stephenwillyamz-1 Reviews

The Lost City (2005)

Beach Blanket Cuba Libre

[1/10 · 31 October 2007]

The film also owes a great debt to William Asher and his five beach party movies. Here's a happy Cuban family with a dad that looks like Trotsky and an Uncle that looks like Orson Wells in Casino Royale. And they have three shallow sons. The main son, egocentric Fico plays the Frankie Avalon role in this film, he's the king of the beach nightclub. Sweet Aurora is his long suffering Annette, trying to get him to see that there more to life than sun, surf and singing. A brain-damaged Bill Murray channels Don Rickles' sarcastic non sequesters. Little Dustin Hoffman gets to play Harvey "Eric Von Zipper" Lembeck for a few minutes. He's the confused/comic/dangerous guy. And in the words of Eric Von Zipper to the director and writer of this lame-brain historical/musical mess, "Fix it, you stupid!"

Time Under Fire (1997)

What A Hunk Of Sci-Fi Junk

[11 September 2007]

To paraphrase Danny Zucco, when he first saw "Greased Lighting", in the movie Grease: "What a hunk of sci-fi junk!"

We've got a time-traveling submarine, powered by baking soda, that somehow time warps through the Bermuda Triangle and emerges in the year 2077--just in time for the Centenary of Elvis's death. The intrepid sub crew is immediately captured by futuristic totalitarian storm troopers and imprisioned in an abandoned rust-belt factory, which doubles as the new Imperial Headquarters of the Holocausted United States of Amerika. The storm troopers that enforce that "duh law" are all dressed in ill-fitting Fahrenheit 451 costumes and seem to bump into each other every few minutes.

How did our future come to this? Well children, in the beginning of the 21st century, an incompetent United States President, with a hidden agenda, orders his military to invade and occupy Iraq--with disastrous results. Have you ever heard of anything more ridiculous that than?

Step Up (2006)

Poor Black Child Discovers He's White

[1/10 · 6 September 2006]

'Take Fame' and 'You've Got Served' and roughly jam them together and what do you got? This God awful movie custom made for dull-normal adolescents. The plot very closely follows 'You've Got Served.' Three ghetto afro-teeners, this time living in John Water's Baltimore—not far from 'Peckers' home—spend their time getting failing grades in high school and dancing in dilapidated 100-year-old buildings with hoochy-mamas. To finance their expensive baggy hip-hop clothing tastes, they steal cars and deliver them to the local chop shop—not unlike John (Tony Manaro) Travolta who worked in a Brooklyn paint store so he could purchase his polyester disco clothes.

Tyler Gage, one of the black three musketeers, gets caught trashing the local Fame High School and is forced to perform janitorial duties. He meets Nora Clark, a 26-year-old white high school student and discovers he's Irish-American, much to the chagrin of his black buddies Mac and Skinny.

As in 'You've Got Served' crime doesn't pay and Skinny, the youngest member of the trio gets shot by a Bad Bad Leroy Brown type—but that doesn't stop the music—and heart-stopping finale.

Night Tide (1961)

A carnie mermaid and a drake are caught-up in a whirlpool of evil

[8/10 · 6 July 2005]

It's night at the seashore and leaning on a pier railing is a lonely navy man, Johnny (Dennis Hopper) Drake wearing his white sailor's uniform, while gazing at a black and white wave with 'Night Tide' cheaply superimposed upon it. (Night Tide is a line from Edgar Allen Poe's weepy old poem: 'Annabel Lee'—a tale of a gaunt and sickly gal who dwelled 'in a kingdom by the sea' and came to a typically tragic Victorian end.) Johnny wanders into the Blue Grotto jazz club and within its smoky depths encounters Mora (Linda Lawson) a gaunt midway mermaid dressed in white. While awkwardly trying to pick her up a mysterious European lady, of some breeding, suddenly appears, leaning upon an ancient 19th century espresso maker. This strange 'member of the water race' speaks a puzzling language (possibly Minoian) to Mora and the mermaid immediately turns tail and splits the scene.

Johnny follows her on onto the street, which understandably angers the seemingly cold and distant mermaid. Reality is suddenly suspended as his 10th grade romantic blandishments begins warm her wintry heart. At the entrance to the peeling white door of her apartment complex, above a sleeping merry-go-round, she agrees to have breakfast with him at 10am, on the next day.

