Category Archives: Film Review

Retro Television Review: Playmates (dir by Theodore J. Flicker)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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 1972’s Playmates!  It  can be viewed on YouTube.

Playmates tells the story of two divorces.

Marshall Barnett (Alan Alda) is an attorney.  He went to Yale and Harvard.  He has a successful career.  He has rich and educated friends.  He has a nice bachelor pad.  He also pays hundreds of dollars in alimony.  He and Lois (Barbara Feldon) got divorced 3 years ago and Marshall is still bitter.  He’s bitter that he has to pay her so much money.  He’s bitter that he only gets to see his son on the weekends.  He’s bitter that he can’t seem to start a new, meaningful relationship with anyone.  He’s bitter that his wife still asks him to critique her modernist paintings.

Kermit Holvey (Doug McClure) is a blue collar welder.  He has only been divorced for a few months and his relationship with ex-wife Patti (Connie Stevens) is nowhere near as contentious as Marshall’s relationship with Lois.  Still, Kermit is struggling to adjust to being single and to only seeing his son on the weekends.

Marshall and Kermit meet one weekend while they are both taking their sons to the Kiddieland Amusement Park.  Marshall is so overjoyed to meet someone else who is dealing with divorce that he comes on a bit strong in trying to get to know Kermit.  Kermit, however, does eventually get over his initial weariness and soon, he and Marshall are best friends.  It doesn’t matter that Marshall has a tendency to be a little bit condescending and that Kermit often can’t follow what Marshall is talking about.  They spend most of their time talking about their ex-wives.

But then Kermit meets Lois and he discovers that her paintings really aren’t as bad as Marshall made them out to be.  And Marshall meets Patti and he discovers that she’s not as dumb as Kermit made her out to be.  Soon, Kermit is secretly dating Lois and Marshall is secretly dating Patti and anyone who has ever watched a comedy before knows that there is a big mess waiting in the future.

Playmates was one of those films that pretended to be a lot naughtier than it actually was.  For all the winking and the occasional sly smiles, all that happens is that Kermit and Marshall both end up going out with women with whom they really don’t have much in common.  And while it’s tempting to read a lot into how quickly Kermit and Marshall become friends and how they both end up dating the other’s female equivalent, I think that might be giving this film too much credit.  (If it were made today, things might be different.)  In the end, the film really has more to say about class than it does marriage, as both Marshall and Lois obviously view spending time with Kermit and Patti as being a way of slumming and building up some working class bona fides without actually having to be working class.  Patti, to her credit, calls Marshall out on this.  Marshall admits that she has a point but he still come across as if he’s talking down to her, largely because he’s played by Alan Alda, an actor who is a master at being somehow both likable and condescending at the same time.

Playmates is a well-acted film and there are some funny lines.  The four main characters are all ultimately likable, even if they all have their moments where you can tell why they would be difficult to live with.  It deserves some credit for following its story through to its natural conclusion, with one couple realizing that they still love each other while the other realize that they are better off divorced.  The film may not be as radical as it pretends to be but it still doesn’t cop out on the ending.  In the end, Playmates is probably best watched as a time capsule.  It’s here if you ever want to experience 1972 firsthand.

Insomnia File #65: Girl Lost (dir by Robin Bain)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night, you could have jumped over to Tubi or Prime and watched 2016’s Girl Lost.

Girl Lost tells the story of Shara (Jessica Taylor Haid), who we first see being abused by her mother’s boyfriend and then retreating outside to a pool so that she can run a razor blade over her thigh in peace.  Shara is only 15 but she’s had to deal with things that no one should ever have to experience in a lifetime.  Her mother, Kim (played by Robin Bain, who also directed the film), is a sex worker who expects her daughter to follow in her footsteps and who encourages Shara to pose for risqué photos that Kim then posts online.

