I watched the classic Terence Hill film Super Fuzz last night. As anyone who has seen the movie can tell you, the movie features a theme song that just won’t quit. It’s been stuck in my head since last night. And now, it can be stuck in yours!
There’s a man, do you see? And he looks just like you and me Didn’t he know? Everything he got don’t show
There’s a cop, do you see? And he looks like every cop on the street You will discover You can’t judge this cop by his cover
He’s a super snooper Really super trooper A wonder cop, a one like you never saw
He’s a super snooper Really super trooper A wonder cop, who roll the side of the law
There’s a stir on the floor Super snooper open the door Didn’t he know? Everything he got don’t show
He’s a super snooper Really super trooper A wonder cop, a one like you never saw He’s a super snooper Really super trooper
He’s a super snooper Really super trooper A wonder cop, a one like you never saw He’s a super snooper Really super trooper
He’s a super snooper Really super trooper A wonder cop, a one like you never saw
He’s a super snooper Really super trooper A wonder cop who roll the side of the law
Songwriters: Angelo La Bionda / Carmelo La Bionda / Timothy Touchton
Today, we wish a happy birthday to actress Geena Davis. Today’s scene that I love comes from 1996’s The Long Kiss Goodnight and features Geena Davis as a badass action movie star!
4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films is just what it says it is, 4 (or more) shots from 4 (or more) of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films lets the visuals do the talking.
96 years ago today, Radley Metzger was born in New York, New York. After serving as a photographer in the U.S. Air Force, Metzger went into film distribution. He brought European “art” films to the United States and booked them in various grindhouse theaters. Like so many film distributors and producers, Metzger eventually realized that he could make a lot more many by making his own films. In the late 60s and the early 70s, Metzger was one of the pioneers of the adult film industry. He directed adult films that were distinguished by their strong sense of composition, intelligent storylines, and their sense of characterization.
Unfortunately, Metzger’s films were a bit too arty for the adult crowd and too explicit for the mainstream critics. Still, over the years, Metzger’s work has been rediscovered and appreciated by open-minded film lovers and by people like me who just happen to like artistically-minded decadence.
Today, we honor Radley Metzger with….
4 Shots From 4 Radley Metzger Films
Camille 2000 (1969, dir by Radley Metzger, DP: Ennio Guarnieri)
The Lickerish Quartet (1970, dir by Radley Metzger. DP: Hans Jura)
Score (1974, dir by Radley Metzger, DP: Frano Vodopivec)
Barbara Broadcast (1977, dir. Radley Metzger, DP: Chico Carter)
In Reagan, Dennis Quaid stars at the 40th President of the United States.
Framed as a story being told by a former KGB agent (Jon Voight) who is attempting to make a younger politician understand why Russia lost the Cold War, Reagan starts with Reagan’s childhood, includes his time as an actor and as the anti-communist head of the SAG, and then gets into his political career. Along the way, several familiar faces pop up. Robert Davi plays a thuggish Russian leader. Mena Suvari plays Reagan’s first wife while Penelope Ann Miller plays his second. Xander Berekely plays George Schultz (who was just previously played by Sam Waterston in The Dropout miniseries.) C. Thomas Howell, Kevin Dillon, Dan Lauria, and Lesley-Anne Down all have small but important roles. And the usual suspects when it comes to conservative filmmaking — Nick Searcy, Kevin Sorbo, and Pat Boone — are there to compliment Voight and Davi. I was a little surprised to see that Dean Cain was not present.
As usually happens to films that feature sympathetic Republicans, Reagan was slammed by critic but better-appreciated by the audience for which the film was made. I wasn’t particularly surprised. Movie critics tend to be liberal and Reagan is very much not that. For a professional film critic, a film like Reagan must be met with snark and derision because otherwise, one would risk cancellation. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that there aren’t things to criticize about Reagan the film. I’m just saying that one should always keep in mind that critics have their own individual biases. One reason why the Rotten Tomatoes score is such an unfortunate development is because it ignores the fact that most films have things that work and things that don’t work and that quality is often in the eye of the beholder. Instead, it just tells us that a film is either a 90% or a 10%.
