Category Archives: Film

Monday Live Tweet Alert: Join Us For Invitation to Hell!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter and occasionally Mastodon.  I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of Mastodon’s #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We snark our way through it.

Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 1984’s Invitation to Hell! I picked it so you know it’ll be good.

It should make for a night of fun viewing and I invite all of you to join in.  If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto Mastodon, find the movie on YouTube, hit play at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag!  The  watch party community is a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.   

See you soon!

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special 1991 Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More 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!

Today, we pay tribute to the year 1991!  It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 1991 Films

The Silence Of The Lambs (1991, dir by Jonathan Demme, DP: Tak Fujimoto)

JFK (1991, dir by Oliver Stone, DP: Robert Richardson)

Until the End of the World (1991, dir by Wim Wenders, DP: Robby Muller)

The Sect (1991, dir by Michele Soavi, DP: Franco Fraticelli)

Six Gun Gospel (1943, directed by Lambert Hillyer)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Marshals Nevada Jack McKenzie (Johnny Mack Brown) and Sandy Hopkins (Raymond Hatton) are sent to the frontier mining community of Goldville to determine who is responsible for hijacking all of the gold that should be coming out of the town.  Not surprisingly, it’s all the work of another dastardly saloon owner (Kenneth MacDonald) who is planning on stealing all the gold, chasing off all the settlers, and then selling their land to the railroad company.  While Sandy goes undercover as the town’s new preacher, Jack agrees to ride shotgun on a gold shipment, along with with Dan Baxter (Eddie Drew).  Dan is in love with Jane Simms (Inna Gest), the daughter of honest miner Bill Simms (Kernan Cripps).

Johnny Mack Brown made a countless number of westerns for several different production companies but it seems like they always featured a crooked saloon owner and a plan to sell the land to a railroad company.  Luckily, nobody watches these movies for the plots and that was probably true even when they were first released.  People watch these movies for the nostalgia value of watching a movie where it’s good vs evil and good always triumphs without leaving any sort of lingering doubt about whether or not the heroes did the right thing.  Johnny Mack Brown is as authentic on a horse and carrying a gun as he ever was and there’s a scene where he manages to get a gun despite being tied up that’s pretty cool.  The appeal of Johnny Mack Brown was that he always seemed like he could do the things that he did in the movies in real life as well.  Raymond Hatton provides comic relief, pretending to know the hymns being sung by his congregation and providing some songs of his own.  There’s enough gun fights and horse chases to provide nostalgic happiness for fans of the genre and that’s the important thing.

The Wild Pair (1987, directed by Beau Bridges)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

A police detective named Benny Avalon (Bubba Smith) and an FBI agent named Joe Jennings (Beau Bridges) are assigned to work together to take down a drug dealer named Ivory Jones (Raymond St. Jacques).  Avalon and Jennings don’t immediately get along.  Avalon is tough and streetwise while Joe is a good example of what used to be called a yuppie.  When they discover that Ivory is connected to a white supremacist gang led by Col. Hester (Lloyd Bridges), Avalon and Jennings have to set aside their differences and work together.

The Wild Pair starts out as a standard buddy cop film until things take a sudden serious turn and it instead becomes a violent and blood-soaked revenge thriller.  It tries to mix comedy and action in the style of Beverly Hills Cop but it doesn’t work.  Beverly Hills Cop understood that you could only take the violence so far without losing the laughs.  The Wild Pair has the bad guys killing several innocent (and likable) people and also murdering Avalon’s cat.  Maybe Walter Hill could have pulled off what this film was going for.  He certainly managed to do so with 48 Hours.  But this film was the directorial debut of Beau Bridges, a good actor who, as a director, was no Walter Hill.  As for Bubba Smith, he was always more of a personality than an actor.  That served him well in the Police Academy films but here he’s actually supposed to be playing someone other than Bubba Smith and his limitations of an actor become especially glaring once the film turns serious.  Lloyd Bridges also seems miscast as the villain but that may just be because I’ve watched Airplane! and Hot Shots too many times.

The pair may be wild but they’re also forgettable.

Retro Television Review: The American Short Story Episode 8 “The Blue Hotel”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Saturdays, I will be reviewing The American Short Story, which ran semi-regularly on PBS in 1974 to 1981.  The entire show can be purchased on Prime and found on YouTube and Tubi.

This week, we have an adaptation of a Stephen Crane short story.

Episode 1.8 “The Blue Hotel”

(Dir by Jan Kadar, originally aired in 1977)

In the dying days of the Old West, a train pulls into a station in a small frontier town.  Getting off the train, a Cowboy (John Bottoms), an Easterner (Geddeth Smith), and a Swede (David Warner) head to the town’s only hotel.  A blizzard is coming and the three men are seeking shelter for the night.  The owner of the hotel, Scully (Rex Everhart), is happy to provide it.  As the men wait for dinner to be served, they play a card game with Scully’s son, Johnnie (James Keach).

