Category: Uncategorized

The Long Road Home

We had a very nice visit with my wife’s family, and then a not-so-pleasant journey home. We stayed in a really beautiful old log cabin on the east side of Nashville, Tennessee. The plan was to come home on Friday. The journey should have taken us just under 10 hours. I told everybody that I was setting my alarm for 8 in the AM, and that I wanted to leave no later than 10, but that I’d really like to leave earlier than that.

I looked my brother-in-law, who lives in Nashville and thus was staying at his home rather than the cabin, dead in the eye and reiterated my morning plans. He said that was no problem, they lived but five minutes away and would be there by 9 in the morning.

The alarm went off at 8. We got up, showered, dressed, and had breakfast. I loaded the car. We were ready by nine. Paul and his family were not there. We waited. We talked to my wife’s parents. We waited some more. We did one last walk-through to find anything left behind. We waited even more.

Finally, at 9:40 Paul showed up. And his son. But not his other son or his wife. She was in the shower, he said. I knew that meant at least another twenty minutes. We waited some more. At 10 I said we should go outside and wait. I figured we’d eventually get tired of standing by the car and then get in and go. At 10:20 this finally happened. As we were driving down the long driveway we saw the others pulling in. We said our goodbyes through the windows and we were off. I did the mental calculations, readjusting my time frame for being half an hour late. I figured we could make up the time during meals.

Not five minutes into the drive and my daughter says she doesn’t feel good. She needs to stop. I try to assess if it is an emergency – if I need to pull over or if she can wait until an exit, but get an evasive response. I pull off at the next exit. As I’m waiting for the green light to turn left into the gas station the first eruption occurs. The girl is throwing up in the back seat. Just as I’m turning she does it again.

Bless her ever-loving heart, when she’s done she apologizes to me. I tell her everything is ok, that daddy will take care of it. Luckily she had a blanket covering her lap so most of her clothes are still clean. She got a little on her sweater and I get her mother to take her inside to clean her up and get some water. I’m on car clean-up duty. It was gross. There was vomit in the carpet, vomit on the back of the seat, and vomit on the door. There was vomit pooled up on the door handle, seeping down into the window control. It was everywhere. It smelled very bad. I had to hold my breath to keep from vomiting myself.

But I didn’t. I cleaned it all up. The girl got cleaned up too. With all of that out of her system, she was feeling better. I could tell because she was back to laying down the sarcasm.

Back on the road, the travel went smoothly. There was a little rain and a bit of traffic. Both of which caused me to drive slower than I wanted to but that was ok.

Then we stopped for lunch. The wife wanted Chik-Fil-A which I thought was a bad idea. That restaurant is always crowded at lunch. I knew it would be in Jackson because we used to live near there and that particular store was a nightmare at lunch. Still, we stopped. Of course, it was crazy crowded. We opted for the drive-through. They screwed up our order, but we got it fixed. Then we drove to a Home Depot parking lot to eat. At least the food was good. Getting back on the Interstate took twenty minutes because of traffic.

The road was once again fairly easy. The rain had let up, but the traffic had not. But we made it to Russelville, Arkansas without incident. We stopped at a Wendy’s inside a gas station for supper. They were out of grilled chicken for the salads my wife and daughter wanted. The daughter won’t eat anything else at Wendy’s. We waited fifteen minutes for that to cook. I had to interrupt some storytelling by Wendy’s employees to remind them that we had ordered food and still wanted to eat it.

Back on the road, we made it to Oklahoma. The daughter needed a bathroom break and we opted for Braums (a local burger and ice cream joint) instead of a gas station, figuring the restrooms would be cleaner. And while we were there milkshakes seemed to be in order. Especially after that long, lousy ride.

Friends, they were understaffed and busy at the drive-through. The lady said it would be “a while” for our milkshakes so we left without anything sweet to eat.

A sad end to a sad drive. But an hour later we were home. It took us 12 hours and change.

Christmas Eve Gift

I grew up in a small town. Most of my mother’s family lived in that same small town. On Christmas Eve we would gather with the aunts, uncles, and cousins and Grandma and Papa’s house. We had this tradition where if you were the first person to say “Christmas Eve Gift” to someone else then that person had to buy you a special present. Except we never did abide by the gift-giving aspect of that tradition. It was really about bragging rights about “beating” that person that year.

I have very fond memories of arriving at Grandma’s house early and then hiding behind the door or behind the couch and then jumping out at my aunts and uncles when they arrive shouting gleefully “Christmas Eve Gift.” We got so into this game that my mother would answer the phone (and this was before cell phones and caller ID) with the aforementioned phrase just in case it was someone in the family. No doubt surprising many salesmen in the process.

