A Movie A Day #15: Special Bulletin (1983, directed by Ed Zwick)

Posted on January 15, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

“We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming for a special report…”

Led by veteran anchor John Woodley, the RBS news team is providing continuing coverage of a developing crisis in Charleston, South Carolina, where terrorists are holding several members of the coast guard, a local new reporter, and his cameraman hostage on a small tugboat. These are not typical terrorists, though. Two of them are nuclear scientists. One of them is a social worker. Another one is a nationally-renowned poet. The final terrorist is a former banker robber who was just recently released from prison. This unlikely group has only two demands: that the U.S. government hand over every single nuclear trigger device at the U.S. Naval Base and that RBS give them a live television feed so that they can explain their actions to the nation. If either of those demands are not met, a nuclear bomb will be detonated and will destroy Charleston.

This made-for-TV movie was shot on video tape, to specifically make it look like an actual news broadcast. Though much of the movie seems dated when compared to today’s slick, 24-hour media circus, Special Bulletin was convincing enough that, when it was originally broadcast in 1983, it caused a mini-panic among viewers who missed the opening disclaimer:

Because the movie deals with the threat of nuclear terrorism instead of a U.S.-Soviet nuclear war, it still feels relevant in a way that many of the atomic disaster films of the 1980s do not. Beyond making an anti-nuclear statement, Special Bulletin is also a critical look at how the news media sensationalizes every crisis, with the RBS news team going from smug complacency to outright horror as the situation continues to deteriorate. David Clennon and David Rasche are memorable as the two most outspoken of the terrorists and Ed Flanders is perfectly cast as a veteran news anchor struggling to maintain control in the middle of an uncontrollable situation. Special Bulletin won an Emmy for Outstanding Drama Special and can be currently be found on YouTube.

Keep an eye out for Michael Madsen, who shows up 57 minutes in and gets the movie’s best line: “That guy’s a total psycho ward.”

A Movie A Day #14: Eyewitness (1970, directed by John Hough)

Posted on January 14, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

eyewitness-1970-film

In Eyewitness (which is also known as Sudden Terror), eleven year-old Ziggy (Mark Lester) witnesses a policeman (Peter Vaughan) assassinating a visiting African dignitary but, because he has a history of “crying wolf,” he can’t get anyone to believe him. Not his older sister, Pippa (Susan George). Not his grandfather (Lionel Jeffries), the lighthouse keeper. Not the housekeeper, Madame Robiac (Betty Marsden). Not even Tom Jones (Tony Bonner), a tourist who fancies Pippa. When he sees two policemen driving up to his grandfather’s lighthouse, Ziggy panics and runs. Though John Hough’s direction, which is full of zoom shots and Dutch angles, is dated, Eyewitness holds up well as a tight thriller. Susan George was beautiful in 1970 and Peter Vaughan is a great villain.

If Sam Peckinpah had ever made a children’s movie, it would probably look a lot like Eyewitness. The movie starts out with Ziggy playing on the beach and pretending to be a soldier while imaginary gunshots and explosions are heard in the background. It ends with a strange joke about a man who looks like Hitler, followed by a cheery freeze frame. In between all that cheeriness, the assassin and his brother (Peter Bowles) chase Ziggy across Malta and kill anyone who gets in their way, from a friendly priest to a ten year-old girl being held by her father. I counted ten onscreen death, which is a lot considering that this British movie was released at a time when some were still arguing that Jon Pertwee-era Dr. Who was too scary for children. There’s even an exciting car chase that ends with one car overturned and the blood-covered survivors struggling to drag themselves out from underneath the wreckage. How many British children were traumatized by Eyewitness?

Growing Pains: YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW (Warner Brothers 1966)

Posted on January 14, 2017 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

Francis Ford Coppola was still a UCLA film student when he made YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW, the 1966 coming of age comedy he used as his MFA thesis. The young Coppola was 27, and had gained experience working for Roger Corman ; indeed, Corman gave him his first break when he hired Coppola to write and direct the horror quickie DEMENTIA 13. But YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW was his first major studio release, and put him on the map as a talent to keep an eye on.

