Category Archives: Film Review

BORDERLINE (1980) – Charles Bronson battles human smuggler Ed Harris (in his first major film role)!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

After a couple of decades of toiling away in TV and supporting roles, Charles Bronson became a huge international film star in 1968 when he starred in the films FAREWELL, FRIEND (with Alain Delon), and Sergio Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (with Henry Fonda). For the next 5 years, Bronson would star in successful international co-productions, before hitting it big in the United States with the influential 1974 blockbuster, DEATH WISH. From 1974 to 1977, Bronson had his pick of any role that he wanted. This was probably the most interesting time in his career as he truly tried to expand his range with films like the depression-era HARD TIMES (1975), the romantic comedy FROM NOON TILL THREE (1976), the Raymond Chandler-esque ST. IVES (1976), and the surreal western THE WHITE BUFFALO (1977). But after 1977’s TELEFON and a series of underwhelming box office returns in the states, Bronson’s star was on the wane. He wouldn’t have his next #1 box office hit until he joined forces with the infamous Cannon studios in 1982 for the sequel to his biggest hit and DEATH WISH II. Cannon Studios would provide Bronson with a guaranteed paycheck and a non-stop presence on cable TV and at the video store for the remainder of the decade. I call the films that Bronson made between 1977 and 1982 the in-betweens. They don’t really fit into his European phase (1968-1973), his post-DEATH WISH phase (1974-1977) or his Cannon phase (1982-1989). To be completely honest, it seemed his career was somewhat in limbo at this point, and the movies he made during these years are some of his least well-known.

One of the movies that Charles Bronson made during the in-between years was 1980’s BORDERLINE. In this film, he plays Jeb Maynard, a border patrolman and expert tracker who will stop at nothing to find the human smuggler responsible for killing his friend and fellow patrolman Scooter, played by Wilford Brimley. I like this lower-key Bronson film. Director Jerrold Freedman has made a more realistic film than a lot of the movies in Bronson’s filmography. Outside of the murder that gets the story going, and the final showdown with the lead smuggler (a young Ed Harris), most of the film is made up of good old-fashioned field work and investigation. Bronson even based much of his performance on the technical advice of legendary border patrolman Albert Taylor. Now that doesn’t mean there aren’t some solid, action-packed scenes during the movie. My favorites include a scene where an undercover Maynard goes into Mexico with the mother of a young Mexican boy who was accidentally killed at the same time as Maynard’s friend Scooter. Maynard poses as a family member of the woman in hopes of being smuggled across the border so he can see how the illegal immigrants are being brought in. When thieves intercept the group, all hell breaks loose, and Maynard and the woman must fight their way out. Another badass moment occurs when Bronson beats needed information out of one of the smugglers in a nasty bathroom. This last scene is especially enjoyable for us Bronson fans.

There are so many good actors in this film. Outside of Bronson, Brimley, and Ed Harris, the cast is filled out by other veterans like Bruno Kirby, Bert Remsen, Michael Lerner, John Ashton, and Charles Cyphers. On a side note, Ed Harris gets the “introducing” credit here, even though he had appeared in several TV shows, as well as the movie COMA with Michael Douglas. This was his first major role in a feature film though. I also want to throw out special mention to Karmin Murcelo. She’s not a household name, but she’s excellent as the mother of the young boy who gets killed with Wilford Brimley’s character, who then helps Bronson in his quest to find the killer. Her career extended over 3 decades, and it’s easy to see why based on this performance.

BORDERLINE may not be an explosive action film like some of Bronson’s other work, but it’s an effective drama with a good performance from the star. I think he embodies the character perfectly. It’s also just as relevant in 2025 as it was in 1980, and I give the film a solid recommendation.

Lisa Marie Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Fargo (dir by the Coen Brothers)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Photograph by Erin Nicole

I am currently sitting in my bedroom, wrapped in several blankets and watching the snow fall on the other side of my window.  I love snow, mostly because I live in Texas and therefore, I don’t get to see it that often.  The most snow we’ve gotten down here, at least in my lifetime, was in 2021.  That was when we got hit by that blizzard and had to deal with rolling blackouts for a week straight.  That’s not a good memory but still, I love to watch the snow fall.  Even during that blizzard, I still loved the fact that I could use the snow as a nightlight as I read a Mickey Spillane book and waited for the power to come back on.

