: take terms to Victorio while the other cavalry troops go rampaging around meanwhile. He points out that it might not be definite suicide, if the terms are such that Victorio likes them. Why do I get the sudden feeling that Victorio is not going to be offered reasonable terms….?

– “But sir, Victorio will chop Thompson into pieces and throw them at us!” (Direct quote).

– I love this movie. It’s pure cheese, but it moves fast, it thinks about things on an adult level, and then it does something juvenile while giggling instead.

– Ben salvages his conscience, dignity, and honor out of the wreckage of a conversation with Mrs. Colonel. That takes some doing…..ohh, so he actually didn’t sleep with her. He turned her down and she took it poorly. Well, obviously, he’s the hero.

– Ben points out that if Victorio smells a trap, he, Ben, will be in deep trouble.
“Yes, you’d be the first victim.”
“But not the last, sir.”
“….yes.”
(Snerk.)

– So: there is a possibility Ben might survive the Colonel’s Uriah Gambit. On the other hand, there is a strong possibility Mrs. Colonel is going to end up dead by the end of the movie. AND GOOD RIDDANCE. The Indian girl is much nicer, Ben.

– Oops, the negociations failed. Well, who could have possibly seen that happening?

– Aww, Victorio rides a white horse, and he gets to kill the evil Major himself. And then scalp him. See, that’s what we call progress!

– ….mind you, he does leave orders for Ben and Co. to be tortured. It’s an incremental process.

– That was the most lackluster stampede I’ve ever seen. Sheesh.

– See, this film has kind of set things up to the point where I’m actually hoping the Apaches take Fort Bowie. And that’s not really a good thing, honestly, because aside from Victorio there are no Indian characters to be rooting for.

– Lady, loading rifles is honestly the least you could do. And shut up and stop trying to manipulate your husband. WHAT THE HECK DO YOU MEAN, YOU’VE NEVER LOVED ANY MAN BUT HIM? WHAT? ARGH.

– Oh no, darn it, the cavalry has arrived. Drat. I was hoping they’d take the fort!

– Tomahawk fight! A clinch! Oh no! Who will the Colonel shoot with his last bullet!?

– Well, Ben survived.

– Also the Colonel has apologized.

– Indian Girl is injured, but at least she’s got Ben….

– AHH GROSS IT’S A KISSING SCENE EWWWWW FASTFORWARD IIIIIT

Rated: Lol, it’s a B-grade Western, what do you expect?

ReReview: Broken Arrow (1996)

I kind of really wanted to like this movie. Unfortunately, it[‘s actors] lack…charisma. John Woo wasn’t exactly dealing with the cream of acting crop, sure, and it’s a big step down to end up with Christian Slater when you’re used to Chow Yun-fat, but when he can’t even make flying through the air sideways while firing two guns cool…you’ve got problems. (Apparently, this is the fault of the studio execs, who trimmed most of the violence and an unknown amount of the characterization.)

So…it’s…it’s not good. But it’s not actually….bad. It’s not nearly as stupid a stupid action movie could be, because every time something is happening that looks like it’s going to be utterly moronic…something else that’s only moderately stupid happens instead. And there are some bits that are just beautiful. Mainly, I think the problem is the cast. While John Travolta has plenty of material to go ham on (and does), Christian Slater and Samantha Mathis as our embattled heroes have a lot less dialogue, and a lot more action-interaction. And while on paper they become a fire-forged, nuke-disarming team…they just utterly and completely lack any spark together. (IMDB claims they were exes, which might explain it.) Slater actually does pretty well too with the bonkers dialogue (“When the day comes when we have to go to war against Utah, we are really going to kick ass.”)–but without it, well…

As far as other performances go, they’re fine. Look, I don’t know anyone else’s name. The black guy who played the good-guy colonel, and the weasely guy who played the weasely-guy analyst were also quite fine.

Plot: Travolta and Slater are Air Force pilots. Travolta is the senior and more colorful Colonel, while Slater is the Captain guy who, if he had a family, would be showing pictures of them to his coworkers. [OH SHIT I’VE BEEN DOING THAT] However, since he’s the heartthrob hero, he manages to eject and survive when Colonel Travolta turns out to be working with a crew of bad guys, crashes of the triangle-stealth-aircraft thingy and steals the nukes. While the Pentagon is sending guys to rappel down canyons (no idea why they couldn’t just walk in, but it does look really fun) and scrambling a weasely-looking analyst to the scene, STAT (….why?), Captain Hero has landed in a national park and is discovered by a cute park ranger girl.