Shara spends almost the entire film fleeing.  At first, she and Kim flee Kim’s boyfriend.  Eventually, Shara and her boyfriend, the well-meaning but not particularly bright Jamie (Felix Ryan), end up running away from Kim.  They live on the streets and discover just how difficult it can be to survive on your own.  In the end, no one can survive without money and Shara, just like her mother before her, comes to realize that there’s one guaranteed way to make that money, whether it’s waiting for a creepy guy in a back alley or getting a job talking on the phone to some pervy loser living in his mother’s basement.  Eventually, Shara runs away from even Jamie and ends up working at a Russian-owned brothel.  Throughout it all, her life continues to unravel.  It’s a harsh world that Shara has been born into and it’s one where you either do what you have to do to survive or you end up imprisoned or worse.  The film’s ends on a dark note.  At first, I thought the ending was perhaps a bit too dark.  After all that had happened, I wondered, what it have killed the film to end on a note of hope?  But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the film ended in the the only way that the story could have ended.  From the minute she was born, poor Shara never really had a chance.

It’s a deeply unsettling film.  In fact, if you are trying to find something to help lull you into sleep, this is probably not the best film to go with unless you’re prepared to have some fairly upsetting dreams.  Though shot on a low budget, the film captures the harshness of life on the fringes of society and both Jessica Taylor Haid and Robin Bain deserve a lot of credit for their performances as two characters who are not always likable but who are very recognizable.  It’s a sad film that also serves as a tribute to every lost and forgotten soul out there.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker
  59. True Spirit
  60. Project Kill
  61. Replica
  62. Rollergator
  63. Hillbillys In A Haunted House
  64. Once Upon A Midnight Scary

May Positivity: Round Of Your Life (dir by Dylan Thomas Ellis)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

2019’s Round Of Your Life tells the story of the Collins family.

Carl Collins (Boo Arnold) is a retired PGA golfer who is still considered to be one of the best to ever play the game.  He’s put a lot of pressure on his two sons to follow in his footsteps.  Tucker (Tim Ogletree), who likes to tell jokes and doesn’t always follow the best golf course etiquette, has just started on the PGA tour.  Meanwhile, 15 year-old Taylor (Evan Hara) would rather play video games than stick with all of the hard work needed to become a golf pro.

When Taylor fails to make the Varsity Golf Team at his high school, an angry Carl goes for a late night drive.  Unfortunately, his car is hit by another car, this one being driven by a teenage girl who was too busy texting to pay attention to the road.  Carl ends up in a coma.  And Taylor ends up determined to join the golf team and make his father proud.

Coach Wilson (Richard T. Jones) is skeptical about giving Taylor a second chance to play for the school.  But then Wilson sees Taylor playing a round with his best player, Connor (Blair Jackson, who gives the film’s best performance).  Realizing that Taylor actually is a good golfer, Wilson allows him to join the junior varsity team.  When one of the varsity players is caught cheating, Taylor moves up to varsity.  He also starts a tentative relationship with Bailey (Alexandria DeBerry), even though Connor considers Bailey to be his girlfriend.

Tucker, meanwhile, starts going out with Minka (Katie Leclerc), a nurse at the hospital.  A surprisingly large amount of screentime is devoted to Tucker and Minka’s romance, despite the fact that there’s not really much of a story there.  Both Tucker and Minka are single and they start dating.  One gets the feeling that the main reason this storyline was given such prominence in the film is because the actor playing Tucker also wrote the film.

This is a faith-based film, so there’s naturally a lot of emphasis on everyone praying for Carl’s recovery.  This is the type of film where people discuss attending a Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting without a hint of irony.  This is also the rare high school film where no one ever curses, there’s no drinking to be found, and all of the relationships are relatively chaste.  Whether or not the viewer finds this to be realistic would depend on what type of high school they went to.  My high school experience was a bit different.

When the film started, I had a problem with the amount of pressure that Carl put on his sons to follow in his footsteps.  That was especially true in the case of Taylor, who seemed to be a good kid who just happened to be a bit more laid back than either his father or his brother.  Though it’s not made apparent until the film is nearly over, Round Of Your Life did share my concerns.  Visually, Round of Your Life is fairly bland and the twist at the end won’t be a huge shock to anyone who has ever seen one of these films before.  But there is a likable earnestness to this movie.  And, needless to say, the golf courses were lovely.

