Film Review: Thank God, It’s Friday (dir by Robert Klane)

Posted on July 31, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, I just finished watching Thank God, It’s Friday, a movie from 1978. It’s an episodic comedy, one that follows a group of genuinely unlikable characters as they all gather in one genuinely unlikable location and proceed to have some fairly generic experiences.

For example, there’s the married couple and the husband needs to loosen up. There’s the DJ who is going to lose his job if he can’t deliver the big stars that he’s promised. There’s the short, violent guy who is upset because he’s been set up on a date with a tall woman. There’s the dental hygienist who comes across like she’s desperately trying to convince everyone that she’s eccentric when she’s really just boring. (We all know the type.) There’s the teenager girls who try to sneak into the club, despite being underage. There’s the two dorky guys who are looking for love. There’s the two dorky girls who are looking for love.

In fact, everyone in the movie is looking for love! Except for Jeff Goldblum! He just wants to get laid. He manages the club where everyone has gathered on this particular Friday. He’s a womanizer. We can tell because he wears a red jacket and his shirt is half-buttoned. Goldblum decides that he wants to break up the married couple. Boo! Hiss! But wait a minute — neither the husband nor the wife are likable or interesting. Go, Jeff, go! BREAK UP THAT BORINGASS MARRIAGE!

Oh! And Nicole (Donna Summer) is wandering around the club too. She wants a chance to perform but the DJ refuses to let her. So, eventually, she just grabs a microphone and she starts to sing. Luckily, the song she sings is Last Dance and, by singing it, she gives everyone an excuse to go home. If you’ve ever been to a karaoke night, you know that, as soon as a drunk sings Last Dance, it’s time to pay the bill and get the Hell out of there.

Last Dance was apparently written specifically for Thank God, It’s Friday. Or maybe Thank God, It’s Friday was written specifically for Last Dance, who knows? What we do know is that Last Dance won the Oscar for Best Original Song. That’s right — Thank God, It’s Friday is an Oscar winner and therefore, will always be enshrined with fellow Oscar winners like Crash, Titanic, and SPECTRE.

(Which songs did Thank God, It’s Friday beat? It defeated a song from Grease, which is a good thing because Grease is even more annoying than Thank God, It’s Friday. That’s right, I said it. And you know it’s true.)

Anyway, Thank God, It’s Friday is a really bad movie, one that is full of bad writing, bad jokes, bad performances, and indifferent direction. It’s tempting to say that the music was really good but actually, we don’t hear much of the music. The movie is often more concerned about what’s happening in the club’s parking lot than in what is happening (and being heard) on the inside. We may not hear much music but we do get to see some pretty icky racial stereotyping and who would guess that a movie about disco would be so homophobic?

(We don’t see any cocaine, though I’m sure you could probably hear the key grip and the gaffer snorting a line off-camera if you listened closely enough. A lot of the cast looked pretty wired.)

ANYWAY — here’s the important thing about Thank God, It’s Friday. Occasionally, I’ll watch a movie like Dazed and Confused or Boogie Nights or Saturday Night Fever and I’ll get jealous because I know that I’ll never get a chance to experience the 70s first hand. Fortunately, something like Thank God, It’s Friday will always be around to reassure me, “No, Lisa. The 70s sucked!”

Thank God, it’s Friday?

No, thank God the movie’s over.

“Is it Friday yet!?”

Actually, you know what? I can’t end this review without sharing this film’s trailer:

Doesn’t Skatetown, USA look better?

Oh well! Sing us out of here, Donna!

Strange Bedfellows: THE GLASS KEY (Paramount 1942)

Posted on July 30, 2016 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

Anyone who watches television, reads a newspaper, or surfs the Internet today knows the axiom “Politics is a dirty business” is dead on point. The mudslinging and brickbats are being tossed at record rates, and it just keeps escalating. Here at Cracked Rear Viewer, we’re just plain tired of all the nonsense. Ah, for the old days, when politics was much more genteel and civil, right? Wrong! Politics has always been a dirty business, proving another old adage, “There’s nothing new under the sun”. Case in point: the 1942 film THE GLASS KEY.