Down here in North Texas, snow is exotic.  In other parts of the country, it’s just a part of everyday life.

Like in the Dakotas for instance….

First released in 1996 and directed by the Coen Brothers, Fargo is a film that is full of arresting images.  As soon as you hear (or read) the title, those images and the sounds associated with them immediately pop into your head.  You immediately visualize the desperate car salesman Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) trying to trick a customer into paying extra for the trucoat and insisting that “I’m not getting snippy here!”  You see the film’s two kidnappers, Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and Gaear Grimsud (Peter Stomare), getting on each other’s nerves as they drive from one frozen location to another.  You remember heavily pregnant Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) investigating a snowy crime scene and gently correcting another officer’s “police work.”  You flash back to the moment when Mike Yanagita (Steve Park) suddenly breaks down in tears and tells Marge that she’s a super lady.  “And it’s a beautiful day,” Marge says at one point, wondering how so many terrible things could have happened on such a lovely day.  And she’s right.  It was a beautiful day.  It was far too beautiful a day to discover one man stuffing another into a woodchipper.

Myself, I always think of the scene where Carl attempts to find a place to hide a briefcase full of money.  It’s night.  Carl’s been shot in the face but he has the money that he’s gone through so much trouble to collect.  He runs into a field, looking for a place to hide it.  The field is covered in snow.  Every inch of the ground glows a bright white.  Everything looks the same.  But Carl still runs around desperately before picking a place to bury the suitcase.  It doesn’t seem to occur to Carl that there’s no visible landmarks or anything that would ever help him to find the money again.  He’s blinded, by the snow, by the pain of the bullet, and, like most of the characters in this movie, by his own greed.

Of course, Fargo is not a film about people behaving in intelligent ways.  Greed, loneliness, and desperation all lead to people doing some pretty stupid things.  Jerry thinks that the best way to pay off his debts and raise the money for a real estate deal is to arrange for his wife to be kidnapped so his wealthy father-in-law (Harve Presnell) will pay the ransom.  His father-in-law, who obviously despises Jerry and would be happy for him to just go away, is convinced that he’ll be able to both get back his daughter and recover his money.  (If Jerry had just spent a moment really thinking about his plan before going through with it, he would have realized his father-in-law would never just part with his money.)  Carl thinks that it’s a good idea to partner up with the obviously sociopathic Grimsud.  When a cop pulls over Carl and Grimsud’s car, Grimsud ignores the fact that Carl was talking his way out of the ticket and instead kills the policeman and then kills several eyewitnesses.  (“I told you not to stop.”)  Marge figures out what is going on but even she puts her life in danger by investigating a cabin without proper backup.  The characters in Fargo frequently behave in ludicrous ways and almost all of them speak with an exaggerated regional dialect (All together now: “Oh yeah,”) but they also feel incredibly real.  The sad truth of the matter is that there are people as greedy, dumb, and hapless in the world as Jerry.  There are people like Carl and Grimsud.  Even Jerry’s fearsome father-in-law is a very familiar type of character.  People do thing without thinking and inevitably, they make things worse the more overwhelmed they become.  Common sense (not to mention decency) is frequently the last thing that anyone considers.  Fortunately, Marge is believable too.  Marge at times almost seems so gentle and polite (“No, why don’t you sit over there?” she sweetly tells Mike when he attempts to get too close to her.) that the viewer worries about what’s going to happen to her when she gets closer and closer to figuring out what’s going on.  Fortunately, Marge turns out to be much stronger than anyone, even the viewer, expected.  The world of Fargo can be a terrible place but there’s moments of kindness and hope as well.

Fargo is both a comedy and a drama.  The opening title card says that the film is based on a true story, which is a typical Coen Brothers joke.  (The film was loosely inspired by several similar crimes but the story itself is fictional.)  Carter Burwell’s dramatic score is both appropriately grand and also gently satiric.  Jerry does some terrible things but William H. Macy plays him as being so naive and desperate and ultimately overwhelmed that it’s hard not to have a little sympathy for him.  Jerry truly thought it would be so simple to pull off a complicated crime.  (The poor guy can’t even get the ice off of his windshield.)  As played by Steve Buscemi, Carl Showalter talks nonstop and he makes you laugh despite yourself.  His shock at how poorly everything goes is one of the film’s highlights.  It’s a funny film but it’s also a sad one.  I always worry about what’s going to happen to Jerry’s son.  Ultimately, of course, the film belongs to Frances McDormand, who gives a wonderful performance as Marge.  She’s the heart of the film, the one who reminds the viewer that there are good people in the world.

