Yes Man

2008 comedy

Rating: 10/20 (Jen: 12/20)

Plot: Carl's struggling. His wife Stephanie has left him after less than a year, and he's bored with his job. He spends most of his time avoiding phone calls from his best friends and watching movies like some loser. But that all changes after he meets self-help guru Terence Stamp and decides to force himself to say "Yes" to every offer, every opportunity, every situation, every request, and every plea for help, thus becoming a "Yes Man" and giving the movie its stupid title.

There are times when I think Jim Carrey is a really good actor, and I'm glad I'm watching a Jim Carrey movie. This wasn't one of those times. See the poster? When I try to remember this movie in a month (I won't, by the way), I'm going to remember it as nearly two hours of watching Jim Carrey do exactly what he's doing on the poster. My memory of this movie will then by more gayer than my memories of The Sound of Music and The Music Man combined, and that is an enormous amount of gay. A staggering amount of gay! There are some good moments. Terence Stamp (Zod!) is in this playing a guy named Terrence. And I like almost all of the scenes that Rhys Darby (Flight of the Concords manager, a series of commercials that are obviously very effective since I can almost remember what they're for) is in. That guy's a hoot, and luckily, he's in this quite a bit. My guess is that his role was supposed to be a minor one, but the filmmakers sensed comedy gold and decided to give him more to do. There are just too many unfortunate moments in this. Carl is a really inconsistent character and Carrey plays him awkwardly, and a scene involving an elderly woman and fellatio is more disturbing than it is humorous. I did think Zooey Deschanel's band was humorous, and Jen had to explain to me what the great band name, Munchausen by Proxy, even meant. I'm a sucker for bands that wear sea creatures for hats.

The Wolf Man

1941 monster movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: The second son of a rich guy, a guy rich enough to own his own telescope, ventures into town to pick up chicks. He buys a cane with a wolf's head in order to impress one, a gal he Peeping Tommed with the use of his daddy's telescope, and she recites poetry about werewolves. Then, they meet another character who recites the same poem about werewolves. Then, a pair of gypsies tell the guy all about werewolves and tell him he's about to be bitten by one. Then, he's surprised when he's bitten by a werewolf and turns into one himself. This ruins his plans to boink the gal he spotted with his daddy's telescope.

Some rich atmosphere, quality writing (despite what I wrote up there), and a monster you can connect with and feel sorry for save this one. The titular monster (is it obvious that I really like using the word titular?) is really pretty goofy looking. He really just looks like a hirsute guy with a terrible haircut who might be getting ready to go to a discotheque or might just stay home for the evening, sipping brandy and smoking his phallic pipe while leering at women through a telescope. And the wolf man really isn't in the movie very much. The back of the dvd box tells me that it took make-up people six hours to make Lon Chaney Jr. look like a wolf man and then three hours to make him look like Lon Chaney Jr. again. I think that was for only a single day (or night) of filming though because the wolf man doesn't do a lot. The great Bela Lugosi, here playing a gypsy wolf man and apparently too lazy to spend time with the make-up people so that he gets to be a wolf man on screen, also isn't in this movie nearly enough. Actually, you could argue that there's not nearly enough movie here. At a zippy seventy minutes, it all seems kind of rushed. I would have liked a little more character development and a lot more scenes of the wolf man raping people or biting chickens' heads off or doing something other than just running around the same few trees over and over again. And less lycanthrophy poetry! I do like some of the ideas the makers of this hint at about the duality of human beings (the werewolf as a metaphor), but just like a lot of the rest of this, it's only hinted at.

Titular.

