Guilty Pleasure No. 53: Happy Gilmore (dir by Dennis Dugan)

Posted on March 25, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Poor Shooter McGavin! As played by the great Christopher McDonald, Shooter McGavin is the often unacknowledged hero of the 1996 comedy classic, Happy Gilmore.

I know, I know. Most people will tell you that Shooter is actually the bad guy. He’s the snooty pro golfer who tries to keep aspiring hockey player-turned-golfer Happy Gilmore (Adam Sandler) from competing on the PGA tour. And it is true that he does allow himself to get consumed with jealousy over Happy’s popularity. And he does definitely cross the line when he buys and holds hostage the house where Happy’s grandmother has spent almost her entire life. (“She’s so old! Look at her! She’d old!” Happy exclaims at one point.) But try to look at it from Shooter’s point of view.

Shooter has spent years playing golf. He’s practiced. He’s paid his dues. He’s done what he had to do to earn his spot as America’s best golfer. And now, he finally has a chance to win his first championship. And what happens? A very loud hockey player shows up from out-of-nowhere and totally changes the sport. What really has to be galling is that Happy’s not even a good player. He can’t putt. He has no strategy. His only skill is the distance that he can hit the ball. And yet, despite all that, Happy becomes a media superstar. The only people willing to stand up to Happy and defend the honor of the game are Bob Barker and …. Shooter McGavin.

Really, Shooter doesn’t really start to go after Happy until Happy’s fans starts to purposefully antagonize him. Remember Happy’s ex-boss showing up to heckle Shooter even though he still had that nail in his head? Seriously that’s not right. I mean, who shows up to support the dude who put a nail in your head? Shooter McGavin had every reason to be concerned about that.

Despite the fact that Shooter was treated rather unfairly, Happy Gilmore is definitely a favorite of mine. I pretty much love the entire film, from Carl Weathers’s enjoyably demented performance as Happy’s mentor to the famous scene of Bob Barker beating Happy to a pulp. For those who only know Adam Sandler from his later, lazier comedies, Happy Gilmore will be a bit of a revelation because Sandler and the entire cast actually seem to be making an effort to make a good and funny comedy. The staid world of golf turns out to be the perfect foil for Sandler’s manchild antics. And for those who prefer Sandler when he’s playing serious roles, he actually does a pretty good job in Happy Gilmore’s few sincere moments. His scenes with his grandmother are actually rather sweet.

Happy Gilmore remains Sandler’s best comedy and it’s a personal favorite of mine. Every time I watch it, I laugh and that’s a good thing. I also like to think that Shooter and Happy eventually set aside their differences and got their own talk show on ESPN. They deserved it.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Insomnia File #53: A Nightmare on Drug Street (dir by Traci Wald Donat)

Posted on March 25, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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 you were having trouble getting to sleep last night, you could have gone over to YouTube and you could have done what I did when I was having trouble getting to sleep two nights ago. You could have watched the 1989 educational film, A Nightmare on Drug Street.

Clocking in at 39 minutes, A Nightmare on Drug Street opens with three people sitting in a dark room. Though the room seems ominous and the three people often appear to only be shadows, they turn out to to be friendly enough. (And no, Freddy Krueger is not among them. This is Drug Street, not Elm Street.)

“Hi, I’m Jill!” the one in the middle informs us. “I’m dead!”

Filipe, who is is sitting to left of and is a bit less perky than Jill, mentions that they’re all dead. Eddie, the youngest of the three, speaks up and mentions that he’s been dead for two days longer than Jill. They all have a good laugh about that. Jill says that she’s not sure where they are but she thinks that they’re supposed to think about their mistakes and to try to prevent other people their age from making the same mistakes.

“Jill,” I nearly shouted at the screen, “you’re in Purgatory! It’s not that complicated!”

Eddie complains as he realizes that he’s going to have to relive his story again. Jill laughs and says that Eddie is always complaining. Filipe does not laugh because he’s not in a particularly good mood and I don’t blame him. His Purgatory experience is obviously not turning out the way that he was hoping. It would appear that Filipe has gotten trapped on the boring side of Purgatory.

Anyway, we then see how each of them ended up dead. As you can probably guess from the title it all has to do with drugs.

For instance, after winning the big game, Filipe got both stoned and drunk and then decided that it would be a good idea to steal his brother’s car. Needless to say, it doesn’t take long until Filipe’s more intelligent friend is demanding to be let out of the car. It also doesn’t take long to hear the sound of an off-screen crash. Apparently, there wasn’t enough money in the budget to film a real crash.

Jill met a guy at a party and basically allowed herself to be talked into trying cocaine. As anyone who has ever seen a film like this can probably guess, Jill goes straight from doing that one line to stealing from her friends and selling a family heirloom so she can get more money for coke. Her family is disappointed in her. Her friends are angry with her. And her drug dealer keeps hitting on her. No wonder Jill eventually end up snorting too much.

And finally, Eddie, who is still in middle school, is handed a crack pipe by a friend. Soon, Eddie is getting high in the bathroom while his parents try to understand why his grades have gone down.

Interestingly enough, each story is narrated by a dead teen but not the teen that actually dies in the story. So, Jill tells Filipe’s story and makes fun of him for being geeky whenever he gets high. (Yeah, Jill, like you looked really cool with your bloodshot eyes and your red nose….) Eddie tells Jill’s story and manages to get through it without ridiculing her. Filipe tells Eddie’s story while wearing what appears to be a hospital gown. There’s actually a scene in Purgatory where the three of them debate who will tell each story. Do they automatically know the stories or is it just a case that they’re memorized them because there’s literally nothing else to talk about while in Purgatory? The film leaves that question unanswered, which is a shame.

(Speaking of unanswered questions, why are we even in Purgatory in the first place? The three narrators look directly at the viewer when they speak so I’m guess that I’m meant to have died as well. But if I’m already dead, what’s the point of warning me about drugs? Seriously, there’s a lot of unanswered questions in this film.)

Anyway, as for the film itself, it’s another well-intentioned but not quite successful attempt to make an anti-drug scare film. Like many anti-drug short films, A Nightmare on Drug Street suffers due to the fact that the characters are more interesting when they’re high than when they’re sober. The stories themselves often veer into melodrama though, to the film’s credit, it seems to at least be a bit self-aware when it comes to this. When Filipe jumps in his car, Jill says that she knows that we know what’s going to happen but she asks us to keep watching anyways. After being specifically asked to watch, you kind of feel like you have to.

For the most part, this film’s main worth is as a time capsule. It’s all about 80s fashion and 80s lingo. Breaking Bad fans will take note that Filipe is played by Raymond Cruz, who later played a fearsome drug dealer on the classic AMC series. I guess Filipe found his way out of Purgatory after all.

Previous Insomnia Files:

6 Classic Trailers For March 25th, 2022

Posted on March 25, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Since it’s Oscar week, it seems like a good idea to devote the latest edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film trailers to 6 classic films that received not a single Oscar nomination. That’s the way the Oscars are unfortunately. Sometimes, the best films are totally ignored.

For instance….

Chappaqua (1967)

1967 was a great year for the movie so perhaps it’s understandable that the Academy somehow overlooked Chappaqua. Still, this film was far more deserving a nomination than Doctor Doolittle.

2. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1971)

Valley of the Dolls received an Oscar nominations for its score. However, it’s unofficial sequel didn’t even receive that. Not a single nomination went to Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, not even Best Original Song. In 1970, the Academy just wasn’t ready.

3. Coffy (1973)

Ellen Burstyn certainly deserved the Oscar for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore but still, how could the Academy not nominate Pam Grier for her work in Coffy?

4. Dawn of the Dead (1978)

The Academy will probably never embrace the zombie genre. They certainly weren’t prepared to do so in 1978. That said, it’s way past time to give Tom Savini an honorary award.

5. The Warriors (1979)

The Warriors is another classic that went unnominated. Not even the music got a nomination. David Patrick Kelly was totally snubbed. The Baseball Furies should have been sitting in front row on Oscar night. It’s a true shame.

6. Death Wish 3 (1985)

Give the Giggler an Oscar!

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special David Lean Edition

Posted on March 25, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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, we celebrate the birth and the legacy of the great British director, David Lean! He was born 114 years ago today and went on to become one of the most important and influential directors of all time. Lawrence of Arabia is still held up as one of the best adventure films ever made. My personal favorite Lean film remains Brief Encounter. Here are….