Considering the film’s cultural impact, it’s always somewhat shocking to remember that Fargo did not win the Oscar for Best Picture.  It lost to The English Patient, a film about a homewrecker who helps the Nazis.  Personally, I prefer Fargo.

Fargo (1996, dir by the Coen Brothers, DP: Roger Deakins)

Counterpunch (2013, directed by Kenneth Castillo)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Emilio Manrique (Alvaro Orlando) was born in the part of Miami that is never featured in any tourism commercials.  With an absentee father (Steven Bauer) and an addict mother (Yennifer Behrens), Emilio struggled while growing up, getting in trouble and spending time in a mental hospital before he was given a good home by his uncle (Oscar Torre) and grandmother (Ivonne Coll).  Boxing provides an escape for Enrique, a chance to make something out of himself.  But few promoters are willing to take a chance on him, not with his criminal background and rumored mental health woes.  Only Talia Portillo (Camila Banus), who is eager to prove herself as Miami’s first female boxing promoter, is willing to support Emilio but can even she get him a fight against the champion (Jilon VanOver).

From what I understand, Counterpunch was inspired by Alvaro Orlando’s actual life story.  (Along with director Kenneth Castillo, he’s credited with writing the film’s screenplay.)  Almost every boxing cliche is present in Counterpunch but I appreciated that the film took a look at not just how Emilio’s childhood set him on the path to becoming a boxer but also at what it did to him mentally.  As fearsome as Emilio’s opponents are in the ring, the greatest threat to his success of a boxer comes from his own inner demons.  Alvaro Orlando is believable as Emilio, which makes sense since it’s his story!  Danny Trejo and Steven Bauer both show up in small roles.  Trejo plays Emilio’s counselor and he gives a heartfelt performance, playing a character who doesn’t seem like he’s too far off from who Trejo actually is.

Counterpunch is a good boxing movie, even if it doesn’t exactly rewrite the rules of the genre.

Film Review: The Jazz Singer (dir by Richard Fleischer)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the 1980 remake of The Jazz Singer, it only takes the film seven minutes to find an excuse to put Neil Diamond in blackface.

Of course, the film was a remake of the 1927 version of The Jazz Singer, which featured several scenes of Al Jolson performing in blackface.  In fact, Al Jolson in blackface was such a key part of the film that it was even the image that was used to advertise the film when it was first released.  Back in the 20s, Jolson said that wearing blackface was a way of honoring the black artists who created jazz.  (As shocking as the image of Al Jolson wearing blackface is to modern sensibilities, Jolson was considered a strong advocate for civil rights and one of the few white singers to regularly appear on stage with black musicians.)  Regardless of Jolson’s motives, less-progressively minded performers used blackface as a way to reinforce racial stereotypes and, to modern audiences, blackface is an abhorrent reminder of how black people were marginalized by a racist culture.  You would think that, if there was any element of the original film that a remake would change, it would be the lead character performing in blackface.

But nope.  Seven minutes into the remake, songwriter Jess Robin (Neil Diamond) puts on a fake afro and dons blackface so that he can perform on stage at a black club with the group that is performing his songs.  The group’s name is the Four Brothers and, unfortunately, one of the Brothers was arrested the day of the performance.  Jess performs with the group and the crowd loves it until they see his white hands.  Ernie Hudson — yes, Ernie Hudson — stands up and yells, “That’s a white boy!”  A riot breaks out.  The police show up.  Jess and the three remaining Brothers are arrested and taken to jail.  Jess is eventually bailed out by his father, Cantor Rabinovitch (Laurence Olivier).  The Cantor is shocked to discover that his son, Yussel Rabinovitch, has been performing under the name Jess Robin.  He’s also stunned to learn that Yussel doesn’t want to be a cantor like his father.  Instead, he wants to write and perform modern music.  The Cantor tells Yussel that his voice is God’s instrument, not his own.  Yussel returns home to his wife, Rivka (Caitlin Adams), and tries to put aside his dreams.