And, well…look, if you’re going to have your lead characters meet and hit it off with a martial-arts-infused knife versus gun Mexican Standoff that becomes a No I Have The Upper Hand But Look I Gave You Your Gun Back Please Trust Me…it ought to be well-choreographed and they ought to have insane levels of chemistry. Neither of these things apply.

Anyhow, whenever John Woo actually has something to sink his stylistic teeth into (the loading a revolver while the attack helicopter approaches montage), it’s great. On the other hand, while our heroes are wandering around in the desert with no way of affecting the plot and nothing to do but attempt to act in the midst of an interpersonal-chemical void, it’s not great.

(Although, the action sequence with the cars was great.) I mean, in what other movie ever have you seen a car chase end with the villain hosing his own car down with a fire extinguisher?

Still, this movie has an interesting degree of charm, partly because it thinks it’s really cool (slow-mo John Travolta in aviator shades striding through the desert! John Travolta chowing down on scenery in teeth-baring display of low-volume hamminess!) and partly because it, well, it kind of is cool. I mean, you’ve got helicopters (that are real helicopters), desert settings (that are real deserts), natural colors (that aren’t washed out with orange and blue filters), explosions (that are real gasoline explosions), and stuff like depth of field (that isn’t zoomed in on some jackass actor’s face as he tries to be theatrical–you get real desert vistas and canyon walls. Quality stuff, especially these days when everything except the jackass actors is CGI.) Woo and company took a crew and a brace of actors and a set of vehicles that they took out into the desert, lined everything up, and hit Go. And it looks good.

(Stupid, but good.)

Anyhoo, the plot proceeds, with our heroes disposing of one nuke relatively safely in an abandoned copper mine (I mean, it does go off), but the other one still at large. Also, the EMP blast has ensured that the government’s response is going to be even more incompetent than it has been so far. Which is pretty freaking incompetent. Nevertheless, our heroes persevere. And if they’d been played by people who could act or at least sell the lame dialogue they’re forced to recite, it would have been a lot more exciting. (The heroine is set up to almost be a cool, tough, actiony but still vulnerable heroine. She just….can’t act, isn’t athletic, can’t do martial arts, has zero chemistry with the hero [even when doing the mandated post-riverborne escape scene cuddling], and isn’t even all that good-looking, though that might just be the 90s’-style makeup.)

So anyway, the heroine ends up on the truck with the nuke whilst the heroes have a brief argument re: SAVE THE GIRL versus I HAVE ORDERS (haha, j/k, we’re gonna save the girl.)

So there’s a helicopter-vs-train action scene, until the helicopter explodes because the pilot forgot that he had ONE JOB and flies INTO A MOUNTAIN. DUDE. It’s a really, really egregious way of turning the battle into a gun-vs-gun fight, which devolves into a fistfight which, what do you expect, the hero wins and oh boy he manages to click-disarm the nuke whilst diving sideways out of the speeding train okay, okay, FINE, yes it is very cool.

Nailed it.

Anyhow, day saved, villain killed, heroes hug (so terribly awkwardly it’s probably for the best Woo cuts away quickly). And, well….quiverfull?

Rated: it coulda been a contender.

ReReview: Female on the Beach (1955)

OH MY GOSH LADY CALL THE COPS. (throw him out first). (and before that, make him give you back his key.) (and then, buy a gun.) OH MY GOSH. This isn’t going to end well.
EFF OFF, YOU CREEPY LITTLE F*CKER!

Although it’s no wonder he’s got an inflated opinion of himself, if he knows he’s able to drive women to attempted murder-suicide and this isn’t even a chick he slept with….this really isn’t going to end well.

Ladies, when you are talking to a creepy little f*cker, even if he’s managing to be less creepy and explain himself, DO NOT APOLOGIZE FOR BEING QUOTE RUDE UNQUOTE. Especially when he’s explaining to you that he’s a gigolo who is chasing you for your money and oh yes he was involved with the previous tenant, who, BY THE WAY, fell to her death mysteriously FROM YOUR BALCONY. Two days ago. I mean, seriously, they haven’t even fixed the railing yet, good grief!

(This isn’t going to end well.)

Zing! I like this detective. He’s going to be the guy who picks up all the pieces afterwards, isn’t he? (Unless he’s the AKTUAL MURDERER, but I doubt that.)

