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 Malibu CA, which aired in Syndication in 1998 and 1999. Almost the entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!
Yes, this is from the first season. I don’t care. I refuse to waste my time looking for a second season advertisement.
Will Scott make it to the Olympics? Let’s try to find out.
Episode 2.10 “The Comeback”
(Dir by Gary Shimokawa, originally aired on December 11th, 1999)
Here’s what the imdb has to say about this episode:
Scott is excited about working with a new therapist, Ted from California University, and he believes against all odds that he will be in shape for the Olympic swim team trials. Trying to rush along his rehabilitation, he persuades Ted to let him get back in the water. Scott says he feels great and his comeback is progressing very rapidly, but he’s been taking medication to ease the pain his shoulder is causing him.
Yikes! It sounds like Scott is hooked on drugs and, since this is a Peter Engel-produced sitcom, I think it’s safe to assume that Scott is not going to qualify for the Olympics. Using drugs on any Peter Engel sitcom means that you surrender whatever you current dream may be. We all remember what happened to Tiffani on California Dreams and Jessie on Saved By The Bell.
Oh well. The idea of Scott just suddenly turning out to be a good enough swimmer to qualify for the Olympics never made much sense to begin with. People spend their entire lives training for the Olympics. Scott didn’t even know he was a fast swimmer until the second or third episode of this season. Indeed, he should probably sue whoever gave him the false hope of thinking he could qualify in the first place.
This is yet another episode that has not been uploaded to YouTube so I can’t really do a proper review. However, next week’s episode has been uploaded so, next Thursday, I will once again be watching Malibu, CA. Yay, I guess.
On April 15th, 2013, a terrible crime was committed.
Two brothers, Tamerlan and Dzokhar Tsarnaev, bombed the Boston Marathon. I can remember the exact moment when I looked up at the television and I saw the footage of the bomb going off as a group of runners ran across the finish line. Instinctively, I found myself hoping that the explosion looked worse than it actually was and that no one had been seriously injured. However, I was then flooded with images of people running in fear while other lay injured and bleeding on the ground. A photograph of man who had lost his both his legs was seared into my mind, the nightmarish image of those exposed and shattered bones coming to represent the pure evil that was unleashed on that day.
At first, there was a lot of speculation about who was responsible for the bombing. Despite the fact that it had all the earmarks of an al-Qaeda operation, many people on the news insisted that the bomb had been set by their favorite boogeymen, the right-wing militias. (The initial theory was that it was a tax day protest, which is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.) Three days after the bombing, the first photographs of the Tsarnaev Brothers were released. Looking at the security footage of Tamerlan placing a bomb on the ground right next to a child who was subsequently killed in the blast, I started to rethink my opposition to the death penalty.
Boston was shut down until the Tsarnaev brothers were tracked down and, along with hating the Tsarnaevs, I found myself fearing that the search for them would normalize the idea of suspending civil liberties. Tamerlan was gunned down in a fight with police and hopefully, he felt each bullet. Dzokhar was captured after he attempted to hide in a homeowner’s boat while whining like a little bitch. Dzokhar is one of three people on the Federal Death Row. He also has a truly creepy fan club online, though they haven’t been as active as they were in the past.
2016’s Patriots Day is about that tragic day and the subsequent manhunt for the Tsarnaev brothers. This is another one of Peter Berg’s films about professional, no-nonsense men who have a job to do and who do it well. Mark Wahlberg plays a cop. Kevin Bacon plays the FBI agent who heads up the investigation. John Goodman plays the Boston police commission while Michael Beach makes an appearance as Deval Patrick, the then-governor of Massachusetts who ran a bizarrely overlooked presidential campaign in 2020. Just as he did with Deepwater Horizon, Berg emphasizes the human cost of the tragedy along with the official efforts to track down the men responsible. The ensemble comes together impressively, recreating those scary few days and also paying tribute to a city that refused to allow itself to be defeated. PatriotsDay follows the common, blue collar citizens of Boston as they deal with a horrific act of evil. Even though we all know how the story turned out, the film manages to create a decent amount of suspense as the authorities search for the Tsarnaevs. As for the brothers themselves, the film portrays them as being initially cocky and eventually pathetic. To the film’s credit, it doesn’t ask us to consider things from the point of view of the terrorists. There’s no moral relativism here. The film knows who deserves to be heard.