But when a recording artist named Keith Lennox (Paul Nicholas) wants to record one Yussel’s songs, Yussel flies out to Los Angeles.  As Jess Robin, he is shocked to discover that Lennox wants to turn a ballad that he wrote into a hard rock number,  Jess sings the song to show Lennox how it should sound.  The arrogant Lennox is not impressed but his agent, Molly (Lucie Arnaz) is.  Soon, Jess has a chance to become a star but what about the family he left behind in New York?  “I have no son!” the Cantor wails when he learns about Jess’s new life in California.

I’ve often seen the 1980 version of The Jazz Singer referred to as being one of the worst films of all time.  I watched it a few days ago and I wouldn’t go that far.  It’s not really terrible as much as its just kind of bland.  For someone who has had as long and successful a career as Neil Diamond, he gives a surprisingly charisma-free performance in the lead role.  The most memorable thing about Diamond’s performance is that he refuses to maintain eye contact with any of the other performers, which makes Jess seem like kind of a sullen brat.  It also doesn’t help that Diamond appears to be in his 40s in this film, playing a role that was clearly written for a much younger artist.  Still, when it comes to bad acting, no one can beat a very miscast Laurence Olivier, delivering his lines with an overdone Yiddish accent and dramatically tearing at his clothes to indicate that Yussel is dead to him.  Olivier was neither Jewish nor a New Yorker and that becomes very clear the more one watches this film.  It takes a truly great actor to give a performance this bad.  Diamond, at least, could point to the fact that he was a nonactor given a starring role in a major studio production.  Olivier, on the other hand, really had no one to blame but himself.

Still, I have to admit that ending the film with a sparkly Neil Diamond performing America while Laurence Olivier nods in the audience was perhaps the best possible way to bring this film to a close.  It’s a moment of beautiful kitsch.  The Jazz Singer needed more of that.

A FAMILY THING (1996) – Robert Duvall & James Earl Jones are brothers!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Just for the hell of it, I went on a little Robert Duvall marathon for his birthday on January 5th. I started the marathon off with his superior western with Kevin Costner, OPEN RANGE (2003). Next up was Duvall’s excellent crime film with Joe Don Baker and Robert Ryan, THE OUTFIT (1973). Duvall was in badass mode in this one. Based on one of Richard Stark’s “Parker” books, this was my first time to watch the film and damn, it was excellent. After that, I watched the bleak THE ROAD (2009), starring Viggo Mortensen, where Duvall just had a small part. It was a downer. I finished off the marathon late in the evening with A FAMILY THING (1996). I remember when this movie came out in the 1990’s because it was co-written by Billy Bob Thornton. Thornton was still a year away from his massive success with the movie SLING BLADE, but I knew him from his writing and co-starring in the superior crime film ONE FALSE MOVE (1991), as well as his small role in TOMBSTONE (1993). As an Arkansan, I knew Thornton was from Arkansas so I had taken a particular interest in him. But I was only 22 years old when A FAMILY THING was released, and a movie about a couple of old guys resolving family issues didn’t seem that appealing to me. As a guy into his 50’s, the entire concept seems more interesting to me now, so I gave it a spin for the first time to close out the marathon.

The story opens up in rural Arkansas with Earl Pilcher Jr. (Robert Duvall) getting the shock of his life when his beloved mother writes a final letter to him and instructs her local pastor to deliver it a few days after her death. The letter tells Earl that his biological mother was a black woman named Willa Mae who died in childbirth. It seems that Earl’s dad had gotten Willa Mae pregnant, and since he came out white, his “mother” was able to raise him as her own without having to tell him the truth. The letter also tells him that he has a half-brother named Ray Murdock (James Earl Jones) living in Chicago. It’s her dying wish that he meet Ray and get to know him as family. Pissed at his dad, and wanting to honor his mom, Earl heads to Chicago to meet Ray. Earl knows that Ray is a cop so he’s able to track him down. They immediately don’t like each other, but through a variety of circumstances, Earl ends up staying at Ray’s house for a couple of days. While there, he meets Ray’s wise, old Aunt T., Willa Mae’s sister (Irma P. Hall) and his sullen son Virgil (Michael Beach). Will the two men continue to push each other away, or will they eventually find the family connection that exists under all that messy past? 

