Love On The Shattered Lens: Frank and Ava (dir by Michael Oblowitz)

Posted on February 14, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2018’s Frank & Ava tells the story of the tempestuous love affair and marriage of Frank Sinatra (Rico Simonini) and Ava Gardner (Emily Elicia Low).

The film opens with Sinatra at his lowest point. His records are no longer selling. His marriage to Nancy is in trouble. The government is now investigating him for supposed communist sympathies (say it ain’t so, Frank!) and also his connections to the Mafia. Hedda Hopper (Joanne Baron), Louella Parsons (Joanna Sanchez), and Walter Winchell (Richard Portnow) all pop up throughout the film, breathlessly reading the latest gossip into radio microphones. Frank’s voice is weakening and it looks like he’s about to lose his fanbase to Eddie Fisher and Perry Como. As for his acting career, everyone knows that he can’t act. (At one point, even Frank’s friends laugh at the idea of Siantra ever winning an Oscar.) Frank knows that he would be perfect for the role of Maggio in From Here To Eternity but the film’s director wants to cast someone like Harvey Lembeck or Eli Wallach.

As for Ava Gardner, she’s just gotten out of a relationship with Howard Hughes. More famous for her then-scandalous personal life than her film roles, Gardner drinks too much, curses too much, and is too open about her affairs for the sensibilities of much of 1950 America.

When Frank and Ava meet, it’s love at first sight. They drive around while drinking champagne straight from the bottle. They crash cars. When they’re arrested, they charm a local sheriff (Harry Dean Stanton, in his final film role). They fight. They make love. They fight more. They make love more. Frank obsesses on the possibility of Ava being unfaithful to him while continually cheating on her with everyone from Lana Turner to Marilyn Maxwell.

The first thing that you notice about Frank & Ava is that it is full of references to real Hollywood gossip. Names are dropped. Real celebrities are depicted and the portrayals are not always positive. The second thing that you notice is that, with the exception of Emily Elicia Low, no one is particularly convincing. The actress who plays Marilyn Monroe not only looks nothing like Marilyn but her attempt to imitate Marilyn’s trademark voice made me laugh out loud. Actors appear as Lana Turner, Montgomery Clift, Howard Hughes, and a host of mafiosos and none of them are the least bit convincing. Much of the film is like attending a costume party where no one could spend more than five bucks on their costume. Rico Simonini, who was so charming in My Dinner With Eric, is not particularly convincing as Frank Sinatra. That said, Emily Elicia Low is well-cast as Ava Gardner and Eric Roberts shows up for two scenes as producer Harry Cohn. In real life, Cohn was a notorious bully. The old anecdote about everyone showing up at an unpopular man’s funeral to make sure that he’s actually dead is often said to have been inspired by Cohn. In the film, Roberts plays Cohn as being a surprisingly reasonable guy. If Fred Zinnemann wants Sinatra, he can have Sinatra. If he wants Eli Wallach, he can have Eli Wallach. Just make sure they aren’t communists!

Probably the most interesting thing about this film is its attempt to recreate the 50s without spending a good deal of money. This is a low-budget movie and there’s an obvious artificiality to many of the sets and costumes that gives the entire film an oddly dream-like feel. It’s less a recreation of the past and more a look at how the past might look in our fantasies. All the men wear suits. Ava dresses and talk as if she just stepped out of a parody of a film noir. Famous scenes from Goodfellas and La Dolce Vita are awkwardly recreated by Santini and the cast. The film, which was made by people who obviously loved the legend of Frank and Ava, ultimately transcends the conventional definition of good and bad and instead becomes a work of outsider art, a look into the hazier regions of the American cultural psyche.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Caddyshack II (1988, directed by Allan Arkush)

Posted on January 31, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Welcome back to Bushwood Country Club! The Gopher is still stealing balls and burrowing through the course. Ty Webb (Chevy Chase) is still the majority shareholder of the club, even though he now only plays golf inside of his mansion. And that’s it!

Only the Gopher and Chevy Chase returned for Caddyshack II. Ted Knight died before the movie went into production. Bill Murray didn’t want to recreate his role from the first movie. Rodney Dangerfield was involved in developing the movie but then dropped out after two million had already been spent in pre-production. Chevy Chase was paid seven figures to return and he later called it one of the biggest mistakes of his career. Only the Gopher didn’t complain.

