Tag Archives: Peter Koch

Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 3.1 “Inside Straight”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Pacific Blue, a cop show that aired from 1996 to 2000 on the USA Network!  It’s currently streaming everywhere, though I’m watching it on Tubi.

Everyone’s book for another season of bicycles and law-breaking.

Episode 3.1 “Inside Straight”

(Dir by Michael Levine, originally aired on August 3rd, 19997)

One night, while on a date with Chris, TC spots a man holding a gun.  TC draws his own gun and yells at the man to drop his weapon.  The man turns around.  He fires so TC shoots and the man goes down.  It turns out that the man was an undercover narcotics detective with a spotless record.

TC is suspended and the bike patrol basically stops doing their job and instead proceed to harass the dead man’s wife and his partner until they discover that the wife and the partner were having an affair and, conveniently, the cop was actually shot by someone who happened to be standing behind TC.  It seems like simple forensic evidence (like the amount of bullets on the scene) should have proven that without the bike patrol even getting involved but I guess the cops in Malibu or wherever this show takes place are extremely incompetent.

Meanwhile, the poker game of mobster Joseph Tataglia (Joseph Campanella) gets held up,  The thief is a degenerate gambler who tries to frame TC’s older brother, Teddy (Andy Buckley — how, it’s David Wallace from The Office!).  The real thief is easily exposed and captured.  I’m not really sure what the point of this story was.  Tataglia last appeared during the first season but this episode acts as if he’s been a continual presence in the show for the past two seasons.  I imagine viewers were confused as to who he was or why he had so much pull with Palermo.

There’s a scene where TC is subjected to an intense interrogation from Internal Affairs and I have to admit that it made me laugh because TC and Palermo were wearing their dorky bicycle cop uniforms while being yelled at by someone in a suit.

Another scene features Victor and Cory telling Chris and TC that there’s a huge crowd waiting to see the movie that they want to see.  Victor says TC might have to flash his badge to get tickets.  Police arrogance is annoying in general but it’s even worse coming from people who ride bicycles.

It appears that nothing had changed with the start of a new season.

Conspiracy Theory (1997, directed by Richard Donner)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Jerry (Mel Gibson) is the taxi driver that most people would dread getting stuck with.  He’s obsessed with conspiracies, ranting and raving as he drives his passengers around New York City.  The moon landing was fake, he says.  The New World Order is real.  Fluoridation in mind control.  Freemasons control the world.  Black helicopters patrol the skies.  Implausibly, Justice Department lawyer Alice Sutton (Julia Roberts) enjoys listening to Jerry’s paranoid monologues but she finds them to be a lot less amusing when they turn out to be true.  Soon, she and Jerry are being pursued by Dr. Jonas (Patrick Stewart), the head of MK-Ultra and the man who bred Jerry to eventually become an assassin.

Conspiracy Theory has a good premise and a great Mel Gibson performance and Patrick Stewart is entertaining as the main bad guy.  Though it really is just a slightly above average 90s action film, Conspiracy Theory is still a movie that seems prophetic.  Many of Jerry’s theories were obscure and not well-known when the movie was first released, nearly 30 years ago.  Today, a lot of them have been popularized by social media and podcasts.  Conspiracies have gone mainstream.  Jerry would love listening to Joe Rogan today.  In fact, Jerry would probably have a podcast of his own.  Because the movie was released in 1997, a lot of the things that Jerry talks about feel quaint and almost old-fashioned when you compare them to what Jerry would be ranting about today.  Compared to today’s anti-vaxxers and 9-11 truthers, Jerry’s fear of the black helicopters seems harmless.  Or, at least, it does until the black helicopters suddenly show up in the middle of a chase scene, nearly invisible in the night sky.

Conspiracy Theory can’t really hold up to Richard Donner’s best films.  There aren’t as many memorable lines as in Lethal Weapon and it never finds the same balance between kitsch and art that Donner was able to find with both The Omen and Superman.  Donner still gets some good moments, like the opening montage where Jerry scares the Hell out of a yuppie passenger played by Alex McArthur.  I wish Conspiracy Theory had followed its premise through to its natural conclusion instead of having Jerry suddenly turn into what was then a typical Mel Gibson action hero.  (Today, of course, it would probably be much easier for audiences to accept the idea of Gibson playing a mentally ill, paranoid conspiracy theorist.)  Overall, though, both the movie and the theories hold your interest.

 

 

A Movie A Day #323: Ted & Venus (1991, directed by Bud Cort)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Strange movie, Ted & Venus.

Actor Bud Cort (you remember him from Harold and Maude) both directs and stars as Ted.  Ted is a homeless poet who lives on the beach and only has one friend, a mellow beach bum named Max (Josh Brolin).  Kim Adams plays Linda, who is the Venus of the title, a social worker who has a bodybuilder jerk for a boyfriend (Brian Thompson, who you might remember as the main villain in Cobra).  When Ted sees Linda, it is love at first sight and at first, the movie seems like it is going to be a quirky romantic comedy where Ted eventually wins Linda over.  When Linda turns down Ted’s advances, Ted does not give up.  Instead, Ted starts following her everywhere and making harassing phone calls.  Ted starts out as a nuisance and goes on to become a full-out stalker.  Everyone, even Max, tells Ted to stop bothering Linda but he is convinced that he can make her fall in love him.  He’s wrong.

Because of the presence of Cort both in front of and behind the camera, Ted & Venus sometimes seems like Harold and Maude: The Later Years.  Harold, the iconoclast that everyone loved, has grown up and become Ted, the unemployable stalker.  It’s an interesting idea and Cort pulls it off as an actor but not as a director.  You have to admire Cort’s devotion to his vision but it’s impossible to be certain what that vision was because the film’s tone is all over the place.  Cort gets a far better performance from himself than he does from the rest of the cast.

Speaking of the cast, the movie is full of familiar faces.  In fact, there are almost too many familiar faces.  It’s hard not to get distracted by all of the cameos.  If you somehow see this obscure movie, keep an eye out for: Woody Harrelson (who gets two lines and five seconds of screen time), Rhea Pearlman, Carol Kane, Martin Mull, Gena Rowlands, Pat McCormick, Vincent Schiavelli, Cassandra Peterson, and Andrea Martin.  When Ted is hauled into court, charged with stalking, the judge is played by LSD guru Timothy Leary.  I am not sure what Ted & Venus was trying to say but Bud Cort assembled an impressive cast to say it.

A Movie A Day #203: Heartbreak Ridge (1986, directed by Clint Eastwood)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The year is 1983 and things are looking bad for the Second Marine Division of the U.S. Marine Corps.  The officers are almost all college graduates like Major Powers (Everett McGill) and Lt. Ring (Boyd Gaines), men who have never served in combat but who are convinced that they know what it means to be a Marine in the 80s.  Convinced that they will never have to actually fight in a war, the latest batch of recruits is growing soft and weak.  All of the slackers have been put in the Recon Platoon, where they are so undisciplined that they think that wannabe rock star Cpl. Jones (Mario Van Peebles) is a good Marine.  MARIO VAN PEEBLES!

They haven’t met Sgt. Highway yet.

Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Highway (Clint Eastwood) has seen combat, in both Korea and Vietnam.  He drinks too much.  He fights too much.  He has chased away his wife (Marsha Mason), despite his attempts to understand her by reading Cosmo and Ladies Home Journal.  Major Powers may think that Highway is a relic but Highway knows better than to worry about what a college boy thinks.  The Recon Platoon may think that they can defy him but that haven’t seen Highway throw a punch yet.  Everyone may think it’s a waste of time to learn how to fight but little do they know that America is about to invade Grenada.

Heartbreak Ridge is all about Clint Eastwood.  Without Clint Eastwood, it would just be another basic training film.  With Clint Eastwood, it is a minor masterpiece and a tribute to America’s fighting spirit.  In 1986, no one was better at glaring at a young punk or glowering at a clueless superior officer than Clint Eastwood.  Even the running joke of Highway reading women’s magazines works because it is impossible not to laugh at Clint Eastwood intently studying an issue of Cosmo.   Clint may have been 56 when he directed and starred in Heartbreak Ridge but he was still believable beating up men who were less than half his age.  (Mario Van Peebles thinks he’s going to be able to stand up to Clint Eastwood?  Get outta here!)  There is never any question that Highway is going to able to whip everyone into shape.  The only question is how many terse one-liners are going to be delivered in the process.   By the time Highway and his platoon reach Grenada, everyone is ready to watch Clint put the communists in their place and Clint does not disappoint.

Reportedly, the U.S. Marine Corps. initially supported Heartbreak Ridge but, in case of life imitating art, disowned the finished picture, feeling that the film’s portrayal of The Corps was inaccurate and the sergeant’s “training” methods were too old-fashioned to actually be effective.

Thomas Highway would disagree.

One final note: Bo Svenson has a small role as the man trying to steal Marsha Mason away from Clint.  If you have ever wanted to see Dirty Harry and Buford Pusser fight over the Goodbye Girl, here’s your chance.