The story’s based on a novel by Dashiell Hammett, and was filmed once before in 1935 with George Raft, Edward Arnold, and Claire Dodd. In this version, Paramount chose to star their red-hot team of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, fresh off their hit THIS GUN FOR HIRE. Brian Donlevy takes the Arnold role as Paul Madvig, a…

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Let’s Talk About Ozark Sharks!

Posted on July 29, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, while most you were probably watching the Democratic National Convention, my friends, the Snarkalecs, and I were watching and live tweeting a movie on SyFy called Ozark Sharks.

And you know what?

I’m glad that I was because, seriously, Ozark Sharks was a tremendous amount of fun. I’m also proud that we managed to get Ozark Sharks trending on twitter, if just because that caused a lot of confusion among the normals, many of whom seemed to assume that it was some sort of politically themed hashtag. For example:

Ooops Hillary! 1,100 donors to a Canadian charity tied to Clinton Foundation r… #ThirstyThursday #OzarkSharks https://t.co/5hoRpZYBxd

— faultlineusa (@faultlineusa) July 29, 2016

Well, with all apologies to the political junkies of twitter, that’s not what Ozark Sharks is about.

Instead, Ozark Sharks is probably the best film that will ever be made about sharks invading a river in Arkansas. Now, if you’re asking yourself: “Why are there sharks in Arkansas?,” you’re not doing this right. The why is not important. What is important is that there are six hungry sharks in the water and they’re willing to eat anyone that they come across. Literally no one is safe. Not your boyfriend. Not your best friends. Not the guy who you were thinking of going out with in case you ever broke up with your boyfriend. Not even lovable older tourists. Ozark sharks will eat anyone.

(And they’re messy eaters, the type that regularly leave legs and arms floating in the water.)

Making things even worse, the river leads to a lake and the citizens of a nearby town are planning on shooting of fireworks at that very same lake. They’re hanging out, drinking beer, listening to country music, hanging out on the docks, and floating around in inner tubes. And little do they realize that sharks are heading straight towards them!

Luckily, hope is not lost. There’s a family that’s come down to the lake for the weekend. Will they be able to stop the sharks or are they all destined to end up as shark bait? Well, let’s consider who they are:

First off, there’s Diane (Laura Cayouette, who many of you will recognize as Leonardo DiCaprio’s sister in Django Unchained) and her husband, Rick (Michael Papajohn). I liked Diane and Rick. They were a likable couple and Cayouette and Papajohn had a very believable chemistry. You actually believed that they were married and in love and I cannot begin to say how important that was to the overall effectiveness of the film. They both committed to the roles and, as a result, Diane and Rick came across like the type of people you would want as your neighbors.

Their oldest child is named Harrison (Dave Davis). Harrison is single and could really use a girlfriend. Fortunately, he meets Dawn (Ashton Leigh), who is stranded on a rock in the middle of the river and in a pretty emotional state because she’s just seen all of her friends (including her boyfriend) eaten by a shark. Fortunately, for Harrison, that means that she is now single.

Harrison’s younger sister is named Molly (Allisyn Ashley Arm). I think the general consensus on twitter was that, by the end of the movie, Molly was everyone’s favorite character. When Molly first appears, she is defiantly insisting on reading a book and refusing to get into the river. Speaking as someone who ruined many a family vacation by doing the same thing, I immediately related to Molly. If Molly had spent the whole movie just reading her book and maintaining her indifferent attitude, she already would have already been the best character in the film. But, instead, Molly quickly emerged as the family badass, which makes her even cooler. I don’t want to spoil the film but let’s just say that if your state is ever invaded by sharks, you’re going to want Molly on your side.

Curtis (Ross Britz) is Molly’s wonderfully goofy boyfriend. More than anything, you have to love Curtis because he seems to genuinely be overjoyed to have a chance to fight sharks. Fortunately, Jones (Thomas Francis Murphy) is also around to teach Molly and Curtis how to deal with sharks. (Jones even gets to utter a line that serves an homage to Jaws. I won’t spoil it, though, because it was a fun moment that you should experience on your own.) Jones owns a bait shop but he’s also an expert in how to kill sharks and he’s got a storeroom full of all sorts of weapons. He even has a harpoon cannon, which he claims is only used to fight sharks though I suspect that it has other uses as well.