Superman II

1980 sequel

Rating: 14/20 (one point lower than the first one; I had to change the first one to a 15/20 to make that happen)

Plot: After a lengthy recap of the first movie (Superman: The Movie), it's revealed that the nuclear bomb Superman hurled into space exploded and made the three leather-clad villains from Krypton 3-D again. They come to the first planet with one sun, conveniently the same planet that Superman is on, in order to rule. Meanwhile, Superman is keeping very busy with his goal of trying to get into Lois Lane's pants. (SPOILER ALERT!) It works, and she understands exactly what all that Man of Steel stuff is all about if you know what I mean. You're a mature reader, so I'm pretty sure you do! Lex Luther escapes from prison and tries to hook up with the visitors, each with Superman's powers, while Superman himself actually makes the decision to give up his powers, presumably because of the sex.

1) What the hell? My memory must be terrible because I do not remember that Superman FLIES AROUND THE WORLD REALLY FAST TO REVERSE TIME in this sequel just like he did in the first movie. Come on! They thought that was a good enough idea to use twice?

2) I completely forgot to mention this in my review of Warning from Space, but there's an idea from that movie that had to have been stolen by the Superman people for both of these Superman movies. You know the hula hoops that are used to imprison the leather-clad bad guys on Krypton? That identical image is used in Warning from Space!

3) Speaking of the leather-clad bad guys, they're the antagonists in this one. They're cool. Marlon Brando alludes to Irsa's perversions within a minute and a half of this one. What a tease! I really like Terence Stamp (The Collector and Phantom Menace, the best of the Star Wars movies) as General Zod, especially at the end of one scene where he seems to have forgotten the rest of his line and just decides to yell his name. "Zod!" Irsa's cool, too. The thug with the menacing beard doesn't say anything, but the other two have some great lines. I especially like the scenes involving their acclimation with their new home. And Zod's response to Perry Mason's warning that there's a man who'll never kneel ("Who is this imbecile?") is really great.

4) The special effects are good. I especially like the scene that takes place on the moon. There are two scenes as embarrassing as the scene with rubber-legged Clark racing the train though. Both involve somebody falling, the first Lois Lane after she stupidly leaps from the window to test her theory that Clark is Superman (Why didn't she just toss Jimmy out?) and the second when a boy falls at Niagara. Is that even possible by the way?

5) Speaking of Lois-jumping-from-the-window scene: Wouldn't she have suffered some awful injuries bouncing off a canopy onto a vegetable stand?

6) One more thing about that scene: I love Clark Kent's answer to his boss's question about where Lois Lane went. "She just stepped out." There are a lot of really funny lines in this movie, and a lot of humor that just falls completely flat. The NASA guy's line about somebody turning on a hair dryer after the tragedy on the moon was really bad. I expected a second NASA guy to turn to him and say, "Too early, NASA guy. Too early."

7) There's a "flying date" reprise, or at least the threat of one, but it's sans the bad poetry so that's ok. There's also a scene where the bearded guy flies with Lex Luther which is likely the hottest scene in the history of superhero movies.

8) As I said earlier, some of the comic relief in this works great. I still love the stuff with Otis and Lex and later with Ms. Teschmacher and Lex, but both of those characters (the ones not named Lex) aren't in the movie very long. Ms. Teschmacher flushing a toilet at Superman's ice house is pretty funny though.

9) Once Zod(!), perverse Irsa, and Beardo arrive on earth, they run into a couple cops who get some great lines. "Hey, hippies, get off the road!" is my favorite line in the movie. What the hell would make that guy think they're hippies? And then his partner used the exclamation "Holy skunk sweat!" which almost made me want to attack my neighbor with hedge clippers.

10) The scene where Clark Kent gets beat up is hard to watch. These truck drivers had to think that Clark Kent was the biggest pansy in the world. "M-m-my blood. My blood." At least he wasn't wearing the tights.

11) Oh, my favorite line in this or any other movie that has ever been made: Lex Luther's "Funny is a person trying to smile without any teeth."

12) This is a thinly-veiled propaganda piece about the evils of premarital sex or, to put it less controversially, a commercial for abstinence.

13) Everything Marlon Brando or his giant head says or does in this movie is goofy. When he's combining Kryptonean philosophy with Beach Boys lyrics, things just get ridiculous.