As for Reagan, it’s definitely a bit on the heavy-handed side but, then again, I think the same can be said for just about every political film that’s come out over the last few decades. For those who claim Reagan is somehow more heavy-handed than most, I invite them to sit through Rob Reiner’s LBJ. Indeed, the only director who has really shown a willingness to admit that a President can be both good and bad was Oliver Stone and when was the last time anyone watched Nixon? Reagan is at its weakness when it tries to recreate Reagan’s time as an actor. Dennis Quaid gives a good and charming performance throughout the film but he’s also 70 years old and, in the scenes where he plays the youngish Ronald Reagan, all of the soft-lighting and Vaseline on the lens ends up making him look like a wax figure. Once Reagan gets older, Quaid is allowed to act his age and both he and the film become much more convincing. I enjoyed the film once Reagan became President, though you should understand that I have biases of my own. I’m a fan of low taxes and individual freedom, which is why I’m also not a fan of communism or, for that matter, any extreme ideology that attempts to tell people how to live or think. “Tear down this wall!” Regan says while standing in front of the Berlin Wall and it’s a rousing moment, both in reality and on film.
In the end, Reagan is a film that will be best appreciated by people who already like Ronald Reagan. Yes, the film is heavy-handed and the framing device is a bit awkward. But Dennis Quaid’s heartfelt (and, towards the end, heartbreaking) performance carries the film. The film is not at all subtle but you know what? I’ve seen a countless number of mediocre films that have portrayed Reagan negatively, often with as little nuance and just as heavy-handed an approach as Reagan uses in its positive portrayal of the man. I sat through The Butler, for God’s sake. There’s nothing wrong with having a film that looks at the man from the other side. Those who like Ronald Reagan will feel vindicated. Those who don’t will say, “What was up with that Pat Boone scene?”
The great director Federico Fellini was born, on this day, 125 years ago.
He was born in Rimini. That’s in Northern Italy. (The Italian side of my family comes from Southern Italy and yes, there is a difference.) Fellini was 19 years old when he enrolled in law school but records, which were admittedly spotty at the time, seem to indicate that he never attended a single class. Instead, Fellini found work as a writer, working first as a journalist and then a screenwriter. (He was one of the many credited for writing the screenplay for Rome, Open City.) He began his directing career as a neorealist in the 50s but soon crafted his own unique style, one which openly mixed humor with drama and fantasy with earthiness. Fellini established himself as one of the world’s best directors, a filmmaker who made art films that not only entertained but also provoked thought. Fellini was a director who embraced life’s contradictions as well as being a strong anti-authoritarian who rarely commented on politics but did make known his distaste for communism. He was also one of Mario Bava’s best friends.
My favorite Fellini film is 1960’s La Dolce Vita.
Ah, to be rich, decadent, and jaded in Rome in the early 60s! Or maybe not. Sometimes, being jaded is not as much fun as it seems.
La Dolce Vita is largely remembered for the scene in which actress Sylvia (Anita Ekberg) and journalist Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) wade into Rome’s Trevi Fountain. While that it is a great and sensual scene and justifiably famous (and, in fact, the film’s poster was originally a shot of Ekberg in the fountain despite the fact that the scene is only a small part of a 3-hour movie), it’s often overlooked that the scene itself does not have a happy ending. When Marcello and Sylvia return to Sylvia’s hotel, Sylvia is slapped by her loutish boyfriend (played by Lex Barker). Marcello, meanwhile, has a fiancée named Emma (Yvonne Furneaux) who is recovering from a recent overdose. Even though Marcello swears that he loves Emma and that he would do anything for her, he is still compulsively unfaithful.
When we first meet Marcello, he’s in a news helicopter, watching as a statue of Jesus is flown over Rome. However, Marcello is distracted by the sight of a group of women sunbathing on a nearby rooftop and he tries to get their phone numbers before returning to following the statue. That pretty much sets the tone for most of what we see of Marcello over the course of La Dolce Vita. He’s searching for the profound and transcendent but he frequently gets distracted by his own more earthy desires.