The Films of 2024: Spaceman (dir by Johan Renck)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

At some point in an unspecified future, Czech cosmonaut Jakub Procházka (Adam Sandler) floats through space in a capsule.  He’s on a mission to investigate Chopra, a cloud of dust and debris that has been spotted near Jupiter.  On Earth, he’s a hero.  People love to watch interviews with him from space, though few realize that the majority of his interviews were actually pre-recorded before he left the planet.  Corporations are sponsoring his trip and Jakub is under order to use their marketing slogans as much as possible whenever he communicates with the people back home.  Jakob is in a race to reach the cloud before a competing mission from South Korea.  One can only guess what’s happened back on Earth to create a situation where the Czech Republic and South Korea are the two countries with a working space program.

Jakub is someone who grew up yearning to leave the planet and escape from the pain of being the son of a “party informer.”  Now that he’s in space, he obsesses on how much he misses his wife, Lenka (Carey Mulligan).  He and Lenka used to talk regularly through “CzechConnect” but it’s been a while since she’s answered any of his calls.  Lenka was not happy when Jakub accepted the mission to Chopra, accusing him of abandoning her when she needed him most.  Considering that she is pregnant (and that a previous pregnancy ended in a miscarriage), she’s absolutely right.  What Jakub doesn’t know is that Lenka has decided to leave him.  As her mother (Lena Olin) puts it, Jakub will always find an excuse not to return home and deal with their relationship.  After he inspects Chopra, who is to say that Jakub won’t want to continue to see what is waiting beyond Jupiter?  Lenka’s final message to him is being suppressed by the Czech government (represented here by Isabella Rossellini).

What is it that drives Jakub to separate himself from the rest of the world?  Jakub is himself not totally sure.  But when a giant space spider (voiced by Paul Dano) shows up in the capsule and explains that it wants to understand the human mind, Jakub starts to learn.  The spider, who Jakub names Hanus, becomes Jakub’s companion and his confessor.

I’ve often said that there are two Adam Sandlers.  There’s the Adam Sandler who makes goofy comedies with his friends and who mostly seems to view making movies as a working vacation.  And then there’s the Adam Sandler who is a sad-eyed character actor who captures regret and spiritual malaise about as well any performer working today.  To me, it’s always been interesting how the same actor who starred in something like Jack and Jill could also be absolutely heart-breaking when cast in something like The Meyerowtiz Stories.  If the only Sandler films that you ever watched or heard about were his dramatic roles, you would probably assume that he is one of America’s most honored actors.  Spaceman finds Adam Sandler in serious actor mode and he does a good job at portraying Jakub’s loneliness and the deep sadness that makes it difficult from him to open up emotionally.  That said, I have to admit that, as I watched this deliberately-paced and rather somber film, there were a few times when I found myself thinking about how they should have made a sequel to Happy Gilmore where Happy became the first pro-golfer in space.

Spaceman is a film that I wanted to like more than I did.  It’s a well-acted film, with Carey Mulligan again getting a chance to show the depth that she can bring to even a somewhat underwritten role.  The Chopra is beautifully rendered.  The Giant Spider becomes a fascinating character as the story plays out.  The film does a good job of capturing the claustrophobia of being stuck in a space capsule.  (Jakub may have escaped Earth but he’s still definitely trapped.)  The problem is that the film’s approach is a bit too literal-minded.  Instead, of engaging with viewers and letting them discover the film’s themes and solve the story’s mysteries for themselves, Spaceman spells everything out in the most obvious ways.  The film, like Jakub, makes the mistake of not trusting the people watching to be able to understand what they’re seeing.  2001: A Space Odyssey was an obvious influence on the film’s final third but, whereas Kubrick took an obvious joy in leaving audiences scratching their heads, Spaceman wraps things up a bit too neatly,

In the end, I think Spaceman will be best-remembered for being the first film in which audiences will not be surprised to see Adam Sandler giving a dramatic performance.  After Punch-Drunk Love, The Meyerowtiz Stories, Uncut Gems, and Hustle, we’ve reached the point where the idea of Adam Sandler being a good actor is no longer shocking.  Who would have ever guessed?

