Category Archives: Movies

Apr 19 2020
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Movies

BQB’s Classic Movie Reviews – The War of the Roses (1989)

How do you get someone who wants to leave to stay, 3.5 readers?

And how do you get someone who wants to stay to go?

BQB here with a review of yet another 1980s movie as my corona movie marathon continues.

The film is narrated by Attorney Gavin d’Amato, played by Danny DeVito.  The story begins with Gavin meeting with a client who is determined to divorce his wife.  Gavin tells the cautionary tale of his old friends, Oliver and Barbara Rose and their petty, destructive and violent divorce that ruined it all.

Oliver (Michael Douglas) and Barbara (Kathleen Turner) were young once, and they truly loved each other.  Though largely an incredibly dark comedy, it’s also an epic piece, as Gavin goes back and forth between the recent past as well as the course of twenty years, providing tidbits of the couple’s courtship, marriage, early life, having children and finally, their success that turned to unbridled hatred.

Thus is the crux.  Relationships begin with the tenderest of love and they end with the cruelest of anger.  As time goes on and age closes one door after another, the resentments build.  Unhappy partners begin thinking about what they could have done had they not betrothed themselves to this person who no longer makes them happy.  Each truly believes his/herself to be the wronged party and they seek to get even through the legal system, hoping to take it all and leave the other with nothing.

Both have good cases.  Oliver is the Harvard trained lawyer who made all the money. Barbara is the wife who stood by his side, taking care of home and family, focusing on every little detail so that Oliver could put all of his focus on his career, a career that Barbara never had because she was so busy taking care of him.

Ultimately, “the war” comes down to the couple’s magnificent house.  Oliver paid for it.  Barbara took care of it.

Gavin, Oliver’s co-worker who represents him in the divorce, finds a loophole that states that as long as both parties live separate lives while residing in the same house (i.e. they live in the same house but have little to no contact, like a couple of detached roomates) then neither party can lay claim to push the other out and thus, Oliver can’t be forced out.

Great legal advice but realistically, not so much.  While the first half of the movie drags a bit, the last half of the film where the couple trashes their house to bits all in an effort to hurt each other is where the dark comedy gold lies.  You’ll laugh.  You’ll cry.  You might cry a bit more.

I don’t think I’m giving much away but offering Gavin’s parting words up front.  He advises his client, the one he’d been narrating the story to all along, to be generous to his wife.

Perhaps that’s something we all need to keep in mind.  Again, relationships begin with love and typically, they end in hate.  Indeed, you might have been wronged.  Sometimes when there’s cheating, abuse, alcoholism or what have you, it’s easier to draw that clear cut line where you say that person’s an a-hole and they need to be out of your life for good.  The harder situation is where a couple just grows apart, as the Roses did, and for whatever reason, one spouse just wakes up one day and decides they don’t love the other.

Hard as it is, no amount of revenge can get you back the years you spent on someone that you could have spent on someone else.  Be generous enough to bring the matter to an amicable close, though maybe don’t be a chump and leave yourself homeless and penniless either.

Sidenote: Danny DeVito directs and he did a great job here.  I googled his directing credits and didn’t realize he had directed so much and some big name films like Hoffa, though I think this was the best.

Also fun fact this is the third big 1980s movie starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.  They had also starred together in the Indian Jones-esque Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.  Moral of the story?  If someone doesn’t want to stay, you should suck it up and let them go.  However, if someone refuses to leave, then you probably should.

PS – Obviously, it’s named after the War of the Roses, the series of battles in old British history waged over the course of many years.  One can assume both sides of countrymen once loved on another, then war broke out.  They fought viciously over turf and destroyed so much that any victory surely rang hollow.  War is a lot like a non-amicable divorce, 3.5 readers.

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Apr 18 2020
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BQB’s Classic Movie Reviews – Night Shift (1982)

Jumpin Jack Flash, 3.5 readers.

BQB here and my corona movie marathon continues, taking the time to watch movies I otherwise probably would have never seen again.

This time it’s the 1982 comedy “Night Shift” starring Henry Winkler and Michael Keaton.