Dining on balcony of her apartment, the new sweethearts (dwelling deep within the depths of major puppy-love) enjoy a very fishy brunch. In the distance the moviegoer is able to briefly see what Pacific Ocean Park looked like before it burned down to its pier pilings in the late 1960s. A white seagull (looking like the avian equivalent of Johnny) flies into her hands. She strokes the bird and promises it that she won't hurt him.

Soon Johnny is taking the Greyhound up from the navel base at San Pedro to the Santa Monica bus station every weekend. He rents a sleazy room at the Ocean Park Hotel, in order to see more of Mora. As the film progresses he meets a number of very typical seaside characters: Ellen (a cute teeny-bopper and merry-go-round operator), Bruno (masseuse and ex-wrestler), Captain Murdock (Mora's guardian and carnie operator), Madame Romanovitch (a Norma Desmond-ish fortune teller) and Lieutenant Henderson (a stiff/bumbling Venice Precinct detective). They all warn him that Mora is, "…caught in a vortex of evil." Does he listen? Nope.

As this cult classic draws to a close we find ourselves within the third-degree-room of the Venice Police Station. Captain Murdock waxes poetically to our naive hero, "She decided to embrace the rapture of the depths." Perky Ellen, who now has a teenaged crush on the sailor, immediately hands him a paper cup of ten cent coffee.

And as the Shore Patrol transports Seaman Drake back to San Pedro, in a very unofficial looking station-wagon, the screen is suddenly filled with the haunting words of Edgar Allen Poe, the booze-hound and drug addict of Downtown Baltimore: "And so, all the NIGHT TIDE, I lie down by the side of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride. In her sepulcher there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea."

High School Confidential! (1958)

Overaged Teeners Gone Rock 'n Roll Wild

[9/10 · 1 July 2005]

This film starts out with Jerry Lee Lewis and his combo, on the back of a flatbed truck, singing and playing the title song while slowly rolling by the local high school (which looks nothing like a high school). Why are they playing there? Who knows? This scene was shot around the time IL' Jerry Lee married his 14-year-old cousin and was banned from American Bandstand. "Dick Clark done me wrong!" (Also, Allen 'Mr. Rock 'n Roll' Freed was busted for payola during this period; Buddy Holly, Ritchie Vallens & Duh Big Bopper were almost ready to take that fateful flight out of Iowa.) The song 'High School Confidential' suffered from poor airplay and drifted into obscurity—but hey, we got Fabian, Frankie Avalon and the other Italian-American rockers out of the shake-up.

A new kid (who happens to be 24-years-old) Russ 'Westside Story' Tamblyn cruses by the musical flatbed, without looking up and starts his first day at Nameless High. He almost gets into a rumble with Drew Barrymore's dad, the President of the 'Wheelers & Dealers' who's also a small potatoes reefer dealer (one joint for a buck)—Jackie 'Uncle Fester' Coogan is Mister Big. Goody Two-Shoes Michael 'I Was A Teenaged Werewolf' Landon ties to get Russ to stop acting like a juvenile delinquent and join the football team. No dice…

There's a pointless and outlandish 'Wheelers & Dealers' sponsored drag race, whose route seems to consist of pointless loops around a few movie studio sound stages. For reasons unknown 26-year-old John Drew Barrymore's (he died last year) hopped-up 21-year-old girlfriend, Joan is riding with and hanging all over Russ during the big race. This bizarre romantic betrayal doesn't seem to bother any of the drag city racing fans or the Wheelers & Dealers. A big plastic bag of marijuana, hidden behind Russ's wobbling hubcap, falls out just as the fuzz arrive ending the race. Bummer!

Oh, platinum blonde Mamie 'Untamed Youth' Van Doren plays Russ's sex-starved/nymphomaniac aunt—she's an absolutely useless character that has nothing to do with the plot. She was big-busted in her day and a well known cinematic sexpot, but today she's viewed as small bleached-blonde potatoes compared to the saline-implant hoochy mamas of the 21st century.

Anyway, Russ is actually an undercover nark who eventually busts the maryjane/horse dope syndicate preying on those poor, innocent & overaged Eisenhower Era high school students. Those addicted teeners are constantly skipping their homework, preferring to hang out at a strangely serene beatnik nightclub while listening to bleak beat poetry and "grazing in the grass." Uncle Fester plays a honky-tonk piano during these poetry sessions.