To this day I still play the game with my mother. It is much more difficult now that she knows who is calling. One year I saw that she had sent me a text (this was before I had a smartphone that showed me what the text said on my home screen) but instead of reading it, I sent her one saying that I didn’t know what she had just texted me but that I wished her a very merry Christmas Eve Gift.

This morning I printed out a large note that read:

I have my phone on silent so I cannot hear your voice, so Christmas Eve Gift!

Then I Facetimed her with video on and put the camera up to the note.

And to you my dear friends and readers I wish to you a very merry Christmas Eve Gift and a very Happy Christmas and a super joyful whatever you celebrate.

I will not be posting anything for the next few days as I’m taking some time off to spend with my family. Be well everybody and listen to some good music.

Confess, Fletch (2022)

confess fletch

I’m weird when it comes to comedies. With some exceptions, I don’t really like straight-up comedies. I find movies and TV shows that throw a million jokes at the wall hoping something will stick rather boring. I want a good story with good characters doing interesting things. I want the comedy to come naturally out of those characters and stories. Make me laugh, but do it without sacrificing your story.

I absolutely loved Fletch (1985) when I was in high school. It does technically have a story, but it is often sacrificed to Chevy Chase’s antics. Those antics won me over, as did a whole lot of very funny dialogue. Truth be told some of that love really came from a youth minister from Arkansas. He loved Fletch more than just about anything and he was constantly quoting it. I thought he was one of the coolest guys in the world and so his love of the film translated into me loving it.

I’ve not actually seen Fletch in many years, probably decades. So I have no idea if I would still find it funny. The movie is based on a book by Gregory MacDonald. I’ve read that plus a couple more in the Fletch series, and quite liked them. But it has been quite a few years since I cracked those pages, too.

That is a long build-up to say I absolutely loved Confess, Fletch. It was and is and forever shall be right up my alley.

Jon Hamm is perfect as IM Fletcher a former investigative reporter “of some repute” who now writes fluff pieces for travel magazines. He returns to Boston after spending several years in Europe to find a dead woman in the living room of the house he’s renting. He spends the rest of the film trying to solve the murder much to the chagrin of the two actual police detectives assigned to the case (Ron Wood, Jr. and Ayden Mayeri).

Along the way, he runs into a cavalcade of interesting characters (played by an incredible cast of actors including Kyle MacLachlan, John Slattery, and Marcia Gay Harden).

Though it involves a murder the stakes are quite low, the suspense light. It feels like a hangout movie where Fletch keeps running into people, says funny things, and tries to solve a murder. Hamm is so good. I was a big fan of Mad Men and it is absolutely astonishing to me that the actor who was so deadly serious in that, is so goofy here (and in many other roles since that show ended.)

Everything about this movie worked for me. It is a delight. It is very silly and full of jokes, but they don’t get in the way of the story. They feel natural to the character of Fletch and everything that is happening. It isn’t really realistic, but it works within the story the film is telling.

The worst part of the film is that the studio that funded it did absolutely nothing to support it. The film opened in theaters with basically no advertisements and now it has been unceremoniously dropped onto Showtime’s streaming service. I won’t say that it would have been a huge hit had it gotten a little support but it would have at least been seen by a few people. As it is I suspect most of you reading this have never even heard of it.

Emma. (2020)

emma

I have reluctantly become a Jane Austen fan. Or I should say I’ve reluctantly become a fan of the movies based on Jane Austen novels because I’ve still never actually read one of her books. My wife is a very big fan of her books, so I’ve tried to read them many times, but can never make it very far. It seems to me her stories are all about middle-class girls who spend their days feeling miserable because they can’t find a man to marry. That sort of thing has never appeared to me.

Or so I used to think. Over the last few years, I’ve watched several Austen adaptations with my wife and I find myself enjoying them. It started with the long mini-series adaptation of Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth and moved on from there.

Emma. is a recent adaptation of the Austen novel with the same name (well, I don’t think she included a period after the name, but that’s a little wink the film likes to do at its audience). It is a winking type of film that stars a delightful Anya Taylor-Joy as the titular character and it is full of bright, confections that are a joy to watch.

You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.

X (2022) & Pearl (2022)

xpearl

When I wrote about House of the Devil (2009) I indicated that I watched it because I’d heard good things about these two films which were also directed by Ti West. Well, I finally got around to watching them, and I’m glad I did.