4 Shots from 4 David Lean Films

Brief Encounter (1945, dir by David Lean, DP: Robert Krasker)

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957, dir by David Lean, DP: Jack Hildyard)

Lawrence of Arabia (1962, dir by David Lean, DP: Freddie A. Young)

Doctor Zhivago (1965, dir by David Lean, DP: Freddie A. Young)

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Akira Kurosawa Edition

Posted on March 23, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, the Shattered Lens honors both the birth and the legacy of the great filmmaker, Akira Kurosawa! It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Akira Kurosawa Films

Throne of Blood (1957, dir by Akira Kurosawa, DP: Asakuza Nakai)

Yojimbo (1961, dir by Akira Kurosawa, DP: Kazuo Miyagawa)

Kagemusha (1980, dir by Akira Kurosawa, DP: Takao Saito and
Masaharu Ueda )

Ran (1985, dir by Akira Kurosawa, DPs: Takao Saito, Masharu Ueda, and Asakazu Nakai)

Film Review: Icahn: The Restless Billionaire (dir by Bruce David Klein)

Posted on March 22, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Before I actually talk about Icahn: The Restless Billionaire, I should probably confess something. Well, actually, this is a reconfession because I explain this every time that I review any movie or documentary the deals with stocks and investments and big shorts and corporate takeovers and all the rest. The Stock Market confuses the heck out of me.

Seriously, I have no idea how it works. Everything that I hear about it just confuses me. How can you invest money that you don’t have in order to make or lose money that might not actually exist? How can people keep buying stock in the same company? It just seems like a company should eventually run out of stock. And what is stock anyways? And don’t even get me started on this whole thing where people can apparently secretly buy everyone’s stock and then force a company’s founder to resign or sell the company itself. That’s just weird to me.

I will also admit that I actually do own stock. I didn’t buy any of it. Some of it, I inherited. Some of it was gifted to me. Some of it, I got through work. Off the top of my head, I really couldn’t tell you much about any of the stock that I own. I’ve been told that my stock’s doing well, which is fine with me. Nobody ever tells me if my stocks aren’t doing well, which is also fine with me. I don’t really need that pressure.

Some people, however, love the pressure. Carl Icahn, for instance, has made billions by playing with the stock market and by taking over struggling companies and then selling them for a profit. Icahn’s detractors call him a pirate or a raider. Icahn claims that he’s an activist, taking over poorly managed companies and then selling them for a profit so that people, like me, who have no idea how any of this works can also make a profit. (And, of course, Icahn makes a huge amount of money off of it as well.) Carl Icahn is thought to have been one of the role models for Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko. Consider that Wall Street was released in 1987 and you can see just how long Carl Icahn has been doing this.

Icahn: The Restless Billionaire is a documentary about both the man and his controversial career. It delves a little into his childhood and features plenty of scenes of Icahn at his mansions and in his ornate office. For the most part, though, it’s a collection of scenes of Icahn and some of his associates discussing the various takeovers and battles that Icahn has been involved with over the years. The documentary is unapologetically pro-Icahn. If you’re expecting to see AOC or Bernie pop up and start going on about taxing the rich or condemning billionaires, you’re out of luck. In fact, the documentary is so pro-Icahn that it almost feels like a relic from a different era. For that matter, so does Carl Icahn. Icahn is happily pro-capitalism and he makes no apologies for that. A lot of viewers aren’t going to be used to seeing that in a contemporary documentary, especially not one produced by HBO. Myself, I’m a fan of capitalism and free enterprise so it didn’t bother me and the documentary, at the very least, worked as a change of pace. Still, I can’t help but imagine that a lot of my friends would have ended up throwing something at the TV.

Carl Icahn is obviously a smart guy and he’s made a lot of money. I enjoyed looking at the house. At the same time, he’s not exactly the most charismatic billionaire in the world and the scenes that attempt humanize him come across as being stiff and staged. The documentary is probably at its best when its just Icahn and his associates talking about the battles that he’s fought. I honestly couldn’t follow what they were talking about but I also couldn’t deny that they all seemed to be having fun.

Scene That I Love: The Opening of Mulholland Drive (Happy Birthday, Angelo Badalamenti)

Posted on March 22, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Happy birthday, Angelo Badalamenti!

This great composer is probably best known for his dream-like and haunting work for the films of David Lynch. Among the many songs and musical pieces that he’s done for Lynch, he composed the jitterbug music that opened David Lynch’s 2001 film, Mulholland Drive. The scene below features the perfect mix of Lynch’s visual vision and Badalamenti’s musical ear. What I especially like about this scene is that the music starts out as a very cheerful and vaguely generic but then it grows steadily more ominous as the scene plays out.