Spaceballs (1987, directed by Mel Brooks)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

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A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away…

President Skroob (Mel Brooks), the evil and incompetent leader of Planet Spaceball, has squandered all of the air on his planet and is planning on stealing the atmosphere of the planet Druida.  To pull this off, he arranges for the idiotic Prince Valium (Jim J. Bullock) to marry Vespa (Daphne Zuniga), the princess of Druida.  (All together now: “She doesn’t look Druish.”)  Vespa and her droid, Dot Matrix (voice by Joan Rivers), flee Druida with Lord Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) and Colonel Sandurz (George Wyner) in pursuit.

In debt to the intergalactic gangster, Pizza the Hut (voiced by Dom DeLuise), a mercenary named Lone Star (Bill Pullman) and his associate, the man-dog hypbrid Barf (John Candy), accept a contract from Vespa’s father (Dick Van Patten) to track down his daughter.  They take off in their space Winnebago to bring Vespa home.  Though they start only interested in money, Lone Star and Barf come to learn about love, freedom, and a mystical power known as the Schwartz.  (“No, the Schwartz!”)

Back when I was growing up and just being able to have HBO made you the coolest guy on the block, Spaceballs was one of my favorite movies.  I watched it every time that it came on cable.  As usual with Mel Brooks, there were a lot of double entendres that went over my young head but there was also enough goofy humor that I could laugh at what was going on.  I could quote all the lines.  I laughed whenever Rick Moranis showed up in his Darth Vader-costume.  I laughed at John Candy’s facial expressions.  I laughed when Mel Brooks showed up as Yogurt, the Spaceballs version of Yoda.  Pizza the Hut?  That’s hilarious when you’re a kid!

I recently rewatched the film.  Revisiting it was a lesson in how your memory can trick you.  I could still quote most of the lines with reasonable accuracy but nothing was quite the way I remembered it.  Rick Moranis and John Candy were still hilarious and, being older, I could better appreciated the frustration felt by George Wyner’s Colonel Sandurz.  I also realized what a good performance Bill Pullman gave as Lone Star.  While everyone else mugged for the camera, Pullman played his role straight.

I also discovered that a lot of the scenes that I remembered as being hilarious were actually just mildly amusing.  Mel Brooks was always hit-and-miss as a director, the type who would toss everything and the kitchen sink into his films.  Spaceballs has a lot of hilarious scenes but it’s obvious that Brooks didn’t have the same affection for the source material as he did with Young Frankenstein or Blazing Saddles or even High Anxiety.  Brooks is poking fun at Star Wars because it’s popular but he doesn’t seem to have any strong feelings, one way or the other, about George Lucas’s space epic.

I still laughed, though.  Even if Spaceballs wasn’t the masterpiece that I remembered it being, I still enjoyed rewatching it.  The jokes that hit were funny enough to make up for the ones that missed.  Even with his weaker films, Mel Brooks is a national treasure.

The TSL Grindhouse: The Spook Who Sat By The Door (dir by Ivan Dixon)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

1973’s The Spook Who Sat By The Door opens with Senator Hennington (Joseph Mascolo) in a panic.

The Senator is running for reelection and is struggling to appeal to white voters and minority voters at the same time.  White voters are happy that the Senator recently gave a speech in favor of “law and order” but now, he’s polling weakly with black voters.  His wife (Elaine Aiken) suggests that the Senator win back black voters by demanding that the CIA hire more black agents.

The CIA responds to the political pressure by hiring Dan Freeman (Lawrence Cook) to be their first black agent.  Freeman is given the standard CIA training and taught how to start revolutions in other countries.  However, after he completes his training, Freeman is assigned no real responsibilities.  He is given a desk job and spends most of his day making copies.  Whenever a senator or a reporter visits CIA Headquarters, Freeman is trotted out so that the CIA can claim to be diverse.  Freeman understands that he’s a token.  He knows that his job is to basically sit by the door and be seen.  But Freeman actually has bigger plans.

