Jneil Reviews

The Big Sleep (1946)

The screen writing of this classic is, despite even the novelist's trolling, magnificent

[10/10 · 24 June 2017]

I just watched The Big Sleep from a DVR recording I made from TCM's "Essentials" a week ago, including a wraparound discussion with Alec Baldwin and David Letterman. It wasn't the first time I watched the movie but this time I was focused on the plot writing rather than Howard Hawks' directing, Bogie and Bacall's on-screen heat, or Max Steiner's haunting musical score.

Raymond Chandler is one of the best novelists in the English language but when Baldwin and Letterman claim this plot is opaque and quote Chandler as saying he couldn't follow the plot of the movie adapted from his novel it's either Chandler being jealous of his competitor, novelist William Faulkner, one of the four screenwriters, or maybe Chandler was just in a bad mood when he was asked. This movie -- with not only Faulkner but also Leigh Brackett (Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back) as screenwriters -- has not only amazing dialogue but a detective/police procedural plot that is both intricate and mesmerizing. Anyone who can't follow this plot including Baldwin and Letterman should stick to analyzing Bugs Bunny.

As much as the smoking hot acting by the entire cast, and the moody cinematography, the writing makes this movie the classic it is.

Bull (2016–2022)

The bull is an attempt to snow the audience with psychobabble

[3/10 · 18 January 2017]

I just watched my last episode of Bull, a CBS drama about a jury consultant named Dr. Jason Bull, played by NCIS's Tony DiNozzo, Michael Weatherly, and based on the early career of TV psychobabbler "Dr. Phil" McGraw, an executive producer of Bull.

The show is aptly named because both Dr. Bull and the real-life Dr. Phil are in the business of selling bull. In other contexts this is called being a con man; in the case of a jury consultant the job is to pick jurors who can be snowed.

I enjoyed the mechanics of the show for the first few episodes until the Hollywood writers finally got comfortable enough to start snowing their audience with their hellacious statist propaganda -- and that happened on tonight's episode, "Teacher's Pet." In this episode, full of self-righteousness reminiscent of the old Jack Klugman ragefest Quincy, MD, Dr. Bull takes the civil case of black parents upset that their 17 year old son has left them to move in with his lover, a 24-year old blonde bombshell who until she was fired for having sex with this 17-year-old black football god was his high-school English teacher.

One of the emotional retardations liberal and conservative authoritarian statists have in common is a hatred that human beings go through biological puberty and become sexually-capable adults long before control freaks want to lose dominion over them. The coalition of liberal and conservative youth-haters set legal majority beginning at age 18, with most legal privileges not cemented until 21 -- and listening to their psychobabble about how the human brain isn't capable of rational decision-making until age 25 you know they'd raise the drinking, driving, gun-possessing, and marijuana-smoking age to 25 if only the political Overton window would move to make it possible.

So in "Teacher's Pet" the 24-year-old blonde bombshell teacher and the 17-year-old young black football player hooking up is the 17-year-old stud being raped -- and Good People must Stop This Outrage.

Enough. If I relate more of the sickening plot points by which the righteous Dr. Bull breaks them up and returns the 17-year-old to the custody of his parents my libertarian stomach will vomit.

I just removed Bull from "record series" on my DVR.

Buh-bye.

Shadow on the Land (1968 TV Movie)

One of the most important "warning" films ever made

[10/10 · 12 July 2009]

"Shadow on the Land" was the first made-for-TV movie produced and broadcast on ABC and includes in its cast Jackie Cooper, John Forsythe, Gene Hackman, and Carol Lynley. Its producer, Matthew Rapf, produced series like Ben Casey and Kojak. Its screenwriter, Nedrick Young, won an Oscar as co-writer of The Defiant Ones.

I was 16 when I saw it and its portrait of the United States devolved into a fascist dictatorship made an indelible impression on me. It's one of the most important films in the library of liberty ever made, and it deserves to be revived and seen by every lover of freedom who weeps that the United States is well down the path to tyranny shown in this movie.

But this film also shows seeds of hope, in its portrayal of an underground called the Society of Man.

