Another March, Another Movie Log

This month I read Flicker: Your Brain on Movies by neuroscientist Jeffrey M. Zacks, which explains how human brains react to moving images on a screen, and techniques filmmakers use to take advantage of this. There’s a nice chapter on how humans can’t differentiate between seeing something on a screen and being told something by a friend.

We are all so screwed.

Another You (1991)

tubi, original English
Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, playing a compulsive liar and a con artist respectively, go rags-to-riches in a crooked businessman’s scheme to wrest a brewery away from a legal heir. The Pryor-Wilder odd-couple comedy formula had been a success for over a decade; this is a low-risk, mild reward studio film. Some physical comedy, a couple clever one-liners, a few stereotypes exploited (Milli Vanilli jokes…sigh), villains defeated. Sort of forgettable–if I wasn’t keeping a list, I wouldn’t remember the title–but easy laughs.

I recognized the romantic lead as “Gooch” from Psych, but she’s also an accomplished serious actor.

Life Stinks (1991)

tubi, original English
Next up: a rare riches-to-rags comedy, a Mel Brooks film that I somehow missed in high school even though half the band was obsessed with comedy. Brooks plays a wealthy real estate developer (is there any other kind?) who voluntarily lives homeless in an LA neighborhood he plans to gentrify, to win a bet. While he’s out, getting befriended by some actual homeless people and beaten up by others (including somehow the Alien Bounty Hunter), his flunkies have him declared legally insane and sell off all his stuff to his biggest rival.

Predictable ending: he rallies all the street people to attack a party of rich people and topple his rival to get his stuff back. Hilarious fighting backhoe scene, and Billy Barty plays a big role in saving the day.

The Great Escape (1963)

arte, Deutsch
arte aired this in November, and finally, after four months of “I want to see it, but not tonight,” Mr Radish assented. Heh.

Superbly made, but sad.

Top Secret! (1984)

Netflix, original English (mostly)
Please take a moment to appreciate Val Kilmer recording a whole album as Nick Rivers. How Silly Can You Get?

I love this movie, but I couldn’t *enjoy* this viewing, as Mr Radish kept scrolling back to rewatch scenes in German, because the jokes are completely different in the dubbed version. I can appreciate that as an extra level of absurd humor, but the endless stopping and restarting ruined the whole evening.

Time to re-acquaint myself with the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker catalog.

Airplane! (1980)

Paramount+, original English, WZ
I finally remembered to sign up for that free month I got with a bag of potato chips last summer. Heh.

Mr Radish had never before seen Die unglaubliche Reise in einem verrückten Flugzeug (German Titles of Foreign Movies Are Insane) in the original English but he was excited to give it a try, and I hadn’t seen it in English in at least ten years, so I was happy.

We’ve all been walking around quoting it for forty-odd years, so I don’t have to actually review it, do I?

Le Mans (1971)

Paramount+, original English
Technically Europudding, but unlike 21st-century productions, genuinely enjoyable. The whole movie is about the race and the teams running it; none of the love triangles or high-society distractions that form the plots of every other European car-race movie I have seen.

There’s not even a lot of dialog outside of normal race-day communications, just a few scenes with a German driver talking to his wife about retiring, and a couple of conversations between Steve McQueen (Europud needs a big-name American to sell tickets) and the widow of a driver who had been killed the year before. This movie is all action and atmosphere-setting B-roll, filmed at the actual race. This is the way to make a movie about a real-life annual event. More of this, please.

(The race is still run in France every year, and shown live in German television.)

The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain (1995)

Paramount+, original English
I have never cared for Hugh Grant. He brought his slimy fake-aw-shucks demeanor to this otherwise enjoyable true tale of a Welsh village working together to stick it to the man, even while mourning their losses from WWI. Some nice landscape cinematography.

(I could have been outside looking at this instead. Sigh.)

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

Paramount+, original English
I have a memory of not bothering to finish this one when I got it in a red envelope back in the day, which seems strange now because it’s a source of so much blog-era internet culture and catch phrases people who tweet in complete sentences still use to this day. Sensing my lack of enthusiasm, Mr Radish said, “think of it as Airplane! but about the news” and then the whole thing made sense. and I laughed and laughed and laughed.

Bonus points for bears.

Hanky Panky (1982)

tubi, original English
Gene Wilder again, this time paired with Gilda Radner. He’s an out-of-towner minding his own business in NYC (there’s his mistake!) when a mysterious woman embroils him in a spy plot involving the Department of Defense and their new wonder weapon.

Should have been funnier than it was, with those two, but the plot was too convoluted for comedy and the pacing was inconsistent. Nice desert scenery, as the story moved out of the city, and fun to see the vintage computer graphics, but generally disappointing.

Madhouse (1990)

tubi, original English
WARNING: The cat dies. Four times.

Low expectations after the last one, but I like John Larroquette so gave it a whirl. He and Kirstie Alley are California yuppies–lol, remember those?–who just bought a house (described in the teaser as a “luxurious villa” but it’s about the size of ALF’s house on a similar-sized lot). His long-lost cousin from New Jersey brings his pregnant wife and her cat for a visit, and they stay. Then her gold-digging sister gets thrown out by her Farsi-speaking husband, and moves in with her coke-head kid. Then they accidentally set fire to their blue-collar neighbors’ house and home workshop, and he moves in with his brat kids (the son is an animal-torturing psychopath; more disturbing than funny).

The humor comes from watching the house get destroyed bit by bit as all the characters clash, and there was a lot of funny sight gags/slapstick, but too much people standing around yelling at each other. The stars of the show were Scruffydoodles, the cat–there’s a barfing scene that I found a little too realistic–and a baby elephant the cousin picks up from a circus.

Reminded me a bit of Blake Edwards’ The Party with Peter Sellers, