Retro Television Review: Fallen Angel (dir by Robert Michael Lewis)

Posted on November 19, 2023 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 1981’s Fallen Angel! It can be viewed on Tubi.

Jennifer Phillips (Dana Hill) is 12 years old and struggling to find her place in the world. Sometimes, she wants to be a gymnast. Sometimes, she wants to be an actress. She misses her late father. She has a difficult time communicating with her mother, an often-exhausted waitress named Sherry (Melinda Dillon). She is definitely not happy that Sherry is dating the well-meaning but rather dorky Frank Dawson (Ronny Cox). Jennifer wants to watch an awards show. Frank changes the channel to a baseball game. That pretty much sums up their relationship.

One night, Jennifer escapes the unhappiness of her home life by going to an arcade. That’s where she is approached by Howard Nichols (Richard Masur), a seemingly friendly older man who takes her picture and then tells her that she’s just as beautiful as Farrah Fawcett and Olivia Newton-John. Jennifer replies that she doesn’t think that she should talk to Howard because he’s a stranger. Howard tells her that’s very smart of her and then explains that he coaches the local girls softball team and that he thinks Jennifer would make a great shortstop.

You can probably guess where this is going and you’re absolutely right. Soon, Jennifer is spending all of her time with Howard, who tells her that he understands what she’s going through even if her parents don’t. Howard’s an amateur photographer and he’s constantly asking Jennifer to pose for him. He tells Jennifer that she probably shouldn’t tell any adults about their “special friendship” because they just wouldn’t understand. He even buys Jennifer a puppy, one that he threatens to take back to the pound whenever it appears that Jennifer is trying to step away from him.

Howard is not only a pedophile but he also works for a pornography ring and, as Jennifer soon finds out, he’s actually got several young people living with him and posing for pictures. Jennifer’s mother eventually becomes concerned about what Jennifer is doing when she leaves the house and she even comes to suspect that friendly old Howard is not quite as friendly as he pretends to be. But is it too late?

Yikes! I watched this film on Tubi and I cringed through the whole thing. Of course, that’s the reaction that Fallen Angel was going for. This is a film that was made to encourage parents to maybe be a little concerned about with whom their children are spending their free time. Jennifer is fortunate that her mom eventually figures out what is going on but, as the film makes clear, a lot of victims are not so lucky. This film is pure paranoia fuel but in the best way possible. There are some things that every parent should be paranoid about and the adult who only spends time with people 20 years younger than him is definitely one of those things. The film is well-made, well-written, and well-acted. Richard Masur, with his friendly manner and his manipulate tone, will give you nightmares.

Film Review: The Killer (dir by David Fincher)

Posted on November 15, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Killer open with the film’s title character (played by Michael Fassbender) in an abandoned office in Paris.

He spends every day sitting in front of a window, watching the the luxury hotel across the street from him. As is evident from the film’s title and the character’s voice-over narration, the man is a professional killer. Sometimes, he kills up close-and-personal. Sometimes, he kills in a way that makes the death look like it occurred naturally. In Paris, he’s just waiting in an abandoned WeWork office with a sniper rifle. The Killer informs us that a good deal of his time is spent waiting and getting bored. Sometimes, he passes the time by listening to the Smiths. Sometimes, he takes a moment or two to glance at all of the “normies” living their lives with no idea about what’s happening in the otherwise empty office above their heads. The Killer spends a lot of time thinking about his philosophy of life and how that effects the way he does his job. Through his voice-over narration, he talks about the huge amount of people in the world. He talks about how an assassin should never improvise and how an assassin should never allow any feelings of empathy for other people.

That may sound like the beginning of a rather grim movie and certainly, there have been a lot of recent assassin films that have taken themselves way too seriously. Indeed, when the movie started with the Killer going on and on and on about how he prepares for a job, I started to have unwelcome flashbacks to Andrew Dominik’s mind-numbingly pretentious Killing Them Softly. (Really, I can only assume that everyone who was shocked by the mean-spirited ugliness of Blonde must have previously blocked Killing Them Softly from their memory.)