PatriotsDay is a tribute to the first responders and the citizens of Boston who refused to allow the Tsarnaevs to win. With so many people now making excuses for terrorism, PatriotsDay is a powerful reminder of the human cost of such actions. The Tsarnaevs through they were striking a blow for their ideology. Instead, they just reminded us how strong people can be.
With the season already underway, football players are going on strike! They want better contracts. They want more money. They want …. well, they want a lot of stuff. Meanwhile, the fans just want to know who is going to make the playoffs. There are only four games left in the season and the Washington Sentinels need to win three of them to make it into the playoffs. The owner of the team (Jack Warden) recruits burned-out coach McGinty (Gene Hackman) to take over a team that will be made up of replacement players. McGinty says that he wants to pick his own players and he doesn’t want any interference from the team’s owner. Anyone want to guess how long that’s going to last?
McGinty’s team is made up of the usual collection of quirky misfits who show up in movies like this. Tight End Brian Murphy (David Denman, who later played Roy on The Office) is deaf. One of the offensive linemen is a former SUMO wrestler. Orlando Jones plays a receiver who has a day job at a grocery store. The kicker (Rhys Ifan) is a Welsh soccer player. (Okay, a footballer, I don’t care, call it whatever you want.) Jon Favreau plays a berserk defender who is a member of the police force. Leading them on the field is Shane Falco (Keanu Reeves), a quarterback with a confidence problem. Cheering for them from the sidelines and falling in love with Shane is bar owner-turned-head-cheerleader Annabelle (Brooke Langton). Backing up Annabelle is a cheer squad made up of former strippers, the better to distract the other teams.
It’s not often you see a film where the heroes cross a picket line but that’s what happens with The Replacements. Then again, it’s not like the folks on strike are driving trucks or unloading freight for a living. They’re multi-millionaires who want even more money and don’t even care about whether the team wins or loses. When the replacement players actually start to win games and become beloved in the city, the striking players react by starting a bar brawl. In the end, striking quarterback Eddie Martell (Brett Cullen) doesn’t even stick with his principles. He crosses the picket line and creates a quarterback controversy, just in time for the last game of the season.
The Replacements is thoroughly predictable but also very likable. The cast gels nicely, with Hackman especially standing out as the gruff but caring coach. Keanu Reeves is not totally believable as a quarterback with a confidence problem. You take one look at Reeves and you don’t believe he’s had an insecure day in his life. But, as an actor, he’s so likable that it doesn’t matter. The same goes for the entire cast, whether they’re on the playing field or singing I Will Survive in jail. I don’t particularly care much about football but I did enjoy The Replacements.
Not surprisingly, Wes Anderson’s 2023 film, Asteroid Citywas released to mixed reviews. It wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Indeed, after many critics complained about The French Dispatch not being particularly accessible, Anderson decided to one up them by making a film that was even more enigmatic. That said, I really enjoyed Asteroid City and I think history will be kind to it. Today’s song of the day comes from the film’s haunting score.
2017’s The Death of Stalin opens in Moscow in 1953. Joseph Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin) calls into Radio Moscow and demands that he be sent a recording of the piano concerto that has just been performed live. The only problem is that no one bothered to record it while it was being performed. In a panic, the head of Radio Moscow announces that no one — not the musicians, not the exhausted conductor, and certainly not the audience — is allowed to leave until the orchestra has performed again.
