Clem Peterson (Richard Cramer) has a plot to force all of the ranchers in the valley to give up their land. He gives a phony land claim to Carson (John Merton), who presents himself as being a Mexican nobleman. In a situation like this, you need a singing cowboy and luckily, there’s one nearby. Fred (Fred Scott) and Fuzzy (Al St. John) get involved after their cattle are stolen by Clem and his men. Fred not only fights to save the ranchers but he also sings a song or two.
Singing cowboy films are always strange. Cowboys who ride horses and pull guns and get into fistfights should not also be tenors. Fred Scott looks convincing on a horse and he has one heck of a fistfight towards the end of the movie but he’ll also start singing at the drop of a hat and it just doesn’t feel right. John Wayne did a few singing cowboy films early in his career and he could usually pull it off. Fred Scott wasn’t much of an actor and had a forgettable screen presence. He had a good voice, though.
This film was produced by Stan Laurel, of Laurel and Hardy fame. Always read those credits. You never know who you might find.
“It’s like looking in a mirror. Only… Not.” — Castor Troy with Sean Archer’s face
Face/Off is one of those late‑90s action movies that feels like it escaped from an alternate universe where “too much” is a compliment, not a warning label. It is bigger than it needs to be, sillier than the premise probably deserves, and yet somehow more emotionally earnest than most modern blockbusters. The result is a film that swings hard between breathtakingly good and gloriously ridiculous, and that tension is exactly what makes it worth revisiting.
At its core, Face/Off is a story about two men who literally become each other, but it works because it never treats that concept as a small thing. John Travolta’s Sean Archer is an FBI agent consumed by grief after the death of his young son, while Nicolas Cage’s Castor Troy is a theatrical terrorist who seems to enjoy being evil as a kind of performance art. The sci‑fi hook—cutting off their faces and swapping them—does not remotely pass a reality test, but the movie leans into the idea with such conviction that you either roll with it or get left behind in the opening act.
The big selling point is the acting showcase baked into that swap. Watching Travolta play a supposedly buttoned‑up lawman unraveling inside the body of a flamboyant villain, while Cage dials his madness into something deceptively controlled, gives the film a strange, theatrical energy. There is a real pleasure in tracking how each actor steals little gestures and rhythms from the other, so scenes become layered: what you’re seeing on the surface and who you know is “underneath” the borrowed face are constantly at odds.
That identity confusion isn’t just a gimmick; it gives the film some surprising emotional weight. Archer’s grief isn’t window dressing—his obsession with bringing down Troy comes from the trauma of losing his son, and the face swap forces him to confront who he’s become in that tunnel‑vision pursuit. Meanwhile, Troy, once inside Archer’s life, plays “family man” in a way that’s both gross and unnervingly intimate, manipulating Archer’s wife Eve and daughter Jamie with a mix of faux tenderness and predatory charm.
Joan Allen, as Eve, quietly grounds all this insanity. Her character spends a good chunk of the film being gaslit on a level that would break most people, yet Allen plays her with a subdued intelligence that makes the eventual moment of realization feel earned instead of convenient. Dominique Swain’s Jamie gets more of a stock “rebellious teen” setup, but the way Troy‑as‑Archer slithers into her life gives some scenes a genuinely uncomfortable edge, underlining how invasive the villain’s masquerade really is.
Of course, this is a John Woo movie, so the drama is constantly fighting for space with balletic gunfights and slow‑motion chaos. The action is elaborate and stylized, full of dual pistols, flying bodies, and highly choreographed carnage that feels closer to a violent dance than a grounded firefight. Whether it is the prison escape with its magnetic boots or the church shootout framed with doves and religious imagery, Woo stages set pieces as big operatic crescendos, not just plot checkpoints.
That operatic tone is both a strength and a weakness. On the one hand, the heightened style matches the bonkers premise, letting the movie exist in a kind of hyper‑reality where emotions and bullets fly with the same intensity. On the other hand, the sheer excess sometimes undercuts the more serious beats, as if the film can’t decide whether it wants to be a heartfelt story about grief and identity or the wildest action comic you have ever flipped through.
The script occasionally gestures at deeper themes but rarely lingers on them. Archer’s time in a secret off‑the‑books prison hints at broader commentary about state power and dehumanization, yet the movie mostly uses the setting as a backdrop for an escape sequence rather than exploring what it means. Similarly, Troy’s infiltration of Archer’s family brushes against ideas about how easily trust and intimacy can be weaponized, but the story is more interested in cranking up tension than really unpacking that psychological damage.
Where the writing truly shines is in the mechanics of the cat‑and‑mouse relationship. The film keeps finding new ways to twist the knife, whether it’s Archer stuck in Troy’s body trying to convince former enemies he’s changed sides, or Troy using Archer’s authority to erase evidence and tighten the trap. Some of the most satisfying scenes are the quieter confrontations where both men have to stay in character in front of others while aiming verbal daggers at each other, maintaining the illusion even as their hatred escalates.
Still, Face/Off is not exactly a model of restraint or logic, and that’s where some fair criticism comes in. The science of the face swap is nonsense even by sci‑fi standards, and the movie’s attempts to hand‑wave voice, body shape, and mannerisms require a level of suspension of disbelief that will be deal‑breaking for some viewers. On top of that, the third act piles on so many stunts and reversals that fatigue can set in; not every action beat feels necessary when the emotional arc has already hit its key notes.
There is also the question of tone in how the film treats violence and trauma. The opening murder of Archer’s son is genuinely brutal, and the later manipulation of his family taps into real discomfort, yet the movie often snaps back into cool‑shot mode a moment later, as if unsure how long it wants to sit with pain. That tonal whiplash can make it hard to fully buy into the emotional stakes, because the film keeps reminding you it is here, first and foremost, to put on a show.
Despite those flaws, Face/Off has aged in a strangely resilient way. In an era where many big action movies flatten actors into interchangeable cogs in a CG machine, there’s something refreshing about how much personality this film allows its leads to display, even when they’re chewing the scenery. The movie’s excess becomes part of its charm: it feels handcrafted in its madness, a spectacle built around big performances rather than just big effects.
Face/Off is neither a straightforward masterpiece nor a disposable guilty pleasure; it lives in a messy, entertaining space between those extremes. The film delivers memorable performances, inventive set pieces, and a surprisingly sincere emotional throughline, but it also leans on ludicrous science, tonal inconsistency, and overindulgent action. If you can accept its central absurdity and meet it on its own heightened wavelength, it remains a wild, engaging ride that showcases what happens when star power, genre bravado, and unfiltered style crash into each other at full speed.
Sleazy magazine publisher Harlan Wade (Robert Guillaume) has made a lot of enemies through his scandal sheet. He just published a story suggesting that Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) and Della Street (Barbara Hale) are more than just friends. Well, duh! Everyone knows Perry and Della are in love! Perry still wants to sue him but then Harlan turns up dead in his swimming pool. It would have been interesting if Perry had been a suspect but instead the police arrest Michelle Benti (Susan Wilder), a reporter who was recently fired by Wade. Because Michelle is the ex-girlfriend of Paul Drake, Jr. (William Katt), Perry defends her in court.
This is another case of someone close to the Mason crew being accused of murder. The D.A. should know better than to arrest anyone who knows Perry, Della, or Paul. Michelle first appeared in The Case of the Shooting Starbut she was played by a different actress. It’s still good that, for once, the series actually acknowledged one of Paul’s ex-girlfriends. I worry about Paul and the way he falls in and out of love.
This one had a good mystery and a really memorable supporting cast. Morgan Brittany, Yaphet Kotto, Wings Hauser, and George Grizzard all played potential suspects. I liked that this was one of those mysteries where the victim went to a party before he died and everyone there threatened to kill him at some point. This movie also featured one of the better courtroom confessions. Raymond Burr uses a cane in this episode and is usually filmed either sitting down or leaning against something for support. Even though Burr obviously wasn’t feeling well, it’s nice to see him and Barbara Hale share some sweet scenes together.
Who sent Della flowers, champagne, and perfume? Watch to find out!
It’s strange to hear Leslie Nielsen drop an F bomb.
That was my main though I watched Camouflage. Leslie Nielsen plays a hard-boiled private detective named Jack Potter who reluctantly takes on an apprentice named Matty McKenzie (Lochlyn Munro). Mostly to get Matty, a failed stage actor, out of his hair, Jack sends him to handle a minor case in the small town of Beaver Ridge. The minor case becomes a major case when it becomes clear that a murder is being planned.