I need not have worried. Fortunately, The Killer is directed by David Fincher and Fincher is far too clever a director to take any the character’s nonsense seriously. The Killer may be obsessed with his inner monologue but Fincher clearly is not. From the start, Fincher pokes fun at the Killer’s self-importance by having him do things like use the names of sitcom characters whenever he has to buy a plane ticket. More often than not, the Killer’s narration is interrupted by someone proving that, despite what he may believe, the Killer does not have complete control over every situation. All of the character’s philosophizing is ultimately his way of denying that, just like the people that he is hired to kill, he is also subject to the whims of fate.

For instance, in Paris, the job gets botched. The Killer does not kill his target and, when he calls his handler (Charles Parnell), he’s informed that there probably will be consequences for his failure. When the Killer returns to his home in South America, he discovers that his girlfriend has been assaulted and left near death by two other assassins. The Killer heads to America, to confront the people that he holds responsible. Some of those people are professionals who have offices and who live in the suburbs. Some of them live on the fringes of society. But all of them, like the Killer, exist in a shadowy and amoral world that makes sense to only them and which is invisible to most of the people around them.

It’s a revenge plot, the type that has been popular for decades. (Indeed, one could easily imagine The Killer being made in the 70s with Charles Bronson playing the title role.) The story may not be unique but the action plays out with Fincher’s signature visual style and a welcome amount of wit. The Killer travels from Paris to South America to New Orleans to Florida to New York and eventually Chicago and each location has its own unique feel. As always, Fincher has a terrific eye for detail and this film is at its strongest when it captures the feel of everyone else’s life going forward while The Killer remains focused on his mission. Even the worst characters are allowed moments that humanize them. Meanwhile, The Killer is so coldly determined that he often becomes as frightening as the people that he is pursuing.

The film is dominated by Fassbender, who is in every scene and who brings a feral intensity to the character. The Killer may have a friendly smile but the viewer only has to look at his eyes to see just how shut off from any sort of human warmth that he actually is. (Indeed, the Killer only seems to genuinely care about his girlfriend and, even then, we don’t learn much about his relationship with her.) Over the course of the film, Fassbender shares scenes with Tilda Swinton, Charles Parnell, Arliss Howard, and an actress named Kerry O’Malley, who gives a sympathetic performance as a secretary who knows too much. Everyone makes a strong impression, bringing the world of The Killer to life.

The Killer can be viewed on Netflix. It’s a triumphant exercise in pure style.

Film Review: Unseen (dir by Yoko Okumura)

Posted on November 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Up in Michigan, Emily (Midori Francis) is a doctor who has been kidnapped by her psychotic ex-boyfriend, Charlie (Michael Patrick Lane). Charlie takes her to a cabin in the woods, where he ties her up and brags about the revenge that he’s going to take on her. Emily manages to break free and temporarily incapacitate Charlie but, in the process, she breaks her glasses. Nearly blind, Emily stumbles out into the wilderness. Despite not knowing where she is and not being able to see more than a few inches in front of her, Emily has to find her way back to civilization before Charlie finds her.

Down in Florida, Sam (Jolene Purdy) arrives for another day of work at a gas station where she spends most of her time dealing with a broken Slurpee machine. From the start, it’s not a good day, with a rich woman named Carol (Missi Pyle) demanding a refund just because she accidentally put the cheapest brand of fuel into her BMW. Sam finds herself looking down at the card that she has from the suicide prevention hotline and we immediately know that Sam is not happy with her life. Then, suddenly, her phone rings.

Emily and Sam don’t know each other but when Emily tries to use her phone to call for help, Sam is the one who ends up getting the call. Once Sam realizes that Emily is being stalked by her murderous ex, Sam agrees to become Emily’s eyes through video call. Sam guides Emily through the woods, keeping her informed of whether or not Charlie is nearby. Along the way, they talk about their different lives and how they came to be in their current situations. Sam gives Emily the strength to keep fighting for her survival while Emily gives Sam a reason to keep on living. And while Emily is having to constantly deal with Charlie and his attempts to re-capture her, Sam has to deal with things like exploding slushee machines, a dying phone battery, and eventually Carol and an apparently insane (and heavily armed) man who appears to be her husband.