"Why do you need a harpoon cannon?"
"Yankees."#OzarkSharks

— Lisa Marie Bowman (@LisaMarieBowman) July 29, 2016

(There’s another member of the family as well, but I fear that if I talk too much about her, I’ll be spoiling one of the film’s more surprising moment. So, I’ll just say that Sharon Garrison did a great job playing her!)

So, if it’s not clear already, I absolutely loved Ozark Sharks. This is one of those lovingly crafted and unabashedly entertaining films that epitomizes everything that we love about old B-movies and modern day SyFy films. This is a genuinely fun and entertaining movie, one that is meant to be watched by you and a group of your snarkiest friends.

On a personal note, I appreciate the fact that this movie got the Ozarks right. When I was growing up, I spent a lot of time in Arkansas. My grandmother lived in Ft. Smith and my family lived in Fouke (home of the Fouke Monster) for a year. I still visit Arkansas fairly frequently. For the record, of course, Ozark Sharks was actually filmed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. But no matter! Regardless of where it was actually filmed, Ozark Sharks gets Arkansas right. It captures the atmosphere, the accents, and the attitudes of the Ozarks and then it throws in a nice little spin by adding sharks.

Ozark Sharks was directed by Misty Talley, who also directed last year’s Zombie Shark. Ozark Sharks shares much of the same crew as Zombie Shark (and a few of the same cast members as well, including Laura Cayouette and Becky Andrews) and they all should be as proud of their work on both films. As opposed to the rather dark Zombie Shark, Ozark Sharks is a rather light-hearted film. (Though there is one death, towards the end of the film, that definitely caught everyone watching it by surprise and got us all feeling a little emotional.) Last year, I announced that Zombie Shark was the best of that year’s SyFy original films. I think the same may very well prove to be true of Ozark Sharks.

Excluding Sunday’s premiere of Sharknado 4, Ozark Sharks was the final original film of SyFy’s Shark week. (For those interested, I’m planning on live tweeting the Hell out of Sharknado 4 and I’ll be doing not just an east coast live tweet but a second live tweet with my friends on the west coast as well!) Below, I’ve ranked them all five of the Shark week premieres in order, with number 1 being my favorite.

(Personally, I liked all five of the premieres so being ranked fifth on this list should not be taken as a criticism.)

Thank you, SyFy, for another great shark week! And, if you missed any of these premieres, keep an eye out because SyFy will probably repeat most of them during this weekend!

Film Review: Gums (1976, dir. Robert J. Kaplan)

Posted on July 29, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

With Deep Jaws (1976) over, I decided to watch the full blown porno spoof of Jaws called Gums. Why did I decide to review these two movies again? Oh, and these movies must have known about each other cause they actually say “Deep Jaws” in this film. It’s somehow better made than Deep Jaws, but that’s not saying much. Also, I’m pretty sure the version I have was censored at some point. I say “at some point” because it’s obvious that whoever did it was in on the whole thing. All the runtime is here as far as I know. They just save me some black boxes by putting humorous things there instead. Let’s take a look at this thing.

The movie opens like a slasher movie by giving us an opening kill.

This time around we have a mermaid that seeks out people, and gives them blow jobs to death. By that, I mean she appears to bite it off after sucking on it for awhile. She also seems to do interpretative dance. I have no idea why, but she does that in this movie on several occasions.

You know the Jaws formula, so let’s introduce this movie’s equivalent of the well-known characters.

That’s our sheriff. Their actual names aren’t important to anything. He finds the severed penis and stock footage of a beaver.

The guy who found it says it looks like it was chewed off by a beaver, so they cut to this shot before going back to the characters.

He takes the severed cock back to his office, which immediately turns on his secretary. She comes over to him, so I can show you what I mean by censorship in this movie.

Definitely censored, but by people who had a sense of humor.

Time to meet the mayor!

He surprises the sheriff…

which really makes me think that actor Paul Styles here played Dracula in Suckula (1973).

Suckula (1973, dir. Anthony Spinelli)

It could be. I mean it turned out that the anchorman from Suckula was Buck in the Back To The Future movies.

Suckula (1973, dir. Anthony Spinelli)

Then a black guy comes in to tell the story of how he was sitting on a small boat while his “twin” brother was sucked to death in the water. I put twin in quotes cause I’m pretty sure it’s the same actor who played both brothers. Here’s what I think of that scene.

Time to call in a sexpert. Unfortunately Susie Bright would have been only 18 when this movie came out, so they go with a Dr. Smegma.

He is played by none other than Robert Kerman. Comic book fans may remember him as the Tugboat Captain in Spider-Man (2002). He also showed up in Debbie Does Dallas (1978), Cannibal Holocaust (1980), and Cannibal Ferox (1981) among many other films.

This begins a sex scene that I’m pretty sure has lifted music seeing as I heard some prior to this. No matter, because we quickly go back to the rest of the characters and the deaths hit the papers.

I love how serious actor Zack Norman takes playing the reporter just before he prints the story. In 1984 he would go on to play Ira in Romancing the Stone. That’s a step up. He could have wound up in Romancing the Bone (1984) instead. He was also in an episode of the 1990’s TV Show The Flash. That means that between him and Robert Kerman, we have both Marvel and DC actors in a Jaws porno spoof.

By the way, “Welcome To Great Head”.

Ready to meet the Robert Shaw equivalent?

That’s Nazi Quint played by none other than Brother Theodore. You might recognize him from several places. The year after this, he did the voice of Gollum in The Hobbit and later in The Return of the King (1980). However, most people probably know him from his last role in The ‘Burbs (1989). He actually got his start in films back in the 1940s doing film noir such as The Third Man (1949).

This scene goes on forever with him talking. On the upside, he is the best actor in the film next to Robert Kerman. During this scene I’m even more sure that Paul Styles is Dracula from Suckula.

Suckula (1973, dir. Anthony Spinelli)

Makes even more sense when you notice that Terri Hall who plays the mermaid was in one of the movies that is on the same box set as Suckula.

Let’s move on because what the hell is this thing it cuts to next?

My only guess is that they felt the need to foreshadow that they will use puppets to get the mermaid at the end. I agree with Brother Theodore: “Absolutely disgusting.”

After a bunch of stock footage and nonsense scenes that were maybe longer originally, we are at the beach and we finally meet our mermaid.

You might be wondering about now, and the answer is yes. Yes, they do play the actual Jaws theme. That is till the blow job starts, then who knows where this crazy music that starts playing came from.

Dr. Smegma eventually shows up after the mermaid attack and I have to give it to Robert Kerman…

because he is the only one in the cast who at all resembles a member of the original cast in appearance and acting.

A bunch of weird sex things happen now that aren’t important. You don’t want to hear about Porno Dreyfuss and his sex doll that he insists on bringing over to the sheriff’s place. I mean involving animals weird. It gets really bizarre.

It eventually gets back to the plot, but not before it makes a mermaid joke.

That’s the famous “Chicken of the Sea” as Porno Dreyfuss says. Somebody gets attacked, and the next day it’s time for Brother Theodore to monologue again like he did at the town hall meeting before they set off to get her.

Porno Dreyfuss is happy cause he spots the sheriff’s secretary in a boat mostly naked. This is when we find out that not only does the mermaid dance, but I’m pretty sure she eats out the secretary to death. How does that work? In the end, the mermaid dances off into the water and the secretary looks dead on the beach.

Now the mermaid attacks the boat, and we get the dumbest peace of censorship in the movie.

This happens when the mermaid attacks Porno Dreyfuss through the toilet. I’m not showing the shot of her head popping out of the toilet. It might give you nightmares.

The rest is just a really lame recreation of the ending of Jaws till they just throw out the people, replace them with small puppets, and then she sucks on something that explodes. Roll credits!

