Steve Godfrey (Charles Starrett) is in trouble again. He has been accused of stealing another payroll and the only man who can clear his name has just been murdered. Steve thinks that he is being set up by outlaws who want to take control of the dead man’s ranch, which is now owned by Mary Ann Jarvis (Adele Roberts).
Luckily, Steve’s old friend, Smiley Burnette, is working as a cook at the Jarvis Ranch. When Smiley isn’t singing songs with the Colorado Hillbillies, he tries to help Steve clear his name. He explains that Mary Ann Jarvis won’t listen to Steve but maybe she’ll listen to Steve’s alter ego, The Durango Kid!
Durango rides again in this movie, though, the majority of the hour runtime is made up of Smiley Burnette singing songs and making jokes. Smiley Burnette is not for everyone. I enjoy the broad humor he brought to these films but I can understand why others might not. Whenever Smiley sings a song, it does bring the action to a halt but that’s true of every Durango Kid film. If you’re a fan of the series, you either like Smiley or you can at least tolerate him. Smiley does do more than just sing in this movie. He also throws black pepper in the eyes of one of the bad guys.
Even with all of the attention paid to Smiley, The Desert Horseman delivers all of the expected horse chases and gunfights. The story is a little more interesting than usual. Steve has been framed for not one but two crimes that he didn’t commit and that adds some urgency to the proceedings. Charles Starrett, as always, is a believable western hero and he takes the role seriously.
Cassie Webb (Dakota Johnson) is a paramedic in New York City. Haunted by the fact that her mother died while giving birth to her while looking for a special spider in Peru (and I cannot believe that I just wrote that), Cassie struggles with showing her emotions and opening up to people. In fact, her only friend appears to be her fellow paramedic, Ben Parker (Adam Scott). Ben’s sister-in-law is pregnant and Cassie tells him, “You’ll be a great uncle, Ben.”
After a near-death experience, Cassie discovers that she has the ability to see into the future. She also discovers that a strange man named Ezekiel (Tahar Rahim) wants to kill three teenage girls, Mattie (Celeste O’Connor), Anya (Isabela Merced), and Julia (Sydney Sweeney). Cassie does what anyone would do. She kidnaps the three girls to keep them safe and then hops on a plane to Peru to find out how Ezekiel is connected to her mother’s death.
Madame Web is the latest entry in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe. Because Sony has the rights to Spider-Man, all of the MCU films featuring Spider-Man have been co-productions with Columbia Pictures and have been distributed by Sony. With Spider-Man emerging as one of the few characters to remain a strong box office draw for Marvel, Columbia has produced a series of Spider-Man-adjacent films that feature characters who have appeared in Spider-Man-related media. While Marvel and Disney have Tom Holland swinging his way through New York, Sony has to settle for Adam Scott and Dakota Johnson in an ambulance.
I always assume that the folks at Marvel and Disney probably groan a little whenever they hear that a new Sony film is coming out. The MCU Spider-Man films have been consistently strong, with all three of them proving popular with both audiences and critics. The Sony Spider-Man films, on the other hand, often seem like throwbacks to the bad old days of the early aughts, when most comic book films were still cheap and kind of embarrassing. Madame Web doesn’t do much to change this perception. In fact, the film is even set in 2003, complete with a Blockbuster Video store prominently featured in one scene, Britney Spears’s Toxic playing in a roadside diner, and a totally random reference to American Idol. (What’s funny is that the jokey reference to American Idol would really only work if the show were no longer on the air but actually, it’s still airing on CBS. No one ever seems to notice anymore but it’s still there. If the movie really had any guts, it would have had Dakota Johnson says that she was going home to watch Paradise Hotel.)
Slow-paced and featuring some of the most awkward line readings this side of a community theater production of Bus Stop,Madame Web is not a particularly engaging film. After a truly abysmal prologue set in Peru, the film spends about half-an-hour giving us a tour of Cassie’s not particularly interesting life as a tough New York paramedic before finally getting started on the main story. And even then, the film leaves the viewer feeling cheated because none of three girls — who we are told are all destined to become super heroes — actually become super powered over the course of the film. The film basically says, “They’re all going to be Spiderwoman …. BUT NOT TODAY!” The problem with that approach is that it’s hard not to feel that the only interesting thing about the three girls is that they’re eventually going to have super powers. Without the powers, they’re just kind of boring. Cassie is the only one who has a super power but being able to see three minutes into the future isn’t that much of a power. Dakota Johnson and the rest of the cast all seem to be bored out of their minds and who can blame them?
The main problem with Madame Web is that it’s just not much fun. The best super hero films are fun to watch. That goes for the Marvel films, the DC films, and even the Sony films. (Admit it, the first Venom was kind of fun.) Even with The Dark Knight films, Christopher Nolan understood that the villains had to be flamboyant to make up for Christian Bale’s rather dour Batman. In this film, we’re never quite sure what Ezekiel wants or even who he is. He’s just a random evil guy and not a particularly memorable one. Madame Web does make some attempts at humor but the sitcom-style jokes are negated by Dakota Johnson’s flat delivery. (Oddly enough, sitcom veteran Adam Scott is stuck playing a serious character.) Overall, there’s an overwhelming blandness to Madame Web. It doesn’t engage,. It doesn’t thrill. It doesn’t make you cheer or even jeer. It’s just kind of there.
The film sets up a sequel but, judging from how the film did at the box office and how not even the film’s cast has pretended to be happy with how the film turned out, I’d expect to see Morbius 2 before another installment of Madame Web.
Produced by Roger Corman and made for a budget of only a million dollars, the very first film version of The Fantastic Four is best known for having never been released. Stan Lee always claimed that the film was never meant to be released and that it was only made so that German producer Bernd Eichinger could hold onto the rights for the characters. Eichinger has always said that he wanted to release the flm and it was Avi Arad, the future founder of Marvel Studios, who asked him not to because he felt a low-budget B-movie would damage the Marvel brand. Arad has said that Eichinger is telling the truth and considering the reception that Albert Pyun’s Captain America received, I can understand why Arad was concerned.
Though the film was never officially released, bootleg copies are out there. I’ve seen the movie a few times and I watched it again last night. Watching it, I was reminded that The Fantastic Four is not as bad as people say.
It’s an origin story. Reed Richards (Alex Hyde-White) flies into space with his girlfriend Sue (Rebecca Staab), her annoying kid brother Johnny (Jay Underwood), and Reed’s best friend Ben (Michael Bailey Smith). Cosmic comet rays lead to them developing super powers. Reed can stretch. Johnny can burst into flame. Sue can turn invisible. Ben turns into a creature with orange, rocky skin. On Earth, they battle both the evil Doctor Doom (Joseph Culp) and the Jeweler (Ian Trigger) for possession of a powerful diamond.
The low budget is obvious and the script isn’t great, with the Jeweler being a truly unimpressive villain. (Unlike Doctor Doom, the Jeweler was created specifically for this movie.) But the movie still has more genuine heart than the future big-budget Fantastic Four films. Alex Hyde-White plays Reed as being brilliant but self-absorbed. Sue is a thankless role but Rebecca Staab does her best. Jay Underwood is annoying as Johnny but Johnny was annoying in the comic books as well. This version of The Fantastic Four is the only movie, so far, to capture and stay true to the spirit of the characters.
This is especially true when it comes Michael Bailey Smith’s performance as Ben Grimm. More than either Jamie Bell or Michael Chiklis, Smith realistically portrays Ben’s bitterness over knowing that he will never be able to return to his former life. Of all the film versions of the Fantastic Four, this is the only one that adequately captures both the look and the personality of The Thing. He become a real person and not just an actor in a rubber suit. This movie is also the only one, so far, to really do a decent job of portraying Dr. Doom’s megalomania. It’s interesting that the film that Marvel didn’t want released is the one that stays true to the original comic book.
The Fantastic Four will be joining the MCU in 2025. Ironically, considering that Marvel Comics started with the Fantastic Four, they’ll be among the last of the major characters to get an MCU film. There’s hope that the new Fantastic Four will reverse the MCU’s declining fortunes. I’ve been skeptical ever since I heard the Silver Surfer was going to be played by Julia Garner but hopefully, I’ll be wrong. Galactus is one of the great Marvel villains and I hope the new Fantastic Four will do him justice. When people are watching the massively hyped, big budget, CGI-heavy version of The Fantastic Four, I hope at least some will remember the low-budget version that could barely afford a single special effect and I hope they’ll remember that it wasn’t that bad.
