Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee and several other services!
Let’s get back on the highway!
Episode 3.6 “Love At Second Sight”
(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on November 5th, 1986)
Jonathan and Mark are working as recreation directors at a retirement community and….
Again?
Actually, I can’t really remember if Jonathan and Mark have worked as a recreation director at a retirement community before but I do know that this is not the first time that they’ve been assigned to work at such a place. And, if I remember correctly, both Mark and Jonathan have been assigned to work as a coach at other places. In other words, Jonathan and Mark have a specific set of skills and they seem to center around athletics and the elderly.
Mark thinks that this assignment is going to be easy but then again, Mark thinks that about every assignment. He might have a point here as he and Jonathan are only supposed to be helping out another angel named Ted (John McLiam). Ted’s assignment is to help Roy (Harvey Vernon) and Laura (Martha Scott) fall in love and find happiness in their twilight years. The complication is that Laura is Ted’s widow! Ted doesn’t want to help his widow fall in love with another man so, instead, he goes out of his way to sabotage Roy and Laura’s relationship. In fact, Ted starts to romance Laura himself and even proposes marriage to her.
Jonathan confronts Ted and tells him that “the Boss” isn’t going to let this happen. Jonathan then takes Ted into the future, where he discovers that Laura has died of a broken heart and that their daughter, Margaret (Nana Visitor), is now heading in the same direction. Realizing that he was being selfish and that he has a responsibility to help Laura move on, Ted returns to the present and pretends to be a jerk and a conman so that Laura will fall out of love with him and instead fall in love with Roy. Ted even gets Roy to punch him so that Laura will be impressed with him. Back to the Future, anyone?
That’s the power of love!
I have two issues with this episode. The lesser of the two is that Ted pretending to suddenly be a jerk seems like the sort of thing that would make Laura even more hesitant about trusting another man as opposed to something that would automatically make her fall in love with Roy. However, my main issue with this episode is that it all felt very familiar. Last season, Jonathan was assigned to help his widow move on and he had mixed feelings about it. (As I would think any angel would.) This season, God gives the same assignment to another angel and again, it nearly backfires on everyone. It actually seems a bit mean-spirited on the part of the Boss to continually give this assignment to the very people that it would most hurt, though I understand that the idea is that Ted and Jonathan both needed to move on as well. That said, at no point does Jonathan say, “Hey, the exact same thing happened to me!” (This was a rare episode that Landon didn’t write so it’s always possible that the actual writer wasn’t aware that he was repeating a storyline from the show’s past.) This episode felt like a missed opportunity.
It’s hard to know where to really start with Megalopolis.
Directed, written, produced, and financed by Francis Ford Coppola, Megalopolis takes place in an alternate version of the United States of America. In this alternative world, New York is called New Rome and it is dominated by a handful of wealthy families. Former District Attorney Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) has been elected mayor. Everyone seems to hate Cicero and the character tends to come across as being a bit whiny so you really do have to wonder how he got elected in the first place.
Cicero is obsessed with the powerful Crassus-Catallina family, which is headed by banker Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight). Hamilton’s nephew is Cesar Catallina (Adam Driver), a brilliant architect who won a Nobel Prize for inventing a type of invisible material. Ever since Cesar’s wife vanished under mysterious circumstances, a cloud of scandal has hung over Cesar’s name and with that scandal has come popularity with both the masses and the tabloid press. When Cesar was tried for murder, the prosecutor was Franklin Cicero. Cesar was acquitted but he now spends his time drinking and mourning his wife. Cesar also has the power to stop time for everyone but him. Why he has this power and how he came to possess it is never made clear, though Cesar compares it to the way that a great painter or writer can capture one moment for eternity.
Cesar is driven through the rainy streets of New York by his chauffeur, Fundi Romaine (Laurence Fishburne). Fundi also serves as the film’s narrator, ruminating about how the Roman Empire eventually became a victim of its own decadence. Just in case the viewer somehow doesn’t pick up on the fact that the movie is comparing modern America to ancient Rome, Fundi informs us of this fact. Thanks, Fundi!