I wish this version hadn’t been censored because I’m sure it would have made more sense, but at least they were trying for something and could actually do things. Deep Jaws just messed around till it dropped a space capsule in a pool, called it good, and ran the credits.

Do I recommend Gums and/or Deep Jaws? NO! If you want a spoof/homage to Jaws, then watch Blades. I reviewed it briefly last October. The movie is still up legally to watch as well. It’s the one to see. These are both terrible films.

Pre Code Confidential #6: Jean Harlow in THE SECRET SIX (MGM 1931)

Posted on July 28, 2016 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

(Once again, your Cracked Rear Viewer is taking part in the TCM Summer Under The Stars Blogathon, hosted by Kristen at Journeys in Classic Film. Just like last year, I’ll be posting on two stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age: Jean Harlow (8/7) and Boris Karloff (8/26).)

Before she became The Platinum Blonde Bombshell of 1930’s Hollywood, Jean Harlow played a pivotal role in early gangster films. She was James Cagney’s second moll in the essential THE PUBLIC ENEMY, and a slutty seductress in THE BEAST OF THE CITY. In THE SECRET SIX, Jean plays a temptress who turns on the mob in a wild Pre-Code film that represents another milestone for Miss Harlow: it’s her first of six with costar Clark Gable.

Wallace Beery plays Slaughterhouse Scorpio, who rises from the stockyards to the top of the gangster heap. He accomplishes this by brute force, bribery, and rubbing out his…

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Let’s Talk About Planet of the Sharks

Posted on July 28, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yesterday, I watched the latest SyFy shark movie premiere — Planet of the Sharks!

As if there was any doubt, Planet of the Sharks is an Asylum movie. And let’s give the Asylum some credit. They know how to title their movies. When I saw that this movie was called Planet of the Sharks, I immediately thought of Planet of the Apes. I went into this movie expecting that it would feature speaking sharks and maybe a stranded astronaut shouting out, “Take your damn fins off of me, you damn dirty sharks!”

Well, needless to say, that doesn’t happen in Planet of the Sharks. The sharks don’t speak, though they have apparently figured out how to leap out of the water and fly through the air. And though there are a few stranded people, none of them are astronauts. In fact, the only thing that Planet of the Sharks has in common with Planet of the Apes is a shot of the Statue of the Liberty.

But that’s okay! What’s important is that seeing a title like Planet of the Sharks got me excited. I was really looking forward to watching the movie and that enthusiasm carried me over some potentially rough moments. It’s a brilliant title and The Asylum deserves all the credit in the world for coming up with it.

As for the film itself, it takes place in the future. Apparently, humanity never did anything about all of that climate chance because the entire world has been flooded. The Statue of Liberty is now underwater! The few humans that are still alive live in crude floating cities, places that have names like Junk City and Sanctuary.

Speaking of Junk City, when the film begins, it’s in the process of being destroyed by a group of sharks. That’s right — in a world where there’s too much water, the entire world becomes a shark feeding ground. Add to that, it appears that all the plankton have died off. The sharks have no choice but to eat human beings.

(And, quite frankly, it’s hard to blame the sharks. When the people of Sanctuary gather to slaughter a group of sharks, they do it with so much savagery that you can’t help but sympathize with the sharks. Importantly, it should be noted that this seemed to be what the movie was going for.)

Fortunately, there is hope! A group of scientists think that if they can power up a transmitter and send a rocket into space, they’ll be able to change weather patterns. (Or something like that. To be honest, I had a hard time following their plan but what’s important is that it’s what they need to do to lower the sea levels and save the world.) But in order to launch the rocket and power up the transmitter and do everything else, they’re going to have to avoid being eaten by rampaging sharks…

Planet of the Sharks was a little bit talky for an Asylum film. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The film deserves some credit for trying to explain the science behind what was going on and for attempting to give the characters some sort of motivation beyond “Let’s blow up a bunch of sharks.” Those looking for nonstop action may be a little bit disappointed.

But, no matter! I liked Planet of the Sharks. I appreciated the fact that it tried to make its dystopian future plausible and you could tell that the filmmakers had actually given some thought to the story. It was actually kind of interesting to see the savage and sometimes odd culture that had risen up to replace the old world. (The floating town of Sanctuary was especially memorable and disturbing.)