Unseen is a bit of a disjointed film. The scenes in Michigan are very serious and very intense, with Emily suffering serious injury as she flees from Charlie. At one point, Emily begs Sam to call her mom so that Emily can say goodbye to her and it’s a genuinely emotional scene. At the same time, the scenes in Florida are often broadly comedic, with Sam sliding across the floor and, at one point, locking herself behind bullet-proof glass while Carol and her husband, who is dressed like a yacht captain, scream at her to come out. The tonal shifts between the two locations can be a bit jarring but the film is still effective, largely due to the sincerity of the performances of Midori Francis and Jolene Purdy. Their friendship feels real and it’s hard not to get a little misty-eyed at the film’s final moments.

Unseen deserves a lot of credit for only being 76 minutes long. It tells its story quickly and without any unnecessary padding. This is a film that does not waste any time getting to the point and, in this time when even the simplest of genre films will often run for more than two hours, it’s hard not appreciate the nicely paced efficiency of Unseen.

Retro Television Review: Dance ‘Til Dawn (dir by Paul Schneider)

Posted on November 12, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s prom time and the seniors at Herbert Hoover High School are excited! Patrice Johnson (Christina Applegate) is especially excited because not only did she organize the prom but she’s also the leading contender to be elected prom queen. She’s looking forward to having a wonderful night with her boyfriend, Roger (Matthew Perry).

Patrice is especially excited because her only real competition for prom queen, Shelley (Alyssa Milano), has broken up with her jock boyfriend, Kevin (Brian Bloom). Shelley has declared that she will instead be attending a very mature and very fun college fraternity party. Meanwhile, Kevin will be attending prom but he will be coming with Angela (Tracey Gold), who has a reputation for being a bit nerdy. Kevin only asked Angela to prom because he was under the false impression that she’s easy but he soon finds himself falling for her for real.

Meanwhile, Shelley doesn’t really have a party to attend. Instead, she decides to spend prom night avoiding her friends and watching an old movie at the town’s movie theater. Shelley is convinced that no one from school will be at the theater. Instead, she runs into nerdy Dan (Chris Young), who also came to the theater because he didn’t have a prom date. Dan and Shelley end up having a fun time hanging out together.

While this is going on, all of the parents are having dramas of their own. Patrice’s embarrassing parents (Cliff de Young and Mary Frann) relive their own youth. Dan’s father (Alan Thicke) is convinced that Dan is not only the most popular kid at school but that Dan is also having a wonderful prom. And Angela’s parents (Edie McClurg and Kelsey Grammer) are so paranoid about the idea of Kevin trying to sleep with their daughter that they actually sneak into the prom to try to keep them from getting too close. Of course, they are mistaken for waiters and are immediately put to work.

I watched this two weeks ago, when I was still struggling to process the shock of Matthew Perry’s passing. Unfortunately, Matthew Perry is not in much of the film and it’s not really until the end of the film that he really gets a chance to show any of the sardonic wit for which he was best known. That said, Christina Applegate appears to be having fun as the snooty mean girl and she and Perry do make for a cute couple. Actually, all of the couples in the film are cute, with Alyssa Milano and Chris Young especially making for an adorable couple. This is a pleasant and, for many, nostalgic diversion, as long as you’re willing to accept that there is absolutely nothing go on beneath the film’s slick and occasionally colorful surface. The humor is broad, the messages are obvious, and, as always, it’s amusing to watch Kelsey Grammer running around in a panic.

Dance Til Dawn doesn’t really bring anything new to the high school genre but it’s still worthy of the name of Herbert Hoover.

Film Review: Pain Hustlers (dir by David Yates)

Posted on November 8, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I had high hopes for Pain Hustlers, largely because it featured some of my favorite actors and actresses. Chris Evans, Emily Blunt, Andy Garcia …. how can you go wrong with that cast, right?