I was surprised how deeply I was affected by A FAMILY THING. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get teary-eyed a couple of times. The movie may use issues of adultery and racism to get the ball rolling, but more than anything else, it seems to understand that life is messy and that people are messy. We’ll disappoint ourselves, we’ll disappoint other people, and other people will disappoint us. There’s a reason that many people find their love in dogs and cats instead of people, because real relationships can be tough. The truth about my own life is that I could not have appreciated this film in 1996 at only 22 years of age. I was too naive. That’s no longer the case in 2025, and I can now truly relate to this story of two men who share a painful history, find common ground, and decide it’s worth moving forward together because family really does matter.

A movie like A FAMILY THING has no chance of working without a great cast, and this movie is a thespian jackpot. Robert Duvall is spot on perfect as the good ole guy from Arkansas, with a little bit of a racism engrained down deep into his soul, who now has to deal with the fact that he is half black. The scene where he confronts his dad about the lies that had been told to him all his life is as good as it gets. James Earl Jones matches Duvall in the even trickier role as the man who has always known about his “white” half brother Earl. This man has buried his hatred away for Earl’s father for decades, who he blames for the death of his own mother, and now has to deal with those feelings being dredged back up to the surface when Earl shows up in Chicago. Jones perfectly balances his character’s desire to keep the past in the past, with his decency as a man who doesn’t want to just throw Earl out on the street. He eventually softens towards him no matter how much bitterness he has for Earl’s dad. And neither Duvall or Jones even give the best performance in the film. That honor goes to Irma P. Hall as the blind, but extremely perceptive Aunt T. She sees through all of their bullshit, as she states to each of them on different occasions, and encourages them to get to know each other because they’re family. As they play games of racism and bitterness, she reminds them they are brothers no matter the color of their skin. It’s the performance of a lifetime and was at least worthy of an Oscar nomination in my opinion. 

Overall, A FAMILY THING may compress the amount of time and potential therapy it would take to resolve the type of family history presented here, but it does find a certain truth in the power of relationships. Earl and Ray don’t have to recognize the fact that they are brothers. As a matter of fact their lives are just fine without each other. But it’s their willingness to embrace the messy truth and find a way to connect with each other that makes the movie meaningful to me! 

Here’s the trailer for A FAMILY THING.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Arrowsmith (dir by John Ford)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the 1931 Best Picture nominee Arrowsmith, Ronald Colman stars as Martin Arrowsmith, a doctor who is trying to save lives without compromising his ethics.

Arrowsmith is mentored by the famed bacteriologist, Max Gottlieb (A.E. Anson) and married to a nurse named Leora (Helen Hayes).  At first, Arrowsmith makes his living as the local doctor in Leora’s small hometown in South Dakota.  However, Arrowsmith is ambitious and wants to do more with his life and career than just take care of a small town.  He wants to cure the world of disease.  When he’s offered a position at the prestigious McGurk Institute in New York, he enthusiastically accepts.  Having just suffered a miscarriage, Leora supports Arrowsmith’s decision and travels to New York with him.  No matter what happens, Leora is always there to support her husband, even when he doesn’t seem to appreciate it.

When Arrowsmith thinks that he’s discovered an antibiotic serum that appears to be capable of curing all sorts of diseases, he attempts to stay true to the methods taught to him by Dr. Gottlieb.  He takes his time.  He tests carefully.  He doesn’t rush out and give the serum to everyone.  However, Arrowsmith finds his methods continually sabotaged by his colleagues, who hope to raise money by telling the press about a miracle serum that can “cure all diseases!”  When Arrowsmith later finds himself combatting an outbreak of the Bubonic Plague in the West Indies, he again tries to employ the scientific method but finds himself being pressured by government officials to give his untested serum to every single person on the island.  Eventually, Arrowsmith’s ethics are pushed to their limits when even Leora falls ill.

Arrowsmith was based on a best-selling novel by Sinclair Lewis, though the plot was changed to make the story more palpable for film audiences.  In the novel, Arrowsmith is a bit of cad who regularly cheats on his wife.  In the film, Arrowsmith is passionate and driven but the exact nature of his relationship with wealthy Joyce Lanyon (Myrna Loy) is left so ambiguous that it actually leaves one wondering why the character is in the film at all.  What both the film and the novel have in common is an emphasis on the importance of science and the scientific method.  Arrowsmith’s idealism runs into the harsh reality of life during an epidemic.  Government officials are more concerned with saying that they’ve done something as opposed to considering whether their actions have ultimately done more harm than good.  In its way, Arrowsmith predicted the COVID era.