The film follows Marcello as he encounters different people in Rome and the surrounding area. Some of them are rich and some of them are poor. All of them are looking for something but none of them seem to be quite sure what it is. A possible sighting of the Madonna brings a crowd of people to the outskirts of Rome, where everyone asks for something but the end result is only chaos. A meeting with an intellectual friend of Marcello seems to offer a solution to Marcello’s ennui until a tragedy reveals that his friend was even more lost than Marcello. (The film’s sudden tragic turn took me very much by surprise when I first saw it, despite the fact that countless filmmakers have imitated the moment since.) A possibly important conversation on a beach is made unintelligible by the crashing waves and, instead of providing enlightenment, it ends with a shrugs and an enigmatic smile. There’s a definite strain melancholy running through the film though there’s also a certain joi de vivre to many of Marcello’s adventures. Marcello is torn between seeking transcendence and seeking pleasure. Fellini shows us that both are equally important. It’s left to use to decide whether the pleasure is worth the heartache and vice versa.
La Dolce Vita is visually stunning portrait of life in Rome at a very particular cultural moment. Marcello Mastroianni is the epitome of decadent cool in the lead role but he’s also a good enough actor to let us see that Marcello is never quite as proud of himself or as happt with his life as everyone assumes he is. La Dolce Vita may be about a specific cultural moment but, as a film, it is timeless.
There’s a brilliant scene that occurs towards the end of 1983’s The Right Stuff.
It takes place in 1963. The original Mercury astronauts, who have become a symbol of American ingenuity and optimism, are being cheered at a rally in Houston. Vice President Lyndon Johnson (Donald Moffat) stands on a stage and brags about having brought the astronauts to his supporters. One-by-one, the astronauts and their wives wave to the cheering crowd. They’re all there: John Glenn (Ed Harris), Gus Grissom (Fred Ward), Alan Shephard (Scott Glenn), Wally Schirra (Lance Henrisken), Deke Slayton (Scott Paulin), Scott Carpenter (Charles Frank), and the always-smiling Gordon Cooper (Dennis Quaid). The astronauts all look good and they know how to play to the crowd. They were chosen to be and sold as heroes and all of them have delivered.
While the astronauts are celebrated, Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard) is at Edwards Air Force Base. Yeager is the pilot who broke the sound barrier and proved that the mythical “demon in the sky,” which was whispered about by pilots as a warning about taking unnecessary risks, was not waiting to destroy every pilot who tried to go too fast or too high. Yeager is considered by many, including Gordon Cooper, to be the best pilot in America. But, because Yeager didn’t have the right image and he had an independent streak, he was not ever considered to become a part of America’s young space program. Yeager, who usually holds his emotions in check, gets in a jet and flies it straight up into the sky, taking the jet to the edge of space. For a few briefs seconds, the blue sky becomes transparent and we can see the stars and the darkness behind the Earth’s atmosphere. At that very moment, Yeager is at the barrier between reality and imagination, the past and the future, the planet and the universe. And watching the film, the viewer is tempted to think that Yeager might actually make it into space finally. It doesn’t happen, of course. Yeager pushes the jet too far. He manages to eject before his plane crashes. He walks away from the cash with the stubborn strut of a western hero. His expression remains stoic but we know he’s proven something to himself. At that moment, the Mercury Astronauts might be the face of America but Yeager is the soul. Both the astronauts and Yeager play an important role in taking America into space. While the astronauts have learned how to take care of each other, even the face of government bureaucracy and a media that, initially, was eager to mock them and the idea of a man ever escaping the Earth’s atmosphere, Chuck Yeager reminds us that America’s greatest strength has always been its independence.
Philip Kaufman’s film about the early days of the space program is full of moments like that. The Right Stuff is a big film. It’s a long film. It’s a chaotic film, one that frequently switches tone from being a modern western to a media satire to reverent recreation of history. Moments of high drama are mixed with often broad humor. Much like Tom Wolfe’s book, on which Kaufman’s film is based, the sprawling story is often critical of the government and the press but it celebrates the people who set speed records and who first went into space. The film opens with Yeager, proving that a man can break the sound barrier. It goes on to the early days of NASA, ending with the final member of the Mercury Seven going into space. In between, the film offers a portrait of America on the verge of the space age. We watch as John Glenn goes from being a clean-cut and eager to please to standing up to both the press and LBJ. Even later, Glenn sees fireflies in space while an aborigines in Australia performs a ceremony for his safety. We watch as Gus Grissom barely survives a serious accident and is only rescued from drowning after this capsule has been secured. The astronauts go from being ridiculed to celebrated and eventually respected, even by Chuck Yeager.
