Firestarter (1984) is a 90 minute movie that the studio inexplicably decided needed to be 2 full hours. A taut 90 minutes would have not given me time to ponder "why is this happening? Why is anyone doing what it is they are doing? Why would anyone be this dumb?"
But the movie is 120 minutes, and so I did think these things.
I don't blame director Mark L. Lester, who brought us Commando and Bobbi Jo and the Outlaw, because I think he did some stuff in this movie very well, but there's just too much movie here, which is an editing problem. And, he didn't write the script. I also don't blame Tangerine Dream, who provided the score and who are not at their best here.
I don't blame Drew Barrymore, who is a child in this movie. Nor do I blame Martin Sheen or George C. Scott, Louise Fletcher or Art Carney. I might be blaming everyone else. This movie is boring and makes no sense, and for a movie that's 120 minutes so they can explain stuff but that just keeps making things worse, that's a feat.
A rewatch with some time under my belt made me appreciate this movie even more, and I'd take back some of what I said on the podcast about Shang-Chi not having enough to do. It's less than others, but he's doing plenty. And Simu Liu is absolutely present in every scene. There's a lot going on with his character and it's there in small looks and reactions. Acting is reacting, and he's nailing that - in character as an observer who has a lot going on inside that he doesn't say out loud.
Between excellent all-ages action, very strong performers, and some deft world-building, I won't say it's a flawless film, but it's so... watchable. And the characters all so well defined, I want to hang out with everyone in the film, even the bad guys. I mean, I don't care what bad stuff Tony Leung's Xu Wenwu is supposed to have done, he seems cool AF.
I also am not as certain where Xialing winds up at the end of the film. Is she reforming the Ten Rings organization? Tilting back to running her dad's criminal empire? The Ten Rings have sided with Ta Lo, and Xialing has fought nobly with her brother and Ying Nan's crew, so... anyway, I enjoy the ambiguity at the end.
And hats off to Awkwafina, who is both hilarious and absolutely grounds the film without shouting "say what....?" after every revelation. The decade of friendship with Shang-Chi means she's very much working to understand the world, but we're never told by a very funny character that we shouldn't take it seriously. That's something you would not have seen pre-Marvel Studios.
Anyhoo... I love this movie. I don't do top 10 lists or anything, but I do feel like this is up there with the movies I'll rewatch for years on end.
Eddie sometimes plays fast and loose with what he'll bring to Noir Alley, and Over-Exposed (1956) is definitely on the outer limits of Noir Alley. I mean, it basically follows a story that could appear in many-a-noir as a morality play, but driven by a woman instead of a man, and it doesn't end in a hail of bullets for our protagonist.
This one starts with a clip joint getting knocked over, and Cleo Moore - desperate for work - meeting the aging photographer who took a picture of her as she headed to jail. They hit it off and she decides to pick up the trade. She makes her way to NYC where she struggles off camera for some amount of time before finding success, especially as one of the girls in a sparkly one-piece bathing suit who takes photos in nightclubs. This leads to the fanciest club in town, while she ignores Richard Crenna, a newspaperman who seems like an honest joe. But, man, does he want her to want to throw all of her dreams and security out the window so she can become his little woman.
Of course bad things happen and her meteoric rise as a person who points cameras at people falls apart. Something something photo blackmail racket (don't blackmail people, kids).
This looks very good for what feels like a dopey B picture, mostly existing to show off Cleo Moore in bathing suits and clingy gowns. But there's enough story there for it not to feel cheap. And Cleo Moore is all right. She's good in things I've seen her in, even if she's never exactly bowling me over.
If you're like me and only know sun-beaten older Richard Crenna, the squeaky voiced kid on the screen is almost unrecognizable. But he's all right!
It's a cheesecake picture that's kinda short on cheesecake, but that's ok. Cleo Moore is just fine doing her own acting thing.
Had COVID not been a factor, I would have probably seen Nobody (2021) in the theater. It seemed like a simple movie - and it is. It's an excuse for both a middle-aged-guy action fantasy, as well as videogame-style super action, just below the absurdities of John Wick (worth noting, this is written by the same guy, Derek Kolstad). The kind of movie where our hero cannot be killed even if 20 guys with guns are coming at him and he does Krav Maga and Gun-Fu while they come at him, inexplicably, one on one and the baddies can't hit the hero when they all shoot at him for 30 feet away.
Ryan welcomes old droog and new co-host SGHarms to viddy a bit of the old ultraviolence as we discuss a bit of popular cine. It's Kubrick's much-discussed 1970's masterpiece, and there's plenty to talk about. Join us for a sloosh, my brothers, as we sort through all that Master Kubrick has brought us.
If you have not seen this film, be aware that discussion of the film will include covering the film's depiction of multiple forms of violence, including sexual violence. Proceed with caution.
Viewing: Unknown. Probably third all the way through
Director: Brian De Palma
It's very hard to say "I love Dressed to Kill (1980)" with a straight face, but I do think De Palma's pivot to a more explicit eroticism from the staid suggestion of such in the Hitchockian thriller is worth at least looking at. At this point in his career, De Palma's movies read a lot like film school theory classes come to life, but I can't really remember our courses ever highlighting De Palma. Maybe he's too on the nose with some of this stuff. Maybe he wasn't "classic" enough.
But, yeah, what Hitch only hinted at, De Palma is pleased to put up on screen. Your mileage may vary was to whether this works for you, but in an era where cinema was where adults went for entertainment, and with De Palma dealing neither with the Hayes Code nor Hitch's pre-War sense of decorum, just be aware the film is frank about illicit sex and sexual kinks, and there's no shortage of female nudity (that's an Angie Dickinson body double in those key shots there at the opening, btw).
I don't know what the opposite is of "catching lightning in a bottle", but Who's That Girl? (1987) is here to make me wonder what that might be, or if we're in need of a new phrase.
Look. If you were a straight dude coming of age in the 1980's, you might not have talked about it, but chances are you spent a lot of time thinking about Madonna. Not as part of the cultural discourse that somehow always placed Madonna in the middle of the po-discourse Venn Diagram and which was mostly nonsense, but for other reasons. There's twenty seconds of video here which will help you understand.
So, yes. Madonna. By 1987 she was a marketing and musical force who decided to dabble in acting. Warner Bros., who was in the Madonna business and made both music and movies, said "sure, whatever". Madonna somehow landed on a script about a girl getting out of prison who has to prove she's innocent, and decided this would be the movie she'd make.
If catching lightning in a bottle is an unique combination of factors that come together and create a very special film, this is a mix of predictable hackery paired with an unprepared celebrity who doesn't know the difference between fame and talent needed to pull off a project.
Back in 2018, I recall a story breaking on the news about 12 Thai soccer players and their coach trapped in a cave that had been flooded by summer rains. I'm going to be completely candid: I heard the details and immediately tuned out the story afterwards. Everything I heard told me that this story would end with 12 dead children and a dead coach. And probably some rescue crew. In what seemed a bleak year (ha ha... how little we knew then!), signing myself up for updates on what seemed a deathwatch just seemed morbid.
And then someone told me "no, they got out. Yes, all of them."
I read some details of what had happened and it seemed like madness, but I wrote it off as "boy, I guess Navy SEALS really know their stuff."
Forget all of that.
The Rescue (2021), knows you know those broad strokes, but recreates the timeline of the story through interviews, actual footage from the participants, some occasional recreation footage (using the actual participants), news footage and some excellent graphics. And the story is both one-hundred times more unbelievable than you're expecting and ultimately, that same level of magnitude a story of the best in humanity.
I hesitate to talk too much about the logistics or even about the participants, but it is fascinating to find out that the main divers to assist in the search and rescue were private citizens, mostly from the UK, cave diving hobbyists who put everything on the line for this effort. And you may ask yourself "what sort of person scuba dives in caves?" And that would be a *great* question, because these are not extreme sports enthusiasts, but an assortment of misfits and the kind of people who will go into a body of water completely surrounded by rock on all sides.
It doesn't matter that you know that the kids made it out. The movie broke me with footage of a young mother standing at the cave's mouth calling to her son to come home, and just kept whittling me down from there. Yes, the divers are remarkable, but 13 boys also held together, monumental efforts took place to move rivers, to find alternatives and support the ongoing work.
I very much remember the drama of Baby Jessica's rescue from a well in West Texas and how the people of West Texas pulled together to save one child. Here, an international collective and thousands of locals pitched in.
Give it a shot. You might momentarily have faith in us as a species. You might also believe some cosmic convergence is possible.
I don't remember not knowing who Meat Loaf was, which makes sense as I was 2 years old when Bat Out of Hell was released. And, of course, I appreciated his performance in Rocky Horror, and reteaming with Jim Steinman for Bat Out of Hell II.
But I still remember one Christmas when I was in college my brother and I slipping out after the folks and company went to bed and we headed for a bar that had been there forever, with a jukebox that hadn't seen much rotation since it had been put in place. It was a shitty little bar with a clear brand of clientele which we didn't really match, most of whom seemed to be regulars and knew each other, and just as our beers hit the table, the jukebox started with Bat Out of Hell and someone had put in money to play the entire album in order.
I don't know why, but that night I became totally sold on that album.
Whatever world Jim Steinman wrote songs for (Steinman passed in April) and Meat Loaf sings about is a world that resonates like hell with me. And, apparently, the be-mulleted denizens of Molly Maguire's Irish Pub in Spring, Texas circa Christmas 1995. But, yeah, it's a musical theater version of rock and roll, where the already heightened melodrama of romance, heartbreak and all the usual faire of radio rock is raised to rock opera levels. And at the center, Meat Loaf's sincerity anchors what sh/could be absurd, putting a broken hero at the middle of it.
Here's to you and one of the best selling albums of all-time, sir. The record seems like an unlikely candidate to grab that mantle, and I'm so glad it has.
Mr. Loaf also acted. A LOT. His occasional health issues and personal demons may have kept him from some choices and maybe off the live stage, but he leaves behind not just his music but plentiful roles and screentime.