Arrowsmith was the first John Ford film to be nominated for Best Picture and its financial success allowed Ford the freedom to go on to become one of Hollywood’s most important directors.  Seen today, Arrowsmith feels a bit creaky and self-important, with little of the visual flair that Ford brought to his later films.  Ronald Colman’s performance as Arrowsmith seems a bit stiff, especially when compared to the much more lively (and sympathetic) performance of Helen Hayes.  Arrowsmith is a big and serious film and, if we’re going to be honest, it’s a little bit boring.  Still, it’s interesting to see the issues of today being debated 90 years in the past.

As for the Oscars, Arrowsmith was nominated for Best Picture, Adaptation, Cinematography, and Art Direction.  It lost in all four of the categories in which it was nominated.  That year, Best Picture was won by Grand Hotel, which curiously didn’t receive any other nominations at all.

Glass Jaw (2018, directed by Jeff Celentano)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

When the daughter of his trainer dies of a drug overdose at his house, world light heavyweight champion Travis Austin (Lee Kholafai) takes the blame and goes to prison, even though the drugs were brought into his house by his sparring partner, Joe (Brandon Sklenar).

After four years of being incarcerated, Travis is released into a brand new world.  His wife (Korrina Rico), who waited for his release and only cheated on him once in a moment of weakness, now works as a waitress and lives in a small apartment.  Joe is now not only the light heavyweight champion but also refuses to help Travis get back on his feet.  Travis finally ends up working at a gym, owned by the cantankerous Frank Maloney (Mark Rolston).  It’s a tough life but an unexpected opportunity gives Travis a chance to win back his title.

Glass Jaw pretty much lost me as soon as Travis decided to take the rap and go to prison for something that Joe was responsible for.  Being loyal is one thing but being stupid is something else and, by taking the fall, Travis put his wife in a terrible position.  The film had all of the usual boxing cliches but the Big Fight at the end was strangely anti-climatic, even if both Kholafai and Sklenar looked credible while they were throwing punches at each other.

The best performance in the film was delivered by Jon Gries, who had a small role as Travis’s alcoholic father.  I would have liked for the entire movie to have been about his character.

KID GALAHAD (1962) – Charles Bronson teaches Elvis how to box! Happy Birthday to the King!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

In celebration of the January 8th birthday of the great Elvis Presley, I decided to watch his 1962 film KID GALAHAD, the only film where he co-stars with my movie hero Charles Bronson. I’ve always been a fan of Elvis Presley and seeing him on-screen with Bronson is a real treat for me.

KID GALAHAD opens with Walter Gulick (Elvis Presley) returning to his hometown in upstate New York. Recently discharged from the army, and in the need of money, the aspiring mechanic finds his way to Willy Grogan’s (Gig Young) boxing camp and agrees to spar with one of his up-and-coming young boxers. Walter doesn’t have much boxing skill, but he ends up having one hell of a right hook and knocks the young boxer flat on his ass. Seeing this, Willy Grogan, who has all sorts of personal and financial problems, thinks Walter might be the answer to getting out of debt to his bookie. Willy asks his trainer Lew (Charles Bronson) to work with the young, strong Walter, who’s now been dubbed “Galahad” by Willy’s girlfriend Dolly (Lola Albright) after he had protected her honor from a “man who doesn’t know how to behave around a lady.” Pretty soon, Willy has fights arranged for Walter under the name of “Kid Galahad.” The first fight begins with Galahad getting his faced being punched repeatedly until he gets one opening and then knocks the other fighter out with one punch. After that, with Lew’s help, Galahad’s skills start showing definite improvement. When he’s not working with Lew at the gym, Galahad finds time to romance and propose to Willy’s sister, Rose (Joan Blackman). This causes problems with the troubled Willy who doesn’t want his sister married to some “meatball” or “grease monkey.” Even worse, smelling money, gangster Otto Danzig (David Lewis) and his henchmen start putting pressure on the financially troubled Willy to force Galahad to take a dive in his big fight with “Sugar Boy” Romero so they can clean up on the fix, going so far as breaking Lew’s hands. Will Willy get the balls to say no to the gangsters? Will Galahad be able to beat Sugar Boy Romero and then retire to open his garage with Rose by his side? You probably already know, but you’ll just have to watch and see!