In 1995, an 11 year-old boy named Orion (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) lives in Philadelphia.
He has two loving parents. He lives in a nice house. He has his fist crush, on his classmate Sally (voiced by Shino Nakamichi). He has a bully (voiced by Jack Fisher) who enjoys giving him a hard time and he has several notebooks full of his thoughts and drawings. He also has a lot of fears.
Indeed, it’s his fears that largely define Orion. Some of his fears are understandable. I don’t like wasps or murder clowns either. Some of his other fears are a bit more elaborate. He’s scared of his bully but he’s even more scared of fighting his bully because he might accidentally break the bully’s nose and drive a piece of bone into the bully’s brain, therefore killing him. His biggest fear, however, is his fear of the Dark.
In fact, Orion spends so much time talking about how much he hates the dark and how scared he is of the dark that Dark (Paul Walter Hauser) appears to him in human form and explain that he’s getting tired of Orion blaming him for anything. Dark takes Orion with him as he travels across the world, bringing darkness to various countries and overseeing various other elements, like Sweet Dreams (Angela Bassett), Unexplained Noises (Golda Rosheuvel), Insomnia (Nat Faxon), Quiet (Aparna Nancherla), and Sleep (Natasia Demetriou). Dark shows Orion that there’s no need to scared of the dark and that everyone involved is just doing their job. Orion comes to understand and appreciate Dark but, when he makes the mistake of saying that he still kind of likes Light (voice by Ike Barinholtz) better, it leads to a lot of hurt feelings and resignations….
If this sounds a bit weird, one should keep in mind that the story is being told by the adult Orion (voiced by Colin Hanks) to his daughter, Hypathia (Mia Akemi Brown). Adult Orion is telling the story to help Hypathia deal with her own fears and it soon becomes obvious that he’s making it up as he goes along. Hypathia is aware of this and has no hesitation about calling out the stuff that doesn’t make any sense. And when Orion proves incapable of coming up with a satisfactory ending for his story, Hypathia jumps into the story herself in an attempt to bring it all to a proper conclusion. But once she’s in the story, can she get back out?
Orion and the Dark may sound like a standard “conquer your fears and believe in yourself” animated film but the script was written by Charlie Kaufman and, in typical Kaufman fashion, the story is full of twists and turns and more than a few moments of commentary on the whole act of storytelling itself. There’s actually a lot going on in Orion and the Dark, with the film ultimately becoming a tribute to the power of imagination and to all of the parents-turned-storytellers in the world.
I’m a bit notorious for crying while watching animated films and I will say that Orion and the Dark brought tears to my eyes more than a few times. It’s an incredibly sweet movie, one that can be appreciated by both children and adults. It’s a movie about not just conquering fears but also using those fears to make oneself stronger. The final message is that light cannot exist without the dark and vice versa but that’s okay. There’s much to love in the light but the dark can be lovable too. Fear is a part of life but it’s not the only part of life.
Creatively-animated and featuring a strong cast of voice actors, Orion and the Dark is definitely one to check out.
After spending the past few years cleaning up the west, Steve Leary (Charles Starrett) rides into the town of Red Mound and says that he is ready to buy a ranch and settle down. What Steve finds is an unfriendly town that is divided between law-abiding citizens on one side and cattle rustlers on the other. The cattle rustlers want to prevent Steve from purchasing the old Atkins ranch and they’ll do anything to keep the deed from being signed over. It’s a good thing that Steve also happens to be the legendary Durango Kid.
This is a standard entry in the Durango Kid series. To me, it’s interesting to see that, even though Steve seems like he wants to settle down and live a peaceful, ranching life, he still can’t bring himself to give up his secret identity. It is also interesting that Steve cannot escape Smiley Burnette. This time, Smiley is the owner of Red Mound’s restaurant and he’s accompanied by Texas Jim Lewis and the Lone Star Cowboys. It seems like Smiley sings even more than usual in this entry.
