Scene That I Love: The End of the World from Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia

Posted on August 21, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Over the past few years, there’s been many movies about the end of the world.

A lot of them have been pretty bad. I never did find the high heel that I threw at the screen while watching Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World.

And some of them have been pretty good. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and its sequels come to mind.

And then there’s Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia. Von Trier is always going to be controversial filmmaker but no one has ever matched his brilliance when it came to capturing the end of existence. In Melancholia, a depressed woman (played in a revelatory performance by Kristen Dunst) finds unexpected strength in the end of the world. As can be seen in the scene below, it’s a beautifully sad film, one that ends on a note of triumphant apocalypse:

4 Shots From 4 Films: A Trip To The Moon, Moon, Apollo 18, Melancholia

Posted on August 21, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking.

Happy End of the World Day!

(In certain cultures….)

4 Shots From 4 Films

A Trip to the Moon (1902, dir by Georges Melies)

Moon (2009, directed by Duncan Jones)

Apollo 18 (2011, dir by Gonzalo López-Gallego)

Melancholia (2011, dir by Lars Von Trier)

A Movie A Day #224: Armed and Dangerous (1986, directed by Mark L. Lester)

Posted on August 20, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

John Candy and Eugene Levy make a great team in the underrated comedy, Armed and Dangerous.

John Candy plays Frank Dooley, a member of the LAPD. One of the first scenes of the movie is Frank climbing up a tree to save a little boy’s kitten and then getting stuck in the tree himself. When Frank discovers two corrupt detectives stealing televisions, Frank is framed for the theft and kicked off the force.

Eugene Levy plays Norman Kane, a lawyer whose latest client is a Charles Manson-style cult leader who has a swastika carved into his head. After being repeatedly threatened with murder, Norman asks for a sidebar and requests that the judge sentence his client to life in prison. The judge agrees on the condition that Norman, whom he describes as being “the worst attorney to ever appear before me,” find a new line of work.

Frank and Norman end up taking a one day training course to act as security guards and are assigned to work together by their tough by sympathetic supervisor (Meg Ryan!). Assigned to guard a pharmaceutical warehouse, Frank and Norman stumble across a robbery. The robbery leads them to corruption inside their own union and, before you can say 80s cop movie, Frank and Norman are ignoring the orders of their supervisors and investigating a crime that nobody wants solved.

Armed and Dangerous was one of the many comedy/cop hybrid films of the 1980s. Like Beverly Hills Cop, it features Jonathan Banks as a bad guy. Like the recruits in Police Academy, all of Frank and Norman’s fellow security guards are societal misfits who are distinguished by one or two eccentricities. There is nothing ground-breaking about Armed and Dangerous but Mark Lester did a good job directing the movie and the team of Candy and Levy (who has previously worked together on SCTV) made me laugh more than a few times.

Armed and Dangerous was originally written to be a vehicle for John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. It’s easy to imagine Belushi and Aykroyd in the lead roles but I think the movie actually works better with Candy and Levy, whose comedic style was similar to but far less aggressive than that of Belushi and Aykroyd. One of the reasons that Armed and Dangerous works is because John Candy and Eugene Levy seem like the two last people to ever find themselves in a shootout or a car chase. With Belushi and Aykroyd, it would have been expected. After all, everyone’s seen The Blues Brothers.

A Movie A Day #223: The Texas Rangers (1936, directed by King Vidor)

Posted on August 19, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Sam (Lloyd Nolan), Jim (Fred MacMurray), and Wahoo (Jack Oakie) are three outlaws in the old west. Wahoo works as a stagecoach driver and always lets Sam and Jim know which coaches will be worth holding up. It’s a pretty good scam until the authorities get wise to their scheme and set out after the three of them. Sam abandons his two partners while Jim and Wahoo eventually end up in Texas. At first, Jim and Wahoo are planning to keep on robbing stagecoaches but then they realize that they can make even more money as Texas Rangers.

At first, Jim and Wahoo are just planning on sticking around long enough to make some cash and then split. However, both of them discover that they prefer to be on the right side of the law. After they save a boy named David from Indians, Jim and Wahoo decide to stay in Texas and protect its settlers.

The only problem is that their old friend Sam has returned and his still on the wrong side of the law.

Made to commemorate the Texas centenary (though it was filmed in New Mexico), The Texas Rangers is a good example of what’s known as an oater, a low-budget but entertaining portrayal of life on the frontier. King Vidor does a good job with the action scenes and Fred MacMuarry and Jack Oakie are a likable onscreen team. The best performance comes from Lloyd Nolan, as the ruthless and calculating Sam. Sam can be funny and even likable but when he’s bad, he’s really bad.

Jack Oakie was better known as a comedian and The Texas Rangers provides him with a rare dramatic role. Four years after appearing in The Texas Rangers, Oakie would appear in his most famous role, playing a parody of Benito Mussolini in Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator.

Dead Pigeons Make Easy Targets: THE CHEAP DETECTIVE (Columbia 1978)

Posted on August 19, 2017 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

THE CHEAP DETECTIVE could easily be subtitled “Neil Simon Meets MAD Magazine”. The playwright and director Robert Moore had scored a hit with 1976’s MURDER BY DEATH, spoofing screen PI’s Charlie Chan, Sam Spade, and Nick & Nora Charles, and now went full throttle in sending up Humphrey Bogart movies. Subtle it ain’t, but film buffs will get a kick out of the all-star cast parodying THE MALTESE FALCON, CASABLANCA , TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, and THE BIG SLEEP .

Peter Falk does his best Bogie imitation as Lou Peckinpaugh, as he did in the previous film. When Lou’s partner Floyd Merkle is killed, Lou finds himself in a FALCON-esque plot involving some rare Albanian Eggs worth a fortune. Madeline Kahn , John Houseman, Dom De Luise , and Paul Williams stand in for Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Elisha Cook Jr, respectively, and they milk it for every…

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Here’s The Trailer for Molly’s Game

Posted on August 18, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Eh.

When was the last time Aaron Sorkin really did anything to justify his sterling reputation? Yeah, he won an Oscar for The Social Network and he gave one of those annoying, “Daddy just won an Oscar so go to bed now, my daughter” speeches. And then he was nominated for Moneyball. Since he didn’t win, he was not allowed to use his daughter as a prop for a second speech.

He also gave us The Newsroom, a misogynistic television program that was so smug and tone deaf in its coastal elitism that it was probably a contributing factor to the election of Donald Trump. Sorkin also wrote an “open letter” to his daughter after the election, one that pretty much read like a parody of limousine liberalism.

In short, if Sorkin’s going to continue to be known as a great whatever he is, he needs to start delivering. His latest attempt will be Molly’s Game, which he not only wrote but directed as well. That’s right — no longer will Aaron Sorkin have to deal with meddling directors saying stuff like, “But all your female characters are portrayed as being simpletons who need a man to save them and tell them what to do…”

On the plus side, Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba are in the movie.

On the other side … Sorkin’s gotta be Sorkin…

Here’s the trailer:

Here’s The Trailer for The Florida Project!

Posted on August 18, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Florida Project is the latest film from Sean Baker, who was responsible for last year’s acclaimed Tangerine.

The Florida Project, which was critically acclaimed at Cannes, has a much larger budget than Tangerine, a bigger star (in the form of Willem DaFoe), and some very real Oscar hopes. Let’s just hope that A24 doesn’t get so busy promoting The Florida Project, Baker, and DaFoe that they end up forgetting about The Disaster Artist and James Franco.

Spread the wealth around!

Here’s the trailer for The Florida Project!

Here’s The Trailer For The Death of Stalin!

Posted on August 18, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Death of Stalin is not a film that’s been getting a lot of attention but, since it was directed and co-written by Armando Iannucci, I’m looking forward to seeing it. Iannucci, of course, created both Veep and The Thick Of It and it should be fun to see him turn his satirical sights to death of one of history’s greatest monsters.

Incidentally, in high school, I wrote a short story about a history student who was haunted by the ghost of Josef Stalin and a host of other dictators. Unfortunately, no one in the class knew who Stalin was so they didn’t really understand the story. Oh well. Story of my life…

Here’s the trailer for The Death of Stalin:

A Movie A Day #222: Secret Service of the Air (1939, directed by Noel M. Smith)

Posted on August 18, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

When a secret service agent’s investigation into a supposed counterfeiting ring instead leads to him discovering a plot to smuggle illegal aliens into the United States via airplanes, the agent ends up plummeting several hundred miles to his death. Realizing that they need someone who can go undercover and infiltrate the smuggling ring, the Secret Service recruits Lt. Brass Bancroft (Ronald Reagan). Bancroft is a war hero who is now a commercial airline pilot. He is also good with his fists, has an innate sense of right and wrong, and a sidekick named Gabby (Eddie Foy Jr., giving a very broad performance as the movie’s comic relief). But before Brass can win the trust of the smugglers, he will have to establish a firm cover story and that means allowing himself to be arrested on fake charges. In order to save the day, Brass will have to first survive prison.

If Secret Service of the Air is remembered today, it is because it featured future President Ronald Reagan in an early starring role. In the role of Brass Bancroft, Reagan gives a performance that can be best described as being amiable. He may not be anyone’s idea of a good actor but he is likable, a trait that served him well when, 26 years later, he ran for governor of California. As for the rest of the movie, it was obviously cheaply made but it is also only an hour long, which means that there is rarely time for a dull moment. It plays out like as serial, with a new cliffhanger ever few minutes. Though Reagan was dismissive in the film in his autobiography, Secret Service of the Air was enough of an unexpected success that he would play Brass Bancroft is two sequels.

A Movie A Day #221: Scorned (1994, directed by Andrew Stevens)

Posted on August 17, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

“In an hour, I promise, you’ll be able to beg in two languages.” — Patricia (Shannon Tweed) in Scorned

If anyone could pull that line off, it would be Shannon Tweed at the height of her Skinemax stardom!

In Scorned, Shannon plays Patricia, the beautiful wife of executive Truman Langley (Daniel McVicar). Truman is desperate to land the Wainwright account, thinking it could be the key to getting a huge promotion. To help him out, Patricia sleeps with Mason Wainwright (Stephen Young). Truman gets the account but Alex Weston (Andrew Stevens, who also directed) gets the promotion. After Truman kills himself, Patricia shows up at the Weston house, disguised as a tutor for their son, Robey (Michael D. Arenz). Like clockwork, Patricia seduces not just Alex and Robey but Marina Weston (Kim Morgan Greene) as well.

Of the many direct-to-video films that Andrew Stevens and Shannon Tweed made together in the 90s, Scorned is one of the best. Of course, Shannon Tweed looks good. Of all the regular 90s direct-to-video vixens, Shannon was the sexiest. What is often forgotten is that Shannon could also actually act and she shows that here with her ferocious performance. Andrew Stevens does a good job too, giving an above average performance and, as a director, staying out of Shannon’s way. He knows that everyone watching the movie is watching to see Shannon and this film does not disappoint.

It does stretch credibility that no one in the household realizes that Shannon is trying to destroy them but, then again, what parents would actually hire their hormonal, teenage son a live-in tutor who looks like this?