After robbing a bank in a small western town, an outlaw stops by the home of his estranged wife and takes his own son hostage. The town’s aging sheriff (Patrick Duffy) teams with the boy’s grandfather (Stacy Keach) to take the outlaw down and save the child’s life. Accompanying them is the bank president, Edwin Bornstein (David Rees Snell). Edwin may be a city boy who talks about how much he’s always wanted to say “I reckon,” but it turns out that there’s more to him than meets the eye. He’s also good with a gun.
I probably should have given up on Desolation Canyon as soon as I saw that it was a “Hallmark Presents” film but I like westerns and Stacy Keach has always done well whenever he’s been cast as a gunslinger so I decided to give it a try. Starting with a bank robbery and endings with a duel, Desolation Canyon is about as old-fashioned as an old-fashioned western can be. Because it was made by Hallmark, there’s nothing dangerous or edgy about the film. A few people do get shot but there’s no blood. The shoot outs in Red Dead Redemption are more violent and suspenseful than anything to be found in this film. (Of course, that’s because most of the shootouts in Red Dead Redemption occur because the play pushed the wrong button while trying to greet someone. I still feel bad for accidentally shooting the kindly old homesteader who just wanted someone to help him collect some flowers for his wife.) This is the type of western that you can safely watch with your grandparents, since that’s who the film was made for. That’s not bad because grandparents need movies to but if you’re looking for a complex or an unpredictable western in the style of a Larry McMurtry novel or a later Eastwood film, I reckon this ain’t it.
Giving some credit where credit is due, Stacy Keach, David Rees Snell, and even Patrick Duffy are credible in their roles. Stacy Keach is especially convincing a former gunfighter who can still outdraw anyone. Stacy Keach is 81 years old and still working. Someone needs to write a great Stacy Keach role and they need to do it now.
Rick Penning (Sean Faris) is the captain of his high school rugby team and the team’s highest scorer. He’s also the son of the team’s coach (Neal McDonough). Coach Penning is obsessed with winning at all costs and refuses to tell his son that he’s proud of him. Coach Penning believes that emotion equals weakness and that only losers brag about doing their best. After a loss to the Highland High school rugby team, which is coached by Larry Gelwix (Gary Cole), Rick and his teammates blow of steam by drinking, driving, and crashing a car.
Rick is sentenced to juvie but his case officer (Sean Astin) can see that Rick needs rugby in his life so he arranges for Rick to play with the Highland Team. At first, Rick resents the new team and doesn’t want to follow Coach Gelwix’s advice on or off the field. Coach Gelwix makes the team do community projects while they’re not training and Rick says that’s not his thing. Rick just wants to score points and he doesn’t care about teamwork. But the team and the coach eventually win Rick over and, once Rick gets over being selfish and starts playing for the team instead of just himself, Highland High starts winning games and Rick becomes the team’s newest captain. But, when Rick gets paroled from juvie, he’s sent back home to his father, who expects Rick to reveal all of Highland’s secret plays and weaknesses. When Rick refuses to betray Coach Gelwix, his former teammates frame him and get him sent back to juvie. Rick ends up playing for Highland again, just in time for the state championship and a chance to lead Highland against his father’s team.
Forever Strong had a good message but, from the first minute, I know what was going to happen and how it was going to all end. The story was pretty predictable and the movie seemed to assume that everyone watching would already know everything that they needed to know about rugby. At my high school, athletics pretty much meant football. I don’t think we even had a rugby team. (If we did, we never cheered at their games, which I feel bad about.) Whenever everyone in the movie was arguing about the right way to play rugby and which position on the team was the most important, I was lost. I did like Gary Cole as Coach Gelwix. He was the type of coach that every parent should hope coaches their child’s team.
Whilst stumbling around his office in a drunken daze, graveyard keeper R.J. Dobson (Joseph Conway) accidentally steps on his cat’s tail. The cat runs out of the office. Dobson stumbles after it. Dobson eventually finds the cat sitting by a grave in the cemetery. Dobson picks the cat up and starts to tell it (or maybe the people watching at home), the story behind the tombstone.
