Category: Uncategorized

The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

the poseidon adventure

After writing all of the following out, I realized I had previously written a review of this film. I even edited it and made it public rather recently, and then promptly forgot I had done so. Rather than deleting what I’ve written here, I’ve decided to go ahead and post it. If you read the original review (which you can do here) you’ll notice my thoughts haven’t changed all that much.

I have a very distinct memory of watching this movie for the first time. My mother must have had some errands to run so she dropped me off at Grandma and Papa’s house. Flipping through the channels I landed on The Poseidon Adventure and was immediately entranced. I don’t remember how old I was, I must have been a young teen for I was old enough to appreciate the pretty actresses in their short shorts. But mostly I was there for the exciting adventure of it all.

I remember my mother returning to pick me up before the movie was over. She was a good mother, so instead of making me leave, she either stayed to finish it with me or returned later and took me home.

I’ve seen it a few times since that initial viewing and it never lives up to that original memory. I must have come to it part way through, on that first time watch because I’m always surprised at how long it takes to get to the crash. I’m also always surprised to see Leslie Nielson as the ship’s captain in a completely humorless role.

The basic plot involves an old cruise ship is completely overturned during a massive tsunami. A band of survivors must make their way up to the bottom of the ship where they hope to escape through the ship’s hull.

They are led by Reverand Scott (Gene Hackman) who has some radical ideas about God. He’s of the libertarian school of theology where you don’t pray to God for help, but rather He helps those who help themselves. There’s Ernest Borgnine as a hard-nosed New York City cop and his former prostitute wife (Stella Stevens), and Red Buttons as a love-lorn bachelor. Jack Albertson and Shelley Winters play an old married couple on their way to Jerusalem to see their new grandbaby, and Roddy McDowall is a waiter on board the ship. Two youngsters (Pamela Sue Martin and Robin Shelby) and the ship’s singer (Carol Lynley) round out our group of heroes.

Everyone is given very brief introductions with basic characterizations at the beginning of the film and they stick pretty closely to those types throughout the film but never really become fully fleshed-out people. Hackman’s preacher takes immediate charge demanding that everyone follow his lead to safety even though he really has no idea what he’s doing. Most of the named characters fall in line immediately, except for Borgnine’s cop, who constantly bickers and argues with him.

There are a lot of other characters, mostly extras, that don’t follow the preacher’s commands and naturally they all die horrible deaths. Most of the film has our heroes trying to escape from various perils – explosions, water sloshing in from the sea, fires, etc, etc, etc,. The big gag is that everything is upside down. Strangely the film doesn’t actually use this all that often. There is a funny scene in a bathroom with all the toilets in the ceiling and when the boat first overturns everyone is in a big ballroom and many people have to hold onto tables to keep from tumbling down to the ceiling. Red Buttons gets a kick out of the barbershop with its seat upside down, etc. But a big ship doesn’t lend itself to a lot of furniture or light fixtures that would make the gag even sillier. Mostly it is bit metal corridors and rooms full of pipes.

It does feel very much of its time now and again. The gang has to climb a giant Christmas tree in order to escape the ballroom and Hackman’s character tells the teenager and the former prostitute that they have to take off their gowns because they are too tight fitting to be able to climb easily in them. That might be true, but it is very cringe to hear a preacher telling these ladies to disrobe. Luckily the teenager has shorts on underneath, but the other lady has to put on her husband’s button-up shirt leaving her quite exposed. And the camera does seem to enjoy shooting them at low angles from behind. Interestingly the preacher doesn’t tell Shelley Winters (who was pretty heavyset at the time) to remove her gown. Everybody does get some big laughs in making fun of her size which seems particularly mean from this viewing.

It is still a fun film. The adventure is exciting and while the characters are played broadly you still feel for their predicament. The actors are mostly really good which allows them to feel more fleshed out than the script really allows for. It never quite lives up to my memory of watching it for the first time all those years ago, but then again, what does?

The Last of Sheila (1973)

the last of sheila

Rian Johnson listed this film as an influence on Glass Onion, his recent Knives Out sequel for Netflix (which is excellent, I highly recommend it) so I thought I’d give it a watch. Almost immediately the influences come flying right at you from the television screen.

The story involves a group of rich, beautiful, (mostly) young people who have found success in the movie industry. They’ve been invited by their friend Clinton (James Coburn) for a week aboard his yacht where he had prepared some delightfully complicated game.

The game involves revealing select secrets from each person (alcoholic, ex-convict, homosexual, child molester, etc) and will conclude with the revelation of who ran over Clinton’s wife one year prior and didn’t have the decency to stay with her and maybe call for help. Everyone more or less enjoys the game until someone actually dies and then it becomes a very real murder mystery.