EFF OFF YOU CREEPY LITTLE F*CKER! AND TAKE YOUR PUSHERS WITH YOU…oh good, she sent them packing. BUT NOT HIM, SHEESH LADY. Oh, this isn’t going to end well….Oh. Kay. Riiiiiiiiiiiight.

Getting zinged by the cleaning lady: you ain’t doing well.

Lady, that’s just embarassing. All that? At your age?

OKAY, the detective is definitely smelling fishy, and it isn’t because of the shark hook.

Okay, we have now progressed to a) romantic bridal carrying, b) the detectives now have binoculars. What the heck is up with this movie?

You pimps are annoying.

I’m on Team Detective….

This scene in its native tongue:
– Meow grr hiss.
– Meow?
– Hissss
– Meow, mew, mew, licks paw.
– HISS! HISSSS YOWL GRRRR! YOWL!
– licks paw, cleans ear, licks paw again: mew?
– Hissssss, flicks tail, leaves, tail still flicking.
As entertaining as that was, in hindsight, it’s kind of obvious that the writers didn’t actually know how to end this script and were fishing around for an actual villain.

AGGH GROSS IT’S A KISSING SCENE FAST FORWARD IT ewww!

Ugh you pimps are really annoying. Ahaha. Gosh. That guy’s even more of an obvious loser than Drummond is.

Okay, explain to me how you managed to knock him all the way to the floor with one slap? He’s a foot taller than you and made of stacked muscle. Seriously? You also gave him a concussion??

Gah, I really hate you catty lady. Oh no! She switched them! She set them up it was her doing OH MY GOSH!

Oh, and the detective is watching.

(Oh whew she’s okay. ((How did she make it out the water without even getting her hair wet?)))

Ugh gross it’s another kissing scene.

Well, that was underwhelming. I expected someone was going to die.

Rated: it’s a romance, we’ll be generous. 3/5 stars.

Gunsmoke (1953) – Movie reReview

Audie Murphy and Susan Cabot, who collaborated at least two other times, in Duel at Silver Creek and Ride Clear of Diablo, are the leads in this lightweight but thoroughly well-made and entertaining movie. Also in it is Charles Drake, the white knight to Audie’s black knight in No Name on the Bullet. All of those are extremely good movies. Just about all of Audie’s works are on the + side of B or at least the – side of A.

This one is an easy A if you ask me.

So, this one is about a young gun, Reb Kittridge, drifting into Billings after having made a quick and escape from Johnson County. He’s got a job lined up in Billings, but the situation grows rapidly murky when someone takes a potshot at him before he even gets into town, he meets the daughter of his presumptive target, Rita Saxon (Cabot), and then declines a gunfight with Old Man Saxon (since he hasn’t actually been formally hired yet.) This sort of behavior endears him greatly to Old Man Saxon–who used to be a hellraiser himself, and remembers what it was like to be a young gun who wants out and just needs a leg up…

Anyhow, the bad guy wants the Saxon ranch; Saxon doesn’t want to sell; Kittridge kind of wants to be done with this whole gunslinging business, blah blah blah…so Saxon “loses” his ranch to Reb in a game of cards (“complete with morgage,” heh.)

So now, the burden of the plot is on Audie to get his cattle to market by hook or by crook, with Telford (the bad guy) breathing down his neck and Rita’s bushwacking fiance also causing trouble. Also, Reb’s erstwhile friends have now become business rivals and are now trying to murder him. Better yet, the Saxon ranch genuinely is in a peck of trouble, mortgaged, facing a tight deadline, and low on men and beef both (“That’s your problem, son.” Hehhh.) Oh yeah, and there isn’t even enough money to make payroll for all the men who are about to quit, HAH.

And even better still, Miss Saxon is not at all pleased with the change of management in her home.

And so the fun begins…

– It’s actually kind of a bad look to be picking a fight with a man six inches shorter than you, Curly…
– That being said, Audie (briefly) going berserk on some stuntmen is a definite highlight.
– Rita in some really 50s’ underwear and an incredibly pointy bustier, is also, as Kittridge points out, also worth looking at. I mean…corsets, man. Just…corsets.
– Old Man Saxon has a pretty good role, fatherly, calm, and stalwart…but also slyly running the whole show from the back seat the whole damn time.

There really isn’t all that much more to say about this movie, other than it’s well-written, is acted with distinction and great prowess, moves quickly, is fun and occasionally, genuinely clever. It’s a credit to its genre and you ought to give it a watch.