After Cesar publicly denounces Cicero’s plans to turn New Rome into a casino, Cicero’s daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) decides to take a break from decadent partying to follow Cesar around and try to discover whether or not he actually murdered his wife. Julia discovers that Cesar is not only still mourning his wife but she also witnesses him stopping time. Soon, Julia is working for Cesar’s design firm. At some point, she and Cesar become lovers.
Meanwhile, Cesar’s former lover, Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), has married Crassus and is plotting to take control of his bank. Working with Wow is Cesar’s buffoonish cousin, Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf), who organizes the angry citizens of New Rome into a mob that threatens the safety and power of both Cicero and Cesar. “Make Rome Great Again,” a sign reads at one of Clodio’s rallies, just in case anyone was missing Coppola’s point.
Clodio is obsessed with destroying Cesar. First, he frames Cesar for deflowering New Rome’s vestal virgin, the singer Vesta Sweetwater (Grace VanderWaal). Then, he sends a 12 year-old assassin after Cesar. Cesar fears that he’s lost his ability to stop time. Julia falls more and more in love with him. Cicero gets booed everywhere he goes and, after his fixer (Dustin Hoffman) is mysteriously killed, he finds himself helpless against Clodio’s mob. Can Cesar be convinced to abandon his self-pity long enough to stand up to Clodio?
And what about the Russian spy satellite that just crashed into New Rome? Who will rebuild the city?
And …. well, let’s just say that there’s a lot going on in New Rome.
Francis Ford Coppola originally came up with the idea for Megalopolis in 1977 and he spent decades trying to bring the film to the big screen. Eventually, Coppola ended up producing and financing the film himself. From 2023 to the the day of the film’s Cannes premiere, the trade papers were full of stories about how difficult the production had been, with the underlying theme being that everything was Francis Ford Coppola’s fault and that the movie would be an unmitigated disaster. (In the coverage found in both Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, there seemed to be a good deal of hostility directed at Coppola’s decision to work outside of the Hollywood system.) Disgruntled members of the crew complained that Coppola was an undisciplined director who spent most of the production high. A half-baked attempt to generate a #MeToo scandal around the film made it obvious that Coppola had burned a lot of bridges with both Hollywood and the media. The film was released to critical derision and poor box office returns. Coppola is 85 years old and it’s entirely possible that Megalopolis will be his final film.
Critics be damned, I liked the majority of Megalopolis. Though the film may be thematically and narratively incoherent, it is a feast for the eyes and it’s hard not to respect the fact that, in this age of overwhelming conformity, Coppola brought his own unique vision to the screen. There are a few moments of genuinely macabre beauty to be found in the film. When the Russian satellite crashes into New York, we don’t see the impact but, on the city walls, we do see the shadows of people screaming in fear. When a drunk Cesar is driven through New Rome, he sees gigantic statues stepping off of their bases and slumping to the ground, exhausted with being on display. Coppola films New Rome like a beautiful, open-air prison. It’s an amazing view but don’t even think about trying to escape. The scenes in New Rome’s Coliseum are filled with an epic yet seedy grandeur. At times, the film’s scenes seem to be almost randomly assembled, leaving us to wonder if we’re seeing the past, the present, or maybe just something that Cesar is imagining in his head.
What is the film actually about? It’s not always easy to say. Even in his best films, Coppola has had a tendency to be self-indulgent. Sometimes, that self-indulgence pays off. Though few would admit it now, The Godfather Part II is one of the most self-indulgent films ever made. But it’s also brilliant so it doesn’t matter. However, with Megalopolis, it’s hard not to feel that this film was such a passion project for Coppola that he didn’t stop to consider whether or not he really had anything new to say. Megalopolis is hardly the first film to compare the supposed decline of America to the fall of the Roman Empire. As much as I enjoyed the film’s visuals, I cringed at the film’s ending. One can only imagine how a past Coppola collaborator like John Milius would have reacted to a bunch of children reciting a pledge to take care of the “one Earth.”
