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? 2000’s The Alternate, starring Eric Roberts!
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, find The Alternate on Prime or Tubi, 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.
I took this picture yesterday, from my bedroom window. It’s the first picture that I took in 2026. This is the morning on January 1st, 2026. It may not be my best photograph but it’s an important one. It’s the first image of the year. I love this tree. In just a few months, that ugly, scary old tree will no longer be an eyesore. It’ll be full of green leaves and I’ll have a wonderful view.
52 years ago, on a date that will live in infamy, President Richard Nixon signed into law the national speed limit of 55 Miles Per Hour. Though the law was later repealed, the scourge of the speed limit continues.
Though this song is just a little before my time, it still feels like it was specifically recorded just for me. I have always considered traffic laws, not just the laws themselves but the way they are enforced, to be the epitome of everything that can go wrong when people blindly respect authority.
As for the video, it also feels like it was specifically filmed for me. It’s actually a fun little video with a sense of humor and who hasn’t wanted to tell a traffic judge what he can do with his gavel?
In the year 1979, a young Steven Spielberg attempted to conquer comedy in the same way that he previously conquered horror with Jaws and science fiction with Close Encounters of The Third Kind. Working from a script written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, Spielberg made a film about the days immediately following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. The name of the film was 1941 and it remains Steven Spielberg’s only attempt to direct a full-out comedy. There’s a reason for that.
The film follows a large group of characters over the course of one day and night in 1941. It’s been six days since Pearl Harbor was attacked and the streets of Los Angeles are full of young men who are preparing to ship out and older man who are paranoid about when the next attack is going to come. However, Major General Joseph Stilwell (Robert Stack) just wants to see Dumbo at the local theater. Meanwhile, his womanizing aide (Tim Matheson, giving the same performance here that he did in National Lampoon’s Animal House) just wants to get Stillwell’s aviation-lusting secretary (Nancy Allen) into an airplane.
Elsewhere, Ward Douglas (Ned Beatty) is happy to allow Sgt. Tree (Dan Aykroyd) and his men (including John Candy) to set up on an anti-aircraft gun in his front yard. Ward’s daughter, Betty (Dianne Kay), is only concerned about entering a dance contest with her friend, Maxine (Wendie Jo Sperber). Cpl. Sitarski (Treat Williams) and dishwasher Wally Stephens (Bobby D iCicco) both hope to be Betty’s partner and their rivalry leads to a massive (and seemingly never-ending) brawl.
While Ward deals with the gun in his front yard, another concerned citizen — Claude Crumm (Murray Hamilton) — keeps watch from atop of Ferris wheel, along with amateur ventriloquist Herbie Kazlminsky (Eddie Deezen).
But that’s not all! Susan Backilinie recreates her role from a previous Spielberg film, skinny dipping while the Jaws theme plays in the background and running straight into a submarine that is commanded by Commander Akiro Mitamura (Toshiro Mifune, trying to maintain his dignity). Mifune decides to attack Hollywood but no one on the submarine is sure where that is. Christopher Lee appears as an arrogant German who is along for the ride. Slim Pickens shows up as a lumberjack who is temporarily captured by the Japanese. John Belushi plays Wild Bill Kelso, who flies his airplane through Los Angeles. Warren Oates yells and laughs. Dick Miller, Elijah Cook Jr. and Lionel Stander show up in small roles.
“Since when is Steven funny?” According to Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, this was the reaction that most of Spielberg’s friends had when he announced that his next film would be a screwball comedy set during World War II. Watching the film, one gets their point. The majority of the film’s humor comes from people looking at the camera and screaming. There’s a lot physical comedy, which would undoubtedly work in small amounts but which grows rather tiring when it’s dragged out to the extent that Spielberg’s drags it out. (A brawl at a USO show seems like it should be funny but Spielberg allows it to go on for too long and the careful choreography takes away any element of spontaneity.) The film attempts to duplicate the style of Animal House (and it’s probably not a coincidence that Matheson, Belushi, and director John Landis all have roles in the film) but Spielberg often seems as if he’s trying too hard. There’s nothing subversive about the humor. It’s more antic than funny.
A huge problem is that there really isn’t much of a story here. Spielberg, who is normally one of Hollywood’s best storytellers, attempts to do a loose, Altman-style ensemble film and the result is that none of the characters feel alive and there’s never any sense of narrative momentum. There are a few performers who manage to make an impression amongst all the explosions and the yelling. John Belushi has the advantage of not having to share the majority of his scenes with anyone else. Warren Oates’s manic energy is more than welcome. Wendie Jo Sperber deserved more screentime. Murray Hamilton and Eddie Deezen frequently made me laugh. There’s a wonderful moment where Robert Stack’s intense general cries while watching Dumbo. But, for the most part, the film never comes together.