It’s a big film with a huge cast. Along with Sam Shepherd and the actors who play the Mercury Seven, Barbara Hershey, Pamela Reed, Jeff Goldblum, Harry Shearer, Royal Dano, Kim Stanley, Scott Wilson, and William Russ show up in roles both small and large. It can sometimes be a bit of an overwhelming film but it’s one that leaves you feeling proud of the pioneering pilots and the brave astronauts and it leaves you thinking about the wonder of the universe that surrounds our Earth. It’s a strong tribute to the American spirit, the so-called right stuff of the title.
The Right Stuff was nominated for Best Picture but, in the end, it lost to a far more lowkey film, 1983’s Terms of Endearment. Sam Shepard was nominated for Best Supporting Actor but lost to Jack Nicholson. Nicolson played an astronaut.
In 2021’s The Elevator, Eric Roberts plays Roman Juniper, who is married and who has three kids but who also has a demanding job in a downtown office building. Even though it’s both the weekend and his youngest daughter’s birthday, Roman still has to go into work for a few hours. Unfortunately, just as Roman is looking forward to heading home and celebrating with his family, there’s an electrical short in the building and Roman finds himself trapped in the elevator!
His family starts to wonder where he is and, in another unfortunate coincidence, he is initially misidentified as having been involved in a freak accident that occurred outside of his building. His family fears that Roman is dead but will they ever discover that he’s actually tapped in a dark elevator, where he’s yelling and losing his mind?
In many ways, this film is the ultimate latter day Eric Roberts movie. Roberts is actually the lead in this movie. The film centers around his character and, even when he’s not on-screen, everyone is talking about him. For once, this is not a film where Roberts just shows up in some throw-away role and lends the production a few minutes of Eric Roberts star power. The Elevator is a legitimate Eric Roberts films. And yet, because of the film’s plot, Roberts still spends the majority of his screentime on only one set and, for the most part, he doesn’t really interact with the rest of the cast. Everyone else is out looking for him but Eric Roberts is alone on that elevator. He’s acting up a storm and Eric Roberts is always at his best when he’s playing an emotional character but it’s difficult not to notice that he was probably able to shoot his entire role in just a day or two. You have to respect a man who can star in a movie and still manage to get it all done in just a handful of hours.
Eric Roberts is, not surprisingly, the main reason to see The Elevator. The film itself is poorly paced and cheap-looking. But Eric Roberts is always fun to watch.
Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter and occasion ally Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of Mastodon’s #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We snark our way through it.
Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be Super Fuzz, starring Terrence Hill!
Then, on twitter, #MondayMuggers will be showing Burglar, starring Whoopi Goldberg! The film is on Prime and it starts at 10 pm et!
It should make for a night of exciting and thought-provoking viewing and I invite all of you to join in. If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto Mastodon, pull up Super Fuzz on YouTube, start the movie at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag! Then switch over to twitter, pull Burglar up on Prime, and use the #MondayMuggers hashtag!
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More 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 birthday, we take the time to pay tribute to one of our favorite directors. Needless to say, when it comes to David Lynch, there’s an embarrassment of riches.
Here are….