Here it is. The haunting opening of one of the best films of the current century:

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Stardom Edition

Posted on March 22, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

With the Oscars approaching, it seems appropriate to pay tribute to stardom with 4 shots from 4 films!

4 Shots From 4 Films About Being A Star

Mulholland Drive (2001, dir by David Lynch, DP: Peter Deming)

Chicago (2002, dir by Rob Marshall, DP: Dion Beebe)

Maps to the Stars (2014, dir by David Cronenberg, DP: Peter Suschitzky)

The Neon Demon (2016, dir by Nicolas Winding Refn, DP: Natasha Braier)

Film Review: Lucy and Desi (dir by Amy Poehler)

Posted on March 21, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

If you were as disappointed with Being the Ricardos as I was but you still want to learn something about the lives and the marriage of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, might I suggest checking out Lucy and Desi?

Directed by Amy Poehler, Lucy and Desi covers much of the same material as Being the Ricardos but it does so in a far more authentic way. This is because Lucy and Desi is a documentary, one featuring actual interviews and recordings from Lucy, Desi, and the people who worked with them through the years. As a result, we get to hear the story in their own words as opposed to Aaron Sorkin’s words. I’m hardly the first person to point out that Aaron Sorkin is incapable of writing dialogue that doesn’t sound like something that Aaron Sorkin himself would say. In Being the Ricardos, Lucy and her writers all spoke in Sorkinese and it all felt rather false. Watching Lucy and Desi, you quickly realize that both Lucy and Desi were intelligent and articulate people. Their own words are strong enough, without needing a polish from a screenwriter who, by his own admission, never found I Love Lucy to be all that funny.

Lucy and Desi covers the early lives of both Lucy and Desi as well as detailing how they first met, how they married, and how they went on to revolutionize television with I Love Lucy. More than just being portrayed as being a talented but somewhat volatile couple, both Lucy and Desi emerges as fascinating individuals in their own right. Both of them survived childhood difficulties, both of them remade themselves in Hollywood, and, most importantly, both of them had an instinctive understanding of what audiences wanted to see.

They were also very much in love, even after their divorce. That love was missing from Being the Ricardos but it’s very much present in Lucy and Desi. It was that love that led to the marriage that led to the partnership that made them a success but it was that same success that eventually led to the end of their marriage. And yet, even after divorcing, Lucy and Desi remained close. Their daughter, Lucie Arnaz, talks about the last few times that Lucy saw Desi before Desi’s succumbed to lung cancer. They watched old episodes of I Love Lucy and they laughed together. It’s an incredibly touching moment.

And if sentimentality isn’t your thing, Lucy and Desi also explores just how important their partnership was to the development of modern television. I Love Lucy was the first “modern” sitcom but their company, Desilu Productions, had a hand in producing several other classic shows as well. Star Trek was a Desilu production. So were Mission Impossible and The Untouchables. So much of what we take for granted about pop culture started with Lucy and Desi.

Perhaps the most shocking revelation in the Lucy and Desi documentary is that the J. Edgar Hoover story was true! You may remember that, when I reviewed Being the Ricardos, I scoffed at the scene where Hoover called the studio and personally cleared Lucy of being a communist. But apparently, this actually did happen! I’m as stunned as anyone.

Lucy and Desi is a good and heartfelt tribute to Lucy and Desi, their talent and their love and their lasting influence. It can be viewed on Prime.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Russ Meyer Edition

Posted on March 21, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

100 years ago, on the very day, Russ Meyer was born in San Leandro, California. Meyer would get his start filming newsreels during World War II (many of his newsreel footage were used in the 1970 Oscar winner, Patton). When he returned to the United States, he continued to make films. Meyer was one of the pioneers of the adult film industry, though his films seem rather quaint and innocent when compared to the industry’s later films. Meyer’s strong visual sense and his intentionally over-the-top plots made him a favorite amongst underground critics. In the 70s, he was briefly embraced by mainstream Hollywood but, unhappy with having to deal with studio bosses, Meyer returned to making the type of independent, grindhouse films that made him famous.

Russ Meyer was 82 years old when he died in 2004. He was acclaimed as one of America’s first and greatest independent filmmakers.

Here are 4 Safe-For-Work Shots From 4 Russ Meyer Films.

4 Shots From 4 Films