So, no, Planet of the Sharks did not feature talking sharks. But it was still an enjoyable SyFy film.

Let’s Talk About Ice Sharks!

Posted on July 28, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Climate change is a bitch!

And so are sharks!

Those are the two main things that I took away from watching Ice Sharks, which premiered on the SyFy channel on Tuesday.

Ice Sharks take place in the Arctic circle. A group of scientists have set up Oasis base so that they can observe what climate change is doing to the arctic sea life. The water’s getting warmer and, as a result, the ecosystem is changing. Greenland sharks are no longer content to just hang out around Greenland. Now, suddenly, they’re showing up in Antarctica and guess what? They have the ability to not only jump through ice but also to use their dorsal fins to saw through glaciers…

Well, you can probably guess what happens.

First, it’s just sled dog after sled dog getting eaten. Then it’s an Eskimo who is so thoroughly eaten that only a bloody fingernail is found lodged in the ice. Next thing you know, a scientist makes the mistakes of investigating the world outside of Oasis and a shark ends up biting off his leg. The scientist lies on the ice and briefly attempts to tie a tourniquet around his bloody leg stump. It doesn’t do him much good.

One thing about Greenland sharks — they’re mean but they’re also surprisingly intelligent. As soon as they come across Oasis station, they use their dorsal fins to saw through the ice. Soon, Oasis is sinking to the bottom of the ocean with the surviving scientists inside.

And, as our surviving (and fortunately, physically attractive) scientists try to figure out how they are going to survive, the sharks are outside, banging against the station walls…

Ice Sharks is a surprisingly dark little movie. Don’t get me wrong. It’s an Asylum film so, of course, Ice Sharks has an appropriately macabre sense of humor. But, especially when compared to Sharknado 3, Ice Sharks is rather grim. Director Emile Edwin Smith does a good job of creating and maintaining a claustrophobic atmosphere inside the sunken Oasis station. And when the sharks attack, it’s never pretty. Greenland sharks apparently do not share the charm of their home.

Ice Sharks was a grimly effective little creature rampage film. Personally, I will never look at Greenland the same way again.

Film Review: Indiscretion (dir by John Stewart Muller)

Posted on July 26, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Indiscretion is a strange one.

(And by strange, I mean dull and kind of pointless.)

This film premiered on Lifetime last Saturday but, as I watched it, it quickly became obvious that it wasn’t originally produced for Lifetime.

For one thing, the film was shot on location in Louisiana. Instead of letting Montreal or Toronto stand in for a generic American city, this film was actually shot on the streets of New Orleans. (Unfortunately, the film also made New Orleans seem kind of boring.)

Secondly, Indiscretion turned out to be one of those films where the soundtrack would suddenly go silent whenever a character said anything stronger than “damn.” It was odd because you would see a character very obviously saying something like, “Fuck you,” but you wouldn’t be able to hear the voice. I guess that was to protect the gentle sensibilities of the viewer but what about people who read lips?

And finally, Indiscretion didn’t feature any of the usual Lifetime actors. Instead, it starred Mira Sorvino as a frustrated wife and Cary Elwes as her politician husband. Sorvino’s real-life husband, Christoper Backus, played the troubled sculptor who has an affair with Sorvino and then ends up stalking her family.

So, no, Indiscretion was clearly made to, at the very least, be released straight to video. It was not meant for commercial television. And yet, somehow, it ended up making a somewhat awkward premiere on Lifetime.

Anyway, Indiscretion starts out well enough. It doesn’t waste any time arranging for Sorvino and Backus to meet at a fund raiser and for them to end up having a passionate affair. Sorvino, of course, claims that it was just a weekend fling and that she loves her husband. Backus refuses to believe her and soon, he’s worming his way into her family. He befriends her husband and even gets to go on a hunting trip with the governor of Louisiana. He also ends up having an affair with Sorvino’s teenage daughter.