Watch this! It has more power than a dozen tracts on economics and politics, or political campaigns.

The Singing Revolution (2006)

Let me add my voice to the well-deserved chorus of praise for this film

[10/10 · 24 June 2009]

I'll never understood why crimes against humanity committed by Nazi Germany have always garnered more attention from filmmakers than crimes against humanity committed by the Soviet Union, but they have. What makes The Singing Revolution an important and unique addition to the filmography of oppression and liberation is that Estonia was the ball in a lethal game of football between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and this documentary shows how the only difference between these two evil empires was that the Nazis could only attempt to annihilate the Estonian nation for a few years while the Soviets were at it for decades. The end credits alone -- where one reads about a survivor of two years in a Nazi concentration camp and eight years in a Soviet gulag -- would be sufficient reason to watch this film. But, of course, it is much more than that.

The Singing Revolution documents the indomitable human spirit. A people deprived of arms, deprived of freedom, and subjected to a series of ruthless occupations with the purpose of enslaving their people, stealing their natural resources, and brainwashing their children into forgetting their rich national history and culture -- nevertheless find a way to hold on to their identity through songs. The Estonians rebel against their Soviet masters without firing a shot, driving a truck filled with explosives into a building, walking into a crowded restaurant and setting off an explosive belt strapped to one's chest, dynamiting a hotel quartering enemy soldiers, assassinating a dignitary, kidnapping officials and demanding release of prisoners, or even pouring gasoline on themselves and lighting a match or engaging in a hunger strike.

And the Soviet enemy occupying Estonia had no tradition of freedom or none of the Christian morality the British Empire had when Gandhi went up against them in the struggle for India's independence.

After seeing Defiance a few months ago I was fascinated by the parallels between Jews hiding in the woods to fight the Nazis and Estonians hiding in the woods to fight the Soviets.

The Framers of the American system of government were wise enough to include the right of the people to keep and bear arms as a means of preserving our freedoms against both domestic tyranny and foreign invasion. One civil war was enough to convince any future tyrant of the Pyrrhic victory that awaited them even if they should prevail on the battlefield.

But The Singing Revolution is nonetheless inspiring to me by showing that even under circumstances when a people suffer defeat by overwhelming forces hope can be preserved, and even music can be a weapon in the arsenal of freedom.

The Dark Knight (2008)

Warning: Moral Spoiler Ahead!

[5/10 · 20 July 2008]

Don't worry-- this review doesn't contain any plot spoilers. You can't spoil a movie that doesn't have a plot.

As I was walking out of the theater I asked another man who had just seen this movie, "What did you think?"

He said, "I liked it."

"Why?" I asked.

"There were really good performances in it," he said. "And the special effects were great."

This made me feel a whole lot better.

The moral perversity of this blockbuster movie which had sold out all shows at the theater I saw it at, which is breaking box-office records, and which was applauded by the audience at the end, apparently went over the head of the audience. I realized nobody actually expects good storytelling or anything approaching moral rectitude from a movie anymore. Moviegoers are happy if the movie has high production values.

Look, this movie lives up to its hype. Heath Ledger's final performance is brilliant. The movie is a spectacle from beginning to end. Things blow up and cars fly through the air. Lots of people are killed in creative ways.

I started yawning about halfway through its 152 minutes.

It's not that there isn't good versus evil in this movie. There are scenes that any member of the clergy could use to illustrate a Sunday sermon.

The problem with this movie is that there is one and only one character who has a clear and consistent moral vision, who is heroically dedicated to his chosen mission, who is strong and resourceful throughout, who is always one step ahead of his opposition.

Where's the problem, you ask?

The problem is that this character isn't Batman, who is about as morally tortured as Hamlet.

The problem is that the only character with any moral certainty in this Batman movie is the Joker.

True, the Joker's mission is the generation of chaos and random destruction. He tests the moral fiber of the heroes and by the end of the movie has compromised all of them.

I commented to a friend while walking out of the theater, "I hate this movie for making me feel as if I'm living in Germany in the 1920's."