Unfortunately, when I watched the film, it only took a few minutes for me to lose interest. The film opens with black-and-white interview clips of Liza Drake (Emily Blunt) and Pete Brenner (Chris Evans), in which they both claim to be the only one who can tell the true story of how a failing pharmaceutical firm became a powerhouse by bribing doctor to prescribe Fentanyl. For lack of a better term, I refer to this as the I, Tonya approach though it perhaps would be better to name it after director Adam McKay, whose superficial but slickly made films are often mistaken for being important political statements. It’s a style of filmmaking that may have once been exciting but now, it’s so overused that it’s come to feel a bit like a cliché.

As for the film itself, it opens with Liza working as an exotic dancer and living in a run-down motel with her daughter, Phoebe (Chloe Coleman). A chance meeting with pharmaceutical salesman Pete Brenner leads to Liza getting a job as a sales rep despite the fact that she’s a high school drop-out who previously served time in jail for drug trafficking. (Pete writes up a fake resume for her and lists her as being PHD, which Pete says stands for, “poor, hungry, and desperate.”) After a rocky start, Liza is able to convince Dr. Lydell (Brian D’Arcy James) to start prescribing a powerful painkiller that was developed for cancer patients. Of course, people get addicted to the drug and many overdose but it doesn’t matter because Liza, Pete, and Dr. Lydell are all getting rich. The unstable head of the company, Dr. Jack Neel (Andy Garcia), is happy as long as the money keeps rolling in and as long as everyone takes off their shoes at work because he’s worried about the floors getting dirty.

As I said at the start of the review, the film attempts to take an I, Tonya-style approach to the material, mixing conflicting narrators with moments of dark humor and sudden melodrama. Unfortunately, David Yates is exactly the wrong director for this film. Yates is best-known for his work with the Harry Potter franchise. Yates did a wonderful job directing the last few of the Harry Potter films but, as a director, his tendency is to be a crowd-pleaser and Pain Hustlers fails precisely because Yates always pulls back before the film can get too dark or subversive. This is the type of film where, during the final fourth of the film, everyone starts acting in ways totally contrary to everything we’ve previously learned and seen about them so that the film can end on a traditional note of good vs evil. Watching previously amoral characters suddenly and unconvincingly developed a conscience, I found myself thinking about Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. One reason why The Wolf of Wall Street worked is because Jordan Belfort remained an unrepentant crook through the entire film, even after all of his schemes fell apart. Scorsese has the courage to the let the audience make up their own mind about Belfort. Scorsese understood that suddenly having Belfort (or Henry Hill in Goodfellas or Ace Rothstein in Casino) develop a sense of right and wrong would not only feel unnatural to the character but it would also undercut the effectiveness of the story he was trying to tell. For lack of a better term, it would feel fake. It would feel like pandering to those who demands a cut-and-dried, easy-to-digest message. That’s a lesson that Pain Hustlers missed, to its detriment.

It’s just not a very good film, which is a shame when you consider the amount of talent involved. Of the cast, Chris Evans is the only one who really makes much of an impression, playing Pete as someone who might not be smart but who definitely understands how to charm enough people to get by. Poor Emily Blunt is sabotaged by an inconsistent script while Andy Garcia is pretty much wasted as Dr. Neel. Seriously, can we make an effort to write more decent roles for Andy Garcia? He’s such a good actor and he keeps getting wasted in these small, pointless roles!

Pain Hustlers was a disappointment for me. It happens.

Retro Television Reviews: Terror In The Sky (dir by Bernard L. Kowalski)

Posted on November 5, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On a flight heading from Minneapolis to Seattle, several passengers suddenly start to get ill.

Luckily, there’s a doctor on the plane. Sporting sideburns and wearing a turtleneck, Roddy McDowall is quite chic in the role of Dr. Baird, the dedicated medical professional who comes to realize that the passengers are suffering from food poisoning. As Dr. Baird explains it to head flight attendant Janet Turner (Lois Nettleton), everyone who had the chicken for dinner is about get severely ill. Uh-oh …. both of the pilots had the chicken!

Is there anyone on the plane who has any flying experience? George Spencer (Doug McClure) flew a helicopter in Vietnam but, as George explains, it’s an entirely different type of flying all together. George has no confidence about his ability to land the plane but he’s the only chance the passengers have.