I liked the opening of The Stranger From Ponca City, in which Steve rides into town and all of the townspeople demand to know which side of Red Mound he supports. Smiley even explains that food made on one side of the town cannot be taken to the other without it leading to violence. After the opening sequence, The Stranger From Ponca City focuses on all of the usual horse chases and gunfights that showed up in all of the Durango Kid films. Most of the Durango Kid stock company shows up as well. Keep an eye out for Jock Mahoney, playing a bad guy with Kermit Maynard.
Director Derwin Abrahams keeps things moving, even if his direction is not up the level of the work of Durango’s usual directors, Ray Navarro and Fred F. Sears. This isn’t the best of the Durango Kid films but fans of the genre should enjoy it.
The year is 2002 and countries across Europe are giving up their old currencies and making the transition to the Euro. The future looks bright, especially for Ivan (Aron Piper), a young man from Spain who has gotten a job as a courier. He drives around Europe, often at lighting-fast speeds. He takes money across the continent so that it can safely be hidden away in Switzerland. Along with his lover and boss, Leticia (Maria Pedraza), Ivan quickly rises through the ranks of an international cartel. Helping others stay wealthy leads to Ivan becoming wealthy as well. Soon, he has fast cars, fast friends, a cocaine habit, and a mustache that makes him look like a 1990s NASCAR driver.
With its constantly moving camera and its voice-over narration, this Spanish film owes more than a little to the films of Martin Scorsese, Ivan’s descent into drugs will be familiar to anyone who has seen The Wolf of Wall Street or Goodfellas. Unfortunately, Ivan is never quite as interesting a character as either Jordan Belfort or Henry Hill, largely because Aron Piper is not as charismatic an actor as either Leonardo DiCaprio or Ray Liotta. Ivan comes across as just being a punk who wandered into something that temporarily made him rich and his narration often descends into shallow psychobabble. As a character, Ivan would never have the confidence to throw hundred dollar bills off of his boat. He also wouldn’t have the creativity to pull off the Lufthansa heist. He’s boring and all the cocaine in the world isn’t going to change that.
Interestingly enough, the film also borrows from Adam McKay, with an ending that highlights a lengthy list of consequences of Ivan’s money laundering operation. Much as with the films of McKay, The Courier makes the mistake of assuming that everyone watching shares its dreary Marxist outlook and is going to be outraged. The truth of the matter is that most people would probably love to hide their money from the government because only weirdos enjoy paying taxes. The film assumes that the audience will be demanding revolution whereas the majority will probably be saying, “Hey, money laundering seems like a good idea and you get a nice car out of it! How do I get in on that?”
(Scorsese, at the very least, understands and admits that most people would rather be Jordan Belfort on a yacht than the FBI agent on a subway. Most people would rather be Henry Hill living in New York as opposed to being Henry Hill living in the suburbs of Indianapolis and being an ordinary schnook.)
The Courier does have its moments. Maria Pedraza gives a good performance as Leticia, though you do have to wonder why she should would ever waste her time with someone as boring as Aron Piper’s Ivan. Carlos Jean’s score is wonderfully propulsive and provides them film with a needed rush of adrenaline. In the end, though, The Courier never really escapes the shadow of the films that came before it.
On the frontier, everyone has gold fever. People are trying to find gold and steal gold and it falls to brave Treasury agents like Steve Ellison (Charles Starrett) and Smiley Burnette (played by Smiley Burnette) to keep things safe. When Steve needs to find out who is trying steal gold, he puts on his mask and assumes the identity of The Durango Kid.
Near Laredo, a shipment of government gold has been stolen. Dan Parks (Jim Bannon) is arrested after the gold is found in his wagon but Steve knows that the Durango Kid earlier warned Dan about traveling with gold. Durango and Smiley set out to prove that Dan was set up by his business partner, Fenton (Hugh Prosser).
This yet another Durango Kid movie where Steve gets a job working for the bad guy while Durango works to thwart his plans. (Remarkably, no one ever puts two and two together and notices that Steve, Smiley, and Durango always seem to show up in town at the same time.) Fenton is just one of a long line of corrupt businessmen and land barons that Durango has had to deal with. Fenton is not above threatening Dan’s young son (Tommy Ivo) to get Dan to do what he wants. Given that Dan is just trying to make a good life for his family in a rough world, it’s satisfying when Fenton gets his comeuppance.
