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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 03 2020
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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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Mar 28 2020
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BQB’s Classic Movie Reviews – Tootsie (1982)

Hey 3.5 readers.

So I’ve been watching movies to pass the time during the coronavirus outbreak, and last night I settled on Tootsie on Netflix.  It’s funny how movies you saw as a kid come across differently to you as an adult all these years later.

Dustin Hoffman plays Michael Dorsey, an actor with immense talent who can’t get steady work because he’s an unwavering perfectionist, refusing to obey the most basic commands of his directors if he disagrees with them.

When his friend, Sandy, a fellow thespian (Terri Garr) auditions for and is denied a part as a hospital administrator on a soap opera, Southwest General, Michael, desperate for money to produce his roomate’s play (Bill Murray as Jeff) decides on a lark to don a dress and wig and try out for the part, introducing herself as actress Dorothy Michaels.

Miraculously, he nails it and while the rest of the women on the show are portrayed as brainless females who swoon at the first sign of male authority, she plays the part as a tough talking, no nonsense feminist.

A star is born, but along the way, Michael will have to figure out his feelings for co-star Julie (Jessica Lange) who only knows him as her BFF Dorothy, and fight off advances from Julie’s father and a male costar.

It’s interesting to watch the film in the light of the MeToo era.  There’s a point in the film where Michael confides in Jeff that being a woman is exhausting, that he has to spend his money on countless products just to look pretty, and that all day long, he’s fending off men who are trying to force themselves on her.  Maybe all men should have to walk a mile in Tootsie’s heels.  (Tootsie being an unflattering name the chauvinist director Dabney Coleman gives her.)

There are some things that don’t hold up in modern times.  Men who learn they have kissed a man pretending to be a woman are horrified.  Julie’s father openly states that the only reason he never killed Michael is because the two didn’t kiss.  While these sentiments would likely be felt even today by a straight male who kisses a woman who is, in fact, a man, the looks of panic and horror wouldn’t be appreciated on film.

And of course, it’s important to note to these men that “Dorothy” never tried to kiss any of them.  Pervs.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Mar 25 2020
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TV

TV Review – Tiger King (2020)

3.5 readers, this will be short, but I have to recommend the new docu-series Tiger King on Netflix.

Heck, if you’re huddled inside, trying to stave off the corona, what better time than now to check out this little gem?

The long story short is that there is a crazy, wacky, world that you have likely never heard of before.  That world is the world of privately owned (as in by a person rather than by a professional company) tiger zoos.  Shoddily run by dudes with tremendous egos who act like their ownership of giant kitties is a super power, these joints are teaming with tabloid fodder and this series brings it all to your screen.

The most wacky of all tiger zoo owners is Joe Exotic, a gay country singing bigamist cowboy from Oklahoma who is addicted to social media and putting content on the web.  He loves the limelight, putting some of the silliest videos of himself imaginable out there, acting as though he is some sort of larger than life cartoon character.

Over time, he gets into a public feud with Carol Baskin, the owner of Big Cat Rescue, a preserve that gives a home to big cats once owned by zoos such as Exotic’s.  Baskin says Exotic is mistreating his kitties.  Exotic says she’s just trying to steal his cats for herself.

Ultimately, the feud takes a gruesome turn when Exotic moves from clown to criminal, getting arrested for his part in a hit for hire plot against Baskin.

Some of the things you’ll see in this series just defies belief.  Dudes who play with giant tigers without a care that they could easily become lunch.  Hangers on who work for next to nothing because they either have nowhere else to go or they just love the lifestyle.  Women turned big cat owner groupies.  Young men enamored by Joe’s money to the point they marry him even though they are straight.  Money thrown away on zoos that essentially become money pits and expired Walmart leftover meats that are fed to kitties.

This is one to watch, 3.5 readers.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

 

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Mar 07 2020
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Movie Review – Spenser Confidential (2020)

“Hawk is the name of a motherfucker with a cool gun.  Spenser is the name of the guy who does your taxes.”

I might have mangled that line, but it’s the closest approximation I can remember from a scene in the new Netflix movie.  Mark Wahlberg is reviving the 1980s Boston based private detective TV show based on the series of novels by Robert Parker.  Winston Duke of Black Panther fame plays his trusty sidekick, and the line above is from a part where the dynamic duo squabble over who gets to wield the coolest gun in a shootout with nefarious ne’er-do’wells.

The setup?  Spenser went to prison 5 years ago for kicking his Captain’s ass.  So frustrated was he with his captain’s corruption and unable to prove anything that would stick, he resorted to violence and paid the price.

5 years later, he’s been released and is trying to get his life back on track.  His friend, Henry (Alan Arkin) who trained him in his gym, gives him a place to stay, allowing him to room with Hawk, a fighter he is training.

Spenser is about to leave Boston for good, saying goodbye to his old life of fighting crime, choosing to be a truck driver instead when the captain whose ass he kicked is murdered and a good cop is framed for the deed.

Unable to put himself over his need to do the right thing, Spenser recruits Hawk to help him on a quest to bring down the baddies and clear a good cop’s name.

There’s action.  Thrills.  Dogs.  Lots of dogs.  Marc Maron stops by as a blogger willing to spread tales of Spenser’s daring do.

Comedienne Ilza Schlesinger doesn’t just steal the show as Spenser’s perpetually angry ex-girlfriend, Cissy  She hijacks it and comes back for more and more.  Angry at Spenser one second for his refusal to think of himself and let crimes go unsolved one second, loves him and wants to support him the next.  A scene where she points out that Spenser, Hawk and Henry are basically three grown adults trying to play Batman is particularly funny.