14) Favorite scene: The top of the Empire State Building has been laser-eyed off and is falling to the street below! What's a guy standing below do in response? Turn his back and cover up his head, of course! That'll save him!

15) I love the product placement in this. I'm not sure why Marlboro and Coca Cola thought that people would want to rush out and buy their products just from watching a superhero or super villain fly through one of their signs. And when Superman ludicrously flies around the earth really fast and repairs the Coca Cola sign? I'm sure there's a pro-capitalism subtext there to go along with the abstinence message.

16) This movie ends with a bang like all good superhero action movies should--Clark Kent back in the restaurant taking care of a truck driver who mistreated him earlier in the movie. Reeve's delivery of a line about how he's never seen "garbage eating garbage before" is delivered with such gusto that the man should win some kind of posthumous lifetime achievement award where the audience at the awards event is forced to watch a loop of him saying that line for at least two hours. I'm not even kidding.

17) This isn't as good as the first Superman movie. Some of the whimsy and novelty is gone, and although the big fight scene with the bad guys is pretty exciting, it's almost numbed by some of the goofiness that takes place afterward.

18) Oh, one more question: How did Lex Luther know about the relationship between Lois and Superman?

19) Marlon Brando's chest "S" still bugs me.

Hunger

1966 Dutch feel-good movie

Rating: 17/20 (Mark: 17.5/20)

Plot: It's late-19th-century Norway, and everything is grayish brown. A hopeful writer wanders despairing streets. He looks for work, loses his sanity, dreams of love, and has a rumbly in his tummy. Gradually, his grip on reality slips more and more. He takes his frustrations out on a candle.

Ah, anonymous, this film's actually Danish and filmed in Oslo. I don't know what's in the gray waters in Scandanavia, but something's got to making the Dutch so bleak. Now that I know it's Danish, I'm instantly reminded of Carl Theodor Dreyer's work. This is a bleakness with a fervor, a provocative bleakness. I love this kinds of movies where almost nothing at all happens for almost two hours, yet it somehow remains captivating and moving. And I was moved by this haunting, dismal movie. At the center of things is the performance of Per Oscarsson who plays the starving protagonist. He's in nearly every single shot and luckily, was very easy to connect with. He effectively uses abnormal nonverbal communication and body movements to realistically portray this guy who is very obviously losing it. You can't quit put your finger on it, but from the very first scenes where he eats a piece of paper and promises a woman he'll buy bread from her at ten o'clock the next day, you know that something's not right with this guy. My brother had previously seen this and had read the Knut Hamsun novel and kept making the claim that we were dealing with an unreliable third-person narrator. That's a funny thing to say about a movie, but in a way it's accurate. There seems to be a point in this movie where the guy and reality officially part ways, but thinking back, I can't decide what that moment is. A lot of this seems to be happening and a lot of this seems to be an interpretation of a sick mind of what's happening and a lot of this might not be happening at all. The ambiguity is fascinating and adds a depth to the story. Hunger is shot starkly and beautifully, one of those movies where the setting, filthy and desolate, is as much a character in the movie as any of the people. The guy's rotten teeth are also almost a character on their own. And although there's this staggering, almost engulfing bleakness, there's also a bit of humor in this. This is a great movie, and I'm really glad my brother made me watch it. I still feel bad about eating sausage while watching this poor guy.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

2007 drama

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Based on the true story of Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby who, after suffering a stroke at the age of 42, is unable to speak or move anything but his left eyeball. But he gets to spend lots of time with attractive women and writes a book, so it's all good.