(Or, at the very least, he takes some pictures of her, which Sorvino later discovers. It’s a sign of how haphazardly constructed this film is that you’re never quite sure what’s going on with Backus and Sorvino’s daughter. Backus also uses one of those old Polaroid cameras to take pictures. Apparently, troubled artists don’t use digital cameras.)

The problem is that, after the first, artfully-shot sex scene, the film itself slows down to an interminable crawl. It’s as if the film’s director, editor, screenwriter, and producers all forgot that the audience has already seen a hundred movies just like this one. Nothing surprising happens and, unlike the best Lifetime films, Indiscretion never winks at the audience or indirectly acknowledges the clichéd nature of its narrative. The whole thing is just painfully dull and no amount of mood lighting is going to change that. There is a little twist at the end but most viewers will probably be so bored with it all that they probably won’t even notice. That’s just the type of film this is.

If you want to see an entertainingly over-the-top and pulpy film about people having sex in New Orleans, I would suggest checking to see if Zandalee is still available on YouTube.

Insomnia File No. 19: Great Expectations (dir by Alfonso Cuaron)

Posted on July 26, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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

If you were awake at 2 in the morning last night, you could have turned over to Starz and watched the 1998 film, Great Expectations.

Great Expectations is an adaptation of the famous novel by Charles Dickens, the one about the orphan who helps a fugitive, is mentored by a bitter rich woman who lives in a decaying mansion, falls in love with the beautiful but cold-hearted Estella, and then later is helped out by a mysterious benefactor. The thing that sets this adaptation apart from other version of the novel is that the 1998 Great Expectations is set in modern-day America, as opposed to Victorian-era Great Britain.

Actually, beyond retaining certain aspects of the plot, it’s interesting how little this version of Great Expectations has to do with the original novel. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. While Charles Dickens deserves to be remembered as one of the fathers of modern literature, he could also be a terribly pedantic writer. This adaptation only touches on the novel’s overriding concerns about class and wealth in the most simplistic of ways. It also abandons most of the novel’s subplots and instead concentrates on the love story between Estella (Gwynneth Paltrow) and Finn (Ethan Hawke).

Oh yeah, did I mention that? The hero of this version of Great Expectations is not named Phillip Pirrip and we never have to listen to him explain that, as a child, he was nicknamed Pip because he apparently could not speak. Instead, Pip has been renamed Finn, short for Finnegan. If you believe the trivia section of the imdb, Finn was apparently the name of Ethan Hawke’s dog. And again, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. One of the main reasons why so many readers automatically dislike the narrator of Great Expectations is that he is named Pip.

Anyway, in this version, ~~Pip~~ Finn grows up in Florida, an orphan who is raised by his blue-collar brother-in-law, Joe Gargery (Chris Cooper, giving a very Chris Cooperish performance). The escaped convict is played by Robert De Niro and, towards the end of the film, there’s a hilarious scene where Finn and the convict meet for a second time and Finn somehow does not recognize him, despite the fact that he still pretty much looks the same and still acts exactly like Robert De Niro. The eccentric woman who mentors the young Finn, Mrs. ~~Havisham~~ Dinsmoor, is played by Anne Bancroft and Bancroft, made up to look like Bette Davis in What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?, gives a performance of almost transcendent weirdness. And, of course, Estella — who has been raised to seduce and then destroy men — is played by Gwynneth Paltrow and, as usual, Paltrow is a lot more believable when Estella is remote and self-centered than when she has to soften up towards the end of the film.

It’s an odd film, to be honest. This is one of those films that you watch and you try to be cynical but it’s all so lushly shot and deliriously (and manipulatively) romantic that you can’t help but occasionally get wrapped up in its spell. Hawke and Paltrow, both of whom are incredibly young in this movie, may not have much chemistry but they’re both so achingly beautiful that it almost doesn’t matter.

Great Expectations was the second film to be directed by Alfonso Cuaron and it’s just as visually stylish as his later films. It’s a frequently shallow and somewhat silly film but oh my God, is it ever pretty to look at.