The movie is worth watching and it also sets up a formula.  Spenser can step into the role of a private eye now, being a man who really wants to settle down and have a normal life, yet knows how to solve crimes and can’t sit by while injustice is afoot.  Hawk provides the muscle while Henry and Cissy stop by for comic relief.

Hopefully, this will be the start of a series.  I could seeing it being a TV show, though perhaps Wahlberg is too big for that.  A film series that builds on the formula could be interesting.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Dec 03 2019
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The Irishman is Too Long

It’s a Martin Scorcese movie, so I want to watch it but holy crap.  3 and a half hours?  That’s quite a commitment.

Maybe I can watch it in smaller, one hour bites.

 

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Oct 12 2019
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Movies

Movie Review – El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019)

Jesse’s back, bitches!

BQB here with a review.

When I heard they were making a Breaking Bad movie, my reaction was one of revulsion.  It’s rare that a TV show concludes with all the loose ends tied up, with an overall sense that the writers and producers really, truly cared about all the time the fans invested in watching the show and wanted to reward that time with payoffs galore.  Thus, to create a sequel seemed like trying to paint Mona Lisa Part 2: This Time The Bitch Really Smiles.

Turns out the movie is great, though it’s less of a movie and more of an extended episode.  My main fear was that they were going to bring Walter White (Bryan Cranston) back from the dead and have to conjure up silly, absurd reasons about how this guy has been able to live with terminal cancer for 11 years and how he’s still cooking meth when everyone from the cops to the coast guard are looking for him.

My fears subsided when I learned Walter was left to RIP and this was Jesse’s flick.  When last we saw Jesse, he was looking like an unkempt, unwashed, bearded mountain man, escaping from Nazi captivity in weirdo Todd’s El Camino.

This film tells us what happens next.  With police on his tail and plenty of rival crooks out to get him, will he be able to flee and start a new life, or will he go out in a blaze of glory just like his meth cooking mentor?

Series regulars come and go throughout the flick.  Badger.  Skinny Pete.  Mike.  Even Walter stops by.  Relax, those who ended up in body bags at the end of the series only reappear in flashback form.

Is this a movie we needed?  No, bitch.  To be honest, I never put much thought into what happened to Jesse after his escape.  That being said, it is a nice wrap up, tying up that one last loose end.

It’s fitting the movie is on Netflix.  After all, Breaking Bad is a show that became successfully largely due to the streaming age.  I’ll admit I avoided it for several years because a show about a sad old man dying from cancer after a lifetime of regret didn’t exactly sound like fun viewing to me, but once I kept hearing rave reviews, I started streaming it and I was hooked.  Dying science teacher depressed about his lack of success recruits his wayward former student to start a meth empire and eventually goes from underdog anti-hero to vile villain that you want to see lose?  Yeah, that’s not something that any network was going to pour a lot of dough into promoting.  Word of mouth and “hey, go stream this when you have a minute” was the key to BB’s success.

Still, I’m not sure how much juice can be extracted from the Breaking Bad world.  I suppose there’s always a prequel or a sequel.  I suppose, even for a truck of cash backed up to Bryan Cranston’s house and, hopefully, the right script, we could find out that Walter White survived but honestly, I felt this movie worked because it was just 2 hours.  Would I want to see an entirely new Jesse based spinoff series?  I can’t imagine it.  I did give Better Call Saul a couple of seasons before I gave up.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy, bitch.

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Sep 16 2019
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TV, Uncategorized

TV Review – Stranger Things Season 3 (1980)

Hey 3.5 readers.

BQB here.

It took me awhile but I finally got through Season 3 of Stranger Things.

These are probably bland observations but I’ll make them all the same.

#1 – The nostalgia factor for someone who grew up in the 80s is fun.  From the music choices to the overall feel, the Duffer brothers know that decade which is odd because I don’t think they spent a lot of time in it.

#2 – Often in movies about kids who save the day, the kids are usually presented as geniuses and the adults as bumbling idiots who get in the way  Here, not so much.  Hopper and Joyce are integral to the plot and aren’t treated like dummies getting in the kids’ way.  Also, the kids are kids.  They make kid mistakes and they need, or rather even seek out parental help because they know their limits whereas other films would show a kid genius who is just being slowed down by the adults.

#3 – Look away if you don’t want spoilers, but the final mall battle where the kids throw fireworks bombs at the monster is visually stunning and fun to watch.

#4 – Russians are the villains and kids and adults alike really dump on them throughout the season, calling them commies and deriding communism as evil and corrupt.  I didn’t think that was allowed anymore in today’s PC world, even in a period piece.

#5 – They do tend to work 80s era actors into the series.  Winona Ryder, aka Joyce was a popular kid actor in the 80s.  Sean Astin of Goonies fame has a brief role as her love interest in Season 2.  In Season 3, Cary Elwes of Princess Bride fame plays a villainous mayor.  Comedian Paul Reiser plays a scientist that experiments on the evil monsters.

#6 – I think the challenge for the show was trying to keep reinvent itself after an initial plotline that was cool at first but over time became somewhat limiting.  For example, after two seasons of battling evil monsters that inhabit the “upside-down” version of their town (basically, an evil parallel universe) one wonders why anyone still chooses to continue to live in Hawkins, Indiana.  Season 3 upped the game by bringing Russians conducting an evil experiment in the bowels of that 1980s staple, the shopping mall and it looks like (spoiler alert) Season 4 will likely involve a plot to rescue Hopper from the upside-down.

#7 – I’ve run out of observations but if you have any, leave them in the comments.  In the meantime, don’t click on the video below if you don’t want a spoiler.  Otherwise, enjoy the kids’ rendition of “The Neverending Story” theme song.

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