Camouflage starts out like a typical Leslie Nielsen mockbuster, with Nielsen providing a ridiculous, Frank Drebin-style narration. But the film itself develops into a dark comedy where Matty finds himself in a small town where everyone’s got secret. Nielsen gives an almost-serious performance as Potter, playing him as a cynic with a tragic backstory and little patience for his protegee. There’s a tonal imbalance between the moments of broad comedy and the more serious moments and the film doesn’t work as a result but it is interesting to see a post-Airplane! Leslie Nielsen playing things relatively straight.
One interesting thing about Camouflage is that it was written by Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson but, in the final cut, the screenplay is credited to Reginald Perry. (The small town setting is one that Thornton used frequently in his scripts and it’s easy to imagine him playing the role of Jack Potter in alternate version of this film.) Camouflage reportedly sat on the shelf for quite a while before it was finally given a release and Nielsen’s narration often feels like it was something that was added in post-production to try to both bring the disjointed film together and to draw in the Naked Gun fans. I have a feeling the story behind this film is probably more interesting than the film itself.
Rancher Bob “Utah” Neyes (Russell Hayden) heads into Canada to meet up with his business partner. Unfortunately, his partner has been murdered by outlaw Nails Nelson (Douglas Fowley). Mountie Jack Craig (Lyle Talbot) almost arrests Utah for the crime but he becomes convinced that Utah is innocent and Nails is guilty. Along with fur trader Ivy Jenkins (I. Stanford Jolley), Craig and Utah try to break up Nails’s fur-smuggling operation.
While I was watching it, I thought this movie seemed even more familiar than the usual Poverty Row western. I realized that’s because I had actually seen Russell Hayden and most of the rest of the cast in another movie that had a similar plot, right down taking place on the other side of the border. That other movie was called ‘Neath Canadian Skies. Both it and North of the Border are among the four Canadian western films that Robert Lippert produced in 1946, all of which starred Russell Hayden and were directed by B. Reeves Easton. Supposedly, it took 20 days to shoot all of them.
As for North of the Border, it’s only 42 minutes long and none of those minutes are wasted. There’s all of the usual horse chases and gunfights that fans want from these films. For me, the most interesting thing about the film was getting to see Lyle Talbot play something other than a boring authority figure. Also, this film features Inez Cooper, a pretty redhead who had a short career but whose beauty and personality as well-remembered by fans of Poverty Row westerns. She plays the love interest in this one and there’s no doubt that most men would give up living in Utah for her.
Former madam Suzanne Domenico (Ann Jillian) attempts to blackmail four rich men who are planning on embezzling money from a bank and is found dead by her husband, Tony, shortly afterwards. Tony (Vincent Baggetta) is arrested and charged with murdering his wife. Tony’s older brother used to run around with Della Street (Barbara Hale) and Della is able to get Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) to defend him in court. Paul Drake, Jr. (William Katt) is brought in to do the investigative legwork. Once again, Paul falls for a younger woman (Daphne Ashbrook) who will probably never be mentioned again in any of the other movies.
This movie was a little sad because it was obvious that Raymond Burr was not in good health. He spends most of the movie sitting or moving with crutches. In the movie, they say that Perry is using crutches because of a skiing accident but looking at Raymond Burr, there’s no way to imagine him skiing. Burr is still as sharp as ever when asking questions in the courtroom but it’s still clear that he was in pain when he did this movie. Perry being sidelined does mean that Barbara Hale and William Katt get to do more than usual. After spending the last few movies constantly getting outrun and smacked around, Katt finally gets to beat someone up in the movie.
The mystery isn’t bad, even though I guessed who the murderer was long before the trial started. The entire embezzlement scheme comes down to embezzling a few cents a day so that no one will notice. That’s the same thing they tried to do in Office Space! Luckily, no one got murdered that time.
Overall, this was a good entry in the Parry Mason movies, especially for those of us who like watching Paul Drake, Jr. I’m starting to wonder if all of Perry and Della’s friends are going to end up getting accused of murder at some point. My aunt and I always used to joke about how often Jessica Fletcher’s nephew was accused of murdering someone. It might be just as dangerous to be a friend of Perry Mason’s!
Meek-looking accountant Sanford Lagelfost (Bronson Pinchot) is on trial for embezzlement. It’s supposed to be a simple, up-and-shut case but when the beautiful star witness (Tracy Scoggins) testifies that Sanford is an amazing lover, it becomes a tabloid sensation and the jurors are sequestered in a hotel, where they have to deal with their own restlessness and several distractions, the majority of whom are also played by Bronson Pinchot. Pinchot plays a total of four characters but it’s not like he’s Peter Sellers or even Eddie Murphy. He looks and sounds like Bronson Pinchot in every role.
The jurors are played by a bunch of a familiar television actors. Alan Thicke plays a yuppie named Phil and Lynn Redgrave plays a hippie named Abby and they end up getting married. Stephen Baldwin is the waiter who falls for Heather Locklear, an actress who is a former call girl who is being threatened by her pimp. Madchen Amick is the spoiled rich girl. Television mainstays Mark Blankfield, Ilene Graf, William G. Schilling, Danny Pintauro, and Bill Kirchenbauer are all present and accounted for. Adding to the overall sitcom feel of the movie is the presence of Reginald VelJohnson as the judge. No one in the cast tries very hard, though I do think a case can be made that Madchen Amick was the most beautiful woman on television in 1990.
With the film failing to achieve either a consistent tone or a single laugh, the best thing that I can say about Jury Duty is that it didn’t feature Pauly Shore. Instead it featured Alan Thicke driving a BMW with a license plate that read, “BMW4Phil.” It’s hard to believe that this film was directed by Michael Schultz, who was responsible for movies like Car Wash, Cooley High, and Greased Lightning in the 70s and Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon in the 80s.
On the frontier, crooked lawyer Gabe Bowdre (Karl Hackett) is trying to secure all of the local water rights for himself and that means running off both the homesteaders and the ranchers. Bowdre and his men try to start a range war between the ranching Stocktown family and the homesteading Dawsons. Meanwhile, Dan Stockton (Bob Steele) has fallen in love with Gail Dawson (Louise Stanley) and marries her mere minutes before someone shoots his father in the back.
Gun Lords of Stirrup Basin has all the common elements that usually come with a B-western. I have lost track of how many times I have watched Karl Hackett play a crooked businessman who tries to start a range war to win either the water rights or the property deeds. Bob Steele spent a good deal of his career beating up Karl Hackett on screen.
What sets Gun Lords of Stirrup Basin apart is the Romeo and Juliet angle. While it’s predictable, the love story between Dan and Gail still adds more emotional depth than is usually found in these movies. The scene where all of the ranchers glare daggers at Dan’s new wife is powerful.
Bob Steele’s as good a hero as usual and Karl Hackett is a dastardly villain. Gun Lords of Stirrup Basin runs a little less than an hour, making it a good western for an afternoon break.
The world is ending and teacher Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor) wonders why he keeps seeing signs that announce, “Charles Krantz: 39 Great Years! Thanks, Chuck!” Marty’s ex-wife (Karen Gillan) calls him and tells him that, at the hospital where she works, she and her co-workers have taken to calling themselves “the suicide squad.” It would be an effective moment if not for the fact that the film’s narration (somewhat predictably voiced by Nick Offerman) had already informed us of that fact. Everyone wonders why the world is falling apart. Why has the internet gone off-line? Why has California finally sunk into the ocean? Why are people rioting? Several characters say that it’s the end times before then adding that it’s not the same end time that the “religious fanatics” and “right-wing nuts” always talk about. Thanks for clarifying that! It’s nice to know that, at the end of the world, people will still talk like an aging Maine boomer.
Nine months earlier, a straight-laced banked named Chuck Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) comes across a busker playing her drums on a street corner and feels inspired to start dancing.
Years earlier, a young boy named Chuck Krantz is raised by his grandmother (Mia Sara) and his grandfather (Mark Hamill). Young Chuck (Jacob Tremblay) inherits a love of dance from his grandmother but, after she dies in a supermarket, his grandfather turns to drinking. His grandfather keeps one room in their house locked. (There’s even an absurdly huge lock on the door because The Life of Chuck is not a subtle one.) Eventually, Chuck discovers what is hidden away in the room and it shapes the rest of his life.