At first, the game plays out without incident.  The men are all friendly, with the exception of the Swede.  The Swede remains quiet and seems distrustful.  After a few hands of the game, the Swede accuses Johnnie of cheating.  Over the next few hours, as the wind howls outside, the Swede rants and raves.  Convinced that the wild west is truly full of outlaws and that it’s all exactly like the dime-store novels that he read before boarding the train, he cannot bring himself to accept that the men mean him no harm.  It all leads to violence and tragedy.

This episode made excellent use of the shadowy Blue Hotel and the desolate wind blowing outside.  Over the course of an hour, the hotel went from being a friendly shelter to an ominous location that seemed to pulse with paranoia.  David Warner gave a strong performance as the unstable Swede and the final act of violence (which was changed slightly from the short story’s original conclusion) comes as a genuine shock as does the final twist in the tale.  The Blue Hotel becomes a look at how people unknowingly shape their own destiny, for better or worse.

Live Tweet Alert: Join #ScarySocial for You’re Next!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter.  I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, at 9 pm et, Deanna Dawn will be hosting #ScarySocial!  The movie?  2013’s You’re Next!  

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag!  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

The film is available on Prime!

Scene That I Love: The Party in Eyes Wide Shut

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Eye Wide Shut (1999, directed by Stanley Kubrick)

Stanley Kubrick would have been 97 years old today!

In honor of this visionary and his career, here is a wonderful  scene from his final film, 1999’s Eyes Wide Shut.  Like so many of Kubrick’s films, it took a while for people to really appreciate Eyes Wide Shut.  It’s an odd and, at times, frustrating film but still a film touched by Kubrick’s unique genius.  It’s also a Christmas film and one that I plan to revisit for the site in December.

In this scene, Tom Cruise discovers that it’s not quite as easy to crash a super secret party as he thought it would be.

6 Shots From 6 Films: Special Stanley Kubrick Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More 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!

On this date, 97 years ago, Stanley Kubrick was born in New York City.  The rest, as they say, is history.

In honor of one of the world’s greatest directors, here are….

6 Shots From 6 Stanley Kubrick Films

The Killing (1956, dir by Stanley Kubrick, DP: Lucien Ballard)

Paths of Glory (1957, dir by Stanley Kubrick, DP: Georg Kraus)

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964, dir. Stanley Kubrick, DP: Gilbert Taylor)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, dir by Stanley Kubrick, DP: Geoffrey Unsworth)

Barry Lyndon (1975, dir by Stanley Kubrick, DP: John Alcott)

The Shining (1980, dir by Stanley Kubrick, DP: John Alcott)

Girl You Know It’s True (2023, directed by Simon Verhoeven)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In 1988, a German music producer named Frank Farian (Matthias Schweighofer) has already recorded and produced a song called Girl You Know Its True.  He just needs to find two performers who are more photogenic than the middle-aged studio musicians who actually sang it.  Frank discovers Rob (Tijan Njie) and Fab (Elan Ben Ali), two friends who are trying to make it as dancers.  Rob is German and biracial.  Fab is French.  Frank tells them that all they have to do is lip-synch along with the record whenever they’re “performing” the song.  After Frank assures them that this type of thing is done all the time, they agree.  Frank also tells them that they will be known as Top Shelf.

The song becomes a hit and Rob and Fab become stars but they’re not known as Top Shelf, a name that is dismissed as being too German.  Instead, they find superstardom as Milli Vanilli.  With their popularity comes money, groupies, and drugs.  But when word gets out that neither Rob nor Fab actually sang on their record, everything collapses into one of the biggest entertainment scandals of the past 40 years.

I never would have guessed that a good movie could be made about the fall of Milli Vanilli but Girl You Know Its True is a surprisingly compelling and well-acted retelling of the familiar story.  The movie is as much as about the business of fame as it is about the band itself with Frank realizing and explaining that a band’s image is much more important than the music itself.  Rob and Fab are presented as being incredibly naive and trusting when it comes to Frank and his promises, with Rob also sabotaged by a need for acceptance that came out of his troubled childhood.  The villain in this story is not the band but instead a music industry that knowingly looked the other way on Frank’s deception and then scapegoated Rob and Fab when the truth came out.  Rob and Fab each deal with going from being superstars to being pariahs in their own individual way.  It leads to tragedy for one and regret for the other.

Even though I was familiar with the story, Girl You Know It’s True took me by surprise.  It’s a genuinely good film.

Live Tweet Alert: Join #FridayNightFlix for Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly watch parties.  On Twitter, I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday and I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday.  On Mastodon, I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, at 10 pm et, I will be hosting #FridayNightFlix!  The movie?  1978’s Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag!  I’ll be there happily tweeting.  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is available on Prime and Tubi!

See you there!