Every Monday night at 9:00 Central Time, my wife Sierra and I host a “Live Movie Tweet” event on X using the hashtag #MondayMuggers. We rotate movie picks each week, and our tastes are quite different. Tonight, Monday May 19th, we are showing YOUNG GUNS (1988) starring Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Charlie Sheen, Dermot Mulroney, Casey Siemaszko, Terence Stamp, Jack Palance, Terry O’Quinn, Brian Keith, and Patrick Wayne.
This movie focuses on a group of young gunmen, led by Billy the Kid (Emilio Estevez), who become deputies to avenge the murder of John Tunstall (Terence Stamp), the rancher who took them in, gave them jobs, and taught them how to read. But when Billy takes their authority too far, they soon find themselves to be the outlaws and the ones being hunted down.
Join us tonight for #MondayMuggers and watch the extremely fun YOUNG GUNS! It’s on Amazon Prime. The trailer is included below:
There are certain movies I like that I don’t ever hear anyone else talk about. PURE COUNTRY, starring country music legend George Strait, is such a movie. As you might imagine, it has a great soundtrack. I remember singing one of its songs, “I Cross My Heart,” at a co-worker’s wedding in the summer of 1993. I butchered the hell out of it. It does make me wonder if they’re still married. I haven’t seen that person in close to 30 years, so I’d say it’s a 50/50 proposition. I also remember really liking a song called “Heartland,” another called “When Did You Stop Loving Me,” and another called “Where the Sidewalk Ends.”
I’m a sucker for romance movies, and one of my favorite types of romance movies is where a famous person falls in love with a regular person. In PURE COUNTRY, George Strait is Dusty, a huge country music star who’s tired of the loud music and the big special effects that have come to define his shows. He longs to get back to his roots and just grab his guitar and sing. Unfortunately, his longtime friend and manager Lula (Lesley Ann Warren) isn’t ready to scale down the show since they’re playing to 20,000 fans at every concert. So, after a show one night, Dusty heads out for a walk and doesn’t stop. He does stop by a barber shop where they cut his Steven Seagal ponytail and shave his scruffy beard. Then he heads to an old honkytonk he used to play at when he was in college and reminisces on the good old days. After having a few too many adult beverages, he starts smiling at the lovely Harley Tucker (Isabel Glasser) who doesn’t recognize him as the superstar Dusty. One thing leads to another and he ends up trying to defend her honor from this big obnoxious guy who won’t take no for an answer. A drunk Dusty is no match for the big jerk, and he ends up getting the crap beaten out of him. Thankful that he tried to defend her honor and that he’s cute, Harley takes him to her house to try to mend his wounds. Dusty’s not ready to resume his life as a megastar so he gives Harley his middle name, which is Wyatt. I really like Harley’s family. Her brothers are a couple of dorks, but they love their sister. Her grandpa is played by Rory Calhoun!!! I love Rory Calhoun going back to his westerns in the 40’s and 50’s. And thus begins a fun romance movie where he’s a huge star, and she thinks he’s a regular guy. Of course there will be complications along the way, and the truth will eventually be exposed, but the fun is seeing how it all plays out.
What about George Strait’s acting you might ask? Well, Strait isn’t a very good actor, but that doesn’t keep me from enjoying the film. I do like the way he tells the arrogant Buddy Jackson (Kyle Chandler), “Get your ass outta here!” in one of the scenes. He even repeats it just as well! It’s an important scene and he rises to the occasion. All in all, Strait’s good enough and he’s got the fact that he’s George Strait going in his favor. If you read this and like PURE COUNTRY, please take the time to leave me a comment. I’m looking for other fans. It gets lonely out here!
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 Netflix? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!
If, over the next few weeks, you find yourself having trouble getting to sleep, you might be tempted to log onto Netflix and watch the fourth season of Cobra Kai. That’s certainly what I’m planning to do over the course of the next few days. However, before you watch Cobra Kai, you should make sure that you’ve seen all of the earlier Karate Kid films because you never know who might show up on the show. I mean, if Thomas Ian Griffith is coming back, anyone could be coming back! And that includes Julie Pierce, the young karate student at the center of 1994’s The Next Karate Kid.
Julie (played by Hillary Swank) is a troubled teenager. She lives in Boston with her grandmother. She attends a high school that is run by a weirdly fascistic self-defense instructor named Colonel Dugan (Michael Ironside), who teaches all of the jocks to be tough, ruthless, and to show no mercy. When Julie’s grandmother leaves to for Los Angeles so that she can relax, Julie’s new caretaker is an old family friend who turns out to be Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita).
At first, Julie wants nothing to do with Miyagi. She’s still angry about the death of her parents in a car crash. All she wants to do is take care of a falcon that lives on the roof of the school. She does like a boy named Eric McGowen (Chris Conrad) but Eric is also friends with the members of Colonel Dugan’s paramilitary gang, the so-called Alpha Elite. She needs someone who can understand her and her anger and, at first, Miyagi doesn’t seem like he’s capable of doing and of that. But then Miyagi discovers that Julie has a natural talent for jumping on top of cars and this leads to….
