The other day, Lisa Marie and I watched The Mystery Cruise.
Regan Reilly (Michelle Harrison) is the daughter of mystery novelist Nora Reilly (Colleen Winton) and a respected private detective in her own right. Her friend, Alvirah (Gail O’Grady), has just won the lottery and wants to open up a detective agency with Regan. Regan doesn’t think that the flighty Alvirah would be a good partner. Along with their husbands, they set sail on a mystery cruise that is being used to promote Nora’s new book. Every passenger on the cruise is trying to solve a fake murder but Alvirah thinks that one of the passengers is plotting a real murder!
This Hallmark movie was dumb and silly and kind of fun as long as you didn’t demand too much from it. I actually liked Regan and Alvirah’s husbands (played by Peter Benson and Larry Miller) more than I liked either of them. The mystery was easy to solve and it was clear that the movie wasn’t mean to be taken seriously. My sister and I agreed that a mystery cruise was the sort of thing that we would enjoy doing but we couldn’t agree on which one of us would be Regan and which one would be Alvirah.
This movie was based on a book written by Mary Higgins Clark and her daughter, Carol Higgins Clark. Sadly both of them have since passed away but, as we watched, Lisa Marie and I remembered how our aunt used to have an entire closet full of Mary Higgins Clark novels. It was a good memory.
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 or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!
If you’re having trouble getting to sleep, you can always go over to YouTube and watch 1992’s Nails.
Dennis Hopper stars Harry “Nails” Nile, a cop who …. wait for it …. doesn’t go by the book! He’s just a few days away from retirement but before Nails turns in his badge and his gun, he has to track down the drug dealers responsible for the death of his partner (Earl Billings). His superior officer doesn’t like him. His wife (Anne Archer) doesn’t trust him. Both the cartel and a local political fixer want him taken down. But Nails isn’t going to give up. He’s going to solve the case and stop the bad guys and get revenge. And he’s going to do it …. wait for it …. HIS WAY!
As you can probably already guess, Nails features just about every cop cliche imaginable. Nails’s partner talks about how much he’s enjoying life right before he gets gunned down. Nails’s boss yells about how much Nails’s out-of-control antics are costing the city. There are car chases. There are foot chases. There are shoot-outs and one-liners. There’s even a moving van chase that features the sight of Dennis Hopper frantically running down the street. And, of course, Danny Trejo shows up in a small role. It’s predictable and mindless and kind of entertaining if that’s what you’re in the mood for.
The thing that sets this film apart — really, the only thing — is that Dennis Hopper gives such an over-the-top performance as Nails. He’s the type of cops who randomly yells at strangers, occasionally giggles, and has a habit of repeating back any threat that he happens to hear. When I watched the film, I originally thought a better title than Nails would be Method Cop because Hopper truly does seem to be going out of his way to bring the full weight of the Method onto the type of role that could have just as easily been played by Chuck Norris. However, as the film progressed, I realized that Hopper was basically giving the same performance that he gave in Blue Velvet, except he was now playing the good guy. What if Frank Booth was the hero? Nails answers the question.
Of course, once the film ended, I was reminded that Hopper’s villain in Speed was a former cop. Is it possible that Speed was actually a sequel to Nails?
During the Vietnam War, Charley McLeod, Jr. (Peter Strauss) deserted from the U.S. Army. He has spent the last several years living in France with his wife Adrienne (Maria Mayenzet) but, when he learns that his father (Charlton Heston) is ill, Charley returns to the ranch where he grew up and tries to make peace with the old man before he dies. It’s not easy. Charley, Sr. never agreed with his son’s decision to desert and the local townspeople, including Charley’s former friend Brian (Alan Autry), view him as either being a coward or a traitor.
Proud Men was made for television and it’s clearly a product of a time when people were still coming to terms with both the war in Vietnam and the protests that surrounded it. Strauss isn’t the most convincing rancher that I’ve ever seen but, not surprisingly, Heston is totally believable as Charley’s old-fashioned father. Not much really happens in Proud Men. Charley, Jr. tries to prove himself by working on the ranch. Charley, Sr. holds back his emotions until the inevitable scene where he finally admits that he still loves his son. Probably the best performance comes from Alan Autry, whose character is written to be a bully but who also has a point when he point out that not everyone had the opportunity or the money necessary to just desert and start a new life in another country.
This is definitely a Dad film. It’s about working hard, doing what you have to do even when its difficult, and knowing how to throw a punch when someone in a bar disrespects your wife. It’s a minor film but I actually liked it. Heston may not have had the widest range as an actor but he was capable of very good work when he was cast in the right role, like he is here.
In 2o13’s The Internship, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn play Nick and Billy, two longtime salesman who, having lost their jobs, apply for an internship at Google. Despite there not being any logical reason for either one of them to be given a spot, Nick and Billy are accepted. Suddenly, these two middle-aged guys who know next to nothing about programming or the Internet find themselves at the Google campus. Teaming up with a group of much younger outcasts (albeit very smart outcasts), Nick and Billy compete for a job at Google.
(Personally, the only job I would want at Google would be designing the Google Doodle.)
At first, no one is happy about having to work with Nick and Billy. Nick and Billy are adults, the type who still use landline phones and wonder why the kids are so obsessed with looking at a little screen. They’re loud. They make crude jokes and they don’t understand stuff like safe spaces. They fall for obvious pranks, like being sent to a college campus to track down “Professor Charles Xavier.” This leads to them both getting knocked out by a bald man in a wheelchair. “Professor Xavier’s a total dick!” Billy gasps.
Eventually, though, Nick and Billy start to win everyone over. Their old school competitiveness comes in handy during a game of Quidditch. They know how to talk to women at bars. They know how to appeal to someone running an old-fashioned business. But will that be enough to win them a job at Google?
Back when the Onion was funny, one of their best headlines was ‘The Internship’ Poised To Be Biggest Comedy Of 2005! The joke, of course, was that the film was coming out in 2013. The headline worked because it was true. The film felt very much out-of-place in the world of 2013. The majority of the film’s humor came from Nick and Billy not really knowing what Google was but, by 2013, even the most cranky of boomer grandparents were using Google to search for their Facebook password. Nick and Billy were not boomers. They may have been older than the other interns but still, it’s hard to believe that two guys in their mid-40s would be that clueless about everything from the Internet to the identity of Charles Xavier. I mean, the X-Men movies were kind of a big deal.
The other thig that dated the film was its portrayal of Google as essentially just being a fun playground full of nerdy prodigies who just needed someone to teach them how to party. By 2013, everyone knew that Google was a powerful and somewhat intimidating company. Indeed, at its weakest, the film basically feels like a 2-hour commercial for Google. Never mind that, by 2013, Google was so big and omnipresent that it really didn’t need to advertise.
So, with all that in mind, why do I find myself watching this movie whenever I happen to come across it? First off, as uneven as the movie is, it is funny. The Quidditch scene did make me laugh. John Goodman’s and Will Ferrell’s unhinged cameos made me laugh, almost despite myself. The scene where Nick and Billy annoy the group by misinterpreting what is meant by “coding” made me laugh, if just because of how bizarrely enthusiastic Nick and Billy were when they convinced themselves that their internship director was a Jeff Goldblum fan. (It makes no sense but just go with it.) Most importantly, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn made me laugh. There was absolutely no way to make it plausible that Nick and Billy would be that clueless about technology but Wilson and Vaughn really threw themselves into their roles and, as a result, I’m always willing to forgive some of the film’s missteps. The mix of Vaughn’s overage frat boy goofiness and Wilson’s mellow spaciness always makes me laugh more than it probably should. They’re a good comedic team and they’re both just so damn earnest in this movie that it works a lot better than it really should. In the end, you do find yourself rooting for them. They’re two hard-workers who like to play hard and who have the courage to reinvent themselves. What’s more American than that?
(Even more importantly, when you come across the film on cable, you’re free to pretend that it actually came out in 2005, back when the plot would have actually made more sense.)
If any film lives up to the term guilty pleasure, it’s The Internship.
Hey, remember Tahj Mowry? He was the star of Smart Guy, that WB show that ran in the late 90s. On Smart Guy, he played 10 year old prodigy who goes from being in Elementary School to being in High School. Towards the end of the show’s three-season run, there was an episode in which the smart guy had to decide whether or not to give into peer pressure and drink. The commercials were like, “Tahj Mowry, in a performance that you have to see.” I never saw the episode but, decades later, I still remember the commercial.
Well, in Get Off My Lawn, Tahj Mowry is all grown up. He’s playing Jason Moss, who is not a particularly smart guy. When he and his wife, Jackie (Camila Banus), move into a new house, they find themselves being harassed by a teenager named Alex (Jonah Hwang). Alex grew up in the house and he’s obsessed with making sure that Jason and Jackie “follow the rules.” Because Jason and Jackie are still in the process of buying the house and Alex is the son of the house’s actual owners, all of the old furniture is still sitting inside the building. When Alex notices that Jason and Jackie have moved a chair, he loses it. It turns out that it’s pretty easy to make Alex lose it.
Jason spends a lot of time trying to be a tough guy when it comes to Alex but, even grown up, he’s still Tahj Mowry and it’s a little bit hard to take him seriously doing anything. It’s like when Jaleel White occasionally shows up in a Lifetime film and he’s trying to play a detective but he still basically looks and sounds just like Urkel. Jason comes across as being kind of a wimp and it’s not always easy to sympathize with him. It doesn’t help that Alex is obviously unstable from the minute that he meets Jason and Jackie. This film’s main lesson would appear to be that you don’t have to be nice to everyone who introduces himself to you. That’s actually not a bad lesson.
As far as I can tell, Get Off My Lawn premiered on Tubi in 2025 and then it was recently aired on Lifetime. The film is obviously meant to be a satire of the typical Tubi/Lifetime formula but it’s a little bit difficult to satirize something that is pretty much a self-parody to begin with. That’s not to say that there aren’t funny moments. In the role of the clueless local policeman, Ben Zelevansky made me laugh several times. He gets the final line of the film and he delivers it so well that it actually made feel bad that the rest of the film didn’t always live up to his performance. Watching the film made me long for the cleverly played humor of A Deadly Adoption.
But here’s the odd thing about it all. For all of my complaints, the movie held my attention. It really did. Alex goes so overboard in his attempts to harass Jason and Jackie that I found myself watching just to see what he could possibly do next. On the one hand, the film is flawed. On the other hand, a character pulls out his own eyeball in slow motion. That’s not something that you regularly see, at least not on Lifetime.
I guess my point is that it’s an uneven film and Tahj Mowry is miscast. But, that said, it’s almost compulsively watchable.
With the 250th birthday of America approaching, here’s a rather odd but charming blast from the past (1948, to be exact) called Make Mine Freedom. It’s a cartoon about why America rules and the rest of the world sucks.
This cartoon was produced by Arkansas’s Harding College and there is some debate over who actually directed it. Some sources claim that this was one of the first projects on which Joseph Barbera and William Hanna ever worked. Others insist that this film should be properly credited to either Fritz Freling or Fred Moore.
The important thing is that the film did a good job of exposing Dr. Utopia and his empty promises….
Harry Shearer narrates the story of Leslie Edwards (Matthew Perry) and Bathowlemew Hunt (Chris Farley), the leaders of an expedition that competed with the more famous Lewis & Clark expedition to see who could first to reach the Pacific Ocean. Edwards is foppish and naive. Hunt is illiterate and loud. Included in their expediton is French pirate Fontenot (Eugene Levy) and Fontenot’s Indian wife, Shaquinna (Lisa Barbuscia). The journey leads the expidition to multiple whorehouses, an angry Eagle, and a group of arrogant conquistadors led by Hidalgo (Kevin Dunn). Edwards tries to teach Hunt how to read but Hunt gives up after learning “A.” Hunt, however, gets a chance to not only prove his worth but also to get a haircut from a taxidermist.
Given the talent involved, it’s too bad that this is neither a good comedy nor a good movie. Christopher Guest directs with none of the wit that had made his improvised films so memorable. Apparently, the film was originally envisioned as being an ensemble piece but, once filming began, the studio insisted on just focusing on Farley and, to a lesser extent, Perry. This was also Farley’s last leading role, with the film itself being released several months after his death. Today, if the film is remembered for anything, it’s for featuring two comedic actors who struggled with similar demons and who both died too young. Unfortunately, neither Farley nor Perry are really at their best in this film. Farley yells but with little of the energy that made Tommy Boy a hit. Matthew Perry resorts to playing Chandler Bing in the 1700s. For that matter, this film also features what may be Eugene Levy’s worst performance. It’s a disappointing effort all around. (Would the film have worked better with Farley’s usual foil, David Spade, in the role of Edwards? Probably not. I don’t think any combination of actors could have saved the script.)
What is unfotunate is that the premise had promise. The early years of the United States was full of eccentric characters, quite a few of which were involved in exploring the still-largely uknown continet. Christopher Guest really does seem like he should have been the ideal director for a project liket this but instead, Almost Heroes is overly broad and features its two leading actors giving performanes that fill more appropriate for a sitcom than a motion picture. Almost Heroes was a misfire all the way around.
1986’s The Right of the People takes place in the small town of St. Lawrence, Kansas. It seems like a nice enough town, perhaps the ideal place to start a family. The people are friendly. The streets appear to be safe. It’s about as mid as Middle America can get.
Or, at least, that’s the case until a group of armed gunmen attempt to hold up a restaurant. They enter with their guns drawn and their masks pulled over their faces and they demand that everyone give them their money. When one person in the restaurant makes a sudden move, one of the thieves open fire. Soon, all of the thieves are firing and everyone in the restaurant is dead. Among the victims is the family of District Attorney Christopher Wells (Michael Ontkean).
Wells was a liberal on most law-and-order issues until it was his family that was victimized. He leads an effort to legalize open carry in the small town of St. Lawrence. At first, the mayor (M. Emmett Walsh) opposes the effort but, when it becomes apparent that Proposition G (G for Guns!) is going to pass, the mayor switches over and becomes an advocate for the Second Amendment.
The majority of the citizens are happy that they can now carry guns pretty much anywhere. Less enthused are a handful of cranky liberals who insist that everyone carrying a gun will make the streets less safe. When a man uses his gun to thwart a robbery at a grocery store, he is hailed as a hero. However, nobody talks about the poor cashier who was shot when he tried to use his own gun or any of the innocent people caught in the crossfire.
The Right of the People is an interesting artifact. On the one hand, it doesn’t hide its own position when it comes to gun control. The pro-gun rallies and the posters that decorate them are meant to be ominous and reminiscent of various fascist moments throughout history. At the same time, Christopher Wells is a sympathetic character. He’s someone who lost his entire family because no one was able to stop the criminals who randomly selected a restaurant to rob. One would have to have a heart made of stone to not understand how Wells would go from being a bleeding heart liberal to someone who isn’t exactly concerned about the rights of criminals. (At the same time, Wells is a bit like the fundamentalist who has no problem believing in God when bad things happen to other people but who turns into a rabid atheist as soon as something bad happens to him.) Michael Ontkean gives a strong performance and he gets good support from M. Emmet Walsh and Billy Dee Williams. The film starts out strong but, unfortunately, it falters a bit once everyone in town turns into a caricature of a gun nut. The even hand is tossed out for a heavy hand and the entire film suddenly starts to condescend to the character that it previously treated with such fairness.
What makes this film interesting to me is that I live in an open carry state. The film’s argument that open carry would lead to people eagerly looking for any excuse to start shooting feels rather false after you’ve spent a lifetime surrounded by responsible gun owners. The film was obviously made at a time when open carry wasn’t as common as it is today and it’s vision of a trigger-happy town ultimately becomes so over-the-top that it stops being effective. Fortunately, the film’s vision of the future did not come true.
1969’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? is a film about many different things.
On its simplest level, it’s a film about a group of people who, during the Great Depression, take part in a brutal dance marathon in hopes of winning a $1,500 cash prize and maybe the chance to be spotted by a Hollywood talent scout. It’s a film about the desperation of being poor and forgotten, and it’s all the more effective because it was based on a novel that was actually written during the Great Depression. There’s an authenticity to the characters in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? The original 1935 novel, which I read a few years ago, was written by Horace McCoy, a hard-living Dallas journalist who sometimes supplemented his income by working as a bouncer. McCoy knew the world about which he was writing.
The film is also about the power and allure of fame. The dancers may be exhausted, but they have fans who sit in the stands and who, in return for a smile and a kind word, will sometimes buy them new shoes or a decent meal. At one point, Hollywood director Mervyn LeRoy appears in the audience, and all of the dancers make a point of smiling as they pass in front of him. Meanwhile, the grueling derbies, in which the dancers tandem race in circles around the dance hall, predict the humiliation rituals of reality television. In its way, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? is just as prophetic a film as Network.
The film is also about memory. The film is full of flashbacks and flash-forwards, giving us a portrait of the life of Robert Syverten (Michael Sarrazin), a homeless man who wandered into a dance marathon in Santa Monica. In a flashback, young Robert watches as his grandfather euthanizes a horse that has broken its leg. In a flash-forward, we watch as Robert talks to the police about a crime. And, in what we assume is the story’s “present,” we watch as Robert is partnered up with Gloria Beatty (Jane Fonda), a weary woman who continues to dance even though she no longer believes any of the hype that emcee Rocky Gravo (Gig Young) spouts about how the marathon can be the start of a brand new life.
It took me a while to get used to the flashbacks and the flash-forwards. At first, I thought they were a mistake. They seemed like a gimmicky addition to an otherwise straightforward story. But as the story played out, I came to appreciate the film’s nonlinear structure. Ultimately, the film is about Robert trying to come to terms not only with his actions but also with the actions of everyone involved with the marathon. I also came to realize that the film’s present was actually Robert in the police station and that the scenes of Robert at the dance marathon were his own memories of the vent. The film becomes less about the Depression and more about one person, a lost soul in a cold world, trying to figure out how his life eventually led to him sitting in an interrogation room, accused of a terrible crime.
The entire cast does a good job. Susannah York, who plays an aspiring actress, has an intense scene in which she breaks down when she can’t find the dress she wants to wear. Bruce Dern and Bonnie Bedelia are sympathetic as a young couple. Veteran tough guy Michael Conrad rolls around on roller skates and barks at everyone to keep moving. When Red Buttons shows up as a kind-hearted veteran dancer, your immediate response is to smile because, as a lover of classic films, you immediately associate Buttons with comedy and optimism. In The Poseidon Adventure, he was the one passenger who never gave up hope. But even his character is soon dwarfed and consumed by the ominous atmosphere inside the dance hall. At first, I thought Michael Sarrazin was a bit too stiff as Robert and Jane Fonda was too brittle as Gloria, but as the film progressed, I warmed to both of their performances. Say what you will about Jane Fonda’s political activism (and I personally think that many of her actions during the Vietnam War and her subsequent claims that American POWs were lying about being tortured were and are unforgivable), she was one of the best actresses of her generation.
Though Robert and Gloria may be at the center of the film, the narrative’s diseased heart belongs to Rocky Gravo. Rocky is the emcee and the promoter, the one who implores the crowd to applaud as their favorite dancers attempt to keep moving on the dance floor after weeks of little sleep or food. “Yowzah, yowzah!” Rocky exclaims, hyping up the audience and promising everyone that good times are right around the corner. Of course, since Rocky is also the event’s promoter, the longer the dancers suffer, the more money he makes. Whenever Rocky is on screen, the viewer can almost smell the gin and the cigars and the flop sweat. Gig Young won an Oscar for playing Rocky Gravo, and he undoubtedly deserved it. At times, it seems less like a performance and more like Young trying to exorcise his own demons. Ten years later, he would murder his fifth wife and then shoot himself.
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? received a total of nine Oscar nominations. Sydney Pollack received his first nomination for Best Director, and Jane Fonda her first for Best Actress. Susannah York was nominated for Supporting Actress. The film received nominations for its screenplay, its editing, its art direction, and its score. The only winner was Gig Young. At the time, the film set a record for receiving the most Oscar nominations without also receiving a nomination for Best Picture. It’s tempting to say that the film was too dark and too depressing for the Academy, but then you have to consider that the Academy’s pick for Best Picture for that year was Midnight Cowboy.
(Interestingly enough, Michael Sarrazin was also a top contender for the role of Joe Buck in that film.)
It’s not a happy film or a particularly subtle film. But it remains a powerful film, one that truly sticks with you. The film haunts the viewer, as surely as Gloria will always haunt Robert.
There was a time in the ’80s and ’90s when seeing either Michael J. Fox or James Woods on the cover of a VHS box at my local video store would guarantee a rental from me. Fox had been my favorite television star throughout the ’80s thanks to his performance as Alex P. Keaton on “Family Ties,” and I loved him in TEEN WOLF and the BACK TO THE FUTURE films. James Woods had become one of my favorite actors beginning in the latter half of the ‘80’s after I discovered his run of intense performances in films like COP, BEST SELLER, and TRUE BELIEVER. So, when THE HARD WAY paired these two favorites together in a “buddy-cop” film, it felt like a movie that had been made specifically for me. I recently upgraded my old DVD by purchasing the Kino Lorber blu-ray, so it was the perfect time for a revisit.
THE HARD WAY follows Nick Lang (Fox), a pampered Hollywood movie star who wants to prepare for a gritty new cop role by shadowing a real detective in New York City. Much to the frustration of badass Supercop John Moss (Woods), he’s forced by his starstruck Captain (Delroy Lindo) to show Lang around town and keep him out of any trouble. Even though he’s supposed to be protecting the megastar, Moss is also tracking a psychopathic killer known as “The Party Crasher” (Stephen Lang), and soon Nick Lang ends up smack dab in the middle of real danger.
By 1991, the buddy-cop formula had been going strong for a while, but director John Badham found a clever angle by pairing Michael J. Fox’s fantasyland “action star” with James Woods’ tough, no-nonsense New York detective. It sounds like a gimmick, and it is, but both the action and comedic elements somehow work.
The performance of James Woods keeps the movie moving forward from start to finish. His John Moss is perpetually angry, sarcastic to a fault, and always seems one minute away from completely losing it. He’s also exceedingly tough when he has to be. Woods plays the character with so much energy that it’s impossible to look away, and nobody gets on his nerves like the Hollywood golden boy. Michael J. Fox is perfect as the shallow movie star, because he could be completely insufferable, but he ultimately brings enough charm and self-awareness to the role to make the character likable. There’s a particularly funny, running joke where different people keep telling his “undercover” character that he looks kinda like Nick Lang… only shorter, or in one case, whiter. At the end of the day, it’s the chemistry between Woods and Fox that makes THE HARD WAY such an enjoyable action comedy!
I did want to shoutout Stephen Lang as well. His “Party Crasher” is a memorable and crazy villain. For a film that leans heavily into the comedy, Lang’s unhinged performance actually feels dangerous, giving the movie some grit and edge when he’s on the screen. I love watching movies from this time period to see the parade of recognizable actors that always seem to show up. This one doesn’t disappoint as Annabella Sciorra, Luis Guzman, LL Cool J, Delroy Lindo, Christina Ricci, and even Penny Marshall appear, to name a few.
One of the best things about THE HARD WAY is that it never sits still for long, which does keep you from focusing too much on a couple of glaring plot holes. The filmmakers smartly keep things moving back and forth between the jokes and the big action scenes, and most of the time it all works. It doesn’t reinvent the buddy-cop film, and it’s not necessarily the first movie you think of in the genre, but I consider it an underrated gem, and I feel like it may have fallen through the cracks over the years. If you’re a fan of peak James Woods, or if you fondly remember just what a big deal Michael J. Fox was in the 80’s, this one is a must watch.
The other day, Lisa Marie and I watched The Mystery Cruise.
Through the Shattered Lens 