After spending a few years at the CIA, Freeman resigns and heads back to Chicago to work as a social worker.  Using what he learned at the agency, he starts to recruit young black men as freedom fighters.  He and the Cobras (as they’re called) launch their own guerilla war against the establishment in Chicago.  Some of their tactics are violent and some of them are not.  Freeman understands the importance of winning both hearts and minds and he recruits Willy (David Lemieux) to serve as his lead propagandist.  Because Willy is light-skinned, he is also assigned to rob a bank because Freeman knows that both the witnesses and the police will mistake him for being white and will be less likely to fire on him.  (The other members of the Cobras wear whiteface during the robbery.)

Freeman hopes that he will be able to recruit his childhood friend, Dawson (J.A. Preston), to the cause.  Dawson, however, now works as a detective for the Chicago PD and has been assigned to beak up the Cobras.  Will Freeman be able to bring over Dawson and what will happen if Dawson resists?

Based on a novel by Sam Greenlee (who was one of the first black men to be recruited to work with the United States Information Agency and who based many of Freeman’s CIA experiences on his own), The Spook Who Sat By The Door has achieved legendary status as a film that the FBI reportedly tried to keep out of theaters.  Theater owners were pressured to either not book the film or to only book it for a week before replacing it with a less incendiary film.  As a result, The Spook Who Sat By The Door became a difficult film to see.  As often happens, the efforts to censor the film only added to its revolutionary mystique.

Of course, in 2024, one can go on YouTube and watch the film for oneself.  It’s definitely uneven film, one that has pacing issues (especially at the beginning) and also one that suffers due to its low budget.  Depicting the overthrow of the government on a budget will always be a challenge.  Some of the acting is a bit amateurish but Lawrence Cook broods convincingly as Freeman and he’s well-matched by J.A. Preston’s portrayal of the more down-to-Earth Dawson.  At its best, there’s a raw authenticity and anger to the film that immediately captures the viewer’s attention.  It’s the rare political film to actually feature conversations about actual politics and it’s a film that asks how far people would be willing to go to accomplish change.  The Spook Who Sat By The Door suggests that the true villains are the members of the establishment who cynically embraced the civil rights struggle in their words but not in their actions.  In the end, Dan Freeman becomes a bit of a fanatic but the film suggests that perhaps a fanatic was what the times demanded.

The Film of 2024: Lola (dir by Nicola Peltz Beckham)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Lola (Nicola Peltz Beckham) works her days working in a convenience store and her nights dancing at a strip club.  It’s not enjoyable work but she’s trying to raise money so that she can enroll her little brother, Arlo (Luke David Blumm) in a special arts school in Dallas.  At present, Arlo is being homeschooled by their religious fanatic mother, Mona (Virginia Madsen).  Heavy-drinking Mona throws a fit whenever she sees Arlo putting on makeup or wearing a dress but she doesn’t do a thing about the way her boyfriend (Trevor Long) leers at Lola.  She’s the type who gives people doughnuts with “God” written in icing.

Lola thinks that it is a film about poor people but actually, it isn’t.  Written by, directed by, and starring the daughter of billionaire Nelson Peltz, Lola is less a film about poor people and more a film about what rich people think being poor is like.  As such, everyone smokes and everyone lives in either a trailer or a one-story house but the inside of those houses are perfectly lit and not the least bit cluttered.  Lola may have to work two jobs and she may be hooked on cocaine but her hair and her makeup are always perfect.  Lola’s homelife may not be perfect but, as all poor white girls do in movies like this, she has a super-loyal Black friend (Raven Goodwin) who doesn’t appear to have a life outside of obsessing on Lola’s problems.  Lola also has a dumbass boyfriend (played by Richie Merritt, the star of White Boy Rick) who keeps her supplied with cocaine but who also gets upset when Lola says she’s not ready to lose her virginity to him.

The film follows Lola from one trauma to another.  We’re supposed to sympathize with her because her life is so bad but the film itself doesn’t seem to realize that Lola is often her own worst enemy.  For instance, knowing that she cannot afford to lose her job at the convenience store, she still tries to steal from the store in the most obvious way possible.  When she gets caught, her boss fires her.  Even when she offers to get the stolen stuff out of her locker (seriously, she put it in her locker?), her boss tells her that she’s fired.  The film sets this up as if the boss is somehow being unfair but actually, he’s doing what any boss would do to an employee stealing products from his shelf.  He has every right to fire her and if he didn’t, he would basically be inviting everyone else who works for him to steal from him as well.  Losing the job sends Lola into a spiral of depression and desperation but again, it was her own fault so how sorry am I supposed to feel for her?