1962’s KID GALAHAD is a remake of a 1937 movie of the same name directed by Michael Curtiz, and starring cinematic legends Edward G. Robinson, Bette Davis, and Humphrey Bogart. I’ve never seen the earlier version, so I will not compare the two in any way. And to be completely honest, I haven’t watched very many Elvis Presley movies either. As I type this, I can’t think of a single moment I remember in his filmography not included in KID GALAHAD, and I wouldn’t have watched this one without the presence of Charles Bronson. With that said, I think Elvis gives a good performance in KID GALAHAD. He’s very likable, with his character having an old-fashioned chivalry towards women, a friendly, open way with men, and an appreciation for a strong work ethic. I think Elvis handles each of these parts of his character in a way to that makes me want to root for him. As good as Elvis is as Kid Galahad, Gig Young does most of the heavy lifting as the story really revolves around his character’s troubles even more than it does around Galahad. I think he does a pretty good job of taking a character who’s a pretty sorry guy, and by the end of the movie we actually find ourselves starting to like him. Even though he’s in a true supporting role, Charles Bronson is excellent as the trainer who teaches Galahad how to box. Every scene Bronson’s in is elevated by his enormous screen presence and authority. With Bronson in his corner, you feel Galahad is capable of anything. The most powerful scene in the entire film is when the gangsters try to buy his character off under the threat of violence, and he refuses, leading to his hands being broken. After becoming one of the biggest stars on the planet a number of years later, it’s easy to look back at these moments and wonder how in the hell was he not already a huge star in 1962.

Of course, this being an Elvis Presley movie, there are several musical numbers spread throughout the movie. While I don’t remember too much about the songs themselves, they didn’t really take me out of the drama of the movie either. I actually enjoyed seeing Elvis perform, with the people around him clapping along and enjoying themselves. I do remember a specific scene where Elvis is singing as he’s driving down the road, and Bronson’s sitting in the back seat with a big smile on his face like he’s having a great time. That’s my favorite moment of all the songs.  

Although I haven’t watched many of his movies, I’ve been an appreciative fan of Elvis Presley all my life. I can’t tell you how many times I heard his Christmas album in my younger years, as my mom would play it almost on repeat once we got to November. He was a talented, versatile singer whose charisma and stage presence have never been matched, and whose influence on music and entertainment is immeasurable. The fact that Elvis Presley and Charles Bronson made KID GALAHAD together means something to me, and I had a great time revisiting the film on his birthday!

See the Original Trailer for KID GALAHAD below.

Film Review: Wild 90 (dir by Norman Mailer)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Produced, directed, financed by, and starring writer Norman Mailer, 1968’s Wild 90 is incomprehensibly bad.  Words escape me when it comes to describing just how boring and pointless this film.

Over the course of four nights, Mailer and two of his friends were filmed in a shabby apartment.  Norman Mailer played The Prince, a gangster who talks tough and is constantly doing stuff like punching the room’s only hanging lightbulb.  Buzz Farber and Mickey Knox played Cameo and Twenty Years, the Prince’s partners in crime.  Acclaimed documentarian D.A. Pennebaker served as cinematographer, using a hand-held camera to capture the three men as they drank, laughed, fought, and pretended to be gangsters.

The plot of the film is not easy to describe, both because the entire film was improvised and also because the soundtrack is so muddy that it’s often impossible to understand what anyone’s saying.  As far as I can tell, the Prince’s latest criminal scheme has gone south and the Prince and his two cronies are hiding out in the apartment until the heat dies down.  They don’t have much to do, other than drink and exchange profane dialogue.  (The three men do their best to sound like real-life, poetically crude gangsters.  It’s hard to judge how well they do any of that because the dialogue is often incomprehensible.)  Some people drop by the apartment.  Normally, that would liven things up but in this one, everyone just seems like they want to leave before Norman Mailer accidentally punches them.  One man comes in a with a dog that start barking.  Mailer barks back until the dog falls silent.

Making all of this interesting is the fact that, in the 1960s, Norman Mailer was one of America’s leading public intellectuals.  Today, living in the age of influencers, it can be easy to forget that there were once public intellectuals, like Mailer, William F. Buckley, Gore Vidal, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Tom Wolfe, who disagreements were followed by the public and who made headlines when they showed up drunk on the daytime talk shows.  Mailer was an acclaimed and often controversial writer, one who was as famous for his arrogance and his public feuds as for his novels and essays. Mailer was a New York fixture and a Pulitzer Prize winner  He was one of the first writers to suggest that the Left and the Right could be united by a shared belief in individual freedom.  A year after the release of Wild 90, Mailer ran an ill-fated campaign for mayor of New York City.  His slogan was “No more bullshit!” and his campaign, which attracted some attention early on, was ultimately sabotaged by his habit of showing up drunk to his rallies and insulting his supporters.

