Greedy People (2024)

poster

There is a lot of the Coen Brother’s filmography, especially Fargo, nesting inside of Greedy People. What with the violence in a small town, quirky characters, dark humor, inept burglars, and folksy musical choices. But the film can’t quite pull off that perfect Coen mix to make it more than just mild entertainment.

The script is full of characters with odd-ball quirks, but it rarely seems to know what to do with them, or how to make them actual fleshed-out people. In a similar manner the story is full of interesting incidents – some violent, some funny – but it never merges into a cohesive whole. Still, it is quite entertaining and very enjoyable to watch.

Will Shelley (Himesh Patel) has just graduated from the police academy and has moved his very pregnant wife Paige (Lily James) to a small, island community off the coast of South Carolina. A place he hopes will be a peaceful place to raise a family.

His smart, and gentle boss Captain Murphy (Uzo Aduba) assigns Officer Terry Brogan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), affable, abrasive, and redneck to the core, to show Shelley the ropes. Brogan has a few rules every cop should live by. The first of which is “Don’t kill anybody unless you have to.” Because it gets “messy.” Also, you should get a hobby because this is a small town and the job is boring.

Mostly Brogan shows Shelley where to get free coffee and doughnuts. Then he decides to stop by his married girlfriend’s house for some afternoon delight, leaving Shelley to wait in the cruiser. When a call comes in for what Shelley believes is an in-progress burglary he honks the horn at Brogan and then heads to the scene without him.

To say things go bad would be an understatement. He accidentally discharges his weapon when the homeowner (Traci Lords) surprises him. When she defends herself the ensuing tussle finds her dead, having fallen on a table loging a piece of it into her skull.

Brogan shows up, and they both freak out, but when they find $1 million in cash inside a box, they come up with a plan. Make it look like a robbery gone bad and they can keep the money.

To say things only get worse from there would be yet another understatement.

It is all very Coen-esque. Like the Coens the film is not afraid to get real dark, but it is also quite funny and enjoyable to watch. But unlike the Coen Brothers movies, this doesn’t have a lot of depth to it. It feels too scripted.

For example, Brogan’s hobby is listening to CDs to learn Mandarin Chinese. He, very adeptly, says something in that language and when asked what it means he notes it means “I speak fluent Chinese.” He’s learning the language because his girlfriend is Chinese. A guy as dumb and redneck as Brogan is learning to speak fluent Chinese is funny and quirky, but I’m not sure how realistic it is.

So much of the movie is like this. Characters are given quirks which gives the film character, but it all feels scripted. You can feel the writing in it. The plot is similar. This woman accidentally gets killed on Shelley’s first day. There happens to be a million dollars lazily stashed in a basket. The dead lady’s husband (Tim Blake Nelson) just happened to have hired a hitman to kill his wife on the same day Shelly accidentally did the deed. There are apparently two competing hitmen on this small island and they are easy to contact. Etc. There are a lot of coincidences and oddities that are completely unrealistic.

Still, the performances are good. Gordon-Levitt is excellent at switching from goofball to menacing villain from one minute to the next. Lilly James isn’t given much for her character to do but she makes it her own. Etc.

Call it Coen Brothers-lite. Call it pretty good.

9 To 5 (1980)

9 to 5 movie poster

I really should come up with a catchy name for this series (the one where I’m watching one movie from every year that I’ve been alive, in chronological order), but I can’t think of anything. I’ve been using a website/app called Track to help me finds movies to watch for this series. Basically, I use it to sort movies by year and then scroll down through that list until I find something that both looks interesting and that I haven’t seen. They automatically sort their movies by some sort of popularity rating so I usually have to scroll down for a bit before I find films that I haven’t seen before. After that I’ve generally been able to find something interesting, some film I’ve been meaning to watch, and plug it in.

For whatever reason, I really struggled to find something for 1980. I’ve seen a lot of films from that year and the ones I haven’t mostly looked uninteresting. It didn’t help that my wife was hanging out in the living room where I was preparing to watch a film. She wasn’t necessarily looking to watch a movie with me, she was doing some hand-sewing and that’s just where she was sitting. But that did mean she would be there with me as I watched a movie, which means that she would not be interested in me watching certain types of films, like horror.