Bernard Chanticleer is a 19 year old nerd with a way-overprotective mother and disinterested, authoritarian father. He works for Dad at a New York City library, and is constantly goofing up on the job. Dad thinks it’s time for Bernard to spread his wings and move on his own, much to Mom’s displeasure. She finds him a room at a house owned by Miss Thing, who’s tenants include conservative…

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2016 in Review: Lisa Marie Picks The 26 Best Films of 2016!

Posted on January 14, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Well, the time is here! It’s time for me to reveal my picks for the best 26 films of 2016!

If there’s been any theme that I’ve found myself constantly returning to while looking back at the previous year, it’s that 2016 just wasn’t as good as 2015. That’s certainly true as far as movies are concerned. Whereas 2015 provided us with an embarrasment of riches, 2016 was — overall — a pretty bland year as far as cinema is concerned.

That doesn’t mean there weren’t some great films released in 2016. I’m proud of this list below. At the same time, I’m also a little bit frustrated. As happens every year, there are a few films that, as of this writing, I have yet to see. Weather permitting, I will see Silence and Jackie tomorrow and on Monday. If I feel that they need to be included in my top 26, I will come back and edit this list. And, of course, I still need to see some of the films that are no longer playing in theaters — Captain Fantastic, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, and some others. The list below should be considered my picks for the best 2016 films that I actually got to see.

Also, I still need to write reviews for two of the films listed below. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do that today. As soon as those reviews are posted, I’ll add links.

With all that in mind, here’s the list!

You can check out my picks for previous years by clicking on 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015!

Agree? Disagree? Have a list of your own? Let us know in the comments!

Previous Entries In The Best of 2016:

Playing Catch-Up: Arrival (dir by Denis Villeneuve)

Posted on January 14, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I cannot begin to express how happy I was when I learned that the Directors Guild of America had nominated Denis Villeneuve for his work on Arrival.

Arrival was one of the best films of 2016. In fact, I would argue that it’s one of the best science fiction films that I’ve ever seen. There were a lot of reasons for that, of course. There was the brilliant script by Eric Heisserer. There was the starring performance of Amy Adams, who is one of the best actresses working today. There was a surprise and thought-provoking twist, one that forced you to reconsider everything that you previously believed. There were so many reasons why Arrival was a great film but, ultimately, it call came down to Denis Villeneuve.

Working with material that would have led most directors down the road to bombast, Villeneuve instead took a deliberately low-key approach. Whereas most directors would have encouraged their cast to play up the drama, Villeneuve encourages his actors to take a more inward and cerebral approach to the material. Arrival is a rarity — a film about smart people in which the people actually seem to be smart. For once, we don’t need expositionary characters to pop up and tell us that Louise Banks (Amy Adams) and Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) are brilliant. Instead, we simply believe they are from what we see on the screen. Much like last year’s Sicario, Arrival proves that Villeneuve is a visionary director.

Arrival is a hard film to describe, not because it’s overly complicated but because there’s a huge twist that I really can’t reveal. Before the twist, Arrival is simply a well-directed sci-fi film. After the twist, it is something all together different, an intense meditation on faith, love, language, and destiny. Since I’m reviewing the film late, chances are that you already know about the twist but I’m still not going to spoil it.

What I can tell you is that Arrival opens with the arrival of twelve spaceships, all of which land at different places across the world. The Chinese have a spaceship. The British have a spaceship. I imagine that the Canadians have a spaceship, because who wouldn’t want to hang out with the Canadians? And, of course, the Americans have a spaceship. The aliens are inside the spaceships. They’re octopus-like creatures, ones that almost look as if they could have come from one of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu stories. The aliens may appear to be fearsome but they actually seem to be rather benevolent. No one’s quite sure because the aliens communicate through a complex series of symbols and nobody can understand what those symbols mean.

Louise Banks is a linguist. Ian Donnelly is a physicist. The Americans bring both in to help translate the symbols. Of course, the rest of the world has their own linguists and physicists working to translate the symbols and, humans being humans, it often seems that the Americans and the Chinese are less concerned with translating what the aliens are saying and more concerned with being the first to understand. While Louise works, she continues to be haunted by dreams and visions of her daughter’s death from cancer.