Almost every Durango Kid film featured at least one good fight scene. In Trail to Laredo, the big fight takes place in a saloon and it’s pretty exciting. Not only does the saloon get trashed but there’s a moment where one of the bad guys actually seem to fly through the air. Even Virginia Maxey, playing Classy the saloon singer, gets in on it.
Both Virginia Maxey and Smiley Burnette get to sing a few songs. As always, there enough gunfights and horse chases to keep fans of the genre happy. Charles Starrett was a great cowboy.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1977’s Mary Jane Harper Cried Last Night! It can be viewed on YouTube.
Damn.
I mean, seriously! I have seen some depressing films before but nothing could have quite prepared me for Mary Jane Harper Cried Last Night.
Susan Dey stars as Rowena, a young single mother whose 3 year-old daughter, Mary Jane Harper (Natasha Ryan), is taken to the hospital with a broken arm. Dr. Angela Buccieri (Tricia O’Neil) doesn’t believe Rowena’s claim that Mary Jane is just accident prone and when she discovers what appears to be cigarette burns on the little girl, Dr. Buccieri goes to the head of pediatrics (played by veteran screen villain John Vernon) and requests a full set of X-rays to see if there are any previously healed injuries. Buccieri’s request is denied. It turns out that Rowena comes from a wealthy family and her father (Kevin McCarthy) is a trustee of the hospital. Even after Dr. Buccieri opens up about her own experiences as an abused child, she is told to drop the matter.
She doesn’t drop it. Instead, she goes to a social worker named Dave Williams (Bernie Casey). Dave does his own investigation but none of Rowena’s neighbors want to talk about all of the crying and the screaming that they hear coming from Rowena’s apartment. Rowena presents herself as being a stressed but loving mother. Dave suggests a support group that she can attend. When Rowena goes to the group, she opens up a little about how overwhelmed she feels. Unfortunately, she leaves Mary Jane in the apartment alone and, when a fire breaks out, Mary Jane is lucky to survive.
As intense as all of that is, it’s also only the first half of the movie. The second half is even more intense and emotionally draining and it all leads up to one of the most devastating final lines ever uttered in a movie. Throughout the film, the system fails both Rowena and Mary Jane. Mary Jane is failed when all of the evidence of the abuse that she has suffered is either ignored or shrugged away by the same people who are supposed to be looking out for her. Rowena is failed when no one pays attention to her obvious emotional instability. When she finally does have a breakthrough during a therapy session, her psychiatrist (played by James Karen) curtly tells her that they’ll have to talk about it next week because their hour is up.
Rowena is a character who I both hated and pitied. Like many abusers, she herself was a victim of abuse. Even when Rowena tries to get support, no one wants to admit that a mother is capable of abusing their own child. That said, Mary Jane Harper is at the center of the film. She’s a little girl who is desperate to be loved by a woman who often terrifies her. She is continually failed by the people who should be looking after her and it’s just devastating to watch. I’m sure I’m not the only person who was moved to tears by this film.
What a sad film. At the same time, it’s also an important one. If the film takes place at a time when no one wanted to admit to the abuse happening before their eyes, we now live in a time when people toss around allegations of abuse so casually that it’s led to a certain cynicism about the whole thing. Even when seen today, Mary Jane Harper Cried Last Night works as a powerful plea to watch out and care for one another.
First released in 2017, Divine Will is a short film but it’s also a rather odd film.
Dave Blessing (Brent Reed) used to be the lead singer of Isolation, a band that was apparently the hottest in the world in the 90s. His son, Will (Lee Roessler), is the result of a marriage that only lasted for two weeks. When Will’s mother dies, he moves to Chicago and lives with Dave and Dave’s quirky sister, Jenny (Kat Moser).
We are told (but we do not see) that Will had trouble in Chicago and that he spent a few nights in jail. Wanting to raise his son in a better environment, Dave accepts an offer to become the music minister for a church in small town Kentucky.
So, Dave, Will, Jenny, and the always silent ghost of Will’s mother move to Kentucky. At first, everyone is skeptical about a rock star becoming a choir leader but then all of the women in town see how handsome Dave is and they all suddenly remember that they were once huge fans of Isolation. While Dave tries to avoid all of the women that now want to marry him, Aunt Jenny gets a job as an art teacher. Jenny’s quirky methods go against the staid traditions of the school.
