"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Barbie

I took my time writing about BARBIE, the smash hit pop culture phenomenon from director Greta Gerwig (LADY BIRD, LITTLE WOMEN) and Mattel Films (MONSTER HIGH, TEAM HOT WHEELS, MAX STEEL), so all the takes have pretty much been taken, and I’m sure everybody who hasn’t seen it has heard by now that many people love it. I’m another one of those people. I’ll try not to go on too long about it, but I want to pay my respects, and I promise some of the aspects I’m most interested in are not what most of the other reviews focus on.

In this time of Barbiemania I don’t need to go into detail about all of the movie’s joys, but indulge me on a few of them. First of all, I’m a sucker for a movie with this extreme of a dedication to creating a stylized, artificial world. It’s comparable to movies like POPEYE, SPEED RACER or BATMAN RETURNS in that respect. And what the hell, I’ll say THE FLINTSTONES too, though I want to stress that especially in that example I’m just talking about the heightened sets, props and costumes, not equating them in overall quality. (read the rest of this shit…)

August 18th, 2023 | 38 Comments »

Oppenheimer

First thing I want to say is that I’ve been calling this movie “Oppy” while having no idea that it’s what everyone calls him in the movie. I guess it’s just the natural, instinctive nickname that comes to mind for J. Robert Oppenheimer, even before “J.R.”

Second thing I want to say is that I was so wrong about the phenomenon of OPPENHEIMER! I had been confused as to why people were talking about it as a sure-thing blockbuster smash, but here I am finally having seen it after 3 weeks of sold out shows at the Imax. I had to give in and buy the tickets a week in advance, and the show did sell out in the same theater that never filled up for DEAD RECKONING, JOHN WICK 4, CREED III, DIAL OF DESTINY, etc. There’s lots of hype about it being shot for Imax format, and this is is the only full Imax format screen in the state, so that’s important context. But still – a 3-hour R-rated drama about a scientist selling out every show every day for weeks? Just because Christopher Nolan directed it? Hooray for the auteur theory! (read the rest of this shit…)

August 16th, 2023 | 30 Comments »

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTANT MAYHEM is exactly what I hoped we’d start seeing after SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE: more animated features feeling they have permission to go wild with their visual styles. Directors Jeff Rowe and Keyler Spears already took the baton and ran with it two years ago in THE MITCHELLS VS. THE MACHINES; MUTANT MAYHEM shares that film’s anarchic doodles-on-your-notebook spirit and preference for cartoonish exaggeration. But this time they’ve largely abandoned three-dimensional computer animation’s longstanding quest for realistic textures in favor of artistic flair. Not only the backgrounds, but even the characters look like energetic oil pastel sketches. Even objects that appear tactile are covered in lines, squiggles, smears. Light-colored scratches on swaths of black give the impression of reflections or lights, but also of lines drawn by human hands. Computerized precision takes a back seat to creative looseness and chaos. Every frame looks like the concept art that you see in the making-of coffee table books, as if they somehow removed that final step that polishes things but inevitably loses some of their personality. The personality is intact.

It’s also like SPIDER-VERSE in that it’s a fun animated all ages super hero tale with plenty of laughs, good music, and some emotional substance. And until we have too many of those, I enjoy that too. (read the rest of this shit…)

August 15th, 2023 | 9 Comments »

Dark Web: Cicada 3301

I know I’d seen the cover for the 2021 film DARK WEB: CICADA 3301 before. I assumed it was some generic shitty hacker thriller, so I paid it no mind. But when I was working on my review of FAST X I noticed it on the filmography of Alan Ritchson – he’s not only in it as an actor, but he directed and co-wrote it. That’s right, Reacher himself, from the TV show Reacher. I had to know what kind of a movie Reacher would direct, so I watched it.

It’s not a great movie, but it’s an interesting one. The cover really doesn’t capture the feel of the thing, which is very smart alecky, though more of a thriller with a sense of humor than an all-out comedy. The marketing team might’ve been counting on people knowing what the title referred to, which I did not. It sounds like the corniest name ever if you don’t know “Cicada 3301” is a mysterious internet puzzle thing that’s famous as far as mysterious internet puzzles things go. I guess these very difficult puzzles were posted between 2012 and 2014, claiming to be designed to find “highly intelligent individuals” for some unknown purpose, and only 2 of the 3 have ever been solved. Wikipedia says that “the puzzles focused heavily on data security, cryptography, steganography, and internet anonymity,” whatever that means. Rumors grew that they were a recruiting tool for an intelligence agency, a hacker group, or a secret society. This movie imagines one explanation and follows some characters trying to solve the puzzles. (read the rest of this shit…)

August 14th, 2023 | 3 Comments »

Cujo (40th anniversary revisit)

August 12, 1983

I’ve written about CUJO before, but that was 15 years ago. Since there aren’t that many horror movies in this summer of ’83, it seemed worth revisiting now. Cujo the book was formative to me because I read it when I was in third grade. It might’ve been my first Stephen King book, maybe even my first horror book besides Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and Alfred Hitchcock short story collections. The part I remember vividly, of course, is something about Donna’s sex life with Steve. That seemed grown up and mysterious. The dog attacking people just seemed cool.