On the ground, gruff Marty Treleavan (Leif Erickson) has been summoned to the airport so that he can help to talk George through the landing. Marty explains what all of the instruments do to George. He tells George that he needs to stay in the air for a few hours so that he can get comfortable with the plane. But the people on the plane are getting more ill and George says that he might be ding things up a little but he’s going to land this plane!

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

As I watched this film last night, I found myself saying, “Oh my God, this is just a serious version of Airplane!”

And actually, it is. Terror In The Sky was based on Zero Hour, the 1957 film that also served as the basis for Airplane! (The directors of Airplane! even bought the rights to Zero Hour so that they freely borrow whatever they wanted to from the film.) Indeed, much of the dialogue in both Zero Hour and Terror In The Sky also shows up in Airplane! Even the musical cues in Terror In The Sky and Airplane! are similar.

Terror In The Sky is not a bad film. It’s an efficient made-for-TV film that features several made-for-television veterans, including Keenan Wynn and Kenneth Tobey. Doug McClure grimaces heroically in the role of George Spencer and Roddy McDowall is as likable as ever as the doctor who hates to fly. It’s a very earnest movie about a group of people doing everything that they can to save hundreds of lives. They’re doing the right thing!

But it’s also totally impossible to take the film seriously because you spend the entire movie waiting for Roddy McDowall to say, “Don’t call me Shirley,” or for Leif Erickson to say that he picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue. Every moment and every line makes the viewer think of something funny from Airplane!

Personally, I think they bought their tickets. They knew what they were getting into. I say …. well, you get the idea.

And yes, I did rewatch Airplane! as soon as I finished up Terror In The Sky.

Film Review: You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah (dir by Sammi Cohen)

Posted on November 4, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

You Are So Not Invite To My Bat Mitzvah is a well-acted, well-written, and sweet-natured coming-of-age film, featuring Sunny Sandler as Stacey Friedman, a Hebrew school student who is eagerly looking forward to both her Bat Mitzvah and the party after while also dreading the prospect of that party being ruined by her well-meaning but kind of embarrassing parents (Adam Sandler and Idina Menzel).

Stacey believes that the party, the first major event of her adulthood, will determine the rest of her life and therefore, it’s important that it be a huge party with a wonderful entrance video and at least one celebrity guest. Her older sister (a wonderfully deadpan Sadie Sandler) tells her not to get her hopes up. Her father tells her to stop obsessing on her party and concentrate on what it means to be Jewish. Stacey can only watch in horror as her parents invite their dry cleaner to the ceremony and her mother insists on buying her a dress that Stacy says makes her look like the woman who takes sick kids out of the classroom.

Still, Stacey knows that no matter what happens, she’ll always have her BFF, Lydia Rodriguez Katz (Samantha Lorraine), at her side. Except that, in the weeks leading up to her Bat Mitzvah, Stacey discovers that Lydia is dating Andy Goldfarb (Dylan Hoffman), the inarticulate soccer player that Stacey has had a crush on for years. Of course, as Lydia points out, every girl at the school has had a crush on Andy for years. In a moment of anger, Stacey announces, “You are so not invited to my bat mitzvah!”

As I said, it’s a sweet and very sincere movie, one that celebrates friendship and family. It’s not particularly shocking that Andy turns out to be a middle school jerk but everyone’s had a crush like Andy Goldfarb and, if they’re lucky, everyone had had friends like Stacey and Lydia. In the end, the message here is that friendship is more important than some boy who can barely speak in complete sentences and that being adult means thinking about more than just your own concerns. It’s a good message. This film acknowledges its debt to John Hughes by having Stacey’s father take her to a festival of Hughes’s film and, like the best of those films, You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah is a teen comedy with heart.