Well, you know what it leads to. It’s The Next Karate Kid! Ralph Macchio was 33 years old when this film was first released and was a bit too old to still be playing a kid so the film’s producers tried to reboot the franchise by giving Miyagi a new student. The Next Karate Kid pretty much hits all of the story beats from the first film, though it does change things up by not featuring a karate tournament. Instead, it all leads to a post-prom fight between Miyagi and Dugan. This film is your only chance to see Pat Morita face off against Michael Ironside and that’s got to be worth something.
The Next Karate Kid does not have a particularly good reputation and, watching the film, I understood why. There’s very little of the spontaneity or the wit that made the first film memorable. That said, I did appreciate Michael Ironside’s villainous turn. If Hillary Swank doesn’t necessarily give the type of performance that would make you think, “Future two-time Oscar winner!,” she still does a good job of portraying the anger that’s at the heart of the character. If nothing else, The Next Karate Kid deserves some credit for taking Julie’s anger seriously as opposed to just writing it off as being a “teen girl thing.” The Next Karate Kid wasn’t as bad as I expected but it was still hard not shake the feeling that it was largely unnecessary.
That’s said, I still look forward to Julie’s eventual visit to Cobra Kai.
I have a weakness for films about idealistic educators who try to teach and change lives in the inner city. You know which films I’m talking about. These are the films that always take place in a decaying high school and there’s usually at least one scene where the teacher is warned not to care too much about their hopeless students and then the teacher goes, “Someone has to care!”
Why do these films fascinate me so?
To a large extent, it’s because they take place in a world that is so extremely outside of my high school experience. I was recently doing a search on my school and I came across a video on YouTube that was made by some students from my alma mater:
As I watched this video, I realized that neither the students, the campus, nor the neighborhood had really changed in the 9 years since I graduated.
I also realized that, even though I didn’t realize it at the time, I went to one of the most suburban, white bread high schools in the DFW metroplex. At the time, of course, a lot of my classmates thought they were tough. They would make a big deal about blasting Jay-Z and 50 Cent while they were driving down to Starbucks during lunch. For the most part, though, we put the suburb in suburban.
That, I think, is why I’m fascinated by inner city high school films. It’s even better when those films are totally over-the-top and feature a hero who not only teaches but who kicks some ass as well.
Perhaps that’s why I recently enjoyed watching The Principal.
Originally released way back in 1987, The Principal is one of those films that seems to regularly show up on the lesser known television networks. A few weeks ago, I saw that it was going to be broadcast on Ion Television so I set the DVR to record it and I finally ended up watching it this weekend.
In The Principal, James Belushi plays Rick Lattimore. (You can tell that this movie was released quite some time ago because Belushi has a lot more hair and lot less chins than he does now.) Rick’s a teacher with an anger problem. When he sees his ex-wife out on a date with his divorce lawyer, Rick loses it and physically assaults the lawyer. The next morning, Rick is called into a meeting with the school board. He’s expecting to get fired. Instead, he’s promoted. Rick is now principal of Brandel High.
Brandel High, it turns out, is the most troubled high school ever! Drugs are sold and used openly in the hallways. Few students bother to attend class (but yet they still come to the school). The teachers spend most of their time hiding in either their classroom or the teacher’s lounge. The school’s head of security, Jake (Lou Gossett, Jr.), spends most of his time making sarcastic comments. When Rick pulls up on his motorcycle, the first thing he sees is a fight between rival drug dealers.
Rick responds to all of this by holding a school assembly. As every student at Brandel jeers him, Rick announces that he has only one policy: “NO MORE!” It’s at this point that the school drug lord Victor Duncan (played by Michael Wright) stands up and announces, “You talk too much!”
Things continue to build up from there as Rick divides his time between educating and getting beaten up by resentful students, Jake starts to actually care about his job again, and Victor wanders through the school hallways, dressed like he’s in one of the Underworld films and saying stuff like, “Try to reach me and I’ll just cut off your hand…”
The Principal is such an over-the-top, silly, yet heart-felt film that it’s impossible not to enjoy it in much the same way that you might enjoy eating junk food. As I watched this film, I found myself wondering what had happened to James Belushi in the years since it was originally released because, in The Principal, he’s actually likable. However, the film really belongs to Michael Wright. Seriously, as played by Wright, Victor Duncan is the most evil student in the history of high school cinema. When he tells Rick that he’s willing to cut off his outstretched hand, you believe him.
The Principal is a thoroughly predictable film that promotes a dubious educational policy of zero tolerance. However, it’s also a lot of fun.
In other words, it’s the epitome of a guilty pleasure.
Through the Shattered Lens 