I thought this movie was profoundly moving although I suspect I've been tricked by filmmaker Julian Schnabel by his use of tricky trickery. The music, the experimental camera stuff, a draining script. The whole thing screams, "I'm trying to win awards here!" While watching this, I kept thinking that there was an overwhelming amount of out-of-focus, swirling and discombobulating imagery at the beginning and far too many scenes of the therapist reciting her rearranged alphabet in the second half. However, the quantity of both of those were important, the former because it so effectively helps you to empathize with the protagonist's experience and the latter because it so effectively shows how tedious and painful the communication process had to have been. The effects are nearly overwhelming as Schnabel almost bombards you with this guy's condition. And when you finally get to see actor Mathieu Almaric's portrayal of post-stroke Jean-Do (deep into the movie), it's shocking, especially as it contrasts to the Jean-Do's lifestyle pre-stroke that we see in flashbacks and half-memories. Really, it's only Almaric's eye that is doing any acting here, but it's startling simple performance. This movie really doesn't have much acting in it at all, the story told more with the camera and style than through anything the performers are doing. It reminded me of Clean Shaven, a movie somewhere on this blog, and like that one, parts were tough to watch.

Another happy Cory recommendation.

Buster Keaton Saturday: Arbuckle & Keaton Volume One

Comedy shorts from 1917-1919

Rating: n/r

Plot: Five Fatty/Buster shorts. They're bell boys, butchers, bartenders, and candlestick makers who fall down more than the average bell boys, butchers, bartenders, and candlestick makers.

Was Fatty Arbuckle the first Will Ferrell? With Ferrell, it seems like producers just think of a new job for him to do in every movie. "Let's make him a basketball player." "How about we make him a race car driver this time?" "Hey, he hasn't been a weatherman yet!" Seems to be the same with Fatty, an actor I hadn't seen much of until now. He's fine. He's likable enough for me not to be bothered by Buster only getting a supporting role. Arbuckle's mainly funny because he's a fat guy. It just seems too easy at times. I mean, aren't all fat guys funny? Sometimes I just sit on a park bench waiting for a fat guy to come along so that I can point and laugh. Does that mean I should tape him and have Kino release it? What if the fat guy in the park was in a dress like Fatty is in "The Butcher Boy"? These things aren't terribly funny, barely mildly humorous even. The comedy and what passed as a plot in silent nineteen-teen's shorts are both really typical. There are a lot of clever bits and the physical comedy with both of the players is good, but a very small percentage of this made me laugh or even crack a smile. A couple of these use parody with uneven results. "Out West" pokes fun at the Western, and the humor actually gets pretty black. "Moonshine" has the weirdest title cards I've ever seen, ones that break the fourth wall and continually remind the audience that they're watching a movie. John Coogan, father of Chaplin's The Kid's kid Jackie Coogan, plays a policeman in The Hayseed. There probably aren't a lot of people to whom I'd recommend these, but I do have a second volume I'll get around to watching some time.

Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine

2003 documentary

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Garry Kasparov, possibly the greatest chess player ever to play the game, returns to the scene of what he believes is a crime, discussing the details of his 1997 match with IBM's Deep Blue which he lost 3 1/2 - 2 1/2. It's basically an hour and a half of Kasparov yelling, "Shenanigans!" while Deep Blue retorts, "Blurp blurp. I am a robot. Blurp. Blurp. Blurp!"

First, let me cover what I didn't like about this documentary, quibbles that nearly forced me to drop this a few more points. There's an annoying amount of stylistic touches with this documentary--whispered narration, some troublesome music, a few pretentious semi-reconstructed shots, and a few too many shots of the chess-playing automaton called The Turk. No, let me take that last one back. The Turk is cool. Overall, I would have liked more documentary and less dressing for that documentary. The good stuff in this far outweighs the stuff that annoyed me, however. Chief among those good things is Garry Kasparov's charisma. His recollections are fascinating, and I loved watching him ponder moves, squirm agonizingly, and gesticulate while facing his opponents. He's a guy who wears his emotions on his sleeve. And it's possible that he might as well have a post-it note that says "I'm paranoid!" slapped on his forehead. Still, he's so likable, and you want to believe him when he talks about how the IBM people cheated in the match. The documentary is objective although the multitudinous shots of The Turk almost hint that the filmmakers support a conspiracy theory of some kind. There was likely more in this one for me, a fan and terrible player of the game, than for people who don't play. I really liked the insight on the psychology of the game, probably the main difference between a human chess player and a machine like Deep Blue. As a chess player, I would have liked a little more detail on the games themselves, especially a clearer description of the controversial move in game two, but I think the games (with analysis) are included as a special feature on the dvd.