Also, like the best of John Hughes’s films, it’s full of memorable characters. It’s tempting to roll your eyes when you see just how many people involved in this film are named Sandler but everyone gives such a good performance that you quickly forget about any charges of nepotism. We all know that Adam Sandler has made a lot of bad films over the years but he seems to finally be at a point in his career where he’s no longer embarrassed by the fact that he can actually be a good actor. Sunny Sandler is likable and relatable as Stacey and easily carries the film’s emotional moments while Sadie Sandler’s deadpan delivery is one of the movie’s highlights. Idina Menzel, who also played Adam Sandler’s wife in the far different Uncut Gems, is perfectly cast as Stacey’s overbearing but loving mother and Sandler’s real-life wife, Jackie Sandler, is well-cast as Lydia’s mother. Samantha Lorraine makes both her friendship with and her anger at Stacey feel real and poignant. Sarah Sherman is great as the quirky but ultimately quite wise rabbi. Even Luis Guzman shows up and is responsible for some of the film’s funniest moments.

If I had seen this film two months ago, I probably would have said that it was a simply a well-made and very likable coming-of-age film. Seeing it today, at a time when Jews are being told not to enter certain neighborhoods and to hide any external signs of their religion and their cultural background, You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah feels very relevant. At a time when anti-Semitism is being mainstreamed and posters of abducted Jewish children are being ripped off walls and people are openly chanting the most vile of words, You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah feels almost defiant. It is a film about people who proudly and unapologetically Jewish and, when Stacey reads from the Torah at her Bat Mitzvah, it’s not just the prelude to a party or a chance for her to realize that her friendships are more important than the Andy Goldfarbs of the world. It’s a religious ceremony, it’s a cultural tradition, and it’s a proud and triumphant declaration of identity, one that defies all of the hateful bigots. In these troubled times, You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah is a film that takes on an entirely new importance.

Documentary Review: Sly (dir by Thom Zimmy)

Posted on November 3, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Now streaming on Netflix, Sly is a documentary about the life and career of Sylvester Stallone.

The documentary opens with Stallone watching as all of his belongings in his Hollywood mansion are packed in boxes so they can be shipped to his new home in New York. As I listened to Stallone talk about how you sometimes have to return to your roots to discover who you truly are, it occurred to me that Stallone is one of those people who is never not playing a role. Even when he’s not Rocky Balboa or John Rambo or any of the other characters that he’s played in the movies (or, less frequently on television), he’s still playing Sylvester Stallone, the bigger-than-life movie star who has been an inescapable part of the American pop cultural landscape for longer than I’ve been alive. Watching Stallone talk about what it’s like to go, overnight, from being an unknown to being a celebrity, I never doubted his sincerity but I was always aware of how carefully chosen his words seemed to be. Sylvester Stallone lets the audience in but he’s still careful about how much he reveals about himself.

The same can be said of the documentary, which largely focuses on Rocky, Rambo, and The Expendables, with a little Lords of Flatbush, F.I.S.T., Paradise Alley, and Cop Land trivia tossed in as well. Stallone admits that he’s not proud of all of the films that he’s made, citing Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot! as his biggest regret. (Arnold Schwarzenegger pops up to brag about how he was smart enough to turn down the script when it was originally sent to him.) That said, there’s not much attention given to Stallone’s films with Roger Corman or for the films that he did for Cannon. Sorry, there’s no Over The Top trivia. There are a few clips from Cobra and Rhinestone but not much more. If you’re looking for a documentary about the B-movies of Sylvester Stallone, this is not it. (Interestingly enough, even films like Demolition Man — which was one of Stallone’s better non-Rocky and non-Rambo films — are also glossed over.) Beyond talking his troubled relationship with his father, mentioning his love for daughters, and a moment where he gets noticeably emotional while talking about his late son, there’s not much information here about Stallone’s private life. And again, it’s not that Stallone owes anyone any of that information. At one point, Stallone says that he hasn’t had a moment of privacy since the release of Rocky and he’s probably right. He’s earned the right to keep some things private.

Also interviewed in the documentary are Frank Stallone, Quentin Tarantino, film critic Wesley Morris, director John Herzfeld, and Talia Shire. Frank comes across as a lot more genuine here than he did in his own documentary while Talia does the best job of understanding the appeal of Rocky.

This is a documentary that will probably best be appreciated by people who are already fans of Stallone. Stallone doesn’t attempt to win over his doubters but, having been a star for nearly 50 years, Stallone can definitely argue that his doesn’t owe his doubters any effort. Watching the documentary, it became clear to me that Stallone is one of those pop cultural figures who it is impossible not to love. Everything about him, from the rough Hell’s Kitchen childhood to his decision to write a movie for himself to his decision to move into the director’s chair, is pure Americana. There’s a reason why Rocky Balboa often appears with an American flag.

(That said, I still think that Stallone’s best performance was in First Blood and, in this documentary, Stallone gets genuinely emotional as he discusses when he discusses why he felt it was important for Rambo to survive the end of the film.)

He’s a survivor and he’s confident enough to admit that he got a bit arrogant after the success of Rocky. Stallone still has that confidence that borders on arrogance but he’s aging well and it’s hard not to feel that he’s earned the right to brag on himself. (It helps, of course, that he’s become a better actor as he’s aged.) Stallone may not totally open up but he still has his movie star charisma. When he talks, you listen. When he moves, you watch. We’ll miss him when he’s gone.

Documentary Review: Ordinary Men (dir by Manfred Oldenburg and Oliver Halmburger)

Posted on November 2, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1942, Hamburg’s Reserve Police Battalion 101 was sent to Poland. This was not the first time that the battalion was sent to Poland and it would not be the last. Under the command of Col. Wilhelm Trapp, Reserve Police Battalion 101 was made up of 500 men who were in their 30s and were considered to be too old to serve in the regular army. Though they were officially assigned to the patrol the streets and keep order in the territories that had recently surrendered to Nazi Germany, their actual assignment was to round up Polish Jews and either send them to the concentration camps or to personally execute them via firing squad.

After the war ended and many (but not all) of the leaders and members of the battalion were put on trial for war crimes, it was noted that the majority of the men in the battalion were well-educated. Before they had joined the battalion, many of them worked in office jobs and few of them had publicly expressed any anti-Semitic opinions. Quite a few members of the battalion had families at home. One of officers actually got married shortly before being sent back to Poland and he even brought his wife along with him so that they could have a working honeymoon. Only a few members of the battalion were members of the Nazi Party and many had joined simply because being a part of the police meant that they wouldn’t have to go to the front lines.

Perhaps the most shocking thing that was discovered was that, before the first massacre was carried out by the battalion, Wilhelm Trapp called the men together and informed them of what their orders were. Reportedly, he had tears streaming down his face as he told the men what they had been told to do. He announced that any man who did not want to take part in the mass killing would not be force to nor would he be punished for refusing to do so. Essentially, Trapp told the men that they could disobey the orders if they chose to do so and that the men who did follow the orders would essentially be volunteering to do so. One man stepped to the side and, when another officer started to yell at him, Trapp ordered the officer to stop. Eventually, 12 of the 500 members of the battalion would decline to take part. The rest of the battalion, including Trapp, followed orders and gunned down 1,500 Jews from the Józefów ghetto. The men who refused to take part were not punished, beyond the casual insults of the other members of the battalion. That these men were allowed to continue to serve without being executed, demoted, or otherwise penalized exposed as a lie one of the major defenses offered up by Nazi war criminals, that they had no choice but to follow orders. In the end, Reserve Police Battalion 101 is estimated to have been responsible for the death of 83,000 Jews.

Wilhelm Trapp and his superior, Otto Ohlendorf, were executed after the trial. Trapp expressed remorse even during the war but he never refused to carry out his orders. Ohlendorf never expressed a moment of sadness, saying that he had done everything for Germany. Many of the other members of the battalion returned to their “normal” lives after the war, returning to the office or continuing to work as cops. In 1964, several of them were put on trial for war crimes but only 5 were convicted and the longest sentence handed out was for eight years..