Indeed, one of the recurring themes of The Death of Stalin is that everyone is terrified of their beloved dictator. The orchestra fears being executed for failing to recreate their performance. The members of the Central Committee fear being the next person to be purged from the ranks of Stalin’s government. The two guards that are posted outside of Stalin’s bedroom are so terrified of interrupting Stalin and getting on his bad side that they don’t investigate when they hear Stalin collapsing to the floor. When Stalin is found unconscious, the only doctors available are young and inexperienced because Stalin recently exiled all of the good doctors from Moscow. Even after Stalin dies from a cerebral hemorrhage, his reign of terror continues as all the members of his household staff are promptly executed to keep anyone from learning either the exact details of Stalin’s death or the way that the members of the Central Committee responded to his passing.
The Death of Stalin is a dark comedy that follows the members of the Central Committee as they scramble to protect their own positions after Stalin’s death. The humor comes from watching historical figures like Nikita Khrushchev, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lavrenti Beria, and Georgy Malenkov act like panicked junior executives who are desperately trying to save their own jobs during a corporate takeover. Of course, the stakes are a bit higher. Whoever succeeds Stalin will undoubtedly want to execute every other contender for the post. As with so many of Armando Iannucci’s works, the humor comes from watching very powerful people act in very immature and petty ways. While Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor) tries to convince people that he actually is in charge, the brutal Beria (Simon Russell Beale) tries to bully his way into power and the wily Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi, giving one of his best performances) waits for his moment to strike. (Beria, it should be noted, is one of history’s greatest monsters and the film, while a comedy, does not shy away from his depravity.) Molotov (a hilarious Michael Palin) is so loyal to the Party that he says that Stalin was absolutely correct to have his wife executed just to then have Beria show up and reveal that Molotov’s wife is still alive. Meanwhile, Stalin’s idiot son (Rupert Friend) claims that it’s all an American plot while the rest of the Central Committee laughs at him behind his back. Only Georgy Zhukov (Jason Isaacs) seems to have full control of his emotions and his actions and it’s not a surprise to learn that, long after the events depicted in this film, purged from the Party. In The Death of Stalin, the leaders of Russia are obviously scared of anyone who is too competent at their job.
The Death of Stalin is not only a satiric portrayal of petty bureaucrats. It’s also a darkly humorous look of life in a dictatorship, where everyone is at the whim of whoever happens to be in charge at any given time. The film is full of power-hungry narcissists who use their ideology and their nationalism as a shield for their own ambitions. Everyone wants to control someone else. Even as mourners pass by Stalin’s coffin, they’re given orders on how to properly grieve and move. The film ends with a series of pictures of various people either having their faces scratched or, in some cases, just vanishing. In a free country, failure leads to humiliation. In a dictatorship, it leads to non-existence as the formerly prominent are suddenly erased from a history that no longer has a place for them. Ironically, of all the original leaders of communist Russia, it was Molotov who lived the longest. He was 96 when he died in 1986. If not for Stalin’s sudden death, he probably would have been purged and executed at the age of 63.
On this May Day, with so many people currently trying to rehabilitate the reputations of the 20th Century’s worst dictators, The Death of Stalin is must-watch.
I was going to take a short break from reviewing the many films of Eric Roberts but then I came across 2021’s Red Prophecies on Tubi.
Actually, did I just say 2021? Coming up with a date for this film is actually a little bit more complicated than that. This film was apparently actually filmed in 2014 but it sat on the shelf for a while. The version that was released has a prologue and an epilogue that were obviously filmed in 2020. Russian actor Alexander Nevsky appears in both scenes, talking about his plans for manipulating the upcoming U.S. elections. It’s one of those scenes that is meant to be chilling but instead just reminds the viewer of how ludicrously melodramatic and performative most political discourse has been since 2017.