Eventually, I landed on 9 to 5, and it turns out I rather liked it. It is a film that I was very aware of growing up, but for one reason or another, I never sat down and watched it. I was only four years old when it came out so I clearly wasn’t going to see it in the theater, or really even be aware of its existence. I’m thinking it must have played regularly on some cable TV stations throughout the 1980s because I really do have strong memories of knowing about it. Certainly, I loved the Dolly Parton song. I figure a movie about three working women fighting against their sexist boss had little appeal to me as a young teenager. Then, later, when something like that might have appealed to me a little more, the movie had lost its cultural cache. It isn’t a film you really hear about anymore.

So, Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin, and Jane Fonda play the three working girls. They are employed at some giant conglomerate with thousands of employees. Their boss is played by Dabney Coleman. He is a sexist pig. He constantly makes advances toward his secretary (Parton) or positions himself to look down her top. He steals ideas from Tomlin’s character and presents them as his own, all the while passing her up for promotions (and giving less experienced men the jobs). Fonda is a recently divorced housewife who has just gotten a job in the secretarial pool. Coleman hardly gives her a glance.

For the first act things are played pretty straight with these women being mistreated on the job and having no real recourse to put things straight. Then things go really sideways and they find themselves back at Fonda’s house drinking themselves silly, smoking a little pot, and dreaming of what they’d really like to do to the boss.

From here the film turns into a straight-up farce. We are treated to three very silly fantasy sequences showing what the ladies would like to do to the boss. Then they kidnap him and take over the company (they pretend the boss is still working by conveniently having him step out of the office whenever anyone needs to see him and forging his signature on lots of company memos).

It is all pretty ridiculous and silly, and sometimes quite funny. My wife really seemed to enjoy herself, while I mostly just lightly chuckled. It is very much a movie of its time and it is interesting to think about how different films of different eras handle things like sexism in the workplace.

I have a hard time with big, broad comedy and that’s mostly what you get here. The three leads are very good (this was Dolly’s first big chance to show she had acting chops and she nails it). Dabney Coleman is great as the guy you love to hate. Again, my wife laughed herself silly, and I’m sure many others did as well. It was a big hit when it came out. I’m just weird when it comes to comedy.

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982)

dead men don't wear plaid poster

I first learned of Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid inside a little video rental store. The VHS had a cool cover with Steve Martin on the front aiming a gun at the audience, a plaid outline behind him. This would be the late-ish 1980s and Steve Martin was a huge star. I was a young teen and loved Martin in movies like Three Amigos (1986), Roxanne (1987), and The Man With Two Brains (1983). I immediately picked the VHS up and talked my mother into renting it.

We took it home and I popped it in the VCR and pressed play. I was immediately disappointed. It was in black and white. I hated black-and-white movies. Or I thought I did. I’d never actually seen one. But black and white movies were old and old was bad. At least that’s what I thought back then anyhow.

I watched for maybe ten minutes then turned it off in disgust.

Many years later, when I learned that there are, in fact, many really great movies in black and white, I decided to give it another spin. I was definitely a classic movie fan by then, but just a beginner. I knew actors like Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Vincent Price. I’d seen a few film noirs but was by no means an expert.

The film is a homage to the classic film noirs of the 1940s. Through trick editing, it intercuts the new story with clips from 19 classic films. It does this surprisingly well.

Steve Martin plays Rigby Reardon a private investigator who is hired by Juliett Forest (Rachel Ward) to investigate the murder of her father. During the investigation, he comes across a large crowd of interesting characters, which is where the classic films come in.

Sometimes Reardon will call someone on the telephone and it will be Humphrey Bogart from The Big Sleep (or some other classic film star in a classic movie) who will answer. The dialog is cut as if Reardon is talking to Phillip Marlowe. Other times he’ll meet up with someone and it will be Veronica Lake in The Glass Key (or some other classic film star in a classic movie). In these instances, the film will sometimes use an extra dressed like the classic film actor, shot from behind, so that they can interact with Reardon in a more realistic way. It is all done cleverly and that makes it a really fun watch.

The great Edith Head (in her last film) did the costumes and she did an amazing job matching everything up. Ditto the lighting and staging and everything.

The film was co-written (with Steve Martin) by Carl Reiner, and it was directed by him as well. Reiner is a vaudevillian at heart and this is very much in Martin’s very silly stage (long before he started writing for the New Yorker and Broadway). I have to admit I’m not a big fan of that style of comedy. It is too jokey for me.

