I Watched Touchback (2012, Dir. by Don Handfield)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

When he was in high school, Scott Murphy (Brian Presley) was nicknamed “Mr. Football.”  He was the best high school player in Ohio and everyone knew he was going to make it far in the NFL.  His dreams of football stardom ended on the night of the big game when his leg was shattered during a running play.  Twenty years later, Scott is still living in his small town.  He owns a farm that he can’t make the payments on and crops that he can’t bring in.  When Scott learns that he is to he honored at the next high school football team for taking the team to the state championship years ago, it causes him to break down.  He attempts to commit suicide but, when he passes out from inhaling carbon monoxide, he doesn’t die.  Instead, he wakes up as a high school student in 1991.

Scott has his second chance.  The championship game is coming up and, if Scott can keep from getting injured, he’ll be able to accept his scholarship to Ohio State and go on to the NFL.  He makes sure to introduce himself to his future wife Macy (Melanie Lynesky) so he won’t lose her.  He befriends the kids that he picked on the first time he was in high school.  When a college scout tells him that his scholarship will not be rescinded if he chooses to sit out the big game, Scott decides to stay on the bench but then his coach (Kurt Russell) explains how much the game means to the people in the town.  Scott realizes he has to play for them but can he get through the game without getting injured a second time?

What would you do if you had a second chance?  That’s something that everyone wonders.  If I had a second chance to relive my senior year of high school, I would take more risks, worry less about the unimportant stuff, and try to be nicer to everyone and not just the members of my social circle.  If I knew I was going to suffer a life-changing injury, I would probably go out of my way to make sure it didn’t happen.  That’s where Touchback loses me because I just don’t think Scott would have played in that game, no matter how eloquent the coach was.  If Scott had sat out the game, the town might have lost the championship but Scott could have gone on to the NFL, still married Macy, and his family wouldn’t be struggling to make ends meet on the family farm.

If I didn’t really believe Scott would have made the decision that he made, there were still parts of Touchback that I liked.  Kurt Russell was a great coach.  I liked the way the town rallied to Scott, even when he was at his lowest and about ready to give up.  That’s one thing I love about close-knit communities.  They take care of each other.

I Watched Dreamer (2005, Dir. by John Gatins)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Dreamer is based on the true story of a horse that did something that few horses have managed to do.  It broke a bone but it still managed to make a comeback as a racehorse.

I love horses, which is why I’m not a fan of horseracing.  I find horseracing to be cruel.  The horses, which have an innate need to follow the orders of whoever is riding it, will literally run themselves to death to try to keep their jockeys happy.  When you add that many racehorses are kept in deplorable conditions and that, with insurance, they are often worth more dead than alive, you have a sport that brings out the worst in a lot of people.  Horses are wonderful animals because they are so loyal.  That loyalty deserves better than being shot because they broke a leg due to their trainer’s negligence.

Given how I feel about horseracing, I’m amazed that I liked Dreamer when I saw it in the theaters and I was surprised that I still liked it when I watched it this weekend.  I guess it’s because the horse in Dreamer is not euthanized.  She would have been euthanized if not for the fact that her trainer (Kurt Russell) brought his daughter (Dakota Fanning) to work with him that day.  Russell loses his job but he does gain a horse.  After the horse recovers from its injury, Russell hopes to breed the horse.  It turn out that the horse cannot have a foal but it can still race.  With Russell and Fanning’s help, the horse returns to competition and shows up everyone who gave up on her.  Russell and Fanning refuse to give up on the horse and the horse doesn’t give up on herself.  Along the way, Russell and Fanning finally spend time together as father and daughter and Russell reconnects with his wife, Elisabeth Shue, and his father, Kris Kristofferson.  Everyone involved gives a good job.  The movie may be predictable but there aren’t any false notes in any of the performances.  I not only wanted the horse to get better but I wanted the family to grow closer and I was happy when both those things happened.

Dreamer is a good family movie.  If only every trainer was as kind and willing to admit his mistakes as Kurt Russell is in this film.  There’s nothing surprising about Dreamer but it’s still a movie that makes me cheer.  It makes me cheer in a way that a real horse race never would.