The Turk:

The Blood on Satan's Claw

1971 horror movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: It's the 1600s, and since there's not much to do in an English farming community, the teenagers all decide to become devil worshippers, a hobby which apparently involves raping and murdering each other. And we contemporary parents think Eminem is a bad influence on our kids!

There's a great deal to like about The Blood on Satan's Claw. Really, with a title like that, you'd better have a fairly good movie. This has an atmosphere or mood similar to The Wicker Man, and director Piers Haggard does a fine job creating atmosphere and mood with effectively unusual camera work and a really odd soundtrack. This feels different from most movies; there's a fuzz on the surface of this that never allowed me to feel comfortable with the setting or the characters. Speaking of fuzz, I also learned from this movie that Satan has fuzzy legs. This is imperfect storytelling. The plot either seems choppy or incomplete, and there were too many pieces missing for this story to flow. There's a really interesting character in this one, an evil girl with the wonderful name Angel Bleak. Or, if you don't trust my ears and go with what the Internet says, the not-as-wonderful name Angel Blake. She's played by the lovely Linda Hayden and manages to combine innocence and evil to create what would be a classic horror character if more people were willing to see a movie called The Blood on Satan's Claw. Plus, she disrobes! There are lulls and parts where this has difficulty making a connection, but it's just interesting enough to spend an hour and a half with.

The Magic Blade

1976 kung-fu movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Yen Nan-Fei arrives to battle master swordsman Fu Hung-Hsieh to settle a dispute over who is the better sword fighter. While they're fighting, they are attacked by professional assassins. They decide to have lunch instead and are attacked by more assassins. They have to work together, procure some exploding Peacock Darts, and figure out who's behind the plot to get rid of them.

Everybody was kung-fu fightin' in this one from the first minute to the last. And these cats, with their assortment of swords and other cool weapons (fans, Peacock Darts, explosives, a loaf of bread), are fast as lightnin'. The sword play, as good as you'd expect from a Shaw Brothers production, is seasoned with just the right amount of fantasy elements. You get impossible acrobatics, swords that can cut the branches off tree from a distance, doors and windows that close with the wave of magical hands. It's over the top, but it's never over over the top. The main character (Fu Hung) is a typical kung-fu action hero but there's a sprinkling of Clint Eastwood and Sherlock Holmes in him that gives him some depth. The antagonists are also interesting, mystical and mysterious, and the fight scenes are ingeniously fast and furious. I especially liked the cannibalistic and acrobatic Devil's Granny and the guy who made the good guys play Chinese chess. The Magic Blade has a story that only gets complicated at the very end, and I imagine its wall-to-wall action scenes would please aficionados of kung-fu fantasy flicks.

Space Master X-7

1958 sci-fi

Rating: 10/20

Plot: "Satellite terror strikes the earth" when a deadly space fungus is brought back to our planet. A scientist investigates the fungus, dubs it "blood rust," and then dies. Suddenly, a woman hunt is on as the authorities search for the scientist's ex-wife Laura who was visiting so that this movie could have a plot.

A couple sidebars:

1) Moe Howard is in this. He plays a taxi driver. I couldn't find any other Stooges.

2) Paul Frees plays the scientist. He was Dr. Vorhees in The Thing from Another World, but is mostly known for a ton of voice work including a bunch of things I watched as a child. He was Burgermeister Meisterburger! And the Ghost Host in Disneyworld's Haunted Mansion ride! And he did voice work for The Abominable Dr. Phibes. He also did "various voices" for the Jackson Five cartoon. From the credits, it actually seems like he did every voice on the show that wasn't a Jackson brother.