The movie wasn’t as important to me, and though I saw it on VHS at some point it wasn’t until rewatching it for that 2008 review that I realized it’s a real gem. It’s a movie everyone knows about but I’m not sure it’s held in as high of regard as I think it deserves. It’s a simple movie with very strong execution, and some of the elements involved (killer dog, tiny kid, limited location) are of a high enough degree of difficulty that there aren’t many other movies to directly compare it to. (read the rest of this shit…)

August 10th, 2023 | 21 Comments »

Smokey and the Bandit Part 3

August 12, 1983

I believe we’ve discussed once or twice in this series, and possibly in other contexts, that in 1977 there was this movie called “STAR WARS” that absolutely knocked pop culture on its ass, and the thing still hasn’t recovered. One of the biggest and longest lasting pop culture creations so far. More than a phenomenon. Practically a religion.

Would you care to guess what was #2 at the U.S. box office that year, and therefore also a big deal? It was SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT, the directorial debut of stuntman Hal Needham. Though I’m not aware of a disco version of its theme song, it made more money than CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND or SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. It was huge.

SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT II came out the August after EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, and did pretty well, if not as well. Now we have SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT PART 3 released in the August after RETURN OF THE JEDI. This time it acknowledges its sister trilogy by opening with text that says, “Once upon a time, there was a famous Sheriff. It was not so long ago in our very own galaxy……..” (read the rest of this shit…)

August 9th, 2023 | 15 Comments »

Curse of the Pink Panther

August 12, 1983

So far in this series we’ve seen the third STAR WARS movie, the second PSYCHO movie, the thirteenth James Bond movie, the third SUPERMAN movie, the second Tony Manero movie, and the third JAWS movie. (We skipped the second PORKY’S movie, but that also came out, and we looked at the second GRIZZLY movie, which did not come out.) Among all these, one of the least remembered, for justifiable reasons, is the eighth PINK PANTHER movie, CURSE OF THE PINK PANTHER.

Though people my age tend to be more interested in the animated cat character spun-off from the Friz Freleng-directed title sequence of the first movie in 1963, the PINK PANTHER is of course a series of mystery slapstick comedies about the clumsy but accidentally effective French detective Inspector Jacques Clouseau, played by Peter Sellers in THE PINK PANTHER, A SHOT IN THE DARK, THE RETURN OF THE PINK PANTHER, THE PINK PANTHER STRIKES AGAIN and REVENGE OF THE PINK PANTHER. After Sellers died in 1980 the series became an experiment in ways to continue after the death of a star that was 98% of the attraction. (read the rest of this shit…)

August 8th, 2023 | 13 Comments »

Grizzly II: Revenge

Last week we discussed GET CRAZY, a movie about a bunch of bands putting on a concert that was just barely released in August of ’83. Today we’re going to take a look at a 1983 film also about a bunch of bands putting on a concert, but this one wasn’t released at all until 2020, because it was never finished. Technically the thing they released is considered finished, but I’d dispute that description.

GRIZZLY II: REVENGE is officially the sequel to William Girdler’s GRIZZLY (1976). Over the years I’ve stumbled across it occasionally on IMDb when looking up various filmographies – I believe it used to be listed as GRIZZLY II: THE CONCERT and GRIZZLY II: THE PREDATOR – but it said the production fell apart before they finished filming. Little did I know there was an executive producer out there still determined to release it. (read the rest of this shit…)

August 7th, 2023 | 11 Comments »

Get Crazy

August 5, 1983

GET CRAZY is a goofy let’s-put-on-a-show comedy directed by Allan Arkush, with a tone similar to his earlier, more popular ROCK ’N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL. It’s another broad comedy and celebration of punk culture, oddly mixed with some blues this time.

Daniel Stern (BLUE THUNDER) stars as Neil Allen, stage manager for the historic Saturn Theater, where legendary promoter Max Wolfe (Allen Garfield, NASHVILLE) is putting on his 15th annual New Year’s Eve concert. But there’s a villain trying to steal his thunder. Younger, more competitive promoter Colin Beverly (Ed Begley Jr., CAT PEOPLE) of Serpent Sounds lands his helicopter in front of the theater, causing various women’s clothes to blow off, and struts in with his two henchmen (Bobby Sherman and Fabian), all three of them dressed in silver. He threatens to take over the lease on the Saturn, causing Max to have a heart attack and his shitty nephew Sammy (Miles Chapin, THE FUNHOUSE) to kiss Beverly’s ass. (read the rest of this shit…)

August 3rd, 2023 | 11 Comments »

Risky Business

August 5, 1983

RISKY BUSINESS is a teen sex comedy best remembered for the scene where Tom Cruise in tighty-whiteys dorkily dances around his living room to one of the least cool songs of the era. But put that out of your mind because the overall style and feel of this movie is one of severe coolness. It’s the only horny teen movie I’ve seen that feels kinda like a distant relative to AMERICAN GIGOLO and AFTER HOURS.

That may largely come down to the score by Tangerine Dream (whose previous movie scores were SORCERER, THIEF, STRANGE BEHAVIOR, THE SOLDIER, and WAVELENGTH), on top of strong work by cinematographers Bruce Surtrees (DIRTY HARRY, THE OUTFIT, WHITE DOG) and Reynaldo Villalobos (URBAN COWBOY), production designer William J. Cassidy (ROCKY, CARNY, ROCKY III) and editor Richard Chew (THE CONVERSATION, STAR WARS). But it also has a different tone and attitude than similar movies of the era. Although writer/director Paul Brickman’s previous screenwriting credits were THE BAD NEWS BEARS IN BREAKING TRAINING and HANDLE WITH CARE, this was his first time directing, and he was welcomed as an exciting new voice. Variety’s review compared the movie to “a promising first novel,” and Roger Ebert wrote that it had earned comparisons to THE GRADUATE. (read the rest of this shit…)

August 2nd, 2023 | 39 Comments »

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