The majority of the film features Eric Roberts as John Payne, an American reporter who moves to Russia and becomes famous for his ability to predict what’s going to happen in Russian politics. For instance, Payne writes that an opposition leader is going to be arrested and he is! Payne gets his information from “The Oracle,” an anonymous source who sends him emails that John, who is supposed to be a veteran reporter, types up without question. Casper Van Dien, who is playing some sort of Russian intelligence agent, tries to figure out where Payne is getting his information from. Stephen Baldwin shows up as a shady Russian politician. Michael Madsen plays a UN official who Payne suspects is actually corrupt. (A corrupt UN official is probably the most plausible of the film’s plot points.) It’s all a part of a huge plot to destabilize both Russia and the United States. How it all links together is anyone’s guess. The story is not easy to follow, which is probably why the film sat on a shelf for seven years until someone realized that there was a market for international conspiracy films in the United States.
There’s a lot of familiar faces in this movie. We don’t actually hear their voices in the film because apparently, it would have cost too much money to have them come back to do ADR. So, instead, we get one person trying to sound like a dozen different people. Eric Roberts, Stephen Baldwin, and Michael Madsen all have very distinctive voices so when they all sound like a 20-something using autotune, you’re going to notice.
This was a messy film. I’m not really sure if it was mean to be pro-Russian or anti-Russian. The film takes place in Russia and it deals with people being oppressed and opposition leaders being murdered by the government but one name this is never mentioned is the name of Vladimer Putin. Is this movie supposed to be taking place in the real world or an alternate world? I was never quite sure. Several of the characters could have easily been cut from the film and again, buying the film’s story means accepting that a famously hard-boiled reporter would automatically trust an email sent to him by someone calling themselves The Oracle. It’s nice to see the cream of the B-movie, straight-to-video crop all in one film together but otherwise, Red Prophecies doesn’t add up to much.
Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:
In 1959’s The FBI Story, veteran FBI agent Chip Hardesty (James Stewart) delivers a lecture to a group of new FBI recruits. He tells them the story of both the FBI and his time as a member of the agency. Somewhat implausibly, it turns out that Chip was involved with nearly every major FBI operation, as we discover while watching this flashback-filled, episodic film.
Battling the Ku Klux Klan in the Deep South? Chip was there.
Investigating the Oklahoma Indian murders? Chip was not only there but he was also the one who solved them through handwriting analysis! (Decades later, the crimes and the investigation would serve as the basis of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.)
During the public enemy era, Chip was there. He was there when Baby Face Nelson killed several unarmed FBI agents, including Chip’s best friend (Murray Hamilton). He was there when John Dillinger was gunned down in Chicago. He was there when my distant ancestor “Pretty Boy” Floyd was killed in Ohio. He wasn’t there when J. Edgar Hoover personally arrested Alvin Karpis or when “Machine Gun” Kelly said, “Don’t shoot, G-Man!” but Chip still makes sure to tell the recruits about it. He also talks about the gunfight that killed Ma Barker, presented her as being a machine gun-toting madwoman.
Chip investigates subversives during World War II and helped to round up Americans of German and Japanese descent during the internment era. (Chip insists that they weren’t rounded up because of their ancestry but because the FBI had gotten reports that they might be disloyal.) When the war wraps up, Chip turns his attention to fighting the international communist conspiracy and good for him. (Communism sucks!)
Strangely enough, it appears that Chip also tells the recruits a good deal about his personal life because we certainly do see a lot of it. Chip marries a librarian named Lucy (Vera Miles), who struggles with the demands of being an FBI agent’s wife but who ultimately accepts that Chip has to do his duty. Sometimes, Lucy wants Chip to quit and sometimes, Chip is tempted to get out. But they always remember that Chip and the FBI have a job to do. They raise a family. They lose a son at Iwo Jima. Their faith in God and country remains undiminished.
The FBI Story was made with the full cooperation of the FBI, with J. Edgar Hoover personally approving the script and making suggestions. Hoover even appeared as himself in the film, accepting a report about an airplane bombing with a grim look on his face. At one point, Chip is prepared to quit the FBI until he hears a speech from Hoover and he’s so inspired that he keeps his resignation letter tucked away in his suit pocket. Since this film came out in 1959, there’s no details of the FBI tapping the phones of Martin Luther King or Hoover collecting dirt on his political opponents. Instead, The FBI Story is pure propaganda, your reminder that law enforcement never makes mistakes and civil liberties can be always be sacrificed for the greater good.