What he was not was a very good filmmaker.  Wild 90 was Mailer’s first film and it’s a nearly unwatchable disaster.  (At least his later film, Maidstone, had Rip Torn around to liven things up.)  With its low-budget, black-and-white look and it’s DIY aesthetic, Wild 90 may remind some of the Andy Warhol’s Factory films but Warhol (or, if we’re to be absolutely honest, Paul Morrissey) was at least trying to be subversive.  Wild 90, on the other hand, is pure self-indulgence, a chance for Mailer to say, “Look how funny I am!”  Farbar and Knox at least manage to give semi-believable performances.  Mailer continually looks straight at the camera and seems to panic whenever either of his co-stars start to take the attention off of him.  The entire film seems to be Mailer’s attempt to convince everyone that he really was a tough guy.

There is one moment of the film that does work.  The film opens with some gorgeously shabby images of lower Manhattan. Norman Mailer was a proud New Yorker so it’s appropriate that the best part of the film is the part that highlights the city he loved.

Documentary Review: William Shatner’s Mysteries of the Gods (dir by Harald Reinl and Charlie Romine)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1976, the German documentary Mysteries of the Gods raises the same questions that were asked by Chariots of the Gods and it offers up the same answers.  How did ancient man build the pyramids?  Aliens!  How were the giant statues of Easter Island moved to their final resting place?  Aliens!  Who created Stonehenge?  Aliens!  Who drew the South American ley lines?  Aliens!  Who took Elijah, Gilgamesh, and Enoch up into the sky?  Aliens!  Who is responsible for religion?  Aliens!

Mysteries of the Gods was made by the same people who did Chariots of the Gods but it’s less a continuation and more of a remake.  The only new thing that Mysteries of the Gods brought to the table was the suggestion that the governments of the world knew about the aliens and that they were, in some cases, working with the aliens.  I’ve already made my feelings about those theories clear.  I’m a skeptic and I’m proud of it.  Still, it’s interesting to wonder what type of advice the aliens would have given the world leaders.  I mean, considering everything that has happened over the past 66 years, it doesn’t appear to be very good advice!

Seriously, tell those dumbass aliens to go home and mess around with their own planet.

When Mysteries of the Gods came over to the United States, it was decided that the film needed a bit more of an American feel to it.  The original’s German narrator would have to go.  But who could replace him?  Who had the gravitas necessary to seriously discuss the theory of ancient astronauts?  Who would draw in the science fiction crowd while possibly still appealing to people who didn’t know much about the history of UFO sightings?  Who would have the proper enthusiasm for the project?  Who was reasonably famous but still enough in need of a paycheck that they would agree to be associated with something as shoddy as Mysteries of the Gods?

We all know the answer to that question.

And if the American distributors were going to pay William Shatner to re-record the film’s narration, why not take full advantage of his presence and film some scenes of him interviewing various psychics and scientists?  Why not have him wax rhapsodic about a crystal skull while actually holding the artifact?  Why not have him actually visiting the locations described in the documentary?  Why not put him in a green turtleneck and a black jacket and present him as being the hip face of pseudo-science?  And why not change the title of the film to William Shatner’s Mysteries of the Gods, implying that Shatner himself had something substantial to do with the making of the film?

And let’s give credit where credit is due.  Mysteries of the Gods is a ludicrous documentary that provides even less evidence for its fantastical claim than Chariot of the Gods did.  But the American version of the film is worth watching, just to see William Shatner trying to repress his natural smirk while reciting the film’s overwrought narration.  Shatner appears to be amused by the whole thing and he definitely comes across as being a good sport as he gamely interview a series of crackpots who are all convinced they’ve cracked some sort of alien code.  The film ends on a triumphant note, with psychic Jeanne Dixon telling an excited Shatner that aliens will visit Earth in April of 1977.

Now, you may say that Dixon was incorrect.  There’s no record of aliens coming to Earth in 1977.  Maybe that’s just what they want you to believe!  To quote the Amazing Criswell, can you prove it didn’t happen?