The worst thing about this movie is something that is quickly turning into a movie pet peeve for me--unnecessary or oppressive narration. This story is told by a senator, and his all-too-frequent narration just gets in the way. It's lazy storytelling. There's really not much to the weirdly named Space Master X-7 although it's actually got a pretty cool story. I like the noirish hunt for Laura. She thinks she's wanted in a murder investigation, and there's a nifty race against the clock as they try to find her before "Blood Rust" kills everybody. Unfortunately, there's not really a movie to go along with that story. There's not anything blatantly awful about the movie. This isn't bad enough to be an entertaining bad movie. The acting's fine, the writing's fine, the minimal use of special effects (the expanding fungus thing) is fine, the camera work is fine. In fact, Space Master X-7 just might be the most fine movie I've seen all year. But it's the same kind of "fine" that I am whenever somebody asks me how I'm doing. "How are you today, Shane?" I'll always answer "Fine" even when I'm smart enough to know that times are dark and getting darker and I'm more depressed than I was the last time the same person asked me how I was doing when I was really depressed. So, if a person I barely know and probably wouldn't want to see asked me, "Hey, Shane, how's Space Master X-7?" I would answer "Fine" but really not mean it. Recommended only to Three Stooges completists.

Breaker! Breaker!

1977 truckdriver kung-fu movie

Rating: 5/20

Plot: Chuck Norris, truckdrivin' tough guy, puts his ears on and gets word that his brother is lost in Texas City, California, a town run by a corrupt judge. Chuck, his roundhouse kick, a yellow t-shirt, and a tacky blue van with a giant eagle painted on the side go looking for him. Unfortunately for the citizens of Texas City, California, they're not smart enough to realize that the best way to get rid of Chuck Norris is just to shoot him.

Seriously, I'm with the Judge Trimmings (that's his name) on this one. "He was unarmed." When an action hero gets by on ingenuity, resourcefulness, or something else, I can accept it. But when he's walking out in the open in broad daylight, and the bad guys can't figure out a way to kill him, there's a problem. And speaking of Judge Trimmings (that's his name), what a character you've got here. George Murdock plays the character like he's in a Shakespearean production. He's Acting with a capital A. His lines clash incongruously with everybody else's in Texas City, California, things like "I'm gonna stick ya! I'm gonna stick ya!" repeated by a guy with a pitchfork and another hick whining, "The guy's a bad dude!" Texas City and its occupants reminded me a bit of the locale and characters in Deliverance, so imagine Hamlet replying to "Squeal like a pig!" This doesn't seem like an authentic representation of the profession of truck driving. At the end (SPOILER ALERT!), a bunch of unseen truckers, including one named Mudflapper, come to the rescue after easily locating this dump town (Texas City, California) sans modern technology and crash into buildings in their manic search for Chuck, all while taking turns crackin' wise on their CB's. Their CB banter sounded like the type of thing that was improvised, possibly by some of the dumbest people on earth. At one point, a trucker (maybe Mudflapper) says, "I haven't had this much fun since I broke my shoulder." I had to rewind that to make sure I heard it correctly. Without context (did I miss a prequel to this?), that makes no sense. This also has one of the most terrible musical montages I've seen in a long time with this insipid pop song accompanying scenes of Chuck Norris and Arlene just standing in various places. And there's a stutterer with a stutter that, just like the representation of truck driving, doesn't seem like an accurate representation of stuttering. Chuck Norris says, "I had a brother but I lost him," to him. There's also a wonderfully poignant moment when the stuttering character says, "I'm-I-I-I-I'mma, I-I'm m-m-m-m-m-ma-ma-m-mad at y-y-y-you," leading to one of the bad guys, the stutterer's brother, doing a little soul searching. Oh, and there's a scene where the stuttering guy makes love to a stuffed lion in a barn. But you can't talk about a Chuck Norris movie without discussing the fight scenes. They're nearly nonstop, but they aren't entertaining at all. I couldn't understand why a kick to the abdomen seems to finish off anybody. Maybe that's because Chuck Norris was the fight coordinator for Breaker! Breaker! I've never been roundhouse-kicked in the stomach by Chuck Norris though, so I'm not exactly an expert. I do know that if I was to remake this movie, I'd have anybody who is roundhouse-kicked in the stomach to violently explode in a CGI fireball. That would totally rule and oddly wouldn't really affect the believability of Breaker! Breaker! It all builds to a climactic fight scene where the hero, right after he's been shot, survives having hay and a tire hurled at him, fights off a man attacking him with a hook and later a bottle, and ends up killing the guy with a roundhouse kick to the abdomen. All while a horse watches!