It is also a bit cringe. There is an ongoing joke where Reardon feels Juliet Forest’s up, caressing her breasts because they were knocked out of place during a scuffle. Or another time Reardon gives Juliet a kiss when she has passed out. There are quite a few dumb gags like that that play very differently now.

I am now a very big fan of classic movies and film noir in particular. I’ve seen more than half the films included inside this movie and so all of that stuff was really quite delightful. It is very well done; clearly, the filmmakers are very big fans of classic movies.

Mapp & Lucia: The Complete Collection

mappand lucia

I’m a sucker for British television. The wife and I usually subscribe to Acorn or Britbox – both streaming services focus on British shows. They make great murder mysteries, crime dramas, and comedies. British comedy is its own genre. It is so very different than American comedic sensibilities.

Mapp & Lucia is a very British comedy. I loved it when I reviewed the series out on DVD back in 2014.

Awesome ’80s In April: Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)

desperately seeking susan movie poster

I feel like I’m going to spend the first few paragraphs of every review I write for this Awesome ’80s in April segment discussing the various memories I have associated with each film. I really had no idea these movies would bring back such memories, but here we are.

If you didn’t live through the 1980s it is hard to explain just how big of a star Madonna was. She was everywhere. She had a ton of radio hits that were in constant rotation on the airwaves. She made great videos that were repeatedly playing on MTV. She was on magazine covers and on talk shows. Madonna and Michael Jackson were the 1980s.

Desperately Seeking Susan was her first film role. She’s basically playing herself. Or at least the public persona she was presenting at the time. She’s the Susan of the title, a free spirit, punk rock sort of girl. We first meet her at a hotel where she’s just spent a free night of spirit-making with a mobster. Right after she leaves some other mobsters throw that guy out the window. Thinking she might be a testifying witness, mobster Wayne (Will Patton) spends the film looking for her to rub her out.

But first, we meet Roberta Glass (Roseanna Arquette) a bored, middle-class housewife who spends her days getting her hair done and reading the personal ads. She’s intrigued by one that says “Desperately Seeking Susan” and lists a time and a place to meet. She’s seen similar ads before and figures Susan and the desperate guy must meet regularly via the personals.

She thinks that’s romantic and decides to go to Battery Park and spy on the lovebirds. Through a series of rather silly events Roberta is mistaken for Susan and due to a bout of amnesia she winds up thinking she’s Susan too.

She meets a nice guy, Dez (Aidan Quinn) and they get into a series of adventures together. Meanwhile, the real Susan is looking for Roberta because she’s got the key to the storage locker where she’s got all her stuff. (The key was accidentally left in her jacket pocket which she sold to a thrift store and Roberta purchased after Roberta followed Susan around the city – I told you things got silly).

The plot isn’t really the point of this movie. It is something like a modern take on the classic screwball comedy. It wanders around some cool old sections of New York City and meets some wonderful characters (played by a who’s who of just getting their start New York actors including Laurie Metcalf, Stephen Wright, Jon Turturro, and Giancarlo Esposito).

Madonna is great in it. She really does seem to be playing herself, or to put it another way, this role feels like it was made specifically for her (though it wasn’t she had to beat out such wonderful actors as Goldie Hawn, Susan Sarandon, and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Her wardrobe is full of that classic early ’80s New York City style that Madonna was famous for.

Arquette is great as well. It is really her movie and it follows her character as she changes from this bored housewife who is just going through the motions to someone finding her own sense of style and self. Madonna gets lauded for having her own unique sense of self, but Arquette holds her own. She’s such a unique performer.

Desperately Seeking Susan is another film that I’ve known about since it came out. It has been on my list of things to watch for ages, but for whatever reason, I never got around to it. The film is really fun, silly, and full of style. It is a time capsule of New York City as well and works as a perfect embodiment of the 1980s.

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.

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.

The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)

fearless vampire killers

Originally written and posted on November 25, 2006.

I’ve knocked off the “mini” in my mini movie review titles. I figure you guys can figure out it is “mini” by the length. The original description was really to designate a difference between my full-on, very well-written pieces and the smaller, quickly put-together reviews. The small reviews are designed to give a quick opinion of the films I see, whereas the longer reviews are meant to be better written and give more insight. A small distinction I know. But you guys are smart, you’ll figure out the difference.