Lewis B. Moffit (George E. Mather) was a med student who had a reputation for not being scared of anything. He killed a rattlesnake without a second’s hesitation. He didn’t flinch while watching an autopsy. For some reason, this upsets his frat brothers so they decide to pull a prank on him to see how brave he really is. As a part of his initiation, Lewis has to break into the mortuary and retrieve a gold ring off of a corpse’s finger. Of course, the prank goes wrong and there are serious consequences to Lewis’s sanity.
Ring of Terror is based on the old urban legend in which a promising but tightly wound college student is either killed or driven mad by a thoughtless fraternity prank. Ring of Terror doesn’t really add anything to the basic story. The only thing that distinguishes it is that all of the college students are played by middle-aged actors so they all seem as if they should have graduated from college and outgrown the frat life a long time ago. George E. Mather was in his 40s when he starred in this film so even if the prank hadn’t broken his mind and he had graduated from medical school, he wouldn’t have had a very long practice.
The story would feel slight for even a 30-minute episode of The Twilight Zone so the director tries to pad out Ring of Terror with a visit to a “swinging” jazz club (and I use the term swinging loosely because there ain’t swinging about that joint), an autopsy, and, of course, those scenes in the cemetery with RJ and his cat. The padding doesn’t help make the story any more intersting but the autopsy scene is at least amusing. Because all of the college students are played by middle-aged actors and are wearing suits, the scene really does look as if a group of wall street brokers decided to spend their lunch hour in the hospital basement. It’s like the episode of Seinfeld where Jerry and Kramer observe an operation and accidentally drop a junior mint in the patient’s chest cavity.
Today, Ring of Terror is best known for being featured on an early episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. (It was actually such a short movie that it had to be paired up with the third chapter of The Phantom Creeps serial.) I’ve seen both the original version and the version with Joel and the Bots and the MST 3K way is the best way to watch this movie. Without Joel and the Bots, it’s so slow and poorly acted that it is nearly unwatchable. With Joel and the Bots, there’s at least a few laughs to be found.
Randolph Scott stars in The Doolins of Oklahoma, a fictionalized account of the career of the real-life western outlaw, Bill Doolin.
Doolin (played, naturally, by Randolph Scott) may have once rode with the fearsome Dalton Brothers but, according to this film, he was actually just an ordinary, salt of the Earth type who wanted to settle down with the right woman and lead a normal life. It looks like he might get that opportunity after the Daltons are killed and Doolin tires of leading his own gang of outlaws. Doolin settles in a Oklahoma town, takes a new name, and falls in love with Elaine (Virginia Hutton). But when both the members of his old gang and a veteran lawman (George Macready) show up in town, Doolin learns that the past cannot be escaped.
The plot of The Doolins of Oklahoma is nothing special, though it’s portrayal of the outlaws being more honorable than law enforcement may have been surprising in 1949. The main thing that distinguishes The Doolins of Oklahoma is the cast, which is full of western veterans like John Ireland, Noah Beery Jr., Charles Kemper, Frank Fenton, and Jock Mahoney. Not surprisingly Randolph Scott is ideally cast as a weary cowboy who just wants to settle down and live the rest of his life in peace. Scott is well-matched by MacReady, as the marshal who will not let anything stand in the way doing his duty as a member of law enforcement. Gordon Douglas directs crisply and energetically and every member of the main cast gets at least one big moment in which to distinguish themselves. The Doolins of Oklahoma may not be a groundbreaking film but it will be enjoyed by fans of the western genre.
Dear Evan Hansen is the film adaptation of the Tony-award winning Broadway musical of the same name. Recreating his stage role, Ben Platt plays Evan Hansen, a teenager who suffers from social anxiety and who is mistaken for having been the best friend of Connor Murphy (Colton Ryan), a troubled classmate who committed suicide after stealing a letter that Evan had written to himself. (Somewhat awkwardly, it was also a letter in which Evan somewhat obliquely wrote about the crush that he had on a member of Connor’s family.) When the letter is subsequently found on Connor’s body, it’s assumed that it’s a suicide note that Connor meant for Evan. Evan, who is in love with Connor’s sister, Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever), allows everyone to believe that he and Connor were friends. Connor’s mother, Cynthia, (Amy Adams) and his stepfather (Danny Pino) adopt Evan as a sort of replacement for their dead son. Cynthia views Evan as being the only way that she’ll ever understand what Connor was going through and Evan continually reassures that Murphys that Connor really did love all of them and that he was trying to change his life for the better. With the Murphys now treating Evan as a member of their own family, Evan’s mother (Julianne Moore) feels that her son is now ashamed of her. And Evan’s classmate, Alana (Amandla Stenberg), launches a movement to raise money to preserve the apple orchard where Evan claims that he and Connor spent all of their time together.
As a musical, Dear Evan Hansen was very popular. As a film, it doesn’t work and it doesn’t work for all the reasons that everyone assumed that it wouldn’t work. Believe me, I wanted it work. From the minute that the trailer first dropped, the reaction to the film has been so overwhelmingly negative that I was really hoping that the film itself would turn out to be an overlooked gem. I was really hoping that this would be one of those underappreciated films that just needed a few brave champions. Instead, it turned out to be not terrible in the way that Cats was terrible but still too flawed to be considered a success.
First off, the plot itself doesn’t transition well from the stage to film. There’s too many holes and there’s too many places in the story where you find yourself wondering why you should care about Evan and his problems. Those plot holes may not have been as big of a problem when the story was presented on the stage because watching any story play out against an artificial backdrop requires a certain suspension of disbelief. But, on film, seeing Evan attending an actual school and walking down an actual street and visiting an actual house, you’re much more aware of how inauthentic the story feels. Evan’s actions rarely make sense and it’s difficult to accept that anyone, even Connor’s emotionally desperate parents, would believe the stories that Evan concocts about his friendship with Connor. On stage, you could perhaps accept that Zoe would buy that Evan and Connor were friends who confided in each other despite the fact that Evan doesn’t seem to know anything about Connor’s family or home life. On screen, especially when one considers the fierce intelligence that Kaitlyn Dever brings to the role of Zoe, it’s a bit more difficult to believe.
The other big problem with the film is Ben Platt is too old for the role of Evan. Platt first played the role in 2015, when he was 23. He won a Tony and certainly, he deserves a lot of credit for creating the role from the workshop phase all the way to Broadway. Now, however, he’s 28 and he looks considerably older. So much of what Evan does is acceptable only if you believe that he’s an immature 17 year-old who is desperately looking for a place and a family where he belongs. The same actions go from being poignant to being creepy when they’re done by someone who appears to be in his mid-30s. While Platt has a great singing voice and shines in the musical numbers, he’s a bit too mannered when he just has to recite dialogue. He’s still giving a stage performance, even though he’s now playing the role on film and everyone around him is giving a film performance. Platt’s talent is undeniable but he’s miscast here and casting him opposite performers who can actually still pass for teenagers doesn’t help the situation at all.
(When I watched the film, I thought that obvious age difference between Ben Platt and Kaitlyn Dever occasionally made the scenes between Evan and Zoe uncomfortable to watch. Then I did some research and discovered that Dever is only three years younger than Platt. It’s just that Dever still looks like a teen while Platt looks very much like an adult. And there’s no shame in looking your age. Someone just needs to cast Platt in an adult role.)
In Platt’s defense, the film doesn’t really make perfect use of any of the members of its talented cast. Amy Adams is such a good actress but the film casts her as a stereotypically flakey rich suburbanite who flitters from one trend to another. Julianne Moore and Amandla Stenberg are similarly wasted, playing characters who have potential but who are never quite given as much to do as they deserve. Of the cast, Kaitlyn Dever is the stand-out, even though Zoe is a bit of an inconsistent character. Initially, she seems like the one person willing to call out everyone on their BS and then, just as suddenly, she’s oddly forgiving of someone who essentially manipulated her emotions for his own benefit.
Not surprisingly, Dear Evan Hansen works best when people are singing. Ben Platt and Colton Ryan bring so much energy to Sincerely, Me that I briefly had hope that the film was turning itself around. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case but still, it’s a good production number. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie doesn’t really live up to it.
She says it’s because Jack “won’t stop teasing me.” Is Jack to blame or does Judy need to toughen up? Should Jack’s classmates have said, “Lay off?” Should Judy’s friends have tattled to the teacher? Should Judy have teased Jack back? What would you do?
This short film from 1951 considers all of those issues and yet, it’s hard not to feel that the ultimate message is that Judy needs to stop taking everything so personally. Sorry, movie. Sorry, judgmental narrator. I disagree. Myself, I think the skinny kid with the glasses should have followed through with his threat to beat Jack up. Up until I was 12, I had a really severe stutter so I know what Judy was going through. Fortunately, in my case, I also had three older sisters and a bunch of overprotective cousins that were always looking after me. Judy doesn’t seem to have that type of support system. To be honest, in most cases like this, I put the blame on the teachers. Jack and Judy are sitting up at the front of the class so there’s really no excuse for no one noticing what was going on.
This short film is another one that feels like a Herk Harvey production but it was actually directed by Arthur Wolf. My favorite shot is the entire class staring at the camera while the narrator asks, “What would you do?” Seriously, someone’s in a lot of trouble once these kids come to a consensus on who is to blame.
From 1951, it’s time to consider …. The Other’s Fellow’s Feelings.
After narrowly avoiding execution by a firing squad in Mexico, three good natured outlaws head back to Texas. Gil (Fred MacMurray) is their leader, a former army officer. Antonio (GIlbert Roland) is the charming caballero. George (Albert Dekker!) is the punch-drunk former prizefighter who provides comedic relief. When they reach Texas, they meet and become involved in the efforts of a newspaper publisher (Brandon Tynan) and his daughter (Betty Brewer) to free their hometown from the control of an aristocratic landowner named Col. Rebstock (Joseph Schildkraut), who rules the town with the help of a sadistic group of cowboys. It turns out that the three outlaws aren’t so bad while the respectable and wealthy Col. Rebstock is as bad as they come.
Rangers of Fortune is a standard 1940’s western programmer, though it’s distinguished by a better than usual cast and the quick-paced direction of Sam Wood. It starts out almost as a comedy, with MacMurray, Roland, and Dekker cracking jokes and getting the better of almost anyone that they come across. The screenwriter of Rangers of Fortune, Frank Butler, also wrote some of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope’s road films and he’s just as good as coming up with comedic dialogue for the team of MacMurray, Roland, and Dekker as he was for Hope and Crosby.
But the movie takes a serious turn once MacMurray, Roland, and Dekker cross the Texas border and they discover that Col. Rebstock will do almost anything and kill just about anyone to keep his hold on the town. Even a successful scheme to install Gil as sheriff just leads to more innocent people dying. When Rangers of Fortune turns dark, it turns very dark, with characters, who we usually don’t expect to die in a film like this, meeting a violent end. Though it won’t convert any skeptics, it’s an interesting film for those who are already fans of old Hollywood westerns.
Rangers of Fortune has never gotten a proper video release but it is on YouTube. Unfortunately, the copy uploaded to YouTube was in terrible condition so it’s difficult to fairly judge the film’s production values. However, even on a damaged print, the natural authority of Fred MacMurray’s lead performance comes through and Joseph Schildkraut is as good a villain as always. Patricia Morrison plays the prettiest girl in town and, even on YouTube, it’s easy to see why every man in town is competing for her attentions. Seeing Albert Dekker, usually cast as intelligent and often conniving character, playing dumb is also an interesting experience, even on a bad print. Hopefully, someday, Rangers of Fortune will get a decent restoration.
Griff (Ryan Kwanten) is a socially awkward young office worker who keep a rubber suit hidden away in his apartment. When he returns home from work, he puts on the suit and searches the night for crimes to stop and criminals to thwart.. Or at least he thinks that he’s fighting crime. The neighbors seem to be afraid of the man in the rubber suit and there are posters on every street corner, asking if anyone can identity the masked voyeur who has been spotted walking about the neighborhood at night. The only one his neighbors who appreciates him is the stray cat that waits every morning for a tin of tuna.
Though he might fight crime at night, no one thinks much of Griff during the day. His co-worker, Tony (Toby Schmitz), constantly bullies him. His older brother, Tim (Patrick Brammall), resents that he had to move back home to keep an eye on him and he is constantly asking Griff if he is having another breakdown. Only the owner of the local hardware store is polite to Griff and that’s just because Griff spends a lot of money in the store, buying what he needs to make what he thinks will be an invisibility suit.
When Tim brings his new girlfriend, Melody (Maeve Dermody), over to meet Griff, she discovers that she has more in common with Griff than with Tim. Griff wants to be invisible while Melody wants to learn how to walk through solid objects. Melody and Griff could be the prefect crime fighting team and also the perfect romantic couple, but only if their fantasy world is allowed to exist uninterrupted. That may be difficult because both Griff and Melody are coming under more and more pressure to get it togther, conform, and start living in the real world with everyone else.
Griff the Invisible is a likable comedy-drama from Australia. At first, it seemed like the film was going to idealize Griff’s fantasy existence but it’s actually fair in its treatment of Tim and everyone who wants Griff to snap out of it and join them in the real life. Being Griff’s friend or relative can be demanding. At the same time, Griff and Melody’s fantasy world is inviting too. Who hasn’t imagined themselves as a super hero at some point? Most importantly, the pairing of Ryan Kwanten and Maeve Dermody works well. By the end of the movie, you’re happy that they have their fantasy as long as they also have each other.
A man named Will (Gabor Varga) has a new job. He spends his days in the wilderness, living in a small cabin and essentially keeping an eye out for anyone who might need help or who might be doing something that they shouldn’t be doing. His only company is his supervisor, June (Laura Saxon). He never meets June. He just hears her voice as he spends his days exploring the forest. Her voice sounds familiar to him, like someone from his recent past,
Will is a man hiding from the traumas of that past. His wife died in a tragic accident. His daughter is currently being raised by her grandfather (Larry Hankin). Will has next to no contact with her. He says it’s better that way. June tells him that almost everyone who accepts a job in the forest is trying to avoid something or escape some sort of tragedy. The forest is where people go to disappear.
June also explains that strange things are hidden in the forest,. Will comes across creepy and deserted buildings. He finds a backpack and makes a shocking discovery when he searches it. Some nights, he thinks that he might see a figure in the distance trying to give him some sort of coded message.
The latest film from director Joszef Gallai, I Hear The Trees Whispering is full of atmosphere. The majority of the film is shot from Will’s point of view. Indeed, we never see Will’s face. Instead, we hear his voice and occasionally, we see his hands while he’s searching for something. It’s a technique that puts us directly into Will’s mind. Just as he’s lost in the wilderness, so are we. Just as he’s hearing strange noises and trying to see where they’re coming from, so are we. It’s a technique the allows the film to capture the forest in all of it ominous beauty. One can see why Will would want to escape to the forest while also understanding how the isolation could drive someone to the point of madness. However, there’s another reason why the majority of the film is shot from WIll’s point of view, one that I won’t spoil beyond to say that it all pays off in an unexpected but effective twist during the film’s third act.
With a 78-minute running time, I Hear The Trees Whispering moves at a deliberate pace, Once again, it’s a film that’s far more concerned with setting the proper atmosphere and developing the characters of Will and June than with tossing in any cheap jump scares. The audience’s fear and anxiety comes from the fact that it’s impossible to watch the film without imagining how you would react if you found yourself in the same situation. Would you have the courage to leave the cabin and see where the noises were coming from? I probably wouldn’t but Will doesn’t really have a choice. He’s as much a prisoner of fate as he is a prisoner of his tragic past. Just as Jack Torrance was always meant to be the caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, Will was always meant to search the forest in search of answers.
As I mentioned earlier, there’s a big twist in the third act, one that I guarantee will take you by surprise and which will force you to reconsider everything that you’ve previously seen. That’s what a good twist does!
I Hear The Trees Whispering is an effectively atmospheric thriller, one that will leave you thinking long after the end credits have rolled.
Space Mutiny, a sci-fi epic from 1988, is full of dialogue about all sorts of political and philosophical concerns but none of it is quite as memorable as the quote above. Dave Ryder says, “Argggggh!” a lot over the course of Space Mutiny. He’s the newly appointed head of security for the Southern Sun, a gigantic spaceship that has spent the last 260 years traveling from Earth to a new planet. Being head of security is important because there are some people on the Southern Sun who are plotting a mutiny. Dave Ryder decides that the most effective way to battle the mutineers is to yell loudly and frequetly. “ARGGGGGH!’ Ryder yells whenever he’s being shot at. “ARGGGGGGGH!” he screams when he finds himself on a very slow and gradual collision course with the head of the mutineers.
When Dave isn’t saying stuff like, “Argggggh!,” he’s saying stuff like, “Go! Go! Go!” When the bad guys open fire on him and his men, it’s time for them to “Go! Go! Go!” When the mutineers are being chased, Dave is quick to tell everyone to “Go! Go! Go!” He’s like the physical fitness trainer from Hell. He never actually yells “Feel the burn!” but you can be damn well sure that he’s thinking it. In fact, there’s a point in the movie where “Feel the burn!” actually would have been a good line. Dave and his girlfriend, Lea (Cissie Cameron), set a mutineer on fire. It’s actually a bit of a sadistic scene and it doesn’t come across as being the big hero moment that it’s obviously meant to be. But, then again, Dave isn’t yelling because he’s a nice guy. He’s yelling because he’s played by Reb Brown. Reb Brown yelled all the way through Strike Force Commando. Why wouldn’t he do the same for Space Mutiny?
Of course, Dave isn’t the only person barking out orders on the Southern Sun. Cameron Mitchell plays the ship’s captain, a wise old man who looks like Santa Claus. John Phillip Law is Kalgon, the main mutineer. He laughs a lot. Cissie Cameron is the captain’s daughter. She falls for Ryder, despite the fact that she appears to be old enough to be Ryder’s mother. (In real life, Reb Brown and Cissie Cameron are married and Cissie is only a few years older than Reb. In Space Mutiny, she’s stuck with an unflattering hair style and is made up to look like an aging cheerleading coach.) There’s also a woman who works on the ship’s bridge. She’s killed in one scene, just to mysteriously turn up alive in the scene that follows. In space, no one can hear the script supervisor. Finally, there’s a group of alien witches who board the ship and spend the entire movie dancing in front of a ball of electricity. Since they don’t actually interact with any of the main characters, it’s obvious that they were added to pad out the film’s running time.
One of the more interesting things about Space Mutnity is that Kalgon actually has a point. It does seem kind of stupid to spend several hundred years traveling to just one planet when there’s other planets nearby that the ship could just as easily reach. Indeed, the mission of the Southern Sun never makes that much sense and the Captain seems to be delusional in his insistence that it does. The Captain’s unending faith and his long-flowing beard makes him come across like a minor biblical prophet, the type who always had to ask a major prophet to interpret his visions for hm. The Captain does not come across like someone who really knows what he’s doing. I don’t care how much Ryder screams, Kalgon had a point!
Today, Space Mutiny is best known for being featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and for later being taken apart by the Rifftrax crew. Space Mutiny, though, is such an extremely silly movie that you really don’t even need any professionals to help you snark your way through it. The film offers up such a treasure trove of material then even the most humorless among your friends will be a comedic genius by the time it ends. It’s a fun movie, made even more so by the fact that the filmmakers apparently meant for the film to be taken seriously. There’s a lot of talk about important issues like freedom, duty, and faith. In the end, what you’ll remember is the screaming.
After robbing a bank in a small western town, an outlaw stops by the home of his estranged wife and takes his own son hostage. The town’s aging sheriff (Patrick Duffy) teams with the boy’s grandfather (Stacy Keach) to take the outlaw down and save the child’s life. Accompanying them is the bank president, Edwin Bornstein (David Rees Snell). Edwin may be a city boy who talks about how much he’s always wanted to say “I reckon,” but it turns out that there’s more to him than meets the eye. He’s also good with a gun.
Through the Shattered Lens 