As for Will, he falls for Casey Buckner (Kathryn Boswell), who lives next door and who is still coming to terms with the death of her brother. Will should be able to help both her and several other people in town because he has the power to bring people a feeling of peace just by touching them. It’s a power that he’s had ever since the passing of his mother. Did I mention that the silent ghost of his mother keeps popping up at random moments?
Oh! And did I also mention that the movie is a musical? Will breaks into song while walking around the countryside. Later, he and Casey share a duet.
As I said, it’s an odd film. I’m a little bit hesitant about reviewing it because the imdb lists the film as having a 114 minute run-time while the version on Tubi was only 74 minutes long. Either the imdb is incorrect or the version of Tubi was heavily edited. Either way, the version I saw did feel as if it was missing a few scenes. It crammed a lot of plot into just 74 minutes and the film was not always easy to follow. The version I saw leaned very heavily on Will’s narration, especially during the first few scenes.
But you know what? It’s a likably goofy film and it’s earnest enough that it feels somewhat churlish to be too critical of it. If nothing else, it definitely captures the feel of living in the country. There’s a scene set in a barn that has so many bales of hay that I immediately felt like I was back on my grandmother’s farm and suffering from allergies. Much like the country that it portrays, the film was odd but the scenery was lovely.
A German MMA fighter is just minutes away from fighting a leading contender when he gets a call from his ex-wife. It is his daughter’s birthday and Octavio is told that if he doesn’t make it to her birthday party within an hour, Octavio’s ex-wife is going to demand full custody of her. Octavio runs from the match, hoping that he can somehow make it from one end of Berlin to the next in just 60 minutes.
What Octavio doesn’t know is that the fight was fixed. Octavio’s opponent agreed to take a dive so a bunch of gamblers put down a lot of money on Octavio winning the fight. If Octavio forfeits, they’ll lose all of their money. Soon, Octavio finds himself being pursued by motely collection of Serbian mobsters, bikers, and cops. Meanwhile, Octavio just wants to pick up a cake and his daughter’s birthday gift (an adorable kitten named Onion) and make it to the party in time.
That’s not a bad premise for an action film and Sixty Minutes features a lot of exciting fight scenes as Octavio battles his way to his ex-wife’s house. Unfortunately, it soon becomes obvious that the film is cheating a bit with the time frame. When Octavio takes off running, a stopwatch lets us know that he has 59 minutes and 59 seconds left. About ten minutes later, the stopwatch reappears and tries to convince us that only four minutes have passed. Octavio has to face a lot of obstacles on his way to that birthday party but it’s hard to create any suspense when the audience knows that the movie isn’t going to be honest about how much time has passed. If any film cries out for a “real time” approach, it’s this movie.
(Personally, I would have changed the title to 80 Minutes. It would still be a stretch to claim that the majority of the movie’s action could have taken place over such a compressed time frame but it would still be more believable than 60.)
On the plus side, the action scenes are exciting. Emilio Sakraya is not the most expressive of actors but, as a former Full-Contact Karate champion, he’s totally convincing in the fight scenes. Wisely, the film does not try to convince us that Octavio is some sort of genius. He is often his own worst enemy. (If you had to get across Berlin in a narrowly-allotted amount of time, would you be stupid enough to stop to argue with the cops?) And there definitely is something rather sweet about Octavio’s determination to make sure that his daughter gets her birthday present. (And fear not, animal lovers — the cat survives the film.) Finally, the soundtrack was heavy on EDM, which I definitely appreciated.
With all of the scenes of Octavio running through Berlin and checking his watch to see how much time he had left, the film feels a bit like a direct descendant of Run, Lola, Run. Unfortunately, Sixty Minutes is nowhere near as exciting, witty, or thoughtful as Tom Tykwer’s classic film. Still, Sixty Minutes is entertaining when taken on its own terms. Just don’t make the mistake of trying to count the minutes.
Steve Godfrey (Charles Starrett) is in trouble again. He has been accused of stealing another payroll and the only man who can clear his name has just been murdered. Steve thinks that he is being set up by outlaws who want to take control of the dead man’s ranch, which is now owned by Mary Ann Jarvis (Adele Roberts).
Through the Shattered Lens 