Winkler plays chuck, a financial genius who gave up his job as a stock broker because he couldn’t handle the stressful, fast pace of Wall Street.  He trades his shot at big money for a job working the night shift at the city morgue.  For a wimpy, wishy washy man who won’t stand up for himself, it’s the perfect gig.  No supervisors, very little to do and the customers, well, they’re dead so they can’t complain.

You’d think he’d be happy to live a quiet life but still, there’s something burning inside him.  His mother nagged his father into an early grave, and he fears he will meet the same fate at the hands of his bossy fiance, Charlotte.

All this changes when Chuck’s new morgue coworker, Billy Blaze (Michael Keaton) comes on the scene.  While Chuck worries about everything, Billy worries about nothing.  Billy is a schmuck, but he fancies himself a fast talking con man.  He quickly sees that when there’s no bosses around at the morgue, this is his chance to run scams out of the office.

Many of those scams fall flat until Billy learns that Chuck’s neighbor, Belinda (Shelley Long) is a prostitute.  She and her fellow ladies of the evening are out of luck, as their rare benevolent pimp, Franklin, who watched their backs, has been put on ice by the local mob.

Scared that he’ll end up like his old man, Chuck takes a risk for once in his life and joins Billy in running a prostitution ring out of the morgue.  Billy drives the ladies and arranges the “meetings” while Chuck handles all the money, managing the moolah so well that the ladies become rich beyond their wildest dreams.

All seems to go well until Shelly and Chuck fall in love and well, Chuck will have to figure out whether it’s easier to stand up, be a man, and take more risks, or if he’ll sit back and let others push him around.

This movie was always on when I was younger and obviously, I didn’t understand the plot other than it was just two guys acting silly.  Prostitution and crime aside, there is a message buried somewhere in there about standing up for yourself, not letting yourself be bullied, being willing to take the risks.  Maybe you’ll get what you wanted but if you don’t, you tried, so accept the consequences and move on.

Sounds dumb, but I recall this movie being the first example where I realized what actors can do.  I had always known Winkler as “The Fonz” on Happy Days, the low voiced cool guy with the leather jacket who always gets all the chicks.  Yet in this movie, he’s a mousy, mealy mouthed man who is afraid of his own shadow.

Amazing transformation, but I hate to say it, unless I’m forgetting a role somewhere, Winkler pretty much stuck with playing wimpy dudes, with The Fonz being his once chance to play an awesome dude, and this movie being the one chance to be a wimpy guy that we all felt for, maybe even saw a little bit of ourselves in.  You may think you’re not a wimp, but how many slights do you put up with a day, just to avoid causing trouble?  Probably more than you realize.

Keaton is great too, playing a dopey slime ball.  He’s got that long hair where he’s going bald up front in this one and as I watched it, I thought, huh, the 1980s was the last decade where a man with a receding hairline could be recruited to play Batman.  Not knocking Keaton’s looks, it’s just, there was a time period in Hollywood where people didn’t get knocked for being human.  Bad hair is something many of us suffer from.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.  Directed by Ron Howard, Winkler’s buddy Ritchie Cunningham.  Shelley Long seems too intelligent to be a prostitute, though the underlying premise is that life is hard and a lot of people have to do a lot of things they don’t want to do just to get by.  Bonus points for Rolling Stones music as Billy is a fan and plays their tunes throughout.

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Apr 17 2020
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BQB’s Classic Movie Reviews – Judgment Night (1993)

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My coronavirus movie marathon continues, 3.5 readers.

This one wasn’t all that cheesy.  I thought it was pretty good as a kid.  As an adult it seems a little goofy but overall, it’s solid and has a simple lot.

Four friends, Jeremy Piven, Cuba Gooding Jr, Emilio Estevez and Stephen Dorff step outside of their suburban Illinois lives, borrowing an RV to go to a boxing match in Chicago.

A traffic jam causes them to seek out a shortcut, which leads to a wrong turn, which leaves them in a bad neighborhood where they witness a murder.  From thereon, the movie is a chase flick, as drug dealer Fallon (Dennis Leary) and his band of goons pursue the pals in an attempt to get rid of the witnesses.

There isn’t a lot in the way of character development.  Everyone gets their brief moment to shine but the movie primarily focuses on the chase and we don’t get to know the characters all that well, though we get a brief glimpse.