Homeroom teacher, Jan Sterling (who also died last year) convinces John Drew Barrymore's marijuana addicted blonde girlfriend Joan, played by Diane Jergens, to break her reefer in half and drop it on the floor. Maybe now Joan can finally graduate from Nameless High and go on the city college.

Mayor of the Sunset Strip (2003)

These Beatle Boots Were Made For Walking

[9/10 · 13 May 2005]

Question: "Do you wish your life could have been different?" Mayor Rodney's Answer: "Mmmm, yeah actually…"

Formerly Groovy Rodney Bingenheimer (born in 1946) is now an ugly little man with a hollow, monotone voice, bangs, tight pants and pointed "Beatle Boots"—lost in the 21st century. He adored his domineering Northern California waitress mother, Marion Bingenheimer, who dumped his father when he was three and consequently dumped him on the doorstep of Connie Stevens when he was 17. "I didn't see my mom for about five or six years."

Anyway, Ms. Stevens wasn't home and suddenly homeless Rodney, trudged his way up to the Sunset Strip, beginning his hand to mouth existence mingling with, and riding the coattails of, up and coming pop music stars. The denizens of the music scene seemed to accept him mainly because he was such a harmless little guy. Kind of a penniless West Coast version of Andy Warhol.

"Rodney buys into the rock star myth, and derives a sense of gratitude and fulfillment from that energy."

Soon, he was a body double for Davy Jones of the Monkeys. He also chummed around with Sonny and Cher whom he considered to be his substitute dad and mom. He had arrived in the giddy world of backstage passes and willing groupies.

The halcyon sixties soon drew to a close and Rodney began his slow drift into obscurity. The one thing he remained very good at, was proclaiming which rock 'n roll groups would become popular…But he never seemed to made any money (at least no money to speak of) off of those predictions.

Rodney currently lives in a shabby aging apartment off of Sunset, filled with pop memorabilia, which he refers to, somewhat facetiously as "Bingenheimer Manor". Mother Marion is dead; his current obsession, Camille considers him only as a "friend". Pushing 60, he's never been married; with a pop career consisting of an after midnight, three-hour once a week, DJ gig.

"Mayor" Bingenheimer has become a walking cautionary tale for those of us born in 1940s Boss Angeles, as well as those overly obsessed with celebrities.

Sideways (2004)

Miles Of Searching For Gilbert's Grape

[8/10 · 22 February 2005]

Saturday night at the movies...Coastal California wine snobs, is a pretty funny subject that hasn't been broached as yet in motion pictures (as far as I know). Miles, Jack and company seemed to go through every silly wine connoisseur ritual in the book, "I smell a hint of French Oak," (or maybe it was Belgian Oak he was really smelling). I'm surprised Miles didn't say, "You must aerate the esters," while he expertly swirled wine around in his glass. Maybe the screenwriter was afraid he might lose his audience with a comment like that. I particularly liked the part where Miles compared his life to a certain fragile grape that required a lot of care. (I forget the grape in question.) Or how about that wine fountain splashing away, while some California fool, playing his acoustic guitar, gives the assembled wine tasting tourists, serene knowing looks. Haw-haw! And yet, through all this, something seemed very familiar about this picture—something I couldn't quite put my finger on.

Sunday morning dawned, and suddenly I knew where Sideways came from. Woody Allen! Sideways was a Woody Allen picture set in Southern California instead of New York City, with two non-Jewish principle actors. The little newbies writer that suffers from romantic angst (Woody), and his tall, good-looking; shallow actor friend (Tony Roberts) who seems to have the world on a string. Hey, if you got to copy, you may as well copy from the best. There was even a Diane Keatonish type named Maya for Woody (er, Miles) to generate awkward romantic blandishments toward and finally enter into a bittersweet relationship with. Her underachieving comment about getting a master's degree so she could work in a winery,got a great laugh in the cineplex. To some of the snooty citizens of Santa Barbara County, it probably wouldn't be so funny.

Sideways had something that I'd never seen in a Woody Allen film before, but certainly exists in real life: Furious Women. Sandra Oh (the director's wife), became almost homicidal, while beating Jack in the face with her little white motorcycle helmet. Whenever Stephanie (Sandra) spoke I thought she was channeling Joan Baez. I wonder if that's her real voice or if she was just making a little auditory fun of a supposedly hip California woman with an out-of-wedlock kid and a marijuana habit?

I enjoyed the film, not as much as The Aviator, but then maybe comparing one to the other is not unlike trying to compare apples with oranges. Or should I channel Miles and use a grape analogy?