It’s simplistic propaganda and it’s overlong and it promotes a few falsehoods as facts. (Despite what the film says, Pretty Boy Floyd had nothing to do with the Kansas City Massacre and most historians agree that Ma Barker was not the criminal mastermind that Hoover made her out to be after she was caught in the crossfire between her sons and law enforcement.) The film rather casually dismisses the concern over the World War II internments of American citizens. To me, something like that is a big deal but the film insists to us that it was all blown out of proportion. That’s the one moment when not even the film itself seems to be totally sold on what it’s selling.
Fortunately, the film stars the ever-reliable James Stewart, who brings his natural mix of charm and gravity to the role of Chip Hardesty. Stewart was a bit too old to play Chip as a bumbling young man in the early part of the film but, as the character grows up, so does Stewart’s performance. The scene where he and Vera Miles learn that his son has been killed in combat feels like it’s from a different and far better movie. I guess my point here is that James Stewart was one of those actors who could make even questionable material watchable and that’s certainly what he does with The FBI Story. The FBI, at a time when Hoover was aging and the excesses of the McCarthy era had left many Americans uneasy about the government, decides to borrow James Stewart’s credibility to boost their own. You may not like the FBI but how can you not love Jimmy Stewart?
The FBI Story came out the same year as one of Stewart’s best films, Anatomy of a Murder, a film that was a complicated as The FBI Story was simplistic. Stewart gives one of his best performances in Anatomy of a Murder, playing the type of character that Chip Hardesty probably wouldn’t want to have much to do with. With these two films, Stewart showed us both sides of the American justice system, the men who are tasked with enforcing the law and, even more importantly, the men who are tasked with making sure that law was enforced fairly. Whichever side your on, you have to be happy to have Jimmy Stewart there.
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 streaming? 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 watched 1979’s DallasCowboysCheerleaders! And then, if you were still having trouble getting to sleep, you could have followed it up with 1980’s DallasCowboysCheerleaders II! And then if you were somehow still not able to get any rest …. well, sorry. There’s only two of them. I guess you could watch that MakingtheTeam show. I don’t know.
Anyway, back to the movies!
The first DallasCowboysCheerleaders stars Jane Seymour as a serious journalist who at first scoffs at the idea of going undercover as a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader. But her ex-boyfriend and editor (Bert Convy) insists that she take the assignment. Jane goes undercover and even makes the squad! (It’s never mentioned whether she has any sort of dance or cheerleading experience so I find it a bit odd that she actually made it onto a professional cheerleading squad but whatever….) Seymour gets to know the other members of the Squad, including theLoveBoat’s Lauren Tewes. She comes to realize that she doesn’t want to write up a tabloid story about the cheerleaders. These are “good, down home girls,” she tells Convy. Convy doesn’t care. He wants scandal!
He’s not going to get it, though. The main message of this film is that the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders are basically saints with pom poms. Sure, one of them has a loser ex-boyfriend. And another one of them struggles a bit with the routines. It’s not an easy job but, in the end, everyone does their bit to support the team!
It’s all pretty silly but I’m from Dallas and I’m surrounded by Cowboy fans who have been complaining nonstop about the team for as long as I can remember so I enjoyed watching a movie that portrayed the Cowboys organization as being the greatest group of people on the planet. (No drug or gun problems here!) It’s very much a film of the 70s, made for television and straddling the line between being exploitive and being wholesome. Yes, the costumes are skimpy but no one smokes, drinks, or curses. The film features soapy drama, actual Dallas locations, 70s fashion, a great disco soundtrack, and dorky Bert Convy as a womanizer. Plus, like me, Jane Seymour has mismatched eyes. How can you not love this film!?
