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, for #ScarySocial, Deanna Dawn will be hosting 2008’s Cloverfield!
If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! The film is available on Prime. I’ll probably be there and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
On this date, in 1908, James Stewart was born in Pennsylvania. Over the course of a long career that saw him become a favorite of every director from Frank Capra to John Ford to Alfred Hitchcock to Anthony Mann, Jimmy Stewart gave a series of amazing performances. My favorite Stewart film is, of course, It’s A Wonderful Life. But I also love Stewart’s performance in 1959’s Anatomy of a Murder. Playing a somewhat cynical attorney, Stewart received his final Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his work in this classic and influential film.
In today’s scene that I love, James Stewart explains to his client (played by Ben Gazzara) that there are four ways that he can defend a murder charge. The contrast between Stewart’s classic style and Gazzara’s intense method style makes for an intense scene between two very talented and unique actors.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing The Master, which ran on NBC from January to August of 1984. Almost all nine of the show’s episodes can be found on Tubi!
The adventures of John Peter McAllister and Max Keller continue!
That’s right, the search for McAllister’s daughter is still on and Max is still learning how to be a ninja. But, before we get to their latest adventure, it’s time to enjoy the opening credits!
Episode 1.2 “Out-of-Time Step”
(Dir by Ray Austin, originally aired on January 27th, 1984)
“Hi, I’m Max Keller and this is how I spend my mornings….” Max Keller tells us in voice over as we watch footage of Max (Timothy Van Patten) balancing on a rope that’s been tied between two trees. Yes, Max is still our narrator and John Peter McAllister (Lee Van Cleef) is still training him to become a ninja. Max is also still traveling in his van and with his hamster.
At the end of the previous episode, Max and McAllister were heading down to Atlanta to search for McAllister’s daughter. At the start of this episode, we discover that they are in San Francisco, investigating a lead that McAllister’s daughter may have danced at a club called Truffles. So, did they go to Atlanta or did they just change their mind and decide to stick around California? More to the point, did NBC say, “Hey, we’re not paying for you people to go out of state?”
Anyway, Truffles turns out to be a club that’s owned by Charlie Patterson (Charles Collins), a former film star who has fallen on hard times. (Charles Collins was a real-life dancer and when Patterson watches footage of a screen test that his character supposedly did for a Hollywood production, the footage is actually of Collins performing in a 1936 film called Dancing Pirate.) Patterson has two daughters. Kelly (Shanna Reed) is a dancer who thrills the club’s patrons every time she steps out onto the stage. The other, Jill (Lori Lethin), uses a wheelchair. Jill tells Charlie that he’s “an ex-hoofer with two daughters, one who wheels and one who does cartwheels.”
Upon arriving at Truffles, Max and McAllister discover that Charlie is being intimidated by Chinatown gangster, Johnny Chan (Brian Toshi) and Chan’s main enforcer, Mr. Lika (Soon-Tek Oh). Mr. Lika spots McAllister’s medallion and realizes that McAllister is a trained ninja. McAllister spots Mr. Lika’s ring and realizes that Mr. Lika is a member of the Yakuza. This establishes a mutual respect between the two of them, one that inevitably leads to a final battle between Soon-Tek Oh and Lee Van Cleef’s stunt double.
Of course, McAllister does more than just fight Mr. Lika. He also encourages Jill to stand up from her wheelchair and take a few steps. And when Johnny Chan has Kelly kidnapped, he and Max rescue her. (But not before Johnny shouts at her, “You’re a dancer! DANCE!”) It leads to a lot of action scenes but it doesn’t bring them any closer to McAllister’s daughter.
This episode wasn’t bad, largely because Soon-Tek Oh and Lee Van Cleef got a chance to face off. Even if all of the actual fighting was done by Van Cleef’s stunt double, it’s still undeniably fun to watch these two icons glare at each other and exchange tough guy dialogue. Plus, there was a lot of dancing! I always appreciate any show that finds room for more than one dance number, even if they are obviously lifted from Flashdance.
As I mentioned earlier, this episode ended with McAllister and Max nowhere close to finding McAllister’s daughter. But Max promised that they could keep looking. I’m sure they’ll find her. It’s not like America is that big.
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 10 pm et, #FridayNightFlix has got 1985’s Fletch!
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag! It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
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, on what would have been his 70th birthday, we celebrate filmmaker Albert Pyun!
It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Albert Pyun Films
The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982, dir by Albert Pyun, DP: Joseph Margine)
Cyborg (1989, dir by Albert Pyun, DP: Philip Alan Waters)
Captain America (1990, dir by Albert Pyun, DP: Philp Alan Waters)
Kickboxer 2 (1991, dir by Albert Pyun, DP: George Mooradian)
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing City Guys, which ran on NBC from 1997 to 2001. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!
This week, the city guys finally leave the city for a while. Drama follows.
Episode 4.24 “El-Brain”
(Dir by Frank Bonner, originally aired on December 16th, 2000)
On Wikipedia, this episode’s plot is described as follows: “El-Train enters the Science Fair to prove that he’s smarter than everyone, including Jamal, who thinks he isn’t.” Unfortunately, this is one of the episodes that is not streaming anywhere online so I haven’t been able to watch it. Interestingly. the title of this episode would seem to indicated that I’ve been referring to L-Train by the wrong name all this time.
Well, he’ll always be L-Train to me. And I hope he did well at the science fair. I’m also going to assume that Jamal learned a lesson about judging people.
Episode 4.25 “Pier Pressure”
(Dir by Frank Bonner, originally aired on December 16th, 2000)
Chris has got access to his father’s vacation home for the weekend so the kids are going to the Hamptons!