Special note: Jack Nance followed his award-worthy performance in Eraserhead with a performance as a truck driver in this one. Maybe that's why Cory recommended it to me.

This trucker movie was recommended by Cory!

Tron

1982 computer movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: This prequel to The Big Lebowski has The Dude, here a video gamer rather than a bowler, slurped into a computer, given a skin-tight glowing outfit and a Frisbee, and forced to battle a guy in a different colored skin-tight suit. Oh, snap!

I have mixed feelings about this one. Tron's got a unique look, but it kind of looks a little dorky. I think it even looked dorky back in '82, but in a way, it really doesn't seem dated. The computer world has to look minimalistic and cartoony, and ultimately, I always like how this movie looks. The action scenes (the motorcycle scene, that giant thing Jeff Bridges reassembles telepathically [?] and drives around, the climactic Frisbee toss) increase in lameness with each passing year, and the story is really confusing, especially for a Disney movie. Like all Disney science fiction movies, I wish this had a little more of an edge. It's vanilla sci-fi which is too bad since this could have had some interesting things to say then that would have still had relevancy today. Instead, it doesn't say much of anything. It's thematically lost. Is it a religious allegory? A fable? A warning? A muddled metaphor? Something else? The music is about perfect for the imagery. That's Wendy Carlos, formerly Walter Carlos, who did music for A Clockwork Orange and The Shining. Which reminds me of a question I have about this movie: Why would the programs in this have genders? Don't get me wrong. I'm glad Cindy Morgan is in this movie, probably just because I was tired of seeing only men in the skin-tight outfits. But wouldn't these programs lack genitalia? And would Jeff Bridges lose his genitals once he enters the virtual world? Or would he, since he's a programmer instead of a program, have conspicuous genitalia and become some sort of god in the computer world? It's something to think about. See, if somebody other than Disney made this movie, I'm sure genitals would have played a more prominent role.

Here's a guy who likes Tron a little more than I do:

Stagecoach

1939 Western

Rating: 17/20

Plot: An early CBS experiment in reality television, this puts nine strangers in a stagecoach in 1880s Arizona, right in the middle of Apache territory with cameras watching them 24 hours a day. There's an outlaw, a corrupt banker, a couple broads, a horny guy, a wino, a Slim Whitman impersonator, a sheriff, and a guy in a gopher costume. Apaches, as any history book would accurately tell you, are bloodthirsty fiends, and when Geronimo's impromptu game of Smear the Queer is interrupted by stagecoach dust, the passengers find themselves in a little trouble. Luckily, John Wayne has taken a break from beating women long enough to help them out.