Piven, who was typecast as the douchebag friend in every group who eventually screws over the group with his douchebaggery plays true to form in this, the rich son of a stockbroker who tries to talk his way out of a situation where clearly there isn’t any room for negotiation.

Frank (Estevez) is a recently married man who just had a baby, adjusting to his new life as a family man, still shaking off his younger party boy days.  There’s a trace of resentment at having to stay home all the time at the beginning of the film, though by the end he finds a new appreciation for the safety of home.

Cuba starts out mild and ends up wild, almost enjoying “the game” and wanting to take on all the bad guys by himself.

Dorff…is mostly there for moral support.

Comedian Leary was famous for doing his rapid fire, long form rants, just unleashing swaths of anger at a rapid clip.  He has a few moments to do that here, though it’s clear he was held back as no one wanted to turn his criminal character into a stand up comedian.

STATUS: Shelf worthy.  Overall, solid flick.  Worth a watch.  Overall message is we should care more about how the other half lives.  The suburban boys quickly learn that the poor live hard lives and when they are stuck in a bad place, there’s no one to turn to for help, so they have to help themselves.

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Apr 16 2020
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BQB’s Classic Movie Reviews – Dead Heat (1988)

Not gonna lie, 3.5 readers.  This one is total garbage, yet the fun kind of garbage…like when you find a fresh eclair sitting on the top of the garbage, right there on a paper plate ala George Costanza and you debate whether or not to eat it.  (Don’t eat it, especially in this day and age.)

My coronavirus 1980s B movie marathon continues with this little gem that honestly, I had forgotten for a long time.

When I was watching “They Live” the other day, it made me think of a scene from a movie I saw when I was a kid where two undead zombie cops, after dying on the job, walk off into heaven, cracking jokes all the while.

For a second, I thought “They Live” was what I was thinking of, but it wasn’t.  So I did a deep dive on google and figured out what I was looking for was the 1988 crapfest Dead Heat.

It stars Joe Piscopo and Treat Williams as Detectives Doug Bigelow and Roger Mortis (cheesy, I know.)  When they respond to the scene of a jewelry heist only to find two masked gunmen who are able to survive despite being shot a ridiculous number of times, they find themselves hopping down a rabbit hole of intrigue, mystery and absurdly dark humor.

Long story short, Mortis is killed during the investigation, only to be brought back to life by the crime ring’s resurrection machine.  Alas, the machine is not foolproof, and Mortis has 12 hours to solve his own murder before he croaks for good.  A running joke is that his face and body fall apart throughout the film.

It’s morbid.  It’s downright sick in some parts.  A strange side trip to a restaurant leaves the duo fighting off undead cow and duck carcasses that were brought back to life after being stored in the meat locker.

Not gonna lie.  The plot is dumb.  The writing is dumb.  The jokes are so corny they are funny.  The special effects are lousy by today’s standards though for its time, not that bad.  Piscopo always got a bad rap as an unfunny comedian but I thought he actually pulled this movie together.

Vincent Price and Darren McGavin of Ralphie’s Dad in a Christmas story fame star as the film’s villains.  At some point, I lost track of what they were up to other than it is some sort of cabal of rich folk paying big bucks so they can live forever.  How that ties in to the undead jewelry robbers is beyond me.

I’ll admit though the movie starts out strong and finishes strong, I found the middle lagging, especially because Piscopo’s character disappears for a good chunk at that time.  At the middle point I found myself yawning and wishing for it to be over, but it redeems itself at the end when Mortis basically becomes a full fledged zombie, running around, absorbing bullets and beatings without a care in the world.

Unfortunately, this is one bad B movie that is probably destined for the toilet of cinema history.  At first, I had a hard time finding it until my smart TV suggested I could watch it for free on some app I’d never heard of called Tubi.  This movie has to be given away just to keep it alive, pun intended.

STATUS:  Thomas Wolfe said you can’t go home again and I admit, some of these 80s movies seem funnier as a kid only as an adult I look back and think, “Holy shit.  How did I get so old.  Was I really alive when the world looked like this and made movies like this?”