He answered me "That's why I love it. It's a documentary. You are."

Able Edwards (2004)

"Citizen Clone"

[7/10 · 14 June 2007]

I think it would be the rare independent filmmaker these days who hasn't fantasized about how it would be possible to bypass the necessity of building sets, going on location, and long shooting schedules -- in other words, all the things that aren't a problem for a high-budget studio film but are for shoestring indie productions -- by the expedient of shooting the actors entirely on a green screen stage and compositing everything else digitally.

Able Edwards did it, and you know what? For the most part it really works.

Yes, some of the seams show -- but so what? You can look at classic movies like Casablanca and North by Northwest and see where the old process shots weren't entirely convincing. As long as there's a good story being conveyed by good acting and directing, an audience is willing to play along and suspend their disbelief. If they didn't, nobody today would have a clue who Aristophanes or Shakespeare was.

The character of Able Edwards is part Walt Disney, part Howard Hughes, part Orson Welles's and Herman J. Mankiewicz's fictitious Charles Foster Kane--who in turn was based on the real-life William Randolph Hearst. Able Edwards story plays with the mythology of Walt Disney being frozen by having Edwards' frozen remains cloned, then -- in an homage to Ira Levin's The Boys from Brazil -- groomed to restore the legacy of the original.

The comic irony of Able Edwards is the juxtaposition of its method --which is the creation of a virtual reality -- with its theme -- that in a world in which all entertainment is virtual, the public will crave a return to entertainment based on the infinite nuances of reality.

Both Able Edwards and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow were made in 2004 using the total green-screen virtual technique. But Able Edwards was made for $30 thousand and Sky Captain for $40 million. The thing is, Sky Captain cost a thousand times as much as Able Edwards but only looks about twice as good -- and I found both movies not all that far apart in entertainment value. Digital media and production is to making movies what Colt firearms were to the Old West--the great equalizer.

Full disclosure requires me to reveal that I heard about this movie because its title actor, Scott Kelly Galbreath, also played in a movie I directed. Scott is a fine actor in both this movie and mine, and, the fates willing, I predict a big career ahead of him.

I hope this movie ends up on TV --either premium cable or network. It deserves to be much better known. Meanwhile, I bought my DVD from Amazon.com, which means you can, too -- and I recommend that you do.

Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006)

Who Killed the Electric Car? Liberals and Environmentalists -- Guilty!

[8/10 · 11 June 2007]

Anybody remember a classic story called "The Monkey's Paw"? Written in 1902 by W.W. Jacobs, endlessly anthologized. IMDb shows eight films with that title and displays seven episodes of anthology TV shows including that title including Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

The essence of the story: the person in possession of the monkey's paw is granted three wishes, only each wish is accompanied by a curse. The wish is granted in such a way that the cost of the wish in unintended consequences is far worse than the value of the wish.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the wonderful world of compassionate government, where each wish is granted, accompanied by a curse.

So we want an electric car, great wish! And even better, the largest automobile manufacturer in the United States, General Motors, puts a billion dollars of their stockholders' money into making one.

This documentary makes the case that GM's electric car was pretty good with a lot of appeal to a consumer base. As equipped, its batteries had too short a range for anyone contemplating a trip from Santa Barbara to San Diego, but for going shopping, driving the kids to school, and commuting to work (if you didn't live in Victorville and work in Century City) it might work pretty well. And by the end of the documentary you find out that upgrades to the batteries would have extended that range to 300 miles between charges -- so it's still not the car to take the family on vacation.

Now, about five minutes after General Motors announces they're going to be putting an electric car on the market, what do the liberals and environmentalists do? They go to the government and say, "Make it a law that in the future more and more cars HAVE to be electric! Make it a law! Make it a law!" So they get their wish, and the State of California makes it a law.

Suddenly, strangely, unexpectedly, General Motors is unhappy that they're making an electric car. Why? Because General Motors is still making almost all of its sales from gasoline-powered cars. The electric car is a new product with an untested market. The gasoline car is an established product with an established market.