It’s a random film, one in which plot points are raised and often quickly abandoned. At one point, Cesar starts to recite Hamlet’s famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy. The cast is huge and everyone seems to be acting in a different movie. Surprisingly enough, neither Esposito nor Adam Driver are particularly believable in their roles, though I think that has more to do with the film’s loose narrative structure than anything else. Shia LaBeouf is convincingly feral as Clodio while Jon Voight seems to be having fun as the wealthy and crude Crassus. The best performance in the film comes from Aubrey Plaza, who plays her role like a vampish femme fatale who has somehow found herself in a science fiction story. Plaza holds nothing back with her performance and she actually manages to bring some genuine human emotion to Coppola’s surreal epic.
Megalopolis is a monument to self-indulgence but it’s always watchable. Coppola may not know what he’s trying to say but he captures the surreal beauty that comes from getting trapped in one’s own imagination. Megalopolis is not a film for everyone but I’m glad it exists. At a time when artistic freedom seems to be under constant attack, it’s hard not to be happy that Coppola did things his way.
One of the ten films to be nominated for Best Picture of 1937, In Old Chicago tells the story of the O’Leary family.
When we first meet the O’Learys, they’re riding across the Illinois frontier in a covered wagon. After patriarch Patrick O’Leary (J. Anthony Hughes) is killed in a freak accident, Hazel O’Leary (Alice Brady) decides to settle in the bustling town of Chicago. Hazel and her three sons build a life for themselves in a poor, largely Irish neighborhood known as the Patch. Hazel makes a living as a laundress and soon, her home is big enough for her to take in a cow named Daisy. Better not put that lantern too close to Daisy, Mrs. O’Leary….
As for the O’Leary boys, they all build a life of their own in 19th century Chicago.
Free-spirited Dion (Tyrone Power) hangs out in the saloon owned by sinister Gil Warren (Brian Donlevy) and, to his mother’s consternation, he falls for a singer named Belle (Alice Faye). Eventually, Dion and Belle open up their own saloon and go into competition with Warren. Dion soon emerges as one of the leaders of the Patch, a rogue with a charming smile and zero ethics but a total love for his family.
The youngest, Bob (Tom Brown), falls in love with a German immigrant named Gretchen (June Storey). Bob asks Gretchen to marry him while Mrs. O’Leary’s cow stares straight at camera.
Finally, the oldest of the O’Leary boys is Jack (Don Ameche). Jack become a crusading lawyer and eventually, he runs for mayor on a reform ticket. With Dion’s help, Jack is able to defeat Gil Warren. But now that Jack is mayor, he immediately sets his sights on tearing down the Patch and, in his words, “starting over.”
In Old Chicago has a two-hour running time and a lot happens in those two hours. Not only is there all the drama between the brothers but also there’s a handful of production numbers featuring Alice Faye. (Considering that she’s performing at a saloon in the slums of Chicago, it’s impressive that Belle can put on such an elaborate show.) Of course, anyone with a knowledge of history knows that every minute of In Old Chicago is building up to the moment when Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicks over that lantern and all the wooden buildings in Chicago go up in flames. In Old Chicago is an early disaster movie and, talented cast aside, the main reason that anyone will be watching will be for the recreation of the Great Chicago Fire. As flames roar around them and cattle stampede through the streets, hundreds of extras run for their lives. As Alice Brady, Tom Brown, and Alice Faye stare off to the horizon, the city of Chicago explodes in front of them. Even today, the scenes of the city on fire are impressive.
As for the rest of the film, I enjoyed the melodramatic excess of it all. The stars weren’t exactly the most dynamic actors of the 1930s but Tyrone Power and Don Ameche were both handsome and likable enough to carry the film and it’s easy to see why In Old Chicago was, at the time of its production, the most expensive film ever made. It’s a big film, with ornate sets, hundreds of extras, and elaborate production numbers. It’s entertaining, even though I did occasionally find myself growing impatient as I waited for the fire to finally start burning.
One thing this film is not is historically accurate. Not only is it now generally agreed that Mrs. O’Leary’s cow was innocent of starting the fire but Mrs. O’Leary’s son was never mayor of Chicago. It is true that Chicago caught fire in 1871 and that the mayor turned to General Philip Sheridan (played here by Sidney Blackmer) for help in both putting out the fire and keeping order in the streets. For the most part, though, In Old Chicago is total fiction. That didn’t bother me but then again, I don’t live in Chicago.
In Old Chicago was nominated for Best Picture of the Year but lost to The Life of Emile Zola. However, Alice Brady won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
60 years ago today, the Cleveland Browns and the Green Bay Packers met in the 33rd Championship Game of the National Football League. The Packers were led by Vince Lombardi while the returning champions, the Browns, were coached by Blanton Collier and had all-star fullback Jim Brown on its offensive roster. The game was played at Lambeau Field in Wisconsin, in the middle of a snowstorm that soon turned the field into a mud pit. 50,777 fans showed up for the game, braving freezing weather and paying ten dollars per ticket. The Packers defeated the Browns, 23-12.
This game was significant for many reasons. It was the last NFL Championship Game to be played before the Super Bowl era. With the exception of that year’s Probowl, it was Jim Brown’s final game before he retired to concentrate on his acting career. It was Lombardi’s 3rd NFL Championship. (The next year, he would catch the Packers to victory at the first Super Bowl.)
It was also the first NFL title game to be broadcast in color. Airing on CBS and announced by Ray Scott, Ken Coleman, and Frank Gifford, the game was broadcast into American household in full, glorious color. It was both a worthy send-off to the Championship Game era and a welcome to the future of the NFL.
In January of 1961, Mad Magazine taught a nation of young readers how to cover their bets. With the magazine due to go to press before the results of the 1960 presidential election would be known, Mad Magazine #60 was published with a double cover.
25 cents was not only a cheap price to pay for Mad’s trademark humor and satire but it was also the price of an invaluable political lesson. Thank you, Mad Magazine!
It isn’t the past. It isn’t the present. It’s the future.
The moon has been colonized and, on Earth, the Mayflower II is preparing for its first international flight. It will be carrying passengers from Houston to the lunar station. Test pilot Ted Striker (Robert Hays) claims that the Mayflower II is not ready to make the trip but he’s been in the Ronald Reagan Hospital For The Mentally Ill ever since he had a nervous breakdown after losing his squadron during “the war.”
Aboard the Mayflower II is Ted’s ex-wife, Elaine (Julie Haggerty), and her new boyfriend, Simon (Chad Everett). Simon says the Mayflower II is in perfect shape but he also turns into jelly whenever things get too rough. Piloting the Mayflower II is Captain Clarence Oveur (Peter Graves) and waiting on the Moon is Commander Buck Murdock (William Shatner). The crew of the Mayflower II is going to have a tough flight ahead of them. Not only is the shipboard computer making plans of its own but one of the passengers (Sonny Bono) has a bomb in his briefcase. Also, Ted has broken out of the hospital and is on the flight, boring people with his long stories.
Every successful film gets a sequel and when Airplane! was a surprise hit in 1980, it was inevitable that there would be an Airplane II. Robert Hays, Julie Haggerty, Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, and Stephen Stucker all returned. Unfortunately, Jim Abrahams, the Zucker brothers, Robert Stack, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Leslie Nielsen did not. (The directors and Nielsen were all working on Police Squad and their absence is strong felt.) Airplane II recreates many of the same jokes as the first Airplane! but without the first film’s good nature or genuine affection for the disaster genre. Airplane! was made for the love of comedy. Airplane II was made for the love of money and, while there are more than a few amusing moments, the difference is obvious and there for all to see.