Occasionally, solid genre craftsmen will fill the need to prove that they’re actually deeper than people give them credit for. In 2020, Stephen King published a novella called The Life of Chuck. In October of 2023, director Mike Flanagan announced that he had begun filming on his adaptation of The Life of Chuck. Both King and Flanagan are better-known for their contributions to the horror gerne, though, around 2017, King apparently decided that he was also meant to be a political pundit. (No writer, with the possible exception of Joyce Carol Oates, has done more damage to their reputation by joining twitter than Stephen King.) There are elements of horror to be found in The Life of Chuck. There’s the world ending during Act One. There’s the locked rom in Act Three. There’s the terrible acting of the woman playing the drummer in Act Two. But this definitely is not a horror film. Instead, it’s King and Flanagan at their most sentimental, heartfelt, and ultimately simplistic.
It’s ultimately a bit too self-consciously quirky for its own good. Flanagan seems to be really concerned that we’ll miss the point of the film so he directs with a heavy-hand and, at times, he overexplains. Sometimes, you have to have some faith in your audience and their ability to figure out things on their own. The scenes of Chuck’s childhood are so shot through a haze of nostalgia that they feel as overly stylized as the scenes that don’t necessarily take place in our reality. For the most part, the narration could have been ditched without weakening the film. That said, the film is hardly a disaster. There are moments that work, like the joyous scene of Tom Hiddleston dancing. The film tries a bit too hard to be profound but there’s joy to be found in the performances of Hiddleston and Jacob Tremblay. Chucks seems like a nice guy.
1972’s Tomorrow opens up in rural Mississippi, in the early 40s. A man is on trial for shooting another man. The majority of the juror wants to acquit the shooter because it’s generally agreed that the victim was a no-account, someone who was never going to amount to anything and who the entire country is better off without. Only one juror votes to convict, a quiet and stoic-looking farmer named Fenty (Robert Duvall). Fenty refuses to go into much detail about why he’s voted to convict. Despite the efforts of the other jurors, Fenty refuses to change his vote and the end result is a hung jury.
The film flashes twenty years, to show why Fenty eventually voted the way that he did. Even in the past, Fenty is quiet and shy, a farmer who also works as a caretaker at another property that is several miles away. He walks to and from his home. Even on Christmas Eve, he says that he plans to walk the 30 miles back to his farm and then, on the day after Christmas, the 30 miles back to his caretaking job. Fenty is someone who keeps to himself, answering most questions with just a few words and revealing little about how he feels about anything.
When Fenty comes across a sickly and pregnant drifter named Sarah Eubanks (Olga Bellin), he takes her into his farm and he nurses her back to health. The film examines the bond that forms between Fenty and Sarah, two people who have been judged by society to be of little significance. It’s not an easy life but Fenty endures. Fenty’s decision to take in Sarah is a decision that will ultimately lead to Fenty’s guilty vote at the trial many years later.
Tomorrow is a film that is not as well-known as it should be. Adapted by Horton Foote from a William Faulkner short story, the black-and-white film is one that demands a little patience. Audiences looking for an immediate pay-off will be disappointed but those willing to give the film time to tell its story will be rewarded. The action unfolds at a gradual but deliberate pace, one that will seem familiar to anyone who has spent any time in the rural South. The film allows the audience the time to get to know both Fenty and Sarah and to truly understand the world in which the live. In the end, when the film’s narrator comes to realize that Fenty is not an insignificant bystander but instead a man of strong character and morals, the audience won’t be surprised because the audience already knows. Fenty has proven himself to the viewer.
Robert Duvall has described Tomorrow as being his favorite of the many films in which he’s appeared. (The film came out the same year that Duvall co-starred in The Godfather.) Indeed, Duvall does give one of his best performances as the quiet but strong Fenty. In many ways, the performance feels as if its descended from his film debut as Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird. Duvall gives an excellent performance as a man who can hide his emotions but not his decency. Tomorrow is a film that requires patience but which still deserves to be better known.
Clem Peterson (Richard Cramer) has a plot to force all of the ranchers in the valley to give up their land. He gives a phony land claim to Carson (John Merton), who presents himself as being a Mexican nobleman. In a situation like this, you need a singing cowboy and luckily, there’s one nearby. Fred (Fred Scott) and Fuzzy (Al St. John) get involved after their cattle are stolen by Clem and his men. Fred not only fights to save the ranchers but he also sings a song or two.
Through the Shattered Lens 