When General Motors got the idea to introduce a new product, they didn't think that the result would be a boomerang effect attacking its bread and butter product.

So the Monkey's Paw of "Make it a law! Make it a law!" immediately convinces the executives at General Motors that they made a boo boo.

Got it yet? If liberals and environmentalists had simply waited, General Motors would have gradually introduced better and better electric cars into the marketplace for a simple reason: to make money. That's how capitalism works. But, no. Liberals and environmentalists distrust capitalism so much that they immediately run to the government and create such an anti-business climate of fear that they very innovation they had wished for was snuffed out.

Then they go and make a documentary which demonstrates how they are incapable of learning the lesson of how by running to the government they aborted their own child.

Good job!

Bobby (I) (2006)

Why "Bobby" failed at the box office

[7/10 · 28 May 2007]

"Bobby" is a movie with an all-star dream cast, well-written, well-directed, well-produced -- yet its domestic box-office take was only 11 million. Why? I didn't see it when it was in theaters. I bought the DVD from Amazon.com and watched it last night.

There's nothing wrong with this movie as a movie. But I don't think writer-director Emilio Estevez ever asked himself two fundamental questions.

(1) What is the object of my film?

(2) Who will be willing to buy a ticket, and why?

"Bobby" is not a documentary, but a narrative feature. It fictionalizes characters and events, including things that did not really happen, and leaving out things that would be necessary to understand what really happened.

The two principal characters in any movie made about the assassination of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy would be (a) Robert F. Kennedy and (b) his assassin, Sirhan Sirhan.

Neither one is a character in the movie. We are shown some stock news footage of Bobby Kennedy but no actor portrays what he was doing that day -- and the man who shot him, Sirhan Sirhan, is not in the movie at all. Of course. Politically-correct liberals blame the cheap handgun for killing Bobby Kennedy, not the Palestinian Jihadi who pulled the trigger.

We are not even shown all the important events that were happening the day of the Bobby Kennedy assassination at the Ambassador Hotel. You have to watch the DVD extra features to get that.

So what "Bobby" gives us is a bunch of peripheral views of the Bobby Kennedy assassination, without ever training the camera on the actual subject.

And it does not even give us a full and balanced picture of Robert F. Kennedy. We are not shown the anti-Communist Bobby Kennedy who, as his brother's chief adviser in October 1962, went toe to toe with Fidel Castro over Soviet missiles in Cuba. We are not shown the Bobby Kennedy who, as Attorney General during the JFK administration, went to war against the Mafia that had put his brother in the Oval Office by stuffing ballot boxes in Chicago and West Virginia. We are not shown the flawed family man who had the affair with Marilyn Monroe that some people think led directly to her death.

Nor does the movie make any attempt to appeal to anyone but nostalgic Kennedy liberals, when it easily could have reached even Republicans by noting how Reaganesque Bobby Kennedy was in his calls that we live up to the lofty ideals and greatness of America.

What could have been an epic historical movie is instead a nice series of character studies of people who converged on a day that changed history.

Evidently, that was not enough to pack them into the theaters.

Pervert! (2005)

2% of Grindhouse's budget --all of the fun!

[8/10 · 4 May 2007]

Look, I'm not going to take a thing away from Robert Rodriguez or Quentin Tarantino when they take on the task of re-creating the classic B-movies of the Russ Meyer era -- but when you have $50 million bucks at your disposal to spend on state-of-the-art effects and every actor in town lining up to work with you, let's just say you're working with advantages that Russ Meyer would have sawed off his own leg to achieve.

Jonathan Yudis did it on a real Russ Meyer micro-budget, and pulls it off beautifully.

Pervert is an over-the-top spoof with deliberately hokey special effects, obviously fake violence, joyously cheesy sexploitation, and deadpan acting by a cast that's obviously enjoying what they're doing.

If you're a fan of the Russ Meyer classics, this is a must-see movie.

Commander in Chief (2005–2006)

The Left Wing Redux

[2 October 2005]

Full disclosure requires me to reveal my prejudice: I am no fan of Rod Lurie.

Back when Lurie was a KABC Radio film critic I crossed swords with him when he was on air attacking the Academy for honoring director and HUAC friendly witness Elia Kazan, and once again spinning the Hollywood left's unending revisionist history about the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, which started out investigating Nazis in Hollywood with full Communist Party support, but apparently went awry when, post WW2, HUAC attempted to root out communists in the creative guilds who were working to blacklist anti-communist writers and directors.

Listen, I'd love to see a woman president -- for example, Dr. Condoleezza Rice.

I've also had a crush on Geena Davis ever since I first saw her on an episode of Family Ties. And I love the movie, Speechless, in which she plays a political speech-writer engaged in a cross-party love affair, a la Mary Matalin and James Carville.

For years I've called The West Wing methadone maintenance for Democrats, so my question is why -- considering that at least half the country votes Republican -- could not a rival network's show have given us a female -- and maybe even black -- Republican conservative president? No, that can't happen. This show isn't intended to be entertainment but a warm-up act for Hillary's bid for the presidency in 2008.

Well, I guess the Republican majority is a demographic market slice the TV networks believe they can afford to do without. Or maybe that's why the old networks are losing their audience.

I'm a writer, so let me just concentrate on the writing of the pilot episode. Spoilers start here.

Why is is that the Hollywood left finds it outrageous that a conservative male president took us to war after we were attacked on 9/11 to eliminate the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq -- both of whose treatment of thousands of women was brutal and barbaric -- yet the idea of a liberal female president invading a Muslim country to rescue a lone Muslim woman sentenced to death for adultery by a Sharia court is just peachy? And why is it that it's perfectly okay for a new female president -- who delivers a soliloquy on how inexperienced she is -- to humiliate her main political adviser, who happens to be her husband, by denying him any job of substance in her administration because, after all, we wouldn't want anyone to think that her chief of staff is running the country? I don't see President Bush worrying about the movie Bush's Brain, which asserts that his political adviser Karl Rove is the power behind the throne.

If Commander in Chief starts to tank in the ratings, I hope -- as an alternative to dumping it -- ABC seeks out Dick Morris to retool it.

Now that would be an interesting show.

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)

Michael Moore's Stirring Call to Arms!

[4 July 2004]

I went into the theater, today, July 4th, 2004, expecting to see Michael Moore presenting the first post 9/11 anti-War film. Instead, Michael Moore has given us one of the most stirring call to arms I have ever seen. He shows us how useless in fighting back against the 9/11 terrorists were our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, how feeble and incompetent is our homeland security. In chilling detail he makes an indictment of how the Saud Royal family is in bed with both Osama bin Laden and American business, and his message could not be any clearer: we are 2-1/2 years late in invading Saudi Arabia, occupying Mecca, and installing an American-style democracy in that terrorist stronghold. We must go to war now! Thank you, Michael Moore, for opening up my eyes!

Mr. Moore, I am signing on to your holy crusade!

The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002)

Time will tell on this minor classic ...

[28 December 2003]

The Adventures of Pluto Nash is a science-fiction movie for fans of 1950's and 1960's written science fiction -- the stuff you find on library bookshelves, written by Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Ron Goulart. That's both this movie's appeal and its marketing problem.

It doesn't rely on cutting-edge special effects for its appeal, although enough money has been spent on the production values that the film is visually well-realized. There are no slow-mo aerial martial arts battles, no stargates, no time-travel.

"Pluto Nash" just tells a good, solid, well-plotted near-future science-fiction adventure story with a light touch -- the sort of story that fans of Heinlein's short stories "It's Great to Be Back" and "The Menace from Earth" would appreciate.

Good cast led by Eddie Murphy with nice turns by Rosario Dawson, Pam Grier, Luis Guzmán, John Cleese, Randy Quaid, and Peter Boyle-- and a little extra brought to bear by Jay Mohr as a future saloon singer updating Sinatra.

This isn't Star Wars or 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's just a fun movie-movie. But it's a shame that Eddie Murphy had to take a hit for delivering solid science fiction -- and good fun.

Crossfire Trail (2001 TV Movie)

Worthy of the golden age westerns

[8/10 · 22 January 2003]

I don't like modern Westerns. Even as meticulously accurate a history as 1993's Tombstone, with all the contributing artists turning in splendid job performances, left me cold because at the end of the movie all that stayed with me was the mind-numbing brutality of ceaseless violence.

Spoiler warning.

Crossfire Trail has its share of violence, including a climactic firefight, but there is a gentleness and intelligence to Charles Robert Carner's screenwriting that overcame the cliches of Louis Lamour's original story. Come on. Is there a more hoary melodrama than the one about the evil banker using a mortgage to blackmail a beautiful widow? All that's missing from this choice of villain is mustache twirling and maniacal laughing. But given that genre prescription, Carner instead gives us an epistemological mystery: the widow has to use her powers of deductive reasoning to figure out whether the handsome banker is trying to protect her from a con man trying to take advantage of her grief, or whether the handsome stranger claiming to be fulfilling a promise to her dead husband is there to protect her interests from the banker.

The cast, led off by Tom Selleck and Virginia Madsen, is ably assisted by Wilford Brimley and Mark Harmon, among others. The directing is good, the photography suitably expansive. But this production deserves special kudos for getting the details of the old West dead-on accurate, with every firearm being portrayed historically accurately, and even details of costuming showing loving care. Moreover, I haven't seen that many westerns with dialogue discussing Beethoven, and poetry quoted from Milton. It's nice to see, for once, that just because a cowboy could get physical he wasn't necessarily an ignorant moron.

This is a Western that could have been made in the golden age of Westerns. It overcame my skepticism and I give it a rating of 8 out of 10.

Bowling for Columbine (2002)

Michael Moore is his own best critic

[10 December 2002]

During the production of "Bowling for Columbine," on September 22, 2001 -- which you'll notice is 11 days after 9/11 -- Michael Moore wrote on his website:

"This started out as a documentary on gun violence in America, but the largest mass murder in our history was just committed -- without the use of a single gun! Not a single bullet fired! No bomb was set off, no missile was fired, no weapon (i.e., a device that was solely and specifically manufactured to kill humans) was used. A boxcutter! -- I can't stop thinking about this. A thousand gun control laws would not have prevented this massacre. What am I doing?"

Camp Stories (1996)

A surprisingly good independent film

[8/10 · 1 July 2002]

I found out about this movie in a fairly unusual way: the summer camp used as a location for filming was owned by close relatives and I watched the video while visiting my relatives at the actual location where as a 10-year-old I'd been a camper myself, only a few years after the era portrayed in this film.

The actual camp, Camp Mohawk, was nothing like the Orthodox Jewish camp portrayed in the film. It was not a religious camp and discipline was merely the bare minimum necessary to keep campers from drowning each other in the lake. It was pretty casual.

The summer camp shown in Camp Stories, on the other hand -- if writer/director Biegel is to be believed -- was more akin to eight weeks spent at a Young Communist camp in the Soviet Union: a maniacal head counsellor on a power trip, an Orthodox Jewish camp owner who thinks rock and roll is obscene, religious rules that kept boys and girls on opposite sides on the camp, the slightest infraction punished by dangerous physical torture -- and a sign posted near the mail room promising campers that any mail complaining to their parents would be censored.

As I said, the actual summer camp this movie was filmed at was nothing like that.

But as a small independent film, this picture wasn't bad. I thought the acting was good throughout, the writing and directing more than competent, and good use was made of the locations.

The story is a not-untypical story of minor teenage rebellion against the artificially repressive sexual code of the 1950's -- or at least how the Baby Boom campers remember it. It's a boy-meets-girl-on-the-other-side-of-the-tracks story, a sexy-wife-cheats-on-her-anal-retentive husband story, and a religious-culture-meets-the-outside-world story. The Orthodox Jews portrayed in this movie are only one step less out-of-touch than the Amish portrayed in Witness -- in other words, clueless. And, of course, any healthy teenager without salt peter in the food is not going to take to this sort of religious repression without a fight.

Technically -- for writing, acting, directing, cinematography, editing, and musical score -- I gave this movie an 8 out of 10. It definitely should find, even at this late date, distribution on video and DVD, and deserves to be seen on the premium cable networks and late-night TV. It's a natural for the Independent Film Channel and the Sundance Channel. With a cast including Jerry Stiller, Elliot Gould, Talia Shire, Paul Sand, and Jason Biggs, it's surprising to me that this picture hasn't found a home.

Minority Report (2002)

Steven Spielberg back on his game ....

[22 June 2002]

The best baseball hitter ever swung at a ball and missed occasionally; you judge them by their batting averages. Steven Spielberg has a particularly high batting average, both commercially and artistically. I was very unhappy with his last film, AI: Artificial Intelligence -- not for anything wrong with Spielberg as a director, which he's always good at, but with the writing -- but Minority Report is Spielberg back on his game as one of our best.

Plot spoiler? You have got to be kidding. This is from a Philip K. Dick story and the plot is so complex and twisted that I couldn't spoil it for you if I tried. Previous films made from Dick stories include two of my favorites: Blade Runner and Total Recall. Dick was simply one of the best science-fiction writers ever and Minority Report reflects his genius.

Great writing, great casting, great acting, great directing, great visuals and special effects, and a great John Williams score. I feel like I'm at the Oscars thanking everyone and the orchestra is about to start playing me off.

Enough. If you like great science-fiction film-making, go see this. But take a No-Doze first: you're going to need to be awake to follow the plot and you don't want to get the caffeine from coffee or Diet Coke because it's 2-1/2 hours long.

Flight of the Navigator (1986)

Reminiscent of the best of the Heinlein young adult novels...

[27 May 2002]

Flight of the Navigator is a far better movie than we'd have a right to suspect.

Plot spoiler if you read further:

A few minutes into this film, 12-year-old David Freeman (Joey Cramer) is on an errand to retrieve his 8-year-old brother, Jeff, when he falls into a gulley and is knocked out. Regaining consciousness, David returns to his house, thinking only a few minutes have passed, and instead of his parents and brother finds a locked door and an elderly couple living there.

Taken to the police station, David is identified by computer records as a boy reported missing eight years before. Despite the fact that he hasn't aged, he's taken to the Freeman's at a different house nearby, and when he sees his parents obviously older, he faints. He returns to consciousness again on a gurney on his way to a hospital bed. A few minutes later, while his parents are called out of the room by a somber-faced doctor, David is left alone with his brother Jeff -- who is now 16.

This is ostensibly a Disney movie for kids -- and later on there is a lot of comedic Disney hijinks -- but the first half hour of the movie, as David and his family deal with the trauma of his time relocation, are some of the most heart-rending and chilling sequences I've seen in any film.

Spoiler over.

This movie reminded me of some of the time-relativity sequences in Robert A. Heinlein's novel, Time for the Stars. The characters are well written and the actors do an excellent job, particularly in the scenes between Joey Cramer and Matt Adler, as 16-year-old Jeff. The distraught parents, Cliff de Young and Veronica Cartwright, are also excellent -- and Howard Hesseman and Sarah Jessica Parker round out a great supporting cast.

Special kudos are due to Paul Reubens (best known for his character Pee Wee Herman) who was originally credited under his own name for lending his voice to a major character in this film, but had his name removed from the credits, replaced by the pseudonym "Pall Mall," after Reubens was arrested for alleged indecent exposure committed in a movie theater seat. (I've never understood how Reubens was convinced to plead "no contest" to the charge, after theater security cameras showed him in the lobby buying popcorn at the time of the alleged offense.) Considering that Disney's Hollywood Pictures division released Powder, directed by a convicted and confessed child molester, Disney should show some backbone and restore Reubens real name to the credits.

If you can get ahold of this movie, see it -- and maybe Disney will see fit to release it again -- on DVD, I hope.

The Majestic (2001)

Good directing and acting, bad storytelling.

[29 December 2001]

Spoiler Warning.

I might not have been anywhere near as ticked off about The Majestic if the advertising had been honest. I went into the theater based on TV commercials showing a movie about a guy who'd lost his memory and may or may not have been an MIA World War II hero. Instead, I was subjected to still another Hollywood wet dream about a blacklisted screenwriter who ends up telling off the House UnAmerican Activities Committee investigation into communists in Hollywood.

I'm a fan of Jim Carrey. I especially thought he should have got the Oscar for The Truman Show. Frank Darabont did a terrific job directing The Green Mile and episodes of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. They did good jobs on The Majestic, too, as did the supporting cast.

I haven't seen the original script but either Michael Sloane's screenplay got rewritten or edited somewhere along the way or it should have been. The storyline deliberately creates suspense then cheats the audience out of it. Forget the coincidence that Peter Appleton is washed up on shore near Luke Trimble's town right when Appleton loses his memory after being blacklisted, though that's a lame set up (and a ripoff of 1965's Mirage, written and directed by blacklistees). But it makes no sense for Peter Appleton to be mistaken for Luke Trimble by Trimble's father and lifelong girlfriend if it isn't going to turn out that Trimble had suffered a previous war-related bout of amnesia and really was Trimble. The ultimate cheat is the piano scene where amnesiac Appleton plays boogie-woogie piano only to have a character who said he taught that piece to Trimble later reverse himself and say he was lying. Plot writing like this just stinks.

It's also bad character writing for the amoral, no-conviction Appleton to be mistaken for the courageous Trimble merely on the basis of a physical resemblance. Even through amnesia, good writing would have had character tell.

But, you see, these plot contrivances are merely for the purpose of setting up Appleton's telling off the Congressional investigating committee with First Amendment rhetoric. It's been a Hollywood catachism for decades that HUAC's investigation (always confused with McCarthy's senate investigation of communists in the U.S. State Department) was a witch hunt. Never mind that HUAC uncovered not only communist but also Nazi and fascist subversive terror cells in the United States, and post 9/11 subversive terror cells hiding behind the Bill of Rights doesn't seem as righteous as it once might have.

But I guess you can't blame screenwriter Michael Sloane for having the real world bite him in the ass.

What Women Want (2000)

A feminist attack on men that backfires

[16 December 2000]

Spoiler warning!

I went to see What Women Want with good feelings. Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt are always a joy to watch and the commercials made the film look funny. For the first half of the movie I "bought the premise," as Johnny Carson used to say all the time, and the "bit" was as funny as the commercials promised. I was unexpectedly delighted by a Mel Gibson solo dance routine to a Frank Sinatra recording that shows he has all the grace and panache of Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain. Mel, who knew?

The problem for me arose when the scriptwriter (or whatever script doctor was hired by the fifth's assistant producer's daughter-in-law) traded in comedy for just one more hackneyed, politically-correct attempt by Hollywood to raise the plight of women by dumping on men. Mel Gibson does his best to remain cute and lovable according to whatever feminist standard these people apply; but the fact is, the script doesn't play fair with us. It's a loaded gun aimed at the male gender. Mel Gibson's character is supposed to be a top creative force at a top ad agency -- not the sort of job you keep by failing to be creative-- but all we are shown is that he is so creatively challenged that he has to stoop to stealing the creative ad ideas right out of Helen Hunt's character's head. I suppose the balance the movie gives us is that Helen Hunt's character is the only woman shown demonstrating any creativity or intelligence. But the simple historical fact is that Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Michelangelo, DaVinci, Picasso, Newton, Einstein, and Hawking, have no female counterparts; and I'm just getting a little sick of female-slanted bigotry trying to establish females as morally or intellectually superior to men when there's so damned little reason to conclude it. Equality of the sexes isn't enhanced by replacing oneupmanship with oneupwomenship.

Just so it doesn't look like I have something against women directors, I thought What Women Want's director, Nancy Meyers, did a terrific job on her previous film, the superior-to-the-original remake of The Parent Trap. And Helen Hunt and Mel Gibson, contrary to a previous reviewer's comment, do indeed have heat.