Glass Onion is a lot bigger, a lot bolder, and a lot more fun, but The Last of Sheila is rather delightful in its own way. The cast includes James Mason, Ian McShane, Raquel Welch, and Dyan Cannon. It was shot on location in the Mediterranean. It was written by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins of all people.

Clinton is a movie producer and he has an idea bout making a movie about his dead wife’s life. He wants everyone he’s invited on the boat to help him make it. They, scriptwriters, directors, and actors all, desperately need him and this movie to help their sagging careers. It is full of twists and turns, mysteries and reveals. The cast is clearly having a good time.

It isn’t quite as punchy as I’d like it to be, and the direction by Herbert Ross never excites. He certainly doesn’t make great use of the beautiful setting. It feels very much of its time. One of the big secrets is the character is homosexual which wouldn’t be a big deal now, but in 1973 could be quite detrimental for a celebrity working in Hollywood. That is more scandalous within the film (as is being an alcoholic and a shoplifter) than the revelation that one of them is a child molester which is shrugged off by the characters and the film. But mostly the film is a lot of fun and if you liked Glass Onion I highly recommend it.

Anna Christie (1930)

anna christie

Greta Garbo was one of the biggest movie stars of the silent era. She had a mysterious, luminous on-screen persona. Despite this she, or perhaps the studios, were reluctant to bring her into the sound era. She was born and raised in Sweden and didn’t speak a word of English when she first came to the United States. By 1930 she was fluent in the language but still spoke with an accent, which no doubt created fears in everyone’s mind that audiences wouldn’t take to the actress once they could hear her talk.

If you’ve ever seen Singin’ in the Rain you’ll know what they were worried about.

The fears were unfounded for Anna Christie her first “talkie” movie was a rousing success and she remained one of the biggest box office stars for the next several years.

MGM played up Anna Christie by promoting it with the tagline “Garbo Talks” (nine years later they’d play with that tag when she made her first comedy, Ninotchka by promoting it with “Garbo Laughs”.) Her famous first line is “Gimme a whiskey, ginger ale on the side, and don’t be stingy, baby.”

For all that, the movie is actually kind of dull. Garbo plays the titular Anna who was abandoned by her father (George F. Marion) at a young age and sent to live with her cousins on their Minnesota farm. They abused her and she moved to St. Paul by herself where she became a prostitute. After a stint in a hospital, she moves back to New York in hopes her father will take her in and let her rest.

He does and they reconcile she meets a sailor and they fall in love. The big drama comes in whether or not these two men will still love her once they find out about her past. The ending is fairly typical for its time period but somewhat shocking as seen through modern eyes.

Garbo and the rest of the small cast are quite good. The story lacks any real emotional punch and the direction is mostly flat. There are a couple of interesting visuals including one scene on a roller coaster where the camera sits in the seat in front of Garbo looking back at her. The other gives us a bird’s eye view at one of those strongmen uses a hammer to ring a bell contraptions. But mostly the camera stays in fixed positions while the characters do a lot of talking. Presumably, the camera doesn’t move much because this is an early sound picture and they were afraid to much movement might hit a microphone or the characters might move to where the mic couldn’t hear them. Again if you’ve seen Singin’ in the Rain you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Actually, you’d be better off just watching Singin’ in the Rain again. Unless you are a big Garbo fan, this one is quite skippable.

The Christmas Haul

presents

Things have been a bit tight in the Brewster household this year. I own a construction business with my brother and father and with everything else going on in the world business has not been as robust as it has been in the past. We’re getting buy, but we’ve had to tighten our belts quite a bit. This meant a much smaller Christmas for everyone, especially me. The wife and I decided to forgo most of our gifts so that we could make Christmas a bit merrier for our daughter.

My mother-in-law did purchase me a fantastic Doctor Who set. They have slowly been putting out entire seasons of the Classic series on Blu-ray, loaded with extras, and as you can see I got the first season in which Colin Baker played The Doctor. He is not my favorite Doctor by a long shot, but I’m excited to add him to my collection.

She also bought me a really fabulous Omnibus collection of the Loan Wolf and Cub manga, but as it turns out, I already own a copy of that. Which is my own fault because I asked her to buy it for me. I keep a pretty large Amazon wish list and the manga was on it. What I had forgotten to do is remove it from that list when I purchased the manga for myself a while back. In fact, I had completely forgotten I owned it until I was randomly looking through the photos on my phone and happened to see a picture I had taken of it. Oh well.

While in Nashville we decided to visit McKays which is this amazing store that sells used books, music, movies and all sorts of other things. The wife and I decided to give ourselves a modest budget of $50 a piece to buy what we wanted.

I landed on a nice Georges Simenon short story collection of Maigret tales and two nice boxed sets of DVDs. I love me some Greta Garbo, and I’m a sucker for those old gangster movies. I’m looking forward to watching them all.

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.