Much like House of the Devil, X is an homage to gritty 1970s horror. It is more influenced by rural terror films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Last House on the Left (1972) than the occult slasher that so influenced Devil.

The plot involves a group of young filmmakers who head off to a secluded Texas farm to produce a pornographic film. It takes place in 1979 when hardcore films had obtained a certain amount of mainstream success. But that success doesn’t lead to acceptance in rural Texas which is why the producer Wayne (Martin Henderson) didn’t bother to tell the elderly couple (Stephen Ure and Mia Goth under a lot of prosthetics and makeup) what they were planning to do. That will come to haunt (and murder) them later in the film.

But much like House of the Devil, X takes its time getting to the overt violence and gore. X is a lot more fun, and funny. Shooting the porn scenes creates a lot of humor. Mia Goth (without the prosthetics) plays Maxine, an exotic dancer who thinks this film will make her a star. Brittany Snow plays Bobby-Lynne, an old pro at pornographic movies. She has no aspirations of being a mainstream star, but would really like to make enough money to buy a house with a pool.

There is one scene in which Bobby-Lynne is performing with Jackson Hole (Kid Cudi) and he says something that makes her genuinely laugh. The film’s director RJ (Owen Campbell) – who thinks of himself as some low-budget, arthouse auteur – zooms in on Bobby-Lynnes’s laughing face. It is perhaps the only authentic bit of acting she’s ever done. The moment Bobby-Lynne realizes the camera is capturing her laugh, she immediately switches to porn-actress mode and makes the requisite “oohs” and “ahhs.”

There’s also the producer of the movie Wayne (Martin Henderson) who is attempting to cash in on the adult film craze of the moment, and the boom mic operator Lorraine (Jenna Ortega) who is also RJ’s girlfriend and had no idea they were making a porno.

I enjoyed the slower moments much more than I did the graphic violence. Once the blood-letting began the film became a lot less interesting to me.

Pearl is a prequel to X which acts as an origin story to the old lady who does most of the murdering in that film. She’s Pearl of the title and is again played by Mia Goth, but without the old age makeup. She grew up on that same farm. Her father has been paralyzed by the Spanish Flu and her domineering mother (Tandi Wright) constantly criticizes her. Pearl loves the movies and dreams of being a star.

Where X was shot like a gritty 1970s horror movie, Pearl is made like a 1940s melodrama with some classic musicals for inspiration, too. It is full of big, bright colors, and there are a couple of wonderful fantasy sequences.

It also feels completely unnecessary. I was reminded of The Conjuring Universe where you have the main movies and then there are all these side stories where relatively unimportant objects in the main movies get their own films. Pearl is a prequel that no one would have asked for.

But it kind of works. It is well-made and entertaining. Mia Goth is magnificent. But I doubt I’ll ever watch it again, whereas I’ll most likely watch X many more times in the future.

Shenandoah (1965)

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I liked all kinds of movies, all sorts of different genres. I’ve recently come to really love old westerns. But sometimes Westerners are hard to watch through modern eyes. Their treatment of Native Americans is shoddy at best, and racist at worst. Shenandoah does ok by Indians, but its treatment of the Civil War and slavery is a little muddy.

I try very hard in this blog to not get political. I have political opinions, of course, but I want this site to be a place where all sorts of views can come and enjoy what I have to offer. This was especially true when I was just sharing live music. But now that I’m writing more reviews some politics will inevitably slip in. It is difficult to review certain types of art without letting some political opinions in. But I’ll try to keep it to a minimum.

That being said there are certain opinions that I will let out proudly. I think it is pretty safe to say that slavery was bad. It was a great evil in this country. That’s not controversial, and if you want to argue that point then you can just see yourself out.

A lot of westerns are set during the Civil War. Very few of them are pro-slavery, but their treatment of that institution, and of black people in general, can be suspect. The older I get the more difficulty I have watching Civil War movies that make folks fighting for the Confederacy into heroes. I know not everyone who fought for the South owned slaves or was particularly pro-slavery. Lots of young men fought for the South because that was their patriotic duty, many probably had no opinion on slavery whatsoever.

I don’t want to get too far into the weeds with this. Shenandoah is a pretty good movie starring James Stewart. He plays a character who wants nothing to do with the war. He has no love for slavery, but neither will he lift a hand to help fight against it. My review wrestles with what to do with a character like that. It is something I wrestle with every time I watch a movie with outdated stereotypes. Sometimes I love the movie, but it is difficult to parse that with the way the movie handles certain issues.

Anyway, you can read my review here.