That said, 1941 is definitely a Steven Spielberg film. It received three Academy Award nominations, for Cinematography, Sound, and Visual Effects. (All three of those categories, not surprisingly, are more associated with spectacle than with comedy.) The film looks great! Spielberg’s attention to detail is there in the production design and the costumes. Watching 1941, you can see Spielberg’s talent while also seeing why he never directed another comedy.
Talk To Me, a made-for-television film that first aired on ABC in 1996, takes viewers behind the scenes of daytime talk show.
The Howard Grant Show has built a strong audience based on airing stories that appeal to the more prurient interests of viewers. Howard Grant (Peter Scolari) may have started out hosting a show about “issues” but now his show features wives who strip, girlfriends who cheat, and the occasional fist fight. While Howard presents himself as being a smooth-talking, compassionate advocate for society’s forgotten victims, the truth of the matter is that he’s a puppet who reads from a teleprompter and who wears an earpiece so that he can be told which questions to ask. Sadie (Veronica Hamel) is the one who is in charge of the show and she’ll exploit anyone and anything to get ratings.
Idealistic Diane Shepherd (Yasmine Bleeth) is hired to work as a segment producer for Howard’s show. Diane used to work on a talk show called “Margolis.” Margolis was cancelled because it was too concerned with “issues.” Still, Diane is hoping that she can bring the same earnest approach that she learned at Margolis to The Howard Grant Show. Why does Diane believe this? Why does it not occur to her that an approach that got her previous show canceled might not be appreciated at her new show?
Because Diane is kind of an idiot.
The movie doesn’t want us to think of Diane as being an idiot. We’re supposed to be on Diane’s side and we’re supposed to be just as shocked as she is when Sadie reveals just how manipulative the talk show game is. Unfortunately, Diane comes across as being so incredibly naive that it’s hard to really take her or her concerns seriously. It’s one thing to be upset at the way Sadie manipulates the show’s guests. It’s another to consistently be surprised by it. Diane spends so much of the movie being shocked that I eventually lost all respect for her. Diane cross the line from idealism into stupidity. Yasmine Bleeth’s wide-eyed performance doesn’t help matters. I watched this movie and wondered how Diane could even survive living in New York, let alone working there.
Jenny Lewis plays Kelly, a drug-addicted prostitute that Diane recruits to appear on the show. Talk to Me does a good job of showing how the show manipulates Kelly and then essentially abandons her once her episode has been filmed but, again, there’s nothing particularly surprising about any of it. I would have to imagine that, even in 1996, most people understood that Jerry Springer wasn’t a paragon of virtue and that his show was more interested in exploiting than helping. Talk To Me feels like an expose of something that had already been exposed.
The best thing about the film is Peter Scolari’s performance as Howard Grant. Scolari does such a good job as the unctuous talk show host that it’s actually a shame that the character didn’t get more screentime. (That said, there is a neat twist involving his character towards the end of the film.) Scolari perfect captures Howard’s fake but superficially appealing concern for his guests. He asks the most exploitive of questions but he does so in a gentle voice and his television audience loves him for it. Howard is remote and quiet off-camera but on-camera, he comes alive. He was born to talk to people. It’s just too bad that the conversation often ruins their lives.
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 were struggling to get to sleep last night, you could have jumped over to Tubi and watched the 1989 film, Listen to Me.
Listen to Me tells the story of two poor but ambitious teenagers who receive debate scholarships to fictional Kenmont University. Monica Tomanski (Jami Gertz) is a liberal from Chicago. Tucker Muldowney (Kirk Cameron) is a “shit-kickin’ conservative” who is from Oklahoma. Despite their different political beliefs, Monica and Tucker find themselves assigned to be debate partners by the college’s legendary debate coach, Charlie Nichols (Roy Scheider).
At Kenmont, debate is as popular and as important as football is at some other colleges. The entire student body shows up to listen to the debates and to cheer for their side. It’s like Oxford, if Oxford was solely populated by 80s teen actors. (Seriously, there’s a lot of familiar faces wandering around that campus.) Charlie is convinced that this could be the year that he wins the national tournament. Gar McKellar (Tom Quill), the troubled son of Sen. McKellar (Anthony Zerbe), is one of the best debaters in the country. However, Gar fears that winning a national debate tournament will somehow lead to him going into politics. He wants to be a writer and he’s got a self-destructive streak. As you probably already guessed, this all leads to Tucker and Monica debating the arrogant Harvard team in front of the Supreme Court. The topic? Whether or not Roe v Wade should be overturned….