At any rate, it’s worth a peak.  Maybe get up in the middle to get some popcorn and go to the bathroom.  Wash your hands to avoid the COVID.  And Piscopo gets a bad rap because he was good in this.  He has some of the cheesiest jokes imaginable, but he delivers them with great enthusiasm, like he was hired to do a job and damn it, it doesn’t matter if this movie sucks, he’s going to smile and deliver those crap lines with as much gusto as he can.

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Apr 15 2020
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BQB’s Classic Movie Reviews – Lethal Weapon Series 1-4 (1987-1998)

I’m getting too old for this shit, 3.5 readers.

I’ve been kicking it 80s style during this quarantine, and over Easter weekend, I celebrated the resurrection of our Lord and Savior by watching Riggs and Murtaugh deep six a lot of bad guys who are never coming back.

On the surface, they may seem silly, but these movies really do have it all (well, the first two are near perfect whereas the last 2 are a bit flawed but I’ll get to that).

They’re funny.  They’re serious.  The stakes are high but the laughs are still present.  You’ll laugh.  You’ll cry.  You’ll get to know the cops, their families, friends, hopes, dreams, etc.  They aren’t just cookie cut outs.  They’re fully developed characters, which is rare for an action movie.

Danny Glover plays Roger Murtaugh, an LAPD Homicide detective who, in the first movie, turns 50.  As is his catch phrase, he is “getting too old for this shit.”  In a scene where his wife and kids bring a flaming birthday cake into the bathroom, catching him by surprise while he’s in the tub, we see his elation, that the family he has built nourishes his soul.  When they leave alone, he looks in the mirror and the look speaks a thousand words silently.  He is depressed that he is getting old.  His best years are behind him.  He is mortal and the fear that one day, he might die and lose the family and home he has built weighs heavily on him.

Across town, we meet Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson).  He’s younger than Riggs.  I’m not sure what age he’s playing but if I had to guess, in the early 30s range.  He lives alone in a trailer by the beach, no one but his dog to keep him company.  His wife has died in a car accident.  It’s Christmas.  We see the look of epic sadness on his face.  He sticks a gun in his mouth and as his finger touches the trigger, we see a pained look on his face, like he might actually do it, that at any rate, he is capable of doing it.  Obviously, he doesn’t do it but if you were seeing this movie in the 1980s for the first time, you definitely might have been lead to believe that he was about to do it.

Riggs and Murtaugh join forces and become the ultimate odd couple.  Murtaugh wants to play it safe because he has too much to lose.  Meanwhile, Riggs has no problem being reckless.  Car chases, shootouts and fist fights are his forte.  Murtaugh nags Riggs, urging him to slow down at every turn, like an old woman.  Riggs is like the young son who pushes his old man into living dangerously.

Ironically, they compliment each other.  As the movies wear on, Murtaugh realizes that in addition to being a dad, he is also a cop.  While there’s a part of him that yearns to leave the force behind and live a safe life, surrounded by family while he goes fishing and collects a pension, there’s another part of him that knows he’ll only feel useful when he’s fighting crime, and Riggs brings this side out of him.

Conversely, as we get to know Riggs, we learn he isn’t as crazy as he seems.  Rather, he was a special forces soldier during Vietnam and followed that up by becoming an LAPD cop.  These are dangerous jobs and one does not get results in either profession by not acting a little bit crazy.  It’s not that Riggs wants to die, it’s just that he learns to suppress the fear and tackle it with humor and bad jokes so as to keep from going completely insane.  The Murtaughs become the family he never had.   Roger like his grumpy uncle, Trish like his Mom doing his laundry and cooking for him.  The kids become like his nieces and nephews.  Along the way, he seeks out the family life that he’s missing and builds a life like Roger’s, one that he’s afraid to lose.

The first two are quite solid.  The third and fourth?  I don’t know.  The third takes place in the early 1990s and doesn’t quite have the cache of 1990s action flicks, which were all more or less about ex Vietnam vets becoming cops and crooks and squaring off against each other, using their ‘Nam skills to kick ass and settling old scores.  Mix in the coke dealers and the fast and loose lifestyle and I don’t know, all that kind of became blase in the 1990s.

Riggs falls for lady cop Rene Russo in the third film and starts a family with her in the fourth.  By 1998, Danny and Mel seemed way too old to be running around getting into fights and car chases, though they address that by embracing the getting too old for this shit line.

Don’t get me wrong.  Three and Four are worth watching, but the real magic rests in 1 and 2.

Not everything holds up.  There are some things that don’t fly today.  Riggs and Murtaugh make fun of Trish’s cooking throughout the series, whereas today the idea of poking fun at a woman’s culinary skills as though this somehow makes her less worthy isn’t kosher.  I mean, hell, good luck even getting a woman to make you dinner.  If you are lucky enough to have one who will, don’t make fun of her cooking skills.

Riggs and Murtaugh also regularly crack jokes about each other being gay and/or unmanly.  After a bomb blast in the first film, Murtaugh grabs Riggs only for Riggs to push Murtaugh away and call him a “fag.”

So yeah, there are some things that will make the modern viewer cringe but if you can write it off as all being a product of the time, you might be able to still enjoy it.  Maybe not.  I don’t know.

Meanwhile, the series does rest on a number of running gags.  Running jokes include Roger borrowing his wife’s car only to completely fuck it up while chasing bad guys, cursing Riggs the entire time, demanding that he go easy on his wife’s car.  The Murtaugh family home takes a beating throughout the series, from drug dealers driving through it with their cars to a toilet explosion in the second film ( a highlight of the series to be sure.)

Joe Pesci is added to the series in 2 as Leo Getz, a slimy accountant turned witness who whines incessantly, yet often comes up with sleazy ideas that help Riggs and Murtaugh catch the crooks.

Overall, it’s a great series that really captures two ways of looking at life.  You can be a Murtaugh and live in fear of losing it all, or be a Riggs and laugh in the face of danger lest you dwell on it and let the fear eat you up inside.

SIDENOTE: It always saddened me when Mel went on his racial tirades.  I didn’t want to believe it at first but the way the racial words roll off his tongue in various recordings, adding in the fact that he was given so many chances to redeem himself yet kept saying such things makes it clear that unfortunately, a lot of this crap was in his heart all along, which it makes it odd when you watch Riggs because that character is so far from being a racist.  Part of me wants to chalk up Mel’s tirades to him becoming an angry old man but I don’t know, there are ways to be an angry old man without invoking all kinds of racial epithets, thus making it hard to believe these bad thoughts weren’t with him all along.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Apr 14 2020
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BQB’s Classic Movie Reviews – The Money Pit (1986)

Hey 3.5 readers.

Your old pal BQB here with another review as we continue the corona quarantine hullabaloo.

This movie was on all the time when I was a kid.  I thought it was funny then and so it was cool to see it is on Netflix today.

The premise may be near and dear to the hearts of every first time home buyer.  After all, the sequence of events goes like this:

  1. You need a place to live.
  2. You find a place you like.
  3. You do your best to inspect the place you like, but inevitably, the homeowner will do their damndest to hide any and all defects so as to avoid paying to fix them, essentially passing the buck to you, the buyer, then playing dumb when you notice it after you moved in.
  4. At that point, maybe you have a case, but in most instances, you’ll spend more time and money on suing the original owner than you would on just paying to have the problem fixed.
  5. You’ll hire a contractor.  The contractor will take your advance payment, and then once they have their money, you will be lucky if you see them before the next ice age.  You can’t hire someone else because you already sunk money into them.  You can’t get too snippy with them because they might walk away and ultimately, most contractors will make you wait so you ultimately just have to live with the hole in your roof, or in your ceiling or dry wall until the contractor takes pity on you…or has spent your initial money down and realizes they need to show up and do some work before they get paid again (unless you were an idiot who paid it all up front in which case, you will never see that contractor again.)

Tom Hanks and Shelley Long made an entire movie about this!  They play Walter and Anna, a young couple who try to make a go of it in a new home, only to get duped by the previous owner.  The majority of the movie is dedicated to wacky hijinx – exploding ovens that shoot turkeys through the air, wiring that sets the house on fire, stairs that fall apart while Walter is walking on them, leaving him to do action movie style jumps to the ledge.  Walter takes the brunt of the beatings, getting knocked in the head by all manner of flying debris.

As unscrupulous contractors take their money and then promise the house will be fixed within two weeks for way, way, way longer than two weeks, the couple is pushed to the breaking point, and they will struggle to keep their sanity and relationship afloat.

Bonus points to Alexander Godunov, that long haired 80s villain who plays Anna’s cheating ex-husband, the cad who tries to take advantage of the situation, hoping to steal Anna back.  I didn’t realize it as a kid, but as an adult I instantly recognized him as the dude who played German terrorist Karl aka Hans Gruber’s right hand henchman in Die Hard.  Yes, he was the villain who helped Sgt. Al Powell realize that he could raise his gun to shoot again.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Apr 14 2020
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BQB’S Classic Movie Reviews – They Live (1988)

I’m here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, 3.5 readers.  And I’m all out of bubblegum.

So, the obvious downside of the coronavirus is that it has left the world in utter turmoil.

But hey, the good news, is I’m watching a lot of movies I never would have had time for.

One such flick is “They Live,” the 1988 B-Sci Fi cult movie that really, really deserves more props than it gets.

It stars infamous wrestling heel, the late Rowdy Roddy Piper as Nada, a homeless drifter who wanders into town, looking for work.  He’s been downtrodden his entire life, from a shitty upbringing, to being constantly laid off and out of work, despite trying his best and never turning down work when he’s lucky enough to find it.

When he finds a construction job, it looks like he might make it, thanks to a church that provides food and help to the homeless.  While taking advantage of the church’s help, he meets Frank (the infamous and awesome Keith David), another down on his luck construction worker who had to leave his wife and family behind just to find work.  He lives the homeless life so he can send money back home.

Both men commiserate, lamenting how hard it is to get ahead.  While Nada still believes in the American dream, Frank argues the whole system is a scam.  If you aren’t born into wealth, then you’ll spend your whole life working hard and getting little in return for it, as though the system is a parasite that feeds off you.

Turns out, Frank was right but not how he thought.  Nada learns that the church is a front for a group of underground freedom fighters, people who have discovered that the world is actually run by aliens!  Yes, “They Live” among us, having perfected a means to hide their hideous alien forms by appearing human.

The human freedom fighter group has created a special pair of sunglasses that allows them to see the aliens for what they are, as well as the subliminal messages hidden in advertisements, billboards, and on TV.  When Nada pops these shades on, he realizes that the whole world is a lie, that alien bastards run it all and that elite aliens are sucking up all the world’s resources, turning big profits while lower class humans work their lives away, never getting ahead.

It’s all basically an allegory for the way the world, more or less actually works.  Funny, the movie was basically considered the silly, over the top Sharknado of its day, but for a flick headlined by a wrestler, there’s a lot that rings true, even today.  The movie’s entire premise, if you forget the aliens, is that the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the working middle class never fights it because they want their piece of the pie, so they help the upper class do things that hurt the planet for fear of losing their income.

There are scenes that are downright crazy.  Plotholes abound and Nada pretty much goes on an instant murder spree when he puts on the glasses.  He starts gunning down every alien he can find, never even taking a second to think about possible strategies.  He doesn’t even take a second to think about whether it is moral to kill beings just because they are aliens.  It’s just, “Boom!  These guys are ugly!  They have to die!”

Cheesy lines?  “Lady, your face looks like someone shoved it in the cheese dip in 1957 and left it there.”

Ah, good times.  But seriously, whenever you heard anyone say something like “I’m here to pass out candy and ass kickings” or something to that effect, this is where that line came from.

Not to mention the absurdly long fight scene between David and Piper that goes on way too long, that was eventually parodied by South Park.

Anyway, it’s fun and despite overt silliness, has a message about corporate greed and how we all might be complicit in it because we all eventually sell out and take our little sliver of pie and turn a blind eye to the evildoings of our corporate overlords for fear of losing that sliver.

Piper is stiff, almost comically so, but somehow fits the character.  The irony is if this flick had starred a Schwarzenegger or Stallone, it would probably be constantly watched even today.

It’s funny.  I remember when I was a little kid, my local video rental store (Those places once lived) had a poster for this movie hanging up for the longest time.  As a kid, it looked scary to me, so it’s funny it took me like 30 years to finally watch this.