Alien Nation (1988)

alien nation

It is interesting to me how there are movies that exist in my memory banks that I haven’t actually seen. What I mean is that there are some films that came out when I was young that were part of our collective culture. Maybe they were big box office successes, or maybe they were endlessly discussed in the media, or maybe they were just talked about over and over with my friends. Many of these films were actually watched by me, but some of them weren’t. Yet because they were discussed in my culture and clips were viewed in various TV shows, it feels like I’ve seen them.

Alien Nation was one such film. It is possible that I actually did watch it at some point, but I don’t have any specific memory of watching it and I couldn’t remember a single plot point as I watched it yesterday. The movie did spawn a short-lived television series so it is possible that I watched some of that. What I do remember is how the aliens looked with their big, bald heads, and the basic buddy cop banter the two leads regularly engaged in.

Within this world, an alien spaceship landed on Earth sometime in the recent past. It was filled with a race of aliens that were bred by another, unseen race of aliens, as a slave class. These aliens are known as “Newcomers” by polite society and “Slags” by the less polite. The world’s governments have decided to welcome Newcomers and the United States has made them citizens. However, a great many humans are disturbed by the Newcomers. They are disgusted by the way they look, what they eat, how they get drunk on sour milk, and don’t always speak good English, etc. Often Newcomers have to take lowly jobs and they tend to be poor and often live, grouped together in run-down sections of the city.

The metaphor is not hard to understand. The film is not too subtle in this regard. The Newcomers are stand-ins for any number of minorities and immigrants that have historically been mistreated over the years.

In the film, James Caan plays Det. Matthew Sykes, is good at his job, if a bit old-school at it, and quite bigoted towards the Newcomers. But when his partner is killed by some Newcomers he agrees to take newly promoted Newcomer Sam Francisco (one of the films recurring gags is that humans got bored naming so many Newcomers when they arrived that they started giving them joke names – Har Har). He’s played by the always wonderful Mandy Patinkin.

Naturally, over the course of the investigation, Sykes learns to respect and even care for his partner and thus learns the important lesson that racism is bad.

As I said the messaging is really heavy-handed. The Newcomers have a distinctive look (which basically amounts to some prosthetic headgear) and are given a few distinguishing traits like getting drunk on sour milk and eating uncooked meat, but the film doesn’t delve very deeply into who they are.

Mostly the film is a typical 1980s buddy-cop action flick with an alien as the straight-laced foil to the wild, no-nonsense partner. It more or less works as that. I have great nostalgia for those types of films and this one landed neatly in that category. It disappoints because it could have been so much more interesting, but if you take it for what it gives, it isn’t bad.

Murder, He Says (1945)

murder he says

The Criterion Channel is featuring a number of lesser-known screwball comedies, and I randomly picked out this one to watch this afternoon.

Fred MacMurray stars as Pete Marshall who works for the Trotter Poll company, which he says is the “same as the Gallup Poll, only we’re not in as much of a hurry.” He’s polling people in rural areas to see how they live in modern life. One day he comes across a redneck family called the Fleagles. Ma Fleagle (Marjorie Main) carries with her a bullwhip which she uses to keep her twin boys Mert and Bert (Peter Whitney) in line and to catch flies. The boys tend to carry shotguns and aren’t afraid to “splatter” folks who come around getting nosey with it.

As it turns out Bonnie Fleagle (Barbara Pepper) robbed a bank some time ago and left $70,000 stashed away somewhere before she got hauled off to jail. She’s not too keen on the rest of the Fleagle clan and has not told any of them where the money is hidden. She did tell Grandma Fleagle the secret, but she ain’t talking.

Grandma is close to dying and her head ain’t screwed on so good so they figure Pete can pretend to be Bonnie’s boyfriend and get the secret out of her. What she tells him is pretty cryptic and doesn’t make much sense, and she’d only tell it to him when the rest of the family was out of earshot.

Just as the family is trying to get the secret out of Pete a woman claiming to be Bonnie shows up. She’s really Helen Walker (Claire Matthews) and she has her own reasons for wanting to get that money.

There is also Mr. Johnson (Porter Hall), Ma Fleagle’s third husband who is a scientist working with some experimental radioactive materials which makes people (and dogs) glow in the dark.

Like all screwball comedies Murder, He Says is very silly. At times it is also very funny, but mostly it stays in the entertaining and silly category. Fred MacMurray is always fun to watch and Marjorie Main is a hoot. The gags come fast, and the plot doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it is quite enjoyable.

It makes for a perfect Sunday afternoon movie which is just how I watched it.