A few thoughts on Listen to Me:
Kirk Cameron’s “Oklahoma” accent is, without a doubt, the worst that I have ever heard in any film ever made. When I was growing up, I did occasionally live in Oklahoma. I still visit Oklahoma frequently. Yes, people in Oklahoma do have an accent. However, that accent sounds nothing like whatever Cameron was trying to do in this film. Whenever Kirk Cameron speaks, he sounds less like an Oklahoma farm boy and more like the tubercular son of a once proud New Orleans family. Beyond the accent, Cameron just isn’t believable as a quick-on-his-feet debate champ. He overplays when he should underplay and underplays …. well, I can’t think of a single scene that he underplays. It’s just not a good performance.
Jami Gertz is a bit more convincing as Monica. (It perhaps helps that Gertz, like her character, is actually from Chicago.) But, for the majority of the film, Monica is seriously underwritten. She’s a straw feminist, who largely exists so that Tucker can tell her to loosen up.
As for the other debaters, we don’t learn much about them. That’s a shame because some of them — like Amanda Peterson’s crippled debater — seem like they would be much more interesting to follow than either Gar, Tucker, or Monica. It’s a crime to cast Peter DeLuise as an Ivy League debater without giving us a chance to actually see him debate.
Roy Scheider gives the best performance in the film, which isn’t really a surprise. That said, Charlie Nichols was a terrible debate coach, one whose entire philosophy seemed to be based on teaching his debaters to make loud and emotional arguments and hope that the judge doesn’t understand how competitive debating is supposed to work.
Would the Supreme Court really judge a national debate tournament?
As for the debates themselves, it’s hard not to notice that all of the arguments are emotional. There’s little talk of evidence or research or anything else. Instead, the characters talk about how abortion has personally effected them. (The Harvard team is portrayed as being snooty villains when they dare to bring up an actual clinical study about abortion.) Admittedly, I did not do college debate but I was involve with Speech and Debate in High School and, when it came to debate, I always tried to get by with the same cutesy techniques that everyone uses in this film. If the judge was a man, I definitely showed a little leg. If someone asked me about a study that disproved my argument, I’d respond by citing a fictional study that disproved their study. I was the Queen of Dramatic Personal Anecdote! And I rarely made it out of the preliminary rounds because most judges — the good ones, at least — were able to tell that I hadn’t bothered to do my homework and that I was just trying to skate by on charm and wit. My coach often told me that if I would actually do the work, I’d probably make it to the semis and beyond but …. eh, doing the work was just too much …. well, work. So, you can imagine my surprise when Tucker and Monica used the same techniques that I used and were declared to be the best debaters in the country!
Seriously, I was robbed!
Listen to Me is a very 80s film, right down to the debate montages and the explanations about why Roe v Wade would never actually be overturned. It tries to do for college debate what numerous other college-set films did for football an binge-drinking. Unfortunately, the film’s intentions are defeated by a didactic script and a miscast lead. It feels considerably longer than 100 minutes, which might help you with your insomnia.
When it comes to reviewing mob movies, I usually describe them as either being “an offer you can refuse” or “an offer you can’t refuse.”
Usually, it’s not that difficult to decide which ranking I should use. If the film is well-acted and if the action unfolds at a steady pace and if there’s plenty of tommy gun action and/or a stylish recreation of the Golden Age of American Gangsterism, chances are that the film will be an offer that you can’t refuse.
Now, if it’s a movie that just features a bunch of guys sitting around trying to sound tough and if it doesn’t really do much to recreate the gangster milieu and if the dialogue sounds like it was cribbed from a hundred other gangster films, it’ll probably be an offer you can refuse.
It’s simple and usually, it only takes me a few minutes to realize which description I’m going to use. But I have to admit that I went back and forth on 1975’s Lepke. To refuse or not to refuse, that was the question.
Lepke is a biographic film about Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, an early American gangster who came to prominence in the early days of the National Crime Syndicate. An ally of Lucky Luciano’s, Lepke was the mastermind behind what became known, in the press, as Murder, Inc. (Lepke himself was smart enough not to name the organization.) If the Mob wanted someone killed, they would contact Albert Anastasia who would then contact Lepke who would then assign the job to someone else. The actual assassin rarely knew who had actually ordered the hit and Lepke was such a feared figure that it was assumed that no one was ever going to turn informant. Lepke was responsible for some of the most infamous gangland killings of the 20s and 30s, including the murder of Dutch Schultz. Unfortunately, for Lepke, someone eventually did turn informant and he ended up as one of the few gangster to meet his end in the electric chair.