With hardly anyone from the first film willing to come back for a second round, Caddyshack II features comedian Jackie Mason as Jack Hartounian, a real estate developer whose daughter, Kate (Jessica Lundy), wants to be a part of the WASPy Bushwood social set. When Chandler Young (Robert Stack) keeps the plain-spoken Jack from being given a membership, Jack teams up with his old friend Ty and buys Bushwood. He turns Bushwood into an amusement park called Jackie’s Wacky Golf. Kate tells Jack that he’s ruined everything and turned Bushwood into Coney Island. Chandler hires survivalist Tom Everett (Dan Aykroyd) to kill Jack and then agrees to play Jack in a round of golf. The winner wins Bushwood.

A bust with both audiences and critics, Caddyshack II is one of the worst sequels ever made. Why would you do a sequel to Caddyshack that features almost nothing that made the first film so entertaining? Jackie Mason was a great comedian and writer but he wasn’t much of an actor and he makes a poor replacement for Rodney Dangerfield. The film really loses me when Chandler Young literally pays money to have Jackie murdered. It’s just a step too far. Not even Ted Knight tried to kill Rodney Dangerfield and Dangerfield was a lot more obnoxious than Jackie Mason ever was. Not even the dancing Gopher can generate much laughs and Kate’s right. Jackie’s Wacky Golf really is a terrible place.

There are some interesting actors and actresses in the supporting cast. The lovely Dyan Cannon plays Jack’s love interest and is one of the few good things about the movie, despite having no chemistry with Mason. Randy Quaid gives a manic performance as Jack’s lawyer, a role that was originally meant for Sam Kinison. Jonathan Silverman is the good caddy who falls for Jack’s daughter while Chynna Phillips is Chandler’s snobby daughter who befriends Kate and tells her she should change her last name to Hart. Dan Aykroyd delivers all of his lines in a high-pitched voice that isn’t funny but which becomes very annoying.

The slobs win again. The snobs are defeated and the Gopher dances with noticeably less enthusiasm. There has never been a Caddyshack 3.

So, I Watched Stealing Home (1988, dir. by William Porter and Steven Kampmann)

Posted on January 4, 2025 by Dazzling Erin

Back in December, Lisa agreed to watch a baseball movie with me to make up for making me watch The Catcher in 2023. The one we picked was Stealing Home, because it starred Mark Harmon and Jodie Foster and it looked like it would be a sweet movie.

Stealing Home opens with Billy Wyatt (Mark Harmon), a minor league baseball player who is getting ready to take the field and who is standing for the National Anthem. I immediately liked Billy because he was standing for the Anthem and not taking a knee. I also like aging minor leaguers because they’re still playing the game even though they know they’ve probably missed their window to move up to the majors. Billy Wyatt loves both the game and his country.

As Billy waits to play ball, he thinks about another type of love, the love that he had for Katie Chandler (Jodie Foster). Katie was six years older than him and encouraged him to always pursue his dreams, whether it was in baseball or love. The movie flashes back to Billy living in a motel with a cocktail waitress and getting a phone call from his mother who tells him that Katie has committed suicide and she wants Billy to spread her ashes at a special place. Billy then flashes back to his childhood and his teen years, in which he’s played by William McNamara who does not look like he could ever grow up to be Mark Harmon. Billy’s best friend is Alan Appleby, who is played as a teenager by Jonathan Silverman and as an adult by Harold Ramis. Jonathan Silverman growing up to be Harold Ramis seems even more unlikely than William McNamara becoming Mark Harmon. Billy remembers losing his virginity to Appleby’s prom date, losing his dad to a car wreck, and a Fourth of July weekend that he spent on the beach with Katie and his mom (Blair Brown).

Only Jodie Foster plays Katie Chandler and we only see Katie thorough Billy’s eyes. Jodie Foster gives a lively performance as Katie but she always more of a plot device than a fully rounded character. We never find out why Katie killed herself. Her father says that Katie was unhappy during her adult life but why? Even after Billy gets her ashes and tries to figure out where she wanted him to spread them, he never thinks about why she killed herself. In fact, he hadn’t even talked to her for years. That really bothered me.

The movie ends with Billy stealing home during a game and proving that he’s still got it as far as baseball goes. I love baseball but I still felt like Katie’s untold story was probably more interesting than Billy’s. I liked Mark Harmon’s performance and I really wanted to like Stealing Home more than I did. I wish the movie had been more about who Katie was instead of being about who Billy thought Katie was.