And that’s really all I can tell you without spoiling the film and potentially making myself cry. But I will say that if you haven’t seen Arrival, you must go out and see it now. It’s one of the most thought-provoking and emotionally wrenching films of the past year.

Add to that, it’s probably going to be nominated for best picture. It’s been overshadowed a bit by all the attention paid to La La Land, Moonlight, and Manchester By The Sea. But Arrival is just as good a film as any of them. In fact, in the future, we’ll probably look at Arrival and say that it was better than all of them.

A Movie A Day #13: Ringmaster (1998, directed by Neil Abramson)

Posted on January 13, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

ringmaster-poster Jerry Springer has been many things over the course of his long life. Lawyer. Anti-war activist. Adviser to Bobby Kennedy. Congressional candidate. City councilman. Brothel aficionado. Mayor. Journalist. Commentator. Talk show host. Destroyer of culture. Scourge of humanity. Twice, he was a highly recruited candidate for the U.S. Senate but, both times, it was decided that there was no way a morally questionable television personality could actually win high political office in the United States.

(Yeah, about that…)

There is one thing that Jerry Springer has never been and that is a movie star. However, that’s not for lack of trying. At the height of his talk show’s popularity, Jerry Springer starred in Ringmaster. Though he played a character named Jerry Farrelly and his show was retitled The Jerry Show, there was never any doubt that Jerry Springer was meant to be playing himself.

Who is Jerry Springer, according to Ringmaster? He’s a sad and weary man who sleeps with his guests and worries that his raunchy show will be his only legacy. After one show, he tells his staff that he will never again be elected to political office. His staff laughs but Jerry didn’t sound like he was making a joke. Why does Jerry do it? Because he cares about America! When a man in his audience starts yelling that Jerry and his guests are all going to Hell, Jerry gets in his face and let him know that his show is providing a voice for the people who live in the real America.

In Ringmaster, the real America is made up of people like trailer park nymphomaniac Angel Zorzak (Jaime Pressly) and her mother, Connie (Molly Hagan). Angel and Connie appear on The Jerry Show after Angel sleeps with her stepfather (Michael Dudikoff, the American Ninja himself) and Connie gets revenge by sleeping with Angel’s boyfriend. Also on the show is Demond (Michael Jai White), who cheated on his girlfriend with her two best friends and, the night before the show, cheats with Angel too. Thanks to the show, Demond gets his comeuppance and Angel and Connie’s relationship is repaired. The movie ends with mother and daughter back in the trailer park, talking about how their new neighbor has big feet.

Pressly and Hagan are the best thing about Ringmaster. The worst thing is undoubtedly Jerry Springer. For someone who has made a career in both politics and television, Jerry Springer turns out to be a terrible actor. He sleepwalks through the movie with a please-kill-me look on his face, keeping his head down and muttering the majority of his lines.

According to Wikipedia, Ringmaster had a budget of $20,000,000 and grossed back less than half of that. Why would people pay money to watch what they could see on TV for free? Jerry Springer never became a senator or a movie star. He continues to host his talk show and probably will until the end of time.

A Movie A Day #12: Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator (2002, directed by Helen Stickler)

Posted on January 12, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

In the 1980s, Mark “Gator” Rogowski was a superstar. A professional skateboarder, Gator was one of the most popular vert skaters, competing and partying alongside Tony Hawk, Christian Hosoi, Steve Caballero, and Lance Mountain. Yet today, unlike his contemporaries, Gator is almost totally forgotten. In 1991, after having changed his name to Mark Anthony and declared himself to be a born again Christian, Gator raped and killed Jessica Bergstrom, a friend of his ex-girlfriend. Convicted of first degree murder, Gator was sentenced to life imprisonment. He is currently an inmate of the California State Prison System.