Eventually, there is a tragedy.  It’s not great shock when it happens but it does lead to scene of Lola sobbing while portentous string music playing on the soundtrack.  Much like everything else in the film, the music choice is so obvious and heavy-handed that it’s more like to inspire a chuckle than a tear.  The right to portentous string music is something that a movie has to earn.  Requiem For A Dream earned Lux Aeterna.  Lola is no Requiem For A Dream.

Instead, Lola has more in common with Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut, Lost River.  Both Lola and Lost River are films about poverty that try way too hard to be profound.  The difference is that Lola lacks the spark of madness that made Lost River interesting, albeit incoherent.  That said, I do think that Nicole Peltz Beckham does have some talent as a director.  There are a few impressive shots to be found in Lola, even if Beckham doesn’t really seem to yet understand how to use them to tell a compelling story.  But with some experience and a script written by someone other than herself, Nicole Peltz Beckham seems like she has the potential to be a worthwhile director.

Sudden Death (1977, directed by Eddie Romero)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Ed Neilson (Ken Metcalf) is a business executive who just wants to spend the weekend grilling with his family but then a bunch of gunmen show up and, in a surprisingly violent sequence that even shows children being shot in slow motion, massacre his entire family.

Ed barely survives and begs his old friend, a former CIA agent named Duke Smith (Robert Conrad), to find out who murdered his family.  Duke would rather hang out on the beach with his wife (Aline Samson) and daughter (Nancy Conrad) and he refuses to help Ed.  But then Ed gets blown up in his car and Duke and his former partner (Felton Perry) come out of retirement to get justice.  Duke’s investigation leads to a corrupt businessman (Thayer David), a murderous government official (John Ashley, who also produced), and a ruthless hitman (Don Stroud).

Filmed in The Philippines and directed by Eddie Romero, Sudden Death is a violent and brutal thriller with a twisty the plot that is nearly impossible to follow.  It seems like a lot of killing for no particular reason.  The thing that sets Sudden Death apart from other action films is its willingness to violently kill off anyone, regardless of age, gender, or relative innocence.  The 70s was a decade known for downbeat endings but, even by the standards of that decade, Sudden Death‘s ending is shockingly abrupt and bleak.  In the lead role, Robert Conrad shows off the ruthless intensity that made him the most feared of all of the coaches on Battle of the Network Stars.

Originally, the sidekick role was offered to Jim Kelly.  When Kelly dropped out, the role was given to the far more laid back Felton Perry.  I think if Kelly had stayed with the film, it would probably be a cult classic today.  Instead, it’s an obscurity that reminds us of how bleak even exploitation films were in the 70s.

The Films of 2024: The Bricklayer (dir by Renny Harlin)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Someone is assassinating commie journalists in Europe and making it appear as if the CIA is responsible.  O’Malley (Tim Blake Nelson) of the CIA suspects that the assassin is Michael Radek (Clifton Collins, Jr.), a former intelligence asset who faked his own death but who has now returned and is seeking vengeance on the Agency for the death of his wife and daughter.  O’Malley decides that Radek’s friend and former CIA handler, Steve Vail (Aaron Eckhart), is the only man who can track Radek down.

The problem is that Vail is as disillusioned with intelligence work as Radek.  Vail walked away from the Agency years ago and now spends his time listening to jazz and working as a bricklayer.  Vail explains that, when working with bricks, everything is predictable and everything fits together perfectly.  It’s the opposite of the chaotic world of spies and assassinations.  O’Malley think that Vail is full of crap and I would be tempted to agree if not for the fact that Aaron Eckhart is one of the few actors who can make you believe anything that he says.

At first, Vail refuses to help but then Radek sends a group of assassins to kill him.  That changes Vail’s mind.  Along with an inexperienced supervisor named Kate (Nina Dobrev), Vail heads to Greece to not only track down Radek but also discover the identity of a mole in the CIA.

The Bricklayer was advertised as being a return-to-form of sorts for director Renny Harlin.  In many ways, it’s a typical Harlin film.  For the most part, it looks good.  Some of the action scenes are exciting.  A car flips over and explodes.  At the same time, it never quite reaches the heights of Harlin’s heyday.  This film has neither the grandeur of Die Hard 2, the romantic sparks of The Long Kiss Goodnight, or the energy of Deep Blue Sea.  The film’s low-budget is definitely a factor in that.  There are scenes in the film that look about as cheap as some of the movies that Bruce Willis was making before he announced his retirement.

That said, The Bricklayer does what it does with efficiency and Renny Harlin still knows how to keep the action moving.  Though the story is a bit too familiar to really be intriguing, Aaron Eckhart makes for a surprisingly believable secret agent.  One thing I especially liked about Eckhart’s performance is that he didn’t go for the “grim” stereotype of the former intelligence agent.  As played by Aaron Eckhart, Steve Vail may have had his regrets but he wasn’t some sort of emotionless zombie.  He enjoyed jazz.  He enjoyed the work that he did as a bricklayer.  Though the rules of the genre demand that he and Nina Dobrev start the film as mild adversaries, they quickly developed a likable chemistry.

The Bricklayer is the epitome of an okay, middle of the road movie.  It’s neither good nor bad enough to be especially memorable but it’s entertaining enough if you’ve got 100 minutes to kill.

Paper Lion (1968, directed by Alex March)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Writer George Plimpton (Alan Alda) is a Park Avenue sophisticate who practices “participatory” journalism.  He has already written about pitching in an exhibition all-star game and getting knocked out by Sugar Ray Robinson.  He is having trouble coming up with his next stunt until he goes to Central Park and plays a touch football game with his girlfriend Kate (Lauren Hutton) and his editor, Oscar (David Doyle).  Oscar sees George throwing the ball and decides that George should write about going to a professional football team’s training camp as a player.

George, who fantasizes about throwing the game-winning touchdown, is enthusiastic.  Most of the teams that George approaches are less enthusiastic but finally, the Detroit Lions agree to sign him as a quarterback.  Once the other players realize that George is a writer and not a professional athlete, there’s a lot of resentment.  As Guard John Gordy (playing himself) puts it, he could easily get injured while protecting an inexperienced quarterback like George.  George can always go back to Park Avenue but, for the rest of the players, the game is their life and they don’t like the idea of some outsider coming in and treating it all like a joke.  At first, only the fearsome defender Alex Karras (also playing himself) is willing to support George but eventually, George’s refusal to give up wins over the rest of the team.  They even let him score a touchdown during practice.

When the preseason begins, George waits for his opportunity to take the field.  How many yards can he lose in three plays?

Paper Lion is based on a true story.  In 1963, George Plimpton did attending training camp and play a scrimmage for the Lions and he later wrote a book about the experience.  The movie changes the time period from ’63 to ’67 so that all of the then-members of the Lions could play themselves.  (Though Karras was a friend of Plimpton’s, he was actually suspended during the 1963 season and, unlike in the movie, never joined Plimpton on the practice field.)  The film plays Plimpton’s football career largely for laughs, celebrating every guy’s fantasy of being a sports star while also showing why it’s probably best to leave the actual game to the professionals.  Alan Alda doesn’t imitate Plimpton’s famous Mid-Atlantic accent but he does capture the excitement of a man getting to live out his fantasy.

Paper Lion was made with the full cooperation of the NFL and a good deal of the film’s final third is made up footage that was shot for an actual game.  Seen today, it’s interesting to see how positively Paper Lion portrays both the game and its players and to contrast it with how the game is usually portrayed today.  There’s no talk of steroids or fears of multiple concussions.  All of the players are clean-cut, friendly, witty, and helpful.  Even the training camp hazing is all done is good fun.  Paper Lion introduces us to the nicest people in the world and they’re all football players!