As for the sequel, it ditches almost everyone from the first film. Only Laraine Stephens, as the squad’s no-nonsense coach, returns. She’s got a whole new squad to deal with and only a limited amount of time to perfect the cheer that will win the Cowboys the Super….sorry, I mean to say the playoff game. Whenever anyone in the film says, “playoff game,” their lips read “Super Bowl,” so I guess there was some last-minute tinkering after shooting was completed. The squad also has to get ready to tour with the USO and to perform at a children’s hospital. (Ray Wise appears as a doctor at the children’s hospital.) The Cheerleaders are not only going to bring peace to the world but they’re also going to give those children the inspiration they need to get better. Yay!
This one isn’t as much fun, largely because Laraine Stephens’s character isn’t that much fun. The first film featured the very British Jane Seymour in Texas, somehow becoming a member of an all-American football team’s cheerleading squad and it was impossible not to enjoy the implausibility of it all. The second film is just Laraine Stephens getting mad at people for not having the routine down to perfection. No thanks, movie, I’m done with dealing with demanding choreographers. There’s a reason why I turned down all of those offers to join the cheer squad in high school. (For the record, my sister was the greatest cheerleader our high school ever had or ever will have! Erin watched the first movie with me a few weeks ago. She said it was okay but she didn’t think Jane Seymour was a convincing cheerleader.)
According to what I’ve read online, the first DallasCowboyCheerleaders film was a huge rating success. The second film was less so, which I guess is why there was never a third.
In 2022, sheriff’s deputies in Adams County, Ohio raided the home of rapper Afroman. According to the warrant, they were doing so on suspicion of drug trafficking and kidnapping. They found neither drugs nor kidnapping victims but they did find and seize over $5,000 worth of Afroman’s money. The money was later returned, with $400 of it missing. During the raid, they also damaged the front gate, blow up a door, and illegally turned off the house’s security cameras.
Afroman responded with three songs about the raid, all utilizing the footage that security cameras recorded before being shut down. The deputies attempted to sue, claiming that the videos were an invasion of their privacy. The judge eventually threw out their lawsuit though another lawsuit, claiming that the video and the songs “defamed” the deputies was allowed to proceed.
So, I guess you should enjoy the video for Will You Help Me Repair My Door? while you still can.
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on YouTube.
This week, on Monsters, a dark room leads to trouble.
Episode 3.16 “The Waiting Room”
(Dir by Philip Alderton, originally aired on January 13th, 1991)
Newlyweds John (Christian Jules LeBlanc) and Catherine (Lisa Waltz) are invited to come stay at an isolated hotel by John’s father, Benjamin (John Saxon). Benjamin explains that the hotel is where he spent his honeymoon. He tells Catherine, “Your husband was conceived in this very room.” Uhmm …. okay. That’s not a creepy thing for a father-in-law to say or anything.
When John disappears, Benjamin tells Catherine the truth. On his wedding night, Benjamin cheated on his wife with a mysterious woman (Denise Gentile) who was staying in a darkened room that appeared to be next door to Benjamin’s. The woman turned out to be an otherworldly creature, one who lived between the real world and spirit world. The woman trapped Benjamin in the room, only allowing him to go after he promised to give her a child.
Benjamin thought he had escaped the woman but, over the years, he discovered that she would show up whenever he walked into a dark room. For that reason, he always has all of the lights on. Now, John has been captured by the woman and it seems like she’ll only exchange him for Benjamin. The problem is that Benjamin doesn’t want to go….
Now, this was a good episode of Monsters! The story was interesting, the direction was atmospheric, the monsters were menacing, and the entire cast did a good job of bringing their characters to life. John Saxon especially gave a good performance as the guilt-ridden Benjamin, alternating between moments of sublime creepiness, truly pathetic cowardice, and very real regret. For once, the story felt neither rushed nor incomplete. In 21-minutes, this episode told an effective story that stayed with the viewer, even after the macabre ending.
Anthology shows are, by their very nature, uneven but the third season of Monsters really did feature some excellent episodes. This was definitely one of the best.
Through the Shattered Lens