Through archival footage and interviews with both his fellow skaters and his ex-girlfriend, Stoked tells the story of Rogowski’s rise and fall. Even if you know nothing about the history of skating, the interviews are interesting and frequently insightful about the fickle nature of fame. Anyone who was not already a fan of Jason Jessee’s will be after seeing him interviewed in Stoked. Because California state law prohibits inmates from giving video interviews, Rogowski is interviewed over the phone and his disembodied voice provides a ghostly accompaniment for much of the film.

Stoked not only tells the story of how Gator ended up in jail but also of how vert skating became big business in the 1980s. At the height of his popularity, Gator was making $20,000 a month, just through board sales and the sponsorship of Vision Street Wear. When street skating became popular in the 90s and a new generation of skaters rejected Vision’s commercial approach, Gator found himself washed up before he even turned 25. By using Gator’s story as a way to examine an entire era, Stoked is to skateboarding what O.J.: Made in America is to football.

Oh No SHE Didn’t!! (MGM/Hammer 1965)

Posted on January 12, 2017 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

…didn’t manage to keep me awake, that is! That’s right, I actually dozed off in the middle of SHE for a good fifteen minutes! This so-called adventure film, a remake of the rousing 1935 Merian C. Cooper production starring Helen Gahagan and Randolph Scott, is based on a novel by H. Rider Haggard, a pretty big-deal adventure novelist back in the day, who also wrote the novels KING SOLOMAN’S MINES and ALLAN QUARTERMAIN. The ’35 version was filled with sumptuous Art Deco sets and a dynamic score by Max Steiner, and proved popular with moviegoers of the day.

But the times, they do a-change, and so do tastes. Hammer Films decided to do this remake thirty years later, with Ursula Andress in the title role. ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. caveman John Richardson plays Leo Vincey, who’s the spitting image of Queen Ayesha’s long-lost love Kallilkrates. Hammer’s top tag-team Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee are in the cast…

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Playing Catch-Up: White Girl (dir by Elizabeth Wood)

Posted on January 11, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Ever since it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, I’ve read the White Girl was the most “shocking” film of 2016. You can take a look at the poster above and see that, according to The Hollywood Reporter, White Girl is “SHOCKING … AND SEXY AS HELL!”

Well, I finally got a chance to watch White Girl on Netflix and the only thing shocking about it is that so many (male) critics were apparently convinced that it was the most shocking movie ever made. I certainly wouldn’t call it shocking. (And considering that White Girl features two graphic rapes, I’d love to know why the critic thought “sexy as Hell” would be an appropriate description.) A better description of White Girl would be “honest.” Then again, considering the way that the movies usually present the experience of being young, female, and in the city, perhaps the fact that White Girl is an honest film is the most shocking thing of all.

Morgan Saylor plays Leah, a college student who, along with her friend, Katie (India Meneuz), moves into a New York apartment. The apartment is located in a largely Spanish neighborhood, one that has yet to surrender to gentrification. While Katie and Leah’s hipster friends are immediately suspicious of everyone else in the neighborhood, the Oklahoma-born Leah is far more adventurous (or perhaps reckless). She approaches Blue (Brian Marc) on a street corner and asks him if he has any weed.

Blue has weed and a lot more. He’s the neighborhood drug dealer and soon, he’s also Leah’s boyfriend. When Leah isn’t getting high and having sex with Blue, she’s working as an intern at a magazine where, early on in the film, she’s sexually assaulted by her boss, Kelly (Justin Bartha, playing a predator who, for many, will seem disturbingly familiar). Leah invites Blue to a party given by the magazine and Blue is able to make a lot of money selling cocaine to Leah’s wealthy co-workers.