 

Far and Away (1992, directed by Ron Howard)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The year is 1892 and Joseph Donnelly (Tom Cruise) is a poor tenant famer in Ireland, used and exploited by the wealthy landowners.  Joseph falls in love with Shannon Christie (Nicole Kidman), the rebellious daughter of his landlord.  Shannon dreams of going to America, where rumor has it that land is being given away in the territory of Oklahoma on a first come/first serve basis.  Shannon even has some valuable spoons that she can use to raise money once they arrive in America.  Joseph, after being challenged to a duel by the Christies’ money manger, Stephen Chase (Thomas Gibson), also decides that heading to America might be a good idea.

Life in America is not as easy as Joseph and Shannon thought it would be.  They first end up in the dirty town of Boston, where Shannon loses her spoons and Joseph works for a corrupt political boss (Colm Meaney) and makes money as a bare-knuckles boxer.  They’ll reach Oklahoma eventually but not before Stephen and the Christies come to Boston and Joseph ends up working on the railroad and getting called “that crazy mick” multiple times.

Far and Away was Ron Howard’s attempt to make an American epic, in the style of John Ford.  It doesn’t work because Tom Cruise is too contemporary to be believable as a 19th century Irish immigrant and Howard tries so hard to push everything to an epic scale that it just makes it even more obvious how slight and predictable the movie’s story is.  Far and Away is full of big movie moments but it lacks the small human moments necessary to really engage its audience.  I will always remembers Far and Away because it was one of those films that seemed to take up permanent residence on HBO when I was growing up.  I didn’t really care about the film’s flaws back then.  Nicole Kidman was attractive and tall and she had wild red hair and back then, that’s all a movie needed to hold my attention.  Unlike Cruise, Nicole Kidman can effortlessly move between historical and contemporary films and, of the two leas, she comes off the best.  The movie is really stolen, though, by Colm Meaney, playing a ruthless political boss who could have taught Boss Tweed a thing or two.

Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day, when we will be celebrating the legacy of immigrants like the Christies and the Donnellys.  Far and Away tries to pay tribute to their courage and their refusal to give up, even when things were tough and deadly on the frontier.  For me, though, Far and Away will always just make me think of HBO in the 90s.

Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life On The Street 3.6 “A Model Citizen”

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 Sundays, I will be reviewing Homicide: Life On The Street, which aired from 1993 to 1999, on NBC!  It  can be viewed on Peacock.

No one’s happy this week.

Episode 3.6 “A Model Citizen”

(Dir by John McNaughton, originally aired on November 11th, 1994)

Welcome to Baltimore, where everyone is depressed.  Consider this week’s episode of Homicide: Life On The Street.

  1. The episode opens with Munch, Bolander, Howard, and Felton in a morgue, waiting for the results of an autopsy.  They start talking about the shows that they watched as children and how many of them had their origins right in Baltimore.  Of course, none of those shows are on the air anymore.  Munch mentions his favorite childhood shows and is ridiculed for liking things when he was a kid.
  2. Emma Zoole (Lauren Tom), an artist who makes models of crime scenes for use in criminal court, stops by the department.  She’s looking for Steve Crosetti, to get his input on a recreation.  Meldrick Lewis tells her that Crosetti’s dead but he offers to help.  Lewis has a crush.  However, Emma likes Bayliss and Bayliss likes Emma.  Bayliss is even turned on by the fact that Emma sleeps in a coffin.  However, when Bayliss sees how upset Lewis is over his relationship with Emma, Bayliss tries to break up with her.  They end up having sex in the coffin instead.
  3. That’s it!, Lewis declares.  He cannot go into the bar business with Tim Bayliss.  Then again, there might not be a bar business anyway because Munch got kicked out of the state-required alcohol awareness class.  Munch, for whatever reason, decided to argue about whether or not a bartender could really be held responsible for getting someone drunk.
  4. Pembleton, Russert, and the city of Baltimore are all being sued by serial killer Pamela Wilgis.  Wilgis claims that Pembleton violated her civil rights when he interrogated her.  Pembleton’s entire interrogation style is put on trial.  He feels like he’s being attacked on all sides.  Finally, Pembleton gets depressed enough to reenter a church, even though he earlier claimed to no longer have any use for religion.
  5. Munch and Howard investigate the accidental shooting of a child by his older brother.  Much gets extremely upset while searching for the gun, taking Howard totally be surprise.  Howard comes to realize that Much actually cares about protecting children from violence and Munch realizes that the world is a terrible place.
  6. Beau Felton returns to his house and discovers that both his wife and his son have left and they’ve taken all the furniture with them.  Goodbye is scrawled, in lipstick, on the bathroom mirror.
  7. Much ends up sitting outside, staring at the ground while Lewis and then Howard both talk to him about how much life sucks.
  8. No one wants to end up like Steve Crosetti, Howard says at one point.  Good luck!  This job is depressing!