The German documentary, Ordinary Men, presents a sobering look at the men and the crimes of Reserve Police Battalion 101. It asks a question for which there is no easy answer. If 12 members of the battalion were willing to refuse to take part in the massacres, why couldn’t the rest of them? The members of the battalion who took part in the firing squads reported suffering from nightmares and depression afterward, leading to the officers holding frequent parties in an attempt to keep everyone’s spirts up. But if the killings were so traumatic to the men, why did they continue to participate in them even though they had the option to opt out? Was it peer pressure? Was it a misplaced sense of nationalism? Was it a fanatical hatred of the Jews? Or were some of the men just sociopaths looking for an excuse to kill? Ordinary Men suggests that all of these things were factors, just as it also suggests that, for many of the men, the massacres just became a part of the job. The documentary suggests that the battalion split into three groups. There was the group that loved their work. There was the group who followed orders but tried not to think about what they had done afterwards. And then there were those who opted out and who, at worst, were given latrine duty as a result. And yet even those who opted out did not chose to desert the battalion nor did they reportedly try to save anyone from being executed. They refused to take part but they also didn’t do anything to stop it.

Narrated by Brian Cox and featuring interviews with historians and actual historical footage of the members of the battalion, Ordinary Men is a look at the nature of evil and also an important documentation of what human beings are capable of doing to each other. It’s certainly more than relevant today.

Film Review: The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (dir by William Friedkin)

Posted on November 1, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is a film that I wanted to like more than I actually did.

The movie, which is based on a play by Herman Wouk (which was itself based on a novel by Wouk that was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film in 1954), takes place in a Naval courtroom. Lt. Steven Maryk (Jake Lacey) is on trial, accused of mutiny against his commanding officer. Maryk claims that, when the ship sailed into a storm, his commanding officer, Philip Francis Queeg (Kiefer Sutherland), was giving orderss that put the entire ship at risk. With the support of the officers, Maryk relieved Queeg of command. Maryk claims that he did so with the knowledge that it would lead to him being court-martialed.

Maryk is assigned Lt. Greenwald (Jason Clarke) as his defense counsel. Greenwald is not happy with his assignment because he think that Maryk is guilty and he believes in the chain of command. When Maryk and his fellow officers claim that Queeg was showing signs of mental instability, Greenwald wonders how they came to that conclusion. Whereas Maryk and his fellow officers, including Keith (Tom Riley) and Keefer (Lewis Pullman), claim that Queeg was dangerously unstable, Greenwald sees an insecure commander who was abandoned by his men. Greenwald comes to realize that keeping Maryk out of the brig will mean destroying Queeg on the stand.

As I said, I wanted to like this film more than I actually did. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial was the final film to be directed by William Friedkin. Friedkin started his career by directing adaptations of plays like The Birthday Party and The Boys In The Band, so another theatrical adaptation does feel like an appropriate bookend for a legendary career. Friedkin’s best films featured troubled and somewhat obsessive individuals, people who are almost addicted to taking risks. That’s certainly an accurate description of several of the characters in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, from Queeg to Keefer to even Greenwald himself. After Friedkin passed away in August, I found myself really hoping that The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial would be one final brilliant Friedkin film.

There’s a lot of good things to be said about The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, including the fact that Jason Clarke is well-cast as Lt. Greenwald. But, in the end, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is essentially a filmed play and, despite a camera that moves frequently, it all feels rather stagey and, at a time, a bit too theatrical. As good as Clarke is, some other members of the cast can’t break free of the film’s staginess and their performances often feel disappointingly superficial. This is especially true of Monica Raymund as the prosecutor and, surprisingly, Kiefer Sutherland as Queeg. Sutherland, who, when he was younger, would have been the ideal pick for the role of Lt. Keefer, gives an overly mannered performance as Queeg, one that is all tics and nerves but with little of the vulnerability that Humphrey Bogart brought to the role in the 1954 film.

Friedkin’s The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial takes place in 2022, as opposed to the World War II setting of Wouk’s original novel. This does lead to an interesting subtext, as Friedkin’s version of the story is set during a time when many people are no longer confident in America’s military leadership. (Wouk’s novel and play came out while America was still feeling confident after the victory of the Allies in World War II.) Friedkin takes a direct approach to the material, allowing the audience to decide for themselves whether Maryk did the right thing.

It’s a solid enough film but one that never quite escapes its stage origins. Friedkin’s respect for the material comes through, even if the film isn’t totally successful.