Tja. October was pretty busy. Still saw a few movies.
I’ve started putting all the YouTube films on a list in case I want to find them again later, or see if they disappear.
Hubie Halloween (2020)
Netflix, original English
Down with a bit of food poisoning, I thought this Sandler comedy would be a light way to pass the evening. Yeah. Between the “schoolyard bullies keep on bullying for thirty years” plot and the no-one-can-suspend-that-much-disbelief “beautiful woman pines after middle-aged guy who has never left his childhood bedroom” love story, I went to sleep feeling worse. Furthermore, I could never figure out who the intended audience was. It was filed under “watch along with older kids” but the jokes and physical gags were either very childish or very adult. Please tell me today’s tweens aren’t interested in middle-aged couples fighting about their dead sex life! Even if you have to lie to me!
More depressing, this film is three years old, and the sets and scenery already feel like relics of a long-dead era. Every yard and room was covered in decorations, with lights and electric motors everywhere; snacks laid out but not eaten everywhere; food wasted in fights; candy flows like water. I remember this carefree Halloween silliness from my previous life in exurban Indiana, but with the inflation and the engineered food and energy shortages, this life is going away and may never come back.
Positives: Hubie carries a multi-tool thermos right out of Q Branch. And I always enjoy recognizing the SNL alums and other actors from late 20th-century comedies.
October 2023
Night Moves (1975)
Cable (Warner Film), original English
Gene Hackman stars as a former NFLer turned Hollywood private detective hired to find the teenage runaway daughter of a movie star (Melanie Griffith, in her first role, and she gets naked for it, FWIW). With the help of a stunt man, he finds her in the Florida Keys at the home of her former stepfather, with his new lady and a mutual friend from the movie biz. But that’s not all he finds.
It was billed as a “psychological thriller”, and maybe it was at the time, but now it’s was just a really interesting dark character-driven drama where a mystery slowly unfolds. Also some nice explosions at the end. Glad I took a chance on this one.
Fun cast thing: Hackman’s wife is played by Webster’s mom, Susan Clark, before she married Alex Karras, subject of a throwaway line about his football career. Mongo pawn in game of life, man.
Shrek 2 (2004)
Netflix, original English
My mother wanted “something funny” to nap to, but also something in English, which limits the choices pretty severely. Anyway. I laughed a lot, but not as much as the first one, and I noticed a lot of dirty jokes clearly aimed at the dads who got volunteered to take the kids out for a matinee so mom could…whatever it is moms did when they were home alone before social media. I haven’t the faintest idea, and I probably don’t want to know.
The drawing of Puss in Boots is spot on, btw. Those eyes!
Skyway (1933)
YouTube (PizzaFlix), original English
A rich girl falls for a stunt pilot, who is kind of an asshole (huh), then tries to change him into a banker. When her father’s bank gets embezzled, his flying skills exonerate him. Surprising amount of action for a Poverty Row production, but mostly interesting for the fashions of the day, and Hoot Gibson playing a contemporary, non-cowboy character.
Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion (1950)
YouTube, original English
There are some colorized versions on the YT, but I downloaded a black and white one several months ago. It’s since been taken down, so no link. Anyway…
The beginning was funny, and the end was funny, but the middle was kind of a slog. YMMV.
Sörensen fängt Feuer (2023)
ARD, original Deutsch
Made-for-German-tax-funded-TV movie, a sequel to Sörensen hat Angst. He’s still fighting his anxiety disorder, stumbles into a series of murders while rescuing a young blind woman who had been imprisoned in a basement since infancy. The hurr durr! stupid local yokels have discovered speed-dating, although none of them understand exactly how it’s supposed to work.
The villains were people who had left the official German tax-funded church because they felt it had strayed too far from the Bible and formed their own private church; the girl had been hidden away because she was proof of infidelity between two members and told she was born blind because her parents had sinned. This week’s Film Mittwoch lesson for viewers: you see all those people leaving the official tax-funded church in record numbers because the organization has replaced the Scriptures with politics? Those people are weird, violent nut jobs.
Nice scenery, though, and I still like Bjarne Mädel.
Predator (1987)
Cable (Warner Film), original English
First time I’ve seen this Schwarzenegger classic…and it was too over-the-top to be taken seriously. I guess it was terrifying in 1987, but I giggled.
Opening credits fun: It’s a two-governor movie! Mr Radish was unaware that Minnesotans had elected Jesse Ventura to serve them in 1998. I cannot forget, because, well, you know. Hehehhe.
But the first scene made the whole picture weaker. The audience sees the Predator fall to earth, but the characters never discover its origins–so what was the point? Foreshadowing with no shadow?
The Last Sunset (1961)
arte, Deutsch
The German title of this character-driven western is El Perdito, so when I sat down I wasn’t expecting the dark turns it took at the end. Very good pic. Dorothy Malone goes after Rock Hudson again, this time succeeding, but the main conflict is between her and Kirk Douglas. They had met and fallen in love before The War Between The States, but now she’s married to an old alcoholic rancher in Mexico, who needs hands to drive the herd up to Texas for sale. Douglas is being pursued by Hudson, a sheriff with a Texas warrant for his capture “dead or alive”, yet Malone persuades them both to help out with the cattle drive. Meanwhile, daughter Missy, on the cusp of womanhood, falls hard for Douglas, who is old enough to be her father–and maybe is.
The ending probably shouldn’t have been a surprise, but somehow it was.
My usual complaint: Young Missy, who grew up wearing pants in the middle of nowhere and could do all the cowboy work the men could do, wore noticeable make-up in every scene, even out on the cattle drive. Don’t let that put you off from watching it, though. The cinematography was breathtaking, and Dimitri Tiomkin’s score adds to the excitement.
(A story driven by the characters, and their motivations, not by CGI or propaganda? Nice change.)
UFO (2018)
Netflix, original English
A fictionalized telling of the 2006 O’Hare sighting. A local college student becomes obsessed with decoding the message presented by the visitors, to the detriment of his friendships and classwork. The “complicated alien math” was undergraduate level, of course, or else the story wouldn’t work.
Mr Radish was disappointed that, despite being the face on the poster, Gillian Anderson only had a small role as an advisor. FYI.
The Bat (1959)
YouTube, original English
Originally a stage play, this “creepy old house” picture with multiple villains stars Vincent Price and Endora from Bewitched. There are multiple villains, and a creature that’s actually a human. Curiously, the second movie this month with bank embezzlement as a major driver of plot…hrm…
It wasn’t bad, but unless you’re a fan of one of the actors–there’s an appearance by Darla Hood from Our Gang, all grown up–there’s not much to recommend it.
Hitchcock (2012)
arte, Deutsch
Surprisingly good film about the making of Psycho (which I have never seen) and the iconic director’s marriage to Alma Reville, who contributed to all his projects, often uncredited. Anthony Hopkins is nearly unrecognizable under all the putty required to make him look portly.
The casting of Red Foreman as the head of the film censorship board was *chef’s kiss*. The Karate Kid also pops up.