Everyone is super excited about the idea of going out on Chris’s father’s yacht. The only problem is that the yacht’s captain has called in sick. Fortunately, Chris knows how to sail. He, Cassidy, Dawn, and Al take the yacht out for a spin. As you can probably guess, this leads to one disaster after another. First off, Al forgets to pack the food because he’s tired of Dawn trying to micromanage his life. Secondly, Chris and Al turn out to be not quite the expert fishermen that they claimed to be. Third, after turning off the engine, Chris can’t figure out how to drop the anchor. Fourth, the boat floats until it hits a sandbar. Fifth, the boat runs out of gas. Sixth, the boat runs out of power. Seventh, Al announces that everyone is going to starve to death. That does seem like a distinct possibility but at least they’ll get to experience a little bit of the yacht life before they die. Plus, if they die, the show will be over and I can start watching something better.
Meanwhile, Jamal and L-Train invite two women up to the house, which they now claim to own. The women make themselves comfortable in the living room. Suddenly, Ms. Noble and Billy show up! What are they doing there!? It turns out that they’re spending the weekend at the Hamptons as well and they just decided to stop by. Seriously, school’s out. It’s the weekend! No one wants to see their principal on the weekend! And really, I am kind of suspicious of any principal who would decide to just drop in on their students during they’re own vacation. That’s weird.
Fortunately, it all works out in the end. Jamal suddenly notices that Chris, Al, Dawn, and Cassidy haven’t come home. The coast guard is called. Everyone lives! Yay! This is the type of episode that I can’t stand, where every problem is the result of people just being unbelievably stupid. But at least it only lasted 30 minutes or so.
In 2020’s Joker’s Poltergeist (also known as Joker’s Wild), Eric Roberts plays James Jennings. Jennings was a part-owner of the Palace Theater Chain until his partner, Rand Place (Martin Kove), forced him out and gave the business to his daughter, Aurora Place (Lacie Marie Meyer). After apparently filming himself discussing how he is going to be starting a movement and how no one is ever going to forget him, James dresses up like a clown, goes down to the theater, and guns down the audience of a film called Joker’s Wild. He also kills Rand before being shot himself by another theatergoer, William Remmington (Ari Boyland).
Clips of James’s final message are shown throughout Joker’s Poltergeist but we never actually see Roberts interacting with the rest of the cast. (When James starts shooting people at the theater, he does so under a mask that he never removes and the end credits indicate that an actor other than Roberts played James in those scenes.) This is obviously one of those films where Roberts filmed his scenes over the course of an hour or two, probably in his own office. He certainly wasn’t on the set. The same can be said of Martin Kove, who only appears as a part of a video message that Rand taped for Aurora before the shooting. For that matter, Dustin Diamond appears for a few brief seconds and again, only as a part of a filmed message that Aurora watches.
Instead, the majority of the film takes place a year after the shooting. Aurora is fighting to not only re-open her theater but to also keep concealed carry legal in her state. She is now dating William and is a part of a support group made up of other survivors of the massacre. From the moment Aurora reenters the old theater, she starts to have strange visions of killer clowns, demonic doctors, and sleazy politicians. “You shouldn’t like guns….” the evil doctors chant at her. At one point, she and her friends are trapped in the theater and being taunted by the spirits of the dead and, at another point, Aurora is suddenly in a hospital and being menaced by killer nurses. Aurora struggles to figure out what is real and what is a dream, with the film suggesting that theater itself has become a separate dimension that is populated by James’s victims. At its best, the film plays out like an unsettling nightmare, the type that doesn’t necessarily cause you to wake up screaming but which still remains fresh in your mind throughout the day.
On the one hand, the film is obviously based on the 2012 Dark Knight Rises shooting that it feels more than a little distasteful. On the other hand, the film is intriguingly surreal and Lacie Marie Meyer gives a really good performance as Aurora. (Yes, it would appear that she was named after Aurora, Colorado, which is one reason why the film feels so distasteful even though it has a handful of effective moments.) The film does attempt to say something about guns, with Aurora being a proponent of the 2nd amendment and the gun-grabbing mayor and his wife being behind the efforts to tear down the theater. It’s hard to really say which side the film comes down on, though I think it’s ultimately more pro-gun control than anything else. That said, the film’s portrayal of the mayor and his wife as being vapid politicians who want to keep their own guns while taking away everyone else’s felt true to life.
Joker’s Poltergeist is ultimately a bit too icky and exploitive to really work but it still has its moments. It’s a movie that keeps you guessing, if nothing else.
Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:
There’s been a lot of controversy about the length of Martin Scorsese’s upcoming film, Killers of the Flower Moon, with many of the same people who regularly praise 150-minute comic book films complaining that Scorsese shouldn’t be allowed to devote over 3 hours and 26 minutes to telling the story of the Osage murders. You can probably already guess from my tone that I have no problem with the idea of watching a 206-minute Martin Scorsese film.
The trailer for Killers of the Flower Moon was released earlier today. (The film itself will be premiering at Cannes in just a few more days.) The trailer looks great, with Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio appearing to be in fine form. (Reportedly, the film’s hero is played by Jesse Plemons but he’s barely glimpsed in the trailer. It makes sense, of course. For a lot of people, one of the main attractions of Killers of the Flower Moon will be a chance to see Scorsese’s two regular leading men, DiCaprio and De Niro in the same film. Yes, I know about This Boy’s Life but come on, that was Michael Caton-Jones. This is Scorsese!) Can you find the wolves in this picture?
Through the Shattered Lens 