For Blue, drugs are a business and he refuses to do hard drugs himself. To Leah, it’s an adventure, one that she believes doesn’t have any real consequences. Or, at least, that’s the way she sees it until Blue is arrested. With Blue, a repeat offender, facing a life sentence, Leah manages to find a lawyer (Chris Noth, who will make you skin crawl) but she needs to raise the money to pay him. Fortunately, Leah has a stash of cocaine that Blue was supposed to sell. Blue tells Leah that she needs to return the cocaine to his dealer but instead, Leah decides to sell the cocaine herself. Or, at the very least, she’s going to sell whatever cocaine she doesn’t end up snorting herself…

White Girl has been called shocking because of its open and nonjudgmental portrayal of both drugs and sex but, honestly, there’s nothing shocking about it. It may be a generational thing but, to me, Leah’s story was a familiar one. I’ve known a lot of Leahs and, personally, there were moments in White Girl that left me cringing just because I could relate to one of Leah’s naive notions or I could remember what it was like to feel like, no matter what I did, there would never be any consequences. Leah may not always be a likable character but it’s not because she has sex or experiments with drugs. Instead, it’s because she spends most of the film blissfully unaware of her own privilege. Leah thinks that she understands the realities of Blue’s world but, as she learns by the end of the film, she’s really just a tourist. And, unlike Blue and the rest of her neighbors, Leah can always leave whenever she wants.

So, White Girl was not a shocking film to me. Instead, it was a very honest film. It can currently be viewed on Netflix.

Playing Catch-Up: Love & Friendship (dir by Whit Stillman)

Posted on January 11, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Earlier this week, I named Pride and Prejudice and Zombies as the worst Jane Austen adaptation of 2016. Of course, I understand that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies isn’t really a Jane Austen adaptation. Instead, it’s an adaptation of a jokey novel that took Austen’s characters and combined them with zombies. But you know what? Nobody would have given a damn if the name of that book and that movie didn’t include three words: Pride. And. Prejudice. That’s the power of Jane Austen.

But anyway, my point is that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was pretty much a low point as far as Jane Austen films are concerned. Fortunately, 2016 also saw the release of a very enjoyable and entertaining Jane Austen film named Love & Friendship and, even better, Love & Friendship was based on something that Austen actually wrote.

Of course, though Austen may have written the novella Lady Susan, it wasn’t published until long after her death and there’s speculation that it was an unfinished (or abandoned) first draft. In fact, it’s debatable whether or not Lady Susan was something that Austen would have ever wanted to see published. While it shares themes in common with Austen’s best known work, it also features a lead character who is far different from the stereotypical Austen heroine. Lady Susan Vernon is vain, selfish, manipulative, and unapologetic about her numerous affairs. She’s also one of the wittiest of Austen’s characters, a woman who is capable of identifying and seeing through the hypocrisies of 18th century society.

In Love & Friendship, Susan is played by Kate Beckinsale, who does a great job in the role. One of the best things about Love & Friendship is that it serves to remind us that Kate Beckinsale is a very good actress, even when she isn’t dealing with vampires and Lycans and all that other Underworld stuff. Lady Susan is a recent widow and has been staying, with her daughter, Frederica (Morfydd Clark), at the estate of Lord and Lady Manwaring (Jenn Murray and Lochlann O’Mearáin) . That’s a good thing because, as a result of the death of her husband, Lady Susan is now virtually penniless and homeless. But, once it becomes obvious that Susan is having an affair with Lord Manwaring, she and Frederica are kicked out of the estate.

They eventually find themselves living with Susan’s brother-in-law, Charles (Justin Edwards) and Charles’s wife, Catherine (Emma Greenwell). Susan, realizing that she needs to find not only a rich husband for Frederica but also one for herself, immediately starts to scheme to win the hand of Catherine’s brother, Reginald DeCourcy (Xavier Samuel). Meanwhile, Susan also tries to arrange for Frederica to marry the hilariously slow-witted Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett). Needless to say, things do not go quite as plan and it’s all rather chaotic and hilarious in its wonderfully refined way.

Director Whit Stillman, who has spent his career making refined and witty movies about morality and manners, is the ideal director for Austen’s material and he’s helped by an extremely witty (and, with the exception of Chloe Sevigny, very British) cast. In the role of Susan, Kate Beckinsale is a force of nature and Tom Bennett is hilariously dense as Sir James, the type of well-meaning dunce who is literally stumped when someone asks him, “How do you do?” Never before has dullness been so hilariously performed and Bennett’s performance really is a minor miracle.

Love & Friendship was a wonderful excursion into Austenland. It didn’t even require zombies to be enjoyable.