One last compliment – as the film went on, it got towards the end and I felt like, “Hmm, this was a lot of exposition without really going anywhere” but then sure enough, there’s a great ending that is shoehorned in out of left field and I can’t think of a better way this could have been wrapped up.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Apr 10 2020
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The Original Mad Max Had Nothing to Do with the Apocalypse

Hey 3.5 readers.

Your old pal BQB here.

So I’ve spent my extra free time this week watching the Mad Max films and I have to say, I am shocked to find out that the original film had absolutely no apocalypse in it whatsoever.

The first Mad Max film stars Mel Gibson as the titular character and takes place in a version of Australia “a few years from now” i.e. maybe a vision of the 1980s as dreamed of by people in the 1970s.

Max is a member of Australia’s “Main Force Police,” leather jacketed cops who cruise the highways in bright, yellow muscle cars, looking to take down the biker gangs that are running amuck in Kangaroo land.

When a veteran member of the force is killed by the bikers, Max gets so distraught that he wants to quit, but is talked into taking a vacation by his boss instead.  On holiday, Max begins to feel better until, well, his wife and son are murdered by the same biker gang, so he goes mad and hunts all those gearheads down.

The end, and honestly, the plot sounds better than the movie.  The movie itself is largely unwatchable.  There are a few cool bits of action interspersed with a lot of crap and it looks like a student film that was slapped together for a C minus.  It’s pretty shitty, even by 1970s standards.

The apocalypse doesn’t come into play until Mad Max 2 or “The Road Warrior.”  That film comes with an early narration explaining that there has been a war that ravaged the world, leaving it bombed out and depleted, and now scavengers roam the wasteland.

This movie basically set the standard for all apocalypse movies, books and stories to follow, director George Miller envisioning a world where people worship cars and gasoline and water become such hot commodities that people are willing to fight and die for them.

Max steals a rig to help a downtrodden tribe of misfits who are oppressed by the muscular, mask wearing Lord Hummungus.  He’s about to run with a bunch of gas as payment, but eventually feels sorry enough for the tribe that he fights for them, and a battle on wheels commences.

Honestly, this movie kinda sucks too, especially by today’s standards.  There’s not a lot of character development and you have to piece things together but the chase scene is good and sets the stage for all future apocalypse movies to come.

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is where the series starts to emerge.  The plot is coherent.  The characters are given depth.  Ironically, the chase scene at the end isn’t as good as it was in 2, but I suppose you can’t have everything.

Max’s car, now pulled by camels, are stolen.  When he reaches Barter Town, he strikes a deal with the villainous Auntie Entity (Tina Turner) to fight Blaster, the brawn behind little person Master’s brains (together they are Master Blaster).  Max is promised his ride will be returned if he takes Blaster out in Thunderdome, the arena where 2 men enter, but 1 man leaves.

When Max realizes he’s been tricked, he is sent off into exile, destined to die of thirst in the desert until he is saved by a tribe of people comprised of the survivors and descendants of a plane that crashed near an oasis long ago.  The tribe has built an entire religion around Captain Walker, their Jesus like figure who they believe will one day return and fly the down plane to Tomorrow-morrow land, a city they have seen a picture of and believe to be a Utopia.

Max has to save these tribesfolk from themselves, because he’s traveled all over the wasteland, and their oasis is the closest thing to paradise he’s found.  They don’t have any idea how good they have it.

I suppose in the 1980s the Mad Max movies would have been thrilling, though honestly, the first one really does suck.  And it’s a plot hole that Max lived to be an adult before the apocalypse, because the next two films build a world where it looks like people have built their lives around worshipping cars and chasing gasoline for multiple generations.  It’s almost as if Director George Miller just decided he liked the character but also liked the apocalyptic setting, so asked his audience to just fudge the details a bit as Max is transported to the wasteland and we just forget about that first dreadful flick altogether.

Ultimately, watching these old movies made me appreciate the recent Mad Max: Fury Road a lot more.  That movie was an unexpected treat.  When it was released, I thought it was going to be one in a long line of lame remakes, but I enjoyed it.  Now, after watching the old movies, I enjoy it more because I think it finally allowed George Miller to achieve his true vision.