Rated: See ya round, Johnny.

Movie (re)Review – Remember the Night

Remember The Night is  a “Isn’t Christmas Wonderful”-genre holiday special, wrapped in a noir-style trench coat and fedora.

The incomparable Barbara Stanwyck (Cry Wolf) and the damn fine Fred MacMurray (Quantez, Double Indemnity) star as a thieving dame who got sticky fingers once too often, and the prosecuting attorney whose job it is to land her in jail.

MacMurray (John Sargent) has something of a reputation to maintain: he’s the best in the department at getting female defendants convicted. Accordingly, when, just before Christmas, he sees the jury about to acquit, he…calls for a recess. The jurors will feel obliged to him for giving them Christmas off, resentful towards Stanwyck (Lee) for having dragged them back to the box, and in the post-holiday gloom are much more likely to give him his conviction. However, there is no heart so cold but knows a touch of pity, and seeing poor Lee fuming and frustrated about spending Christmas in jail, arranges to bail her out.

And then, since she doesn’t have money or a place to stay–or pocket money for a meal–takes her out to dinner. And then, since it turns out they are both native Indiana-ians, arranges to take her home for Christmas. Even though this technically means that he is transporting a felon across state lines.

Hijinx ensue….and they’re going to spend the honeymoon at the Niagara Falls.

There really isn’t any much more to this say about the movie than that, except to add that, did we mention, it stars Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray at the top of their noir-sharp dialogue game and enjoying themselves enormously. Such as when they have to make a fast exit from a hick judge:

Sargent: You threw a lighted match into the wastebasket?
Lee: Well, I wasn’t aiming for the spittoon.
Sargent: You know that’s called arson?
Lee: [faux-aghast] Nooo! I thought that was when you bit somebody!

Or Lee, dismissing the suggestion that it’s kleptomania behind her thieving ways: “Well, they tried that. But you see, you can’t turn around and try to fence the stuff afterwards. They take away your amateur status, then.” Or Sargent’s completely deadpan explanation to his mother that Lee is actually a petty crook who is out on bail….no, Mother, I wasn’t joking. And it’s not even a first offense.

So: good stuff, adroitly packaged, funny, fun, heartwarming, perfectly cast, and perfectly pleasing in every way. They don’t make movie stars like this any more, and they don’t make movies for them any more.

Rated: …we’re at Niagara Falls right now, darling.

Quik(re)review – The 13th Letter (1951)

So I (re)watched The 13th Letter – a 1951 movie directed by Otto Premiger (you know, the name you know from lots of better movies such as Fallen Angel, Laura, Where the Sidewalk Ends and…River of No Return? Huh.) and starring an underwritten Linda Darnell, a bored Charles Boyer, and Michael Rennie’s cheekbones as the hero.

It’s about a (very) tall, handsome, young, unmarried doctor who has set up in a small Canadian town and is just starting to settle himself and his clock collection in comfortably. The settling-in process is interrupted by a series of poison pen letters accusing him of an affair with Charles Boyer’s wife. This is, of course, nonsense, because Rennie has Linda Darnell throwing herself at him in a negligee and it’s getting harder and harder to dodge. But things get decidedly serious when one of the letters’ receivers commits suicide on being told he has cancer. Everyone is a suspect now–from the incompetent hospital nurse who is Boyer’s spurned ex and Boyer’s sister-in-law, to Darnell’s snide younger sister, to Linda Darnell herself. And what is the terrible trauma which lurks in our hero’s past…?

The reveal is two-fold, and actually rather more satisfying than you’d expect. It’s even been cunningly foreshadowed by Boyer’s doctor character explaining to another about this weird psychological condition known as folie a deux…

All that said, it’s still a bit underwritten. There’s enough story here for a TV episode, not really for a movie. Linda Darnell has barely anything to do except look alternately sultry and sulky, and there’s nothing whatsoever to make the romance between her and Rennie interesting other than both parties’ good looks. The central mystery is, fittingly, the most intriguing part of the story; but it’s a little hampered by the fact that there are really only two strong suspects and neither of them get any focus. Inserting more plot–such as making the “investigation” less laughable–would have provided more interest, and more room for all characters to explore and expand. It didn’t, it wasn’t, they couldn’t, and ultimately this movie is….a bit underwritten, and its cast members–who totally did have the ability to take what they were given and deliver on it–were good-looking but underserved.

Rated: I’m going to do something productive with my day any minute now. Annnny minute now.