My Uncle Barry first showed me Stagecoach when I was 4 1/2 years old. Actually, he had taken all the on/off switches off all seven of his television sets and couldn't actually show the movie. He had it memorized and performed Stagecoach all by himself, playing all the parts and using a variety of props he'd found in his neighbor's kitchen. It was pretty exciting stuff, and I was inspired to write the first hip hop lyric alluding to a John Wayne movie. I can't remember all the lyrics, but "When you was out playing Bingo / We picked up Kid Ringo / Look, there's a motherfucking dingo / Drop your pants, boys / This stagecoach is about to throw down." My uncle couldn't demonstrate all the brilliance of this Ford Western. His one-man reenactment of the big Indian chase scene is lame by comparison, and his back yard isn't nearly as perfect a setting for this story as the stunning Monument Valley. And a perverse hip thrusting that Uncle Barry would perform whenever he jumped into his John Wayne character also doesn't make much sense in retrospect. My Uncle Barry, in a suicide letter, claimed that he watched this movie over forty times with Orson Welles while he (Uncle Barry) was directing Citizen Kane. Several years later, in a separate rambling suicide letter, he made a claim that the movie Stagecoach doesn't even exist and that it's only a recurring dream he has whenever there's a quarter moon. He tried to tell me that I didn't exist either. "But I'm right here!" I'd say. "Nope," he'd answer. "You're not." Sadly, he was usually right.

Warning from Space

1956 Japanese B-movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Starfish aliens from the planet Pyra travel to our planet to warn us of impending doom in the form of a runaway planet on a collision course with ours. But they're giant starfish, so nobody sticks around long enough to hear the warning. The aliens have to figure out another way to get the message across before it's too late.

I pretty much declared this to be the greatest movie ever made after the early appearance of the starfish aliens which are a little cheaper looking than the cover above might indicate. I really enjoyed the no-budget affects in this one. There's a trippy transformation from starfish to Japanese pop singer, the ominously approaching scorching fuzz planet, and streaking spaceships. There are also some good visuals when this turns into a near-disaster film, Planet R's proximity to ours causing intense heat and flooding. An evacuation of Tokyo scene was also really well done. This is an early color film, the first color Japanese sci-fi flick actually, and the colors in Warning from Space are sort of sickly or primitive. But like black and white science fiction from the time, the weird color actually gives this a little flavor. The story, admittedly lifted from at least two sources, is interesting although there are some moments that are definitely slower than others. Solid funk from the Japanese!

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

1958 movie

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: 16/20)

Plot: Big Daddy, a wealthy plantation owner, is the big birthday boy. He returns from a trip to enjoy some time with his two sons--firstborn Gooper and favorite Brick. Unfortunately for Big Daddy, somebody sent him the worst birthday present of all time--cancer. Before Big Daddy's return, Brick decides to try to impress the ghost of his late friend Skipper with whom he enjoyed a long homoerotic relationship, and he drunkenly breaks his leg while jumping over hurdles at a high school track. Everybody argues about various things. Maggie humps Brick's broken leg.

The first third of this movie is dominated by an argument between Brick and Maggie and it's got a lot of things working for it. First, the performers are good looking. People like to see good looking people. Second, the good looking people are Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor, and they're pretty good actors at the top of their game here. Third, the dialogue is crisp and caustic and dynamic and charged. I loved Brick's answer to his niece's question about why he's on the floor. "Cause I tried to kill your aunt Maggie." Finally (the "thing working for it" that I'm probably making up), I really like how the architecture and decor of the room is ingeniously used to visually represent this tension between the two, a tension that, since this all begins in medias res, the audience has no way of comprehending. I really dig how line, color contrasts, lighting, and mirrors are used to show the detachment between the husband and wife. It's great stuff. Overall, there's almost too much going on in this. The conflicts get as cluttered as Big Daddy's basement. Oh, and speaking of Big Daddy, out of all the strong performances in Cat, Burl Ives' performance as the patriarch is my favorite. And the guy just oozes sexuality! I sometimes have difficulty staying focused with play adaptations, but this dialogue-heavy movie is never boring. I don't like the title very much though. I would have called it My Leg Is Broken and My Nephew Has No Neck so Pass Me My Drink, Big Daddy or Gooper, Whoever Is the Closest to Said Drink. Maybe that's why I don't write plays.