Roman Polanski is one of those directors that I know of, but don’t really know all that well. In fact, I’ve only seen three of his films (Chinatown, The Ninth Gate, and this one) so it is difficult to compare The Fearless Vampire Killers to his other works. I’ve also heard various things about this film ranging from absolutely brilliant to rather dull.

And that’s pretty much how I’d describe it. It is beautifully and carefully shot. The mountainous landscape is gorgeous (even if half of it is painted) and the village/castle scenes are marvelous. The juxtaposition of the whiteness in the snow and baths with the dark red blood is a wonder to behold. The camera moves like a dancer.

Yet I never really found it all that funny. Perhaps it is that the film was made in 1962 and I’m too young to ever really get it. Or perhaps it is too British for this dumb American to understand. Whatever the reasons, while much of it was rather silly and a bit of a goof I never found myself really laughing at the events onscreen.

All of this tended to make it a rather beautiful bore.

The plot is your basic gothic vampire tale. A Van Helsing-like vampire hunter enters a small eastern European village with his assistant. The lovely ladies begin winding up dead with two small holes in their necks. Being a comedy the two vampire hunters aren’t very good at vampire hunting and supposed hilarity ensues.

It is a film I won’t be watching again I suspect, but one I wouldn’t mind recommending as it is beautifully shot and the humor could befall someone with different sensibilities.

Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)

manhatan murder mystery

Originally written and posted on October 5, 2006.

I’ve been watching Woody Allen films lately and I don’t know how I missed so many of them. I mean how could I be thirty years old and never seen half of his oeuvre? I just don’t get it…I mean I used to watch his films on the USA network when I was a kid – Bananas (1971), Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask (1972), that one about the guy who takes a nap and wakes up a hundred years later and there’s no sex, and I loved them all. I used to stay up late and watch them with my dad. Then I just stopped. I mean I did watch Annie Hall (1977) of course, but so many others…I don’t know…they just slipped by. I think it was watching Deconstructing Harry (1997) that did it. That one…I don’t know it felt like an old man making dirty jokes for two hours…it sounded so good in the magazines, but…I don’t know I couldn’t take it. And then I decided I had seen all the Woody Allen I wanted to see. But now, lately, I’ve been watching the rest, and I can’t believe I ever stopped.

(So that was my written Woody Allen impression. It’s funny, maybe.)

Manhattan Murder Mystery isn’t top-notch Woody Allen, but it’s pretty stinking good. It is basically your classic murder mystery premise with Woody Allen jokes.

Woody plays Larry who is married to Diane Keaton who plays Carol. They live in Manhattan (and I know this sounds pretty much like every Woody Allen movie, but stay with me) and their kindly old neighbor dies. Carol is almost immediately suspicious because the dead woman’s husband, Paul (Jerry Adler), is too chipper too quickly after the death of his spouse.

Carol enlists her friend Ted (Alan Alda) for the conspiracy while Larry thinks they are both nuts. Carol and Ted get deeper and deeper into trying to see how Paul could have done it and eventually (of course) realize that their little game has more truth to it than they could imagine. Soon everybody is knee-deep in a real death plot and must find a way to not only catch a crook, but stay alive as well.

The plot could have easily been lifted from Agatha Christie or Nancy Drew or any other of the millions of murder mystery writers. There is nothing original in the idea, but Woody Allen pulls it off masterfully, mixing the comedy and mystery in equal parts all in breezy, completely enjoyable way.

It may not be his best work, but it sure is fun to watch.

Father’s Little Dividend (1951)

fathers little dividend poster

Like many of my generation, I am more familiar with the Steve Martin remakes of the Father of the Bride series than the original Spencer Tracy versions. The original is less flamboyant (there is no Martin Short counterpart), more realistic (the mother is not also pregnant), and more notable for its 1950s sensibility (Tracy is shocked – shocked – that his daughter would think of having a baby naturally) than its general film qualities.

It is a cute, well-made picture. The jokes are mostly funny, if not all that memorable or hilarious. The cast (including a very young Elizabeth Taylor) plays its parts well. The direction is adequate if again not all that memorable.

There are a couple of particularly lovely moments including a card game played while Elizabeth Taylor’s character bursting at the seams. She squeals at a lousy hand forcing a reaction out of everyone else as if she was having the baby on the table.

Overall, the picture is a harmless, enjoyable viewing, but nothing that will last much past the night. It’s the kind of movie to watch with your grandparents on a lazy Sunday afternoon that you can feel warm and pleasant after watching.