Back to School Part II #19: Girls Just Want To Have Fun (dir by Alan Metter)

Posted on September 4, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For our next film in this series of Back to School reviews, we take a look at 1985’s Girls Just Want To Have Fun!

And you know what?

It’s true — we do just want to have fun!

The fun in Girls Just Want To Have Fun is pretty much defined by dancing, which is okay with me because I love to dance. However, Girls Just Want To Have Fun had the misfortune to be made in the mid-80s. I have lost track of many 80s films that I’ve watched but I’m still always shocked at how undanceable most 80s music truly was. This film, of course, does contain a cover version of the famous song by Cyndi Lauper and that’s actually a pretty good 80s song. However, the rest of the music (and, by that, I mean the music that everyone in the movie is actually dancing to) is incredibly bland in the way that only music from the decade of We Built This City could be.

As for the film itself, it takes place in Chicago. Janey Glenn (Sarah Jessica Parker) is the newest student at the local Catholic girls school. Janey’s overprotective father (Ed Lauter) is in the army and Janey has lived all over the world. Despite that, Janey is not at all worldly. In fact, when she tries to introduce herself to her classmates, all she can get out is that she’s a gymnast and she loves to dance. (When we actually see Janey dancing or doing any sort of gymnastics, Sarah Jessica Parker’s hair always seems to fall in her face, which is certainly one way to hide a stunt double.)

Janey makes one friend at the school. Lynn (Helen Hunt, looking like a teenager but already sounding like a hung over 40 year-old) is about as wild as a girl can be in 1980s PG-rated film. That’s to say, she wears a leather skirt when she’s not in school and, when she babysits, she orders pizza and then allows the baby to sit on it. (Ewwwwwww! There’s a reason why babies wear diapers….) Lynne and Janey are automatically BFFs because they both love Dance TV!

That’s right — it’s DTV! I wonder what that’s supposed to be based on…

It turns out that DTV is having a contest to pick two new dancers! Disobeying her strict father, Janey sneaks out of the house and joins Lynn in auditioning! Lynn’s partner turns out to be so spastic that Lynn doesn’t make the semi-finals. Later, Lynn discovers that her partner was bribed by rich bitch Natalie Sands (Holly Gagnier). I’m not sure why Natalie felt the need to do that since Lynn wasn’t that impressive to begin with. She’s about as good a dancer as you would expect Helen Hunt to be.

However, Janey does make it to the semi-finals, where she’s partnered with Jeff. Jeff is tough and blue-collar and, at first, it doesn’t seem like he and Janey will get along. So, of course, they end up falling in love and, of course, Natalie’s father tries to force Jeff out of the contest by threatening to put his father out of work. Jeff, incidentally, is played by Lee Montgomery. Years before appearing in Girls Just Want To Have Fun, Montgomery played the little kid who gets crushed by a chimney at the end of Burnt Offerings. Burnt Offerings is a really crappy film but I watch it every time that it comes on TCM just so I can see that chimney crush Lee Montgomery. That said, Montgomery actually does a pretty good job of Jeff. You never quite buy him as a rebel without a cause but he still seems like an authentic and likable teenager. Jeff and Janey are a cute couple and that’s all that really matters.

Just as Janey has a best friend, Jeff also has a best friend. Drew Boreman (Jonathan Silverman) talks too much, tries to sell t-shirts from the trunk of his car, and there’s also a scene were he grabs a random girl’s breasts and makes a comment about using her nipples to tune a radio. Drew is annoying and, once you get over the fact that she’s being played by a young Helen Hunt, so is Lynn. Watching the movie, you kind of want to tell both of them to just calm down for a few minutes.

But you know who is not annoying? Jeff’s younger sister, Maggie, who is played by none other than a very young Shannen Doherty. Maggie was my favorite character because she alone seemed to understand how stupid everyone else in the film was. And she was willing to call them out on it.

ANYWAY — Girls Just Want To Have Fun is one of those movies where next to nothing actually happens. There is an extended sequence where our heroes destroy Natalie’s snooty party with the help of a bunch of punks and female body builders but otherwise, it’s remarkable how little actually happens. That said, some of the dancing is good (even if most of the music is totally bland in the way that only 80s music can be) and it’s interesting to see Sarah Jessica Parker and Helen Hunt when they were young. Sarah Jessica Parker actually gives a surprisingly likable performance here, even if it is often way too obvious that a body double is doing the majority of her dancing. That said, you really can’t get any further away from Carrie Bradshaw than Janey Glenn.

Girls Just Want To Have Fun is a time capsule of the decade in which it was made and that is definitely the main reason to watch it. Until time machines are a reality and we can experience the past firsthand, we’ll just have to keep getting our information from movies like this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h6pXPHaWM0

Val’s Movie Roundup #14: Hallmark Edition

Posted on August 15, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

Love Is a Four Letter Word (2007) – This was really disappointing. I could say something like shit is also a four letter word, but disappointing is really a better word for this movie. The movie is about three couples. The first are newlyweds. The second are an older couple who are getting divorced. The third are the two divorce attorneys handling each end of the older couples divorce. What’s so disappointing is that the beginning of this movie has some of the sweetest, affectionate, and genuine moments between two lovers I have seen in a Hallmark movie. However, it then just degenerates into a pitiful attempt at a 1940’s screwball comedy while trying to keep the emotions of the beginning of the film alive on top of cutting between the three couples to tell their stories in parallel. It doesn’t work! Why couldn’t the movie have stuck with the couple we met at the beginning and just tell a nice simple love story. Is it a sin to follow the principle of KISS when making a movie? That being Keep It Simple Stupid! There’s no reason to waste your time on this movie.

Jack’s Family Adventure (2010) – This movie is okay, but that’s the problem. It’s so okay that it’s not really worth watching. A guy played by Peter Graves dies and leaves a cabin to his son played by Jonathan Silverman. No! I’m not going to make that joke.

Jack decides to take his family to said cabin because we all know that getting away from city life brings families together. While they are adjusting, a guy called Wild Bill (Peter Strauss) shows up. They all have a good time and the family emerges closer than when they arrived. That’s it! Like I said, it’s just so okay that boredom sets in pretty quickly. Not worth seeking out, but you’ll survive if you end up seeing it.

Dear Prudence (2008) – Was Jane Seymour always this annoying? I think I have only seen her in Live And Let Die (1973). She is like the living embodiment of the wig from Lies Between Friends. Awful! Well, Seymour plays some TV show host who basically shows you life hack type stuff. She gets sent to a special place in Wyoming. It doesn’t take long for her to stumble upon a crime. I didn’t even know this was going to be a murder mystery going into it. I mean it doesn’t have “murder” or “mystery” in the title to tell me. Sadly, that is so common with Hallmark that I was honestly surprised when she came across blood on a carpet. However, I wasn’t surprised to quickly figure out this was actually shot in Canada. Little tip for Canadian productions trying to pretend they are in the U.S.: Don’t have your Canadian actors say the word “about”.

So in between fantasies of Jason showing up to cut off Seymour’s head, a murder mystery unravels. It’s not an interesting mystery by any means, but Seymour and her trusty side kick giving out all these stupid household remedies for everything will suck any fun you might derive from it right out of it. Skip!

Murder 101: College Can Be Murder (2007) – This is easily the best entry in the Murder 101 series. Despite “murder” being in the title of the movie, it is actually all about Dick Van Dyke trying to get his bike back after it is stolen. It’s an old bike that has a lot of sentimental value. He of course hires his friend played by his son Barry Van Dyke to help him track it down. It’s so funny! Dick keeps seeing people on campus riding his bike around and tries to chase them down. He never catches them. He goes to the gym to try and get in shape in the futile hope that it will help him catch the thief. Barry keeps going around questioning people all about this bike. Posters are put up all around campus. There’s even a scene where Dick is in class and has what I can only describe as a spidey sense that his bike is nearby. He runs out into the hall to find the thief waiting for him on his bike. A hilarious chase ensues.

I would have totally loved this movie if that was what it was actually about. In reality, the stolen bike is just a subplot. I made up some of that stuff, but he does keep chasing after the bike, goes to the gym to gain speed, and Dick does put up posters. Why couldn’t the movie be one long joke about that bike? Instead, some college professor gets killed by eating an orange. At first it’s natural causes, but after Barry does some dumpster diving to retrieve the orange (how the hell did he do that?) they discover he was poisoned. It all winds up revolving around the saying of “publish or perish”. It’s a decent entry in the Murder 101 series, but I really wanted that bike movie instead.

Halloween Horrors 2013 : “Self Storage”

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Sometimes even a movie with very little to recommend for it still has — well, something to recommend for it. Such is the case with this year’s direct-to-video, shot-on-HD indie horror effort Self Storage, a largely pathetic, unmemorable, boringly amoral (more on that before we’re through) piece of — uhhmm, work —- written and directed by, and starring, the supremely untalented Tom DeNucci.

Shot in Rhode Island, this is one of those flicks that’s pretty hard to see having much of an audience beyond the friends and immediate family of anyone involved in its production, being that every single character in it’s a complete douchebag, the blood n’ guts are both fairly tame and poorly realized, and its somewhat inventive premise is buried under layer upon layer of incompetent execution.

First, the particulars of the plot : go-nowhere pothead Jake (the aforementioned DeNucci) works as a security guard at a mini-storage facility. His friends, a half-assed assemblage of walking caricatures (the slut, the hot chick, the good girl, the horn-dog guy who gets a lot of pussy, the two other horn dog guys who get no pussy and are hopeless porn addicts) want to party at his workplace one night and figure it should be no sweat because Jake actually lives on the premises, as well. He says no at first, then says yes when he learns that his asshole boss (Eric Roberts) and flunky right-hand man (Micheal Berryman, whose name might not ring a bell to anyone but die-hard horror fans, but who even most casual viewers will recognize instantly thanks to The Hills Have Eyes, The Devil’s Rejects, and too many other flicks to mention — in short, he’s the tall, bald, weird-lookin’ dude) have cut some kind of shady deal with a local black marketeer (Jonathan Silverman — -speaking of supremely untalented), and intend to shut the place down the next day when they’re good and rich and fire their deadbeat part-timer’s ass in a heartbeat.

So — the party’s on, but everyone but Jake and his sweetheart get killed because the “big deal” that’s going down is a massive sale of kidnapped coeds for the purportedly thriving underground body parts and organs trade. Jake accidentally melts the folks who have already been kidnapped in an acid shower — long story — and finds that he and his dickhead friends have been tapped as replacements.

Yeah, I know — it sounds kinda creepy/interesting yet hopelessly stupid at the same time. Rest assured, dear reader, that the “hopelessly stupid” part of the equation wins the day in a hurry and you’ll be hoping against hope for everyone — even (and maybe especially) our purported “hero ” — to get killed both gruesomely and quickly. Unfortunately, things take a long time to get going, and aren’t very interesting once they do. DeNucci’s film is that rarest of things, then — a story about people you’re aching to see get murdered that bores you so fucking much that you don’t even end up caring how, when, or even if they die — you want ’em too, sure, but actively giving a damn is just too much effort.

So what about that whole “dully amoral” thing, then? Well, Jake ends up pocketing the take for his dead pals’ organs in the end, and rides off into the sunset with his ladyfriend, and I guess the two live happily ever after on the gruesome loot they’ve procured on the deceased bodies of their friends. Could be shocking, I suppose, if handled correctly, but it’s such a garbled mess that you honestly wonder if DeNucci even considered the ethical implications of his tasteless finale or if he just wrapped things up quickly because he didn’t know what the hell else to do at that point. The end result? It all falls pretty flat — just like the preceding 90-or-so minutes.

Still, as I mentioned at the outset, Self Storage has at least one thing going for it — Eric Roberts, who’s clearly in the “anything for a buck” phase of his career at this point. I don’t know about you, but if my script called for a psychotic cheeseball Viet Nam vet who owns a mini-storage business and trades in impromptu homemade (and fatal) surgery on the side, he’d be the first guy I’d call. And he certainly doesn’t disappoint here, hamming it up with the kind of overstated, fourth-wall-busting relish that makes his turn as the villainous Master in 1996’s Doctor Who TV movie look subtle by comparison. He’s a lot of fun to watch, and is clearly pushing the envelope of what he can get away with simply because he knows his chickenshit kid director doesn’t have the balls to step in and tell him to at least try to play it straight. I have a weird kind of respect for anyone willing to piss in his boss’s face so brazenly, and so I tip my hat to Mr. Roberts for clearly communicating with his outrageous performance exactly what he thinks of this steaming pile of dogshit he’s working on. Thanks for the money, ya snot-nosed little punk, now shut up, get the fuck out of my way, and let me do what I do best.

Beyond that, though, this is a movie with less than nothing going for it. Don’t waste your time and/or money picking it up on Blu-Ray or DVD, to be sure — and if you absolutely must watch it in spite of my dire warnings, then catch it on Netflix’s instant streaming queue, like I did. But honestly — you’re just better off leaving the whole thing alone and just trusting me when I say that Roberts is a blast to watch, but Self Storage is in no way worth sitting through just to see him ooze sleaze and disrespect for his (temporary) employers unless you’re really bored, stoned, or both.