Lepke features Tony Curtis as the title character. The film follows him from his youth as a member of a street gang to his early days with the National Crime Syndicate and eventually to his final days at Sing Sing. Michael Callan plays Lepke’s childhood friend, who goes straight. Gianni Russo plays Albert Anastasia while Vic Tayback plays Lucky Luciano. Lepke’s wife, Bernice, is played by Anjanette Comer. Though the beefy and rather loud Tayback is miscast as Luciano, the cast does a fairly good job. Comedian Milton Berle gives a surprisingly strong performance as Lepke’s father-in-law. There’s a great scene in which he interrogates his future son-in-law about what he’s going to get in exchange for giving away his daughter. Curtis is convincingly tough and menacing as Lepke, who this film presents as being a working class family man whose job just happens to be killing people. (Tony Curtis later wrote that he was on a cocaine high while filming Lepke, which perhaps explains the intensity of his performance.)
Lepke definitely holds your interest. There’s enough mob hits and bursts of gunfire to satisfy most gang movie aficionados. At the same time, the film’s recreation of the 20s and 30s is almost too generic and clean. For all the tough talk and the gangland violence, there’s a definite lack of grittiness to the film’s recreation of one of the most violent eras in American history, which is why I found myself conflicted on whether to recommend it or not. I decided that, in the end, the film does enough right to make it worth watching, even if it does still feel more like a made-for-TV crime flick than the gangster epic that so obviously aspires to be,
Historically, this film is important because it was the first American film to be directed by Menahem Golan and produced by Golan and Yoram Globus. Four years after Lepke, Golan and Globus would purchase Cannon Films and go on to make some of the most deliriously entertaining films of all time.
In 1997, a 27 year-old man named Andrew Cunanan went on a killing spree, one that took him from San Diego to Miami Beach. Though the FBI were already looking for him, Cunanan did not receive national attention until July 15th, 1997. That was the day that Cunanan shot and killed fashion designer Gianni Versace in front of Versace’s mansion. By that time, Cunanan had already killed at least four other people. A week after killing Versace, Cunanan would take his own life, shooting himself on a houseboat that he had broken into.
Andrew Cunanan’s motives have remained a mystery. It is known that at least two of the victims, Jeff Trail and David Madson, was acquainted with Cunanan. Madson had a long-distance relationship with Cunanan that he ended a year before he was murdered. Cunanan reportedly described Madson as being “the love of his life,” though Cunanan also apparently had a history of lying. Whether Cunanan knew Chicago businessman Lee Miglin before killing him is a matter of some controversy. It’s agreed that cemetery caretaker William Reese was only killed because he came across Cunanan stealing his truck. Whether or not Cunanan had ever met Versace before in not known. Cunanan claimed he had but, again, Cunanan had a history of lying.
In 2018, Cunanan and his crimes were the focus of the second season of Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story. Darren Criss won an Emmy for playing Cunanan and the series itself was critically acclaimed. Personally, I thought the series started out strong but ran out of gas about halfway through as it became clear that Andrew Cunanan, much like the Menendez brothers, wasn’t really that interesting of a character. Indeed, watching the show, I got the feeling that Cunanan’s main motivation was bitterness over the fact that he was essentially a fairly boring and uninteresting person. He didn’t have much of a personality so he tried to fill that void by going after people who did.
American Crime Story may be the best-known dramatization of Cunanan’s crimes but it was hardly the first. In 1998, less-than-a-year after Cunanan’s suicide, Menahem Golan’s The Versace Murder was released on video. Shane Perdue played Andrew Cunanan. A sad-eyed Franco Nero played Gianni Versace. Steven Bauer and Renny Roker played the two FBI agents who pursued Cunanan across the country. The film was shot in 20 days and watching it, it’s easy to see that it was a rush job. Some scenes run too long, some scenes run too short. Occasionally, the background music is so overwhelming that it’s a struggle to hear what anyone’s saying. It’s definitely an exploitation film, made quickly as to capitalize on the interest in the case before everyone moved on.
And yet, it’s a strangely effective film. A lot of that is due to the performance of Franco Nero, who doesn’t get a lot of screen time but who still makes a definite and even poignant impression as Versace. The film’s strongest moments come towards the end, when the two FBI agents come across as a vigil being held in front of Versace’s mansion and they realize just how much Versace meant to the people of Miami Beach. Matt Servitto and David Wolfson are also sympathetic as David Madson and Jeff Trail. These three performances capture the tragedy of Cunanan’s crimes. In the end, the fact that Shane Perdue is a bit bland in the role of Andrew Cunanan feels almost appropriate. Whether it was intentional or not, Menahem Golan’s The Versace Murder reminds us that Andrew Cunanan’s victims deserve to be remembered far more than the man who killed them.
Through the Shattered Lens 