This was a good episode, one that really captured the emotional turmoil of seeing the worse that humanity has to offer while, at the same time, acknowledging that depressed people often use humor to deal with their feelings.  A few of Munch’s and Lewis’s line made me laugh out loud but seriously, I felt so bad for both of them!

Hopefully, everyone will have cheered up by next week.

Song of the Day: Theme From CHiPs by John Parker and Alan Silvestri

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As today is Erik Estrada’s birthday, it’s obvious what today’s song of the day has to be.

No matter what you may think of the show, this theme has one of the greatest bass lines of all time.  If you’re not dancing, you might want to call 911.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Bernardo Bertolucci Edition

Posted on 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!

Today, the Shattered Lens celebrates Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci!  It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Bernardo Bertolucci Films

The Conformist (1970, dir by Bernardo Betrolucci, DP: Vittorio Storaro)

The Last Emperor (1987, dir by Bernardo Bertolucci, DP: Vittorio Storaro)

The Sheltering Sky (1990, dir by Bernardo Betrolucci, DP: Vittorio Storaro)

Stealing Beauty (1996, dir by Bernardo Bertolucci, DP: Darius Khondji)

Late Night Retro Television Review: Check It Out! 3.10 “Shrink from Sendrax”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night 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 Canadian sitcom, Check it Out, which ran in syndication from 1985 to 1988.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and Peacock!

This week, corporate sends a visitor to Cobb’s for reasons that are never exactly clear.

Episode 3.10 “Shrink From Sendrax”

(Dir by Jayne Schipper, originally aired on November 15th, 1987)

I’m just going to do a mini-review of this episode because I’m busy working on our big St. Patrick’s Day extravaganza here at the Shattered Lens!

  1. Remember that new company that bought out Cobb’s?  It can be easy to forget about them.  Well, in this episode, they send a psychiatrist named Dr. Matthews (Graham Harley) to check on everyone’s mental health.  Why would they do that?  I mean, is Cobb’s grocery store really that important to them?  It seems like a lot of money to spend on checking whether or not the cashiers are feeling good about themselves.
  2. Admittedly, I haven’t had that many jobs and I’ve never worked in a grocery store.  If you told me that I had no choice but to sit down and talk about my life with a psychiatrist as a condition of my employment, I would probably quit.  It’s not that I have anything against psychiatrists.  It’s just that I believe therapy should always be voluntary.
  3. The episode’s highlight was Leslie wanting to spend hours talking to the psychiatrist about the party that was thrown when he turned two years old.  Aaron Schwartz, who is often underused on this show, really got a chance to show off his comedic skills in this episode.
  4. Gordon Clapp’s Viker also got a few good scenes.  In general, any episode that features Clapp is, at the very least, going to make me smile.
  5. Howard freaks out over the psychiatrist and the questionnaire that he’s forced to fill out.  He gets some advice from 14 year-old stockboy Brad, played by T and T‘s Sean Roberge.  This is Brad’s third appearance on the show and I get the feeling that he was originally meant to be a major character but the show’s writers couldn’t figure out what to do with the character.
  6. This third season has had a lot of weird detours and characters.  We haven’t heard anything else about Howard’s brother.  The corporate liaison, TC Collingwood (Elizabeth Hanna), is occasionally pictured in the opening credits and occasionally not.  What happened to the stockboy who had a crush on Marlene?
  7. Anyway, to prove that he’s not crazy, Howard dresses up like a clown because he knows that only way to prove he’s not crazy is to act crazy while realizing that he’s acting crazy or something.
  8. Marlene and Christian, the two most consistently interesting characters on the show, were not in this episode and that kind of made the whole psychiatry angle feel useless.  The idea of Marlene and Christian reacting to ink blots is such a good one that I personally would have delayed production on this episode until Kathleen Laskey and Jeff Pustil were available to appear in it.

Gordon Clapp and Aaron Schwartz were great but, overall, this was pretty dumb episode.