Not surprisingly, Airplane II is at its funniest whenever William Shatner is on screen. In the role of Bud Murdock, Shatner pokes fun at his own image and shows himself to be a good sport. He’s still not as funny as Leslie Nielsen or Robert Stack in the first film but that’s because, unlike Stack and Nielsen in their pre-Airplane! days, there had always been a hint of self-parody to Shatner, even in his most dramatic roles. If Stack and Nielsen shocked people by showing that they could do deadpan comedy, Shatner’s performance just confirmed what most suspected, that he had always been in on the joke. Still, he’s the funniest thing in Airplane II and, whenever I rewatch this movie, I am happy he was there.
Airplane II was a box office failure, which is why the world never got an Airplane III. Fortunately, the world did get Hot Shots and The Naked Gun.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Malibu CA, which aired in Syndication in 1998 and 1999. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!
Well, I guess it’s time to get back to reviewing this show….
Episode 1.22 “Mom’s Gift”
(Dir by Gary Shimokawa, originally aired on April 25th, 1999)
After using the money that their Dad gave them to buy themselves a Nintendo, Jason and Scott realize that they’ve forgotten to get a birthday gift for their mom. They panic, though I’m not sure why. Their mother is living in Saudi Arabia, with her new husband and his family. It’s time for Jason and Scott to admit that she no longer cares about them. And even if she is expecting a gift, it takes a while to ship something from California to Saudi Arabia. It’s not like she’s going to somehow know that they waited until the last minute. Stupid Jason! Stupid Scott!
Jason and Scott decide to make their mom a video tape of their lives in Malibu. (Yeah, guys, that’s a lot better than jewelry.) They invite Sam and Stads to share their favorite Scott and Jason memories and then both Murray and Traycee decide to get in on it as well and….
Yep, it’s a clip show.
Oh, clip shows! Every show, good or bad, has them. They’re cheap. They’re easy to produce. And they certainly are boring to watch. That’s especially true when the clips come from a show, like Malibu CA, that still hasn’t figured out what type of story it’s trying to tell. Hey, remember when Dennis Haskins ran for mayor of Malibu? Remember when Stads and Jason were briefly a couple? Remember when Scott and Sam were even more briefly a couple? This show was all over the place and the clips in this episode mostly serve to remind us that Malibu CA never really settled on a consistent tone.
Probably the most interesting thing about the clips was that they revealed that Sam and Stads used to actually have personalities beyond just being killjoys. When this show started, Stads actually had a sense of humor and Sam actually …. well, Sam never really had much of a personality but still, at least she used to do more than just sit in the background and comment on Murray’s weekly shenanigans. The clips also reminded us me that Jason and Scott used to both be sociopathic. Now, at least, Scott is vaguely responsible and level-headed. Jason, meanwhile, remains a douchebag.
Happy birthday, mom!
Oh well. What can you really say about a clip show? It’s so rare to see a good one. Even the clip show they did for The Office sucked. I guess I should be happy that this was the first episode of Malibu CA that I reviewed for 2025. The clips reminded me of why I was so happy to have an excuse to take a break from reviewing this stupid show but still, a clip show of Malibu CA is still less painful to review than an episode where you actually have to pay attention to the plot.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga opens with the sound of nervous Australian citizens and commentators, narrating us through the collapse of civilization. We hear about riots. We hear about the breakdown of civilization. We hear that people are literally running out of water.
It’s an effective opening but, for those of us who have seen the other movies set in the Mad Max universe, it also feels a bit redundant. We already know the story of how our world came to an end. Mad Max opened with society in its death throes. The Road Warrior and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome both took place a few years after the apocalypse, with the majority of humanity reduced back to a feral existence of scrounging and fighting to survive. Finally, Mad Max: Fury Road took place so far in the future that the only thing that really remained of the old ways were the cars and the guns that were obsessively cared for by the inhabitants of what was once Australia. (Not even the collapse of civilization could halt car culture.)
Furiosa opens 45 years after the apocalypse, with young Furiosa (Alyla Brown) living in the Green Place, one of the few areas of Australia not to be reduced to a waterless desert. When she’s kidnapped by Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) and the Biker Horde, she can only watch in horror as her mother (Charlee Fraser) is crucified by the Horde. Dementus, who was driven mad by the death of his own family, adopts Furiosa as his own and spends years hoping that she will lead him to the Green Place. Instead, Furiosa is eventually “traded” to Dementus’s rival, Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), and, under the tutelage of Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke), she eventually grows up to become both Anya Taylor-Joy and the fierce warrior who was at the center of Mad Max: Fury Road.
Like that opening montage of panicky voices describing the apocalypse, Furiosa is well-made but, narratively, it can feel a bit redundant. There’s really nothing major about Furiosa’s backstory that wasn’t previously revealed in Mad Max: Fury Road. Yes, we learn the exact circumstances of how she lost her arm and it’s a scene that definitely establishes Furiosa as a badass but it’s also reveals that she lost her arm in the way that I imagine 99% of Fury Road‘s audience assumed it happened the first place. That’s the problem with both prequels and sequels. If the first movie is effective, that usually means that the audience has been given all of the information that they needed to understand a character’s past and motivation. As a result, prequels often feel narratively unnecessary. Furiosa spends the majority of this movie plotting her escape from Immortan Joe but we already know that it’s not going to happen because Furiosa still has to be at the Citadel for Fury Road.
Compared to Fury Road (in which the action took place over a handful of days as opposed to the decade that is covered in the prequel), Furiosa can feel a little slow. At times, it can even seem a bit draggy. Furiosa devotes as much time to exploring post-apocalyptic society as it does to action sequences. (It has more in common with Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome than The Road Warrior.) That said, there’s a lot about Furiosa that works wonderfully. No one directs a chase or a battle as well as George Miller. Chris Hemsworth gives a good performance as Dementus, playing him as a tyrant who learned how to lead from watching the Marvel movies that made Hemsworth famous. Hemsworth is particularly strong in his final scene with Furiosa. Dementus may be hateful but, in a strange way, he can be understood. Having lost everything he once cherished in life, Dementus’s actions are as much about his own self-destructive impulses as his own thirst for pwoer. Though she doesn’t take over the role until fairly late in the film, Anya Taylor-Joy gives a fierce performance as Furiosa. Furiosa doesn’t speak much in the film but, when she does, both Anya Taylor-Joy and Alyla Brown make those words count.
Furiosa is an uneven film that falls victim to the same trap that has hindered many prequels. But, ultimately, it’s still a watchable and frequently compelling vision of a disturbing future.
In honor of National Science Fiction Day, today’s song of the day comes from the film that sent James Bond into space!
Released in 1979, Moonrakermay not get as much respect as some of the Bond films but I’ve always liked it. The theme song was the third and final Bond song to be performed by Shirley Bassey. The song was originally written for Frank Sinatra but he turned it down. Johnny Mathis then agreed to perform the song but he backed out at the last minute. Shirley Bassey came in to record the song just weeks before the film was due to premiere.
Because this is a 70s film, there were two versions of this song, the original and the disco. Because I’m the one writing this post, we’re going with the disco version.
Where are you, why do you hide Where is that moonlight trail that leads to your side? Just like the moonraker goes in search of his dream of gold I search for love, for someone to have and hold
I’ve seen your smile in a thousand dreams Felt your touch, and it always seems You love me, you love me
Where are you, when will we meet? Take my unfinished life and make it complete Just like the moonraker knows His dream will come true someday I know that you are only a kiss away
I’ve seen your smile in a thousand dreams Felt your touch, and it always seems You love me, you love me
Through the Shattered Lens 