20 Shots From David Lynch
Eraserhead (1977, directed by David Lynch, DP: Frederick Elmes and Herbert Cardwell)
The Elephant Man (1980, dir by David Lynch, DP: Freddie Francis)
Dune (1984, dir by David Lynch, DP: Freddie Francis)
Blue Velvet (1986, dir by David Lynch, DP: Frederick Elmes)
Twin Peaks: The Pilot (1990, dir by David Lynch, DP: Ron Garcia)
Twin Peaks 1.3 “Zen or the Skill To Catch a Killer” (1990, dir by David Lynch, DP: Frank Byers)
Wild At Heart (1990, dir by David Lynch, DP: Frederick Elmes)
Twin Peaks 2.7 “Lonely Souls” (1990, dir by David Lynch, DP: Frank Byers)
Twin Peaks 2.22 (1991, dir by David Lynch, DP: Frank Byers)
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992, dir by David Lynch, DP: Ron Garcia)
On The Air 1.1 “The Lester Guy Show” (dir by David Lynch, DP: Ron Garcia)
Lost Highway (1997, dir by David Lynch, DP: Peter Deming)
The Straight Story (1999, dir by David Lynch, DP: Freddie Francis)
Rabbits (2002, dir by David Lynch, DP: David Lynch)
Mulholland Drive (2000, dir by David Lynch, DP: Peter Deming)
Twin Peaks: The Return Part 3 (dir by David Lynch, DP: Peter Deming)
Inland Empire (2006, dir by David Lynch, DP: David Lynch)
Twin Peaks: The Return Part 8 (2017, dir by David Lynch, DP: Peter Dening)
Twin Peaks: The Return Part 18 (2017, dir by David Lynch)
What Did Jack Do? (2017, dir by David Lynch, DP: Scott Ressler)
First released in 1982, this epic recreation of one key battles of the Korean War was an expensive film with a cast of well-known actors. Jacqueline Bisset plays a wealthy army wife who tries to protect five South Korean children who have found themselves in the middle of the battle. Ben Gazzara plays her husband, a major who is having an affair with the daughter of Toshiro Mifune. David Janssen and real-life film critic Rex Reed wander through the film as journalist. (Janssen growls like a man dealing with a serious hangover while Reed struggles to not look straight at the camera.) Richard Roundtree plays a tough sergeant. The great Italian actor Gabriele Ferzetti plays a Turkish officer. And, finally, the role of legendary American general Douglas MacArthur — of “I will return” fame — is played by the very British Sir Laurence Olivier. Olivier was apparently told that, in real life, MacArthur often sounded like the comedic actor W.C. Fields and Olivier often seems to be imitating Fields’s pinched style of speaking. Olivier also wears almost as much makeup here as he did in his production of Othello. MacArthur is portrayed as being almost a mystic warrior, a man who relies as much on his faith as his strategic genius to repel the communists. (In victory, he recites The Lord’s Prayer.) The film was directed by Terence Young, who previously brought James Bond to cinematic life.
Inchon is notorious for being a flop with both critics and audiences. The film had a budget of $46,000,000 and reportedly made $5,000,000 at the box office before it was withdrawn. The entirety of the budget was put up by the Unification Church, which is an organization that many people consider to be a cult. (I like neither communists nor cultists so this film left me with no one to root for.) The film proved to be such a flop at the box office that it has never been released on home video. It did, however, air on television a few times and, in recent years, the television cut has been posted to YouTube. That’s how I saw Inchon.
I watched Inchon because I’ve frequently seen it referred to as being one of the worst films ever made. Watching the film, I have to say that I think the “worst film” label is a bit extreme. For the most part, it’s just an extremely uneven and often rather boring film, one that mixed scenes of surprisingly brutal combat with dialogue-heavy scenes that just seem to drag on forever. It’s a film that belongs as much in the disaster genre as the war genre as the film is full of rather shallowly-written characters who all have their own individual dramas to deal with. Will Jacqueline Bisset save the children? Who will sacrifice their lives to defeat the communists? Will Ben Gazzara, who often seems to be the sole member of the cast who is at least tying to give a credible performance, choose his wife or his mistress? The film ultimately feels like a compressed miniseries. Everyone has a story but hardly anyone makes an impression.
That said, Laurence Olivier’s performance as Douglas MacArthur …. agck! Seriously, it’s hard to know where to even begin when it comes to talking about just how miscast Olivier is as the quintessential all-American general. It’s been said that it takes a truly great actor to give a truly bad performance and Olivier certainly proves that to be true in this film. Obviously frail and trying to sound like W.C. Fields, Olivier’s MacArthur is a general who would inspire zero confidence. The film doesn’t help by portraying MacArthur as being an almost holy figure, one who is often framed to look like almost an angel descending from Heaven to lead the battle against America’s enemies. The film is full of scenes of people discussing MacArthur’s genius just to be followed by a scene of Olivier looking old, tired, and rather grumpy. There were a few times when I thought I could see Olivier’s hair dye running down the side of his face. It may have been my imagination or just the graininess of the upload on YouTube but, given the quality of the film, I can’t really dismiss the possibility that it happened and no one felt like doing a second take.
As I said, Inchon can be found on YouTube. It’s not the worst film ever made but that doesn’t mean it’s a good one.
Through the Shattered Lens 