Obviously, I don’t speak for Miller, but as I watched the old films and thought about the new one, my gut tells me that Miller did his best given limited budgets, limited technology, limited ability of the Hollywood apparatus to understand and carry out his vision (he was just starting out as a filmmaker with the first Max) and it took several decades and a lot of new tech for him to bring all the car chases, flaming guitar playing baddies, trucks full of drum beaters, etc to life.

Too bad Mel Gibson turned out to be such a creep.  There might have been a way to fit him into the new one, but kudos to George Miller, as I now realize that Fury Road must have been the culmination of a lifelong dream, one where he had to keep working until he got it right.

 

 

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Apr 03 2020
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Movies

Movie Review – Coffee and Kareem (2020)

This movie is just awful.  I really can’t say enough bad things about it.

On the surface, it seems like it would be good, because it has a lot of good actors in it.  Ed Helms, Taraji P. Henson, Betty Gilpin, David Alan Grier.

But just as pizza, ice cream, orange juice, and Mountain Dew all taste good on their own, they are destined to explode into a pile of crap when you put them together.

The plot, if you can call it one, is that Ed Helms (Officer Coffee, given that unlikely name for no reason other than to create a catchy buddy comedy movie title)  is dating Vanessa, the mother of the rambunctious and foul mouthed 12 year old, Kareem (Terrence Gardenhigh.)

Long story short, Kareem witnesses a murder, Coffee gets framed for it, and its a madcap romp to fight the bad guys and score the evidence that will get Coffee off the hook.

It sounds simple enough yet, it all falls apart at a comedic level.  I don’t know when it became popular for kids to say raunchy things in movies.  I’ve noticed it as a growing trend more and more in movies over the past decade.  Someone, somewhere decided it would be funny to have a kid swear and say naughty things and then movies just kept upping the game, having kids swear more, saying naughtier things until you have this travesty.

Feel free to disagree, but I just think that having kids being foul mouthed for the camera is just gross, a stupid gimmick that Hollywood should have had enough decency to have never gotten involved with in the first place.  How do none of the adults behind this movie not say, “Hey, kids shouldn’t be saying such terrible things and we shouldn’t make one do it for the camera?”

To be honest, I was going to switch it off in the first 20 minutes and I only stuck with it because of Betty Gilpin, who I think is an underrated national treasure, but even she couldn’t save this mess.

I don’t know what else to say.  Rarely do I give a bad review, but Netflix should give subscribers a free month and a formal apology for making this crap.

STATUS: NOT SHELF WORTHY.

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Mar 29 2020
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Movies, Uncategorized

BQB’s Classic Movie Reviews – Night Hawks (1981)

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Hey 3.5 readers.

As an aficionado of 1980s action flicks, as well as everything Stallone, I was shocked to find this movie starring Stallone and Billy Dee Williams as two cops chasing a terrorist, Rutger Hauer as Wulfgar.

So, I watched it and I have to say, overall I was impressed.  It has a degree of seriousness, almost in the vein of “Day of the Jackal” where a London based terrorism expert moves to NYC to educate Stallone and Williams on how to track Wulfgar, that this cunning sociopath is a master of disguise and deception and could be anywhere at any time.

The key plot point is that Stallone, as a cop, is also a master of disguise and deception.  The film begins with an old woman about to get mugged.  She kicks the muggers’ asses, and rips off her mask to reveal that she is Stallone and Billy Dee jumps out of the shadows to provide backup.

My main complaint is about halfway through the film, the subterfuge or cat and mouse angle of the film is blown and it goes from an understated mystery thriller to an all out action flick.  At the beginning, I thought the point was Stallone was going to lull Wulfgar into a trap, but he just goes at him guns a blazing.

Still, there are some riveting action scenes, as well as some prophetic discussions of terrorism and how terrorists operate that seem eerily accurate post-9/11.

Ironically, I think with a few tweaks and perhaps a more serious title, this film could have gone down as one of the great ones.  Instead, it became lost, at least to me, until I found it on Netflix and only then I was on a coronavirus inspired deep Netflix dive.

And I’ll give it this – the ending makes the whole thing.  I don’t want to give it away, but it really is a great, unexpected, and redeeming ending.

STATUS: Shelfworthy.

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