Previous Insomnia Files:

Guilty Pleasure No. 31: Hail, Caesar! (dir by the Coen Brothers)

Posted on July 26, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Sometimes, I wonder if I was the only filmgoer who actually enjoyed Hail, Caesar! when it was released in February.

Oh, don’t met wrong. I know that I’m being a bit overdramatic when I say that. It got some good reviews from the critics, though the praise was rather muted when compared to the reviews that traditionally greet the latest film from the Coen Brothers. I know more than a few people who have agreed with me that Hail, Caesar! was an entertaining lark of a film.

But I know a lot more people who absolutely hated Hail, Caesar! Of course, no film is going to please everyone and the Coen Brothers have always had a tendency to attempt to deliberately alienate their audience. But what has always struck me is the fact that the people who disliked Hail, Caesar seem to really, really dislike it. Talk to them and you get the feeling that they view Hail, Caesar as almost being some sort of a crime against both humanity and cinema.

Taking place in a stylized Hollywood in 1951, Hail, Caesar! tells the story of Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin). Eddie is a shadowy figure. As head of production at Capitol Pictures, Eddie’s job is to keep the “bad” behavior of the stars from getting out into the press. (The press is represented by Tilda Swinton who, in a typical Coen Brothers twist, plays twin sisters who are rival gossip columnists. If the thought of that makes you smile, you are potentially a part of the right audience for Hail Caesar. If it makes you roll your eyes, you should probably avoid the film.) Eddie is the most powerful man in Hollywood and he will do anything to protect the image of the American film industry. He will lie. He will cheat. He will threaten. He is so ruthless and so good at his job that even Lockheed Martin is trying to hire him away from Capitol. And yet, at the same time, Eddie is also a family man and a Catholic who is so devout that he goes to confession on a nearly hourly basis.

(For all you non-Catholics out there, Pope Francis only goes to confession twice a month.)

Hail, Caesar! follows Eddie as he deals with a series of potential problems. Temperamental director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) is upset because he’s been forced to cast Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich, giving the film’s best performance), a good-natured but inarticulate cowboy star, in his sophisticated comedy. Synchronized swimmer DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansoon) is not only pregnant but unmarried as well! (It’s the 50s, remember.)

However, the biggest crisis is that Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) has vanished from the set of his latest film. A mysterious group known as The Future has taken credit for kidnapping him. It’s not really much of a spoiler to reveal that The Future is a cell of communist scriptwriters and they are determined to convert the rather dumb Baird to the struggle. As opposed to most films about Hollywood in the 50s, the communist screenwriters are portrayed as being a bunch of self-righteous and rather cowardly nags, the majority of whom spend more time debating minutiae than actually trying to the overthrow capitalism. In many ways, Hail, Caesar is the anti-Trumbo.

As you might guess from the plot description, there’s a lot going on in Hail, Caesar but none of it really adds up too much. Nor is it supposed to. We’re encouraged to laugh at these frantic characters, as opposed to sympathize with them. Eddie Mannix and Hobie Doyle both emerge as heroes because they’re the only characters who remain calm and confident, regardless of what strangeness is happening onscreen. Eddie may be ruthless, the film tells us, but at least he gets results. Hobie may not be the smartest or most talented guy in Hollywood, we are told, but at least he doesn’t pretend to be anything other than who he is.

Hail, Caesar! is a bit of a lark, a celebration of style over substance. As far as Coen Brother films go, Hail, Caesar has more in common with Burn After Reading than No Country For Old Men. The film is largely an inside joke aimed at people who know the history of Hollywood, which is perhaps why some viewers reacted so negatively. Inside jokes are fun when you’re in on the joke. When you’re not in on it, though, they’re just annoying.

As for me, I thoroughly enjoyed Hail, Caesar! It may not be the Coens at their best but it’s a lot of fun and it appealed me as both a history nerd and a lover of old movies. The best parts of Hail, Caesar! are the scenes that parody the largely forgotten, big-budget studio productions of the 1950s. This is the rare film that acknowledges that not every film made before the 1960s was a masterpiece. The Coens love movies but that doesn’t keep them from getting a little bit snarky. For example, check out this production number featuring Channing Tatum: