MJK1 Reviews

Before Women Had Wings (1997 TV Movie)

This was downright awful

[1/10 · 8 October 2004]

Let me say at the very outset that I thought the cast did exceptionally well with the plot and script presented to them. As for that plot and that script - quite frankly this was the most insulting piece of gratuitous rubbish that I have ever seen. Ellen Barken plays Gloria Maria Jackson, a trailer-trash drunk, who has had three children (a son and two daughters) with her husband Billy, also a trailer-trash drunk and a failed C&W singer who still dreams. The son, the eldest, is away at College, and returns home only for special occasions - Thanksgiving and Christmas. For excitement and to relieve the suffering caused by the disappointment of not having made it big, Billy beats up Gloria Maria as the occasion demands, afterwards complaining bitterly "now see what you made me do?" He gets arrested, is released, returns home, beats her up some more, is arrested and all around the mulberry bush. And then one day, after one more arrest he commits suicide - and Momma Jackson falls to pieces. She wants lovin' and her Billy is dun and gone. So, she gets a trailer attached to a motel as a place of residence for her and her two daughters and proceeds to fly high wide and handsome. Hits the bottle even more, smokes incessantly, beats up her kids for no reason, particularly her youngest, nine-year-old Bird (played with great maturity by Tina Majorino), allows them no friendships, constantly demeans them (every conversation with Bird ends with the nine-year-old being called a fool). And then the constant whingeing and whining that there is no money for anything, no Christmas, no electricity, no life. Just booze, cigarettes and more of the same. So, what's the problem here? This does happen. The problem is, to take a quote from another movie, "just a little bit too much reality for a Friday night!" Why? Because the film drags on and on and on with one unbelievable scene after another, utterly and totally over the top, let's wind this up until it's at breaking point. In the meantime, Bird befriends a mysterious neighbour (a saccharine Oprah Winfrey who somehow mugged the rest of the cast into agreeing to her topping the bill), spends her days hoeing and raking about twenty square feet of some vegetable patch, and who comes to the family's rescue when things can get no worse. Drunken Momma has savagely beaten up Bird one more time too many, for no reason whatsoever (nothing new there) and has driven off somewhere to cool down. At this point, the fifteen-year-old older daughter, Phoebe (very well acted by Julia Stiles), who has taken her own share of beatings (but who recently reached breaking point and smacked Momma around the chops when Momma went too far with a fifteen-year-old) arrives back from being out with her new boyfriend, sees the carnage and runs for help to Miss Zora (Oprah Winfrey) taking Bird with her. Miss Zola hits the roof, waits for Momma, who eventually staggers (or storms) uninvited into Miss Zola's house (although she had absolutely no idea that her kids were there), is summarily manhandled out into the yard by Miss Zola who lectures her severely with some fairytale about when she was Momma's age she didn't pay attention to her own daughter, and now that daughter has left home and won't come back, and the same thing will happen to Momma and something along those stirring lines, and Momma breaks down and Momma dun say that Momma be sorry - sorry, sorry sorry. And Momma must get her life back in order and the kids go off with Miss Zora who is going to visit her daughter and hopes that she won't be slung out on her ear when she gets there. And to tell the truth I couldn't care if she was or not - as long as they don't make another film about it. There was one comfort, insofar as plots and scripts are concerned. That is that it answered one question that I had often wondered about - I now know what the bottom of the barrel is. This film attempted to portray what is a human tragedy, domestic violence, including alcoholism, the neglect and beating of wives by their husbands, and their children by either or both parents. And it showed the horror in all its unedifying glory until it was impossible for viewers to have even one scintilla of sympathy with the central character, Gloria Maria. By her actions she was portrayed as a drunk (which she was), a total bully (which she was), a child-beater (which she was), an utterly selfish and psychotic tyrant who should not be allowed even to visit children much less have care of them. I was hoping, although I knew it was never going to happen, that now that the fifteen-year-old had learned to fend for herself she would also defend her younger sister and beat this woman to a pulp.

But it didn't happen. Along came Oprah, waved the magic words, said her abracadabra and the problem was half way to being sorted. Life isn't like that. If that were true to life the kids would have been found dead. Rubbish like this hardly inspires much confidence.

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

The American Dream gone sour

[30 September 2004]

This is the Great American Dream as it has seldom been shown: stark, vindictive, cruel. A company wishes to get rich by selling parcels of land to speculators. A team of salesmen are assembled to make the sales. An unknown group of buyers (the leads) are out there for the salesmen to lock onto and talk into buying the parcels. Are the parcels of any value? We do not know, it is not important. What we do know is that the company has an incentive scheme to encourage more and more sales. The person with most sales in a given period gets a reward. But it isn't enough. The "boys downtown" are unhappy with the level of sales, a "cleaner" is sent in motivate the salesmen. It is a new motivation: the "closers" of contracts get their names on the board, a chance to win "first prize, a Cadillac Eldorado, second prize, a set of steak knifes, third prize, you're fired." Who is the motivator? A new kid on the block (Alec Baldwin) with a watch that cost more than the salesmen's cars, who drove to the meeting in a $80,000 BMW, and who earned $970,000 last year. And the salesmen? One of them was Shelley Levene (an outstanding Jack Lemmon). We gather that he needs money desperately, his daughter is in hospital, there are bills to pay. And he "hits" the script running - a man so deep into despair, his situation so hopeless that you can almost touch it, and his attempts to disguise this, to remain upbeat, above all to sell, sell, sell. This was a cruel film. The company wants to get rich and doesn't care what depths the salesmen go to, the salesmen want to make a living, and we assume that buyers buy because they see this as some get rich quick scheme. Greed, greed, greed. And then there's Shelley Levene who cannot speak to his daughter because the phone company disconnected her phone because the bill wasn't paid. And he needs the money! If it wasn't a film you would try and make contact so you could give it to him. It was that kind of film. It was very uncomfortable viewing.

Down to You (2000)

A Cure for Insomnia

[5 August 2004]

This film has really nothing to recommend it. It was simply another film where boy meets girl/girl meets boy, fall in love, run into difficulties - but maybe it will all come right in the end. Long before the end I really couldn't have cared less whether it did or not. I just hoped that, whatever solution was found, it would be found sooner rather than later. Life's too short to waste it on seeing the same old garbage regurgitated just one more time too many. The two central characters have appeared in this type of film on a number of occasions previously, and have done so quite successfully. They really should have known better than to try again with this waste of their time. The script was tired and the actors acted as if they knew it but couldn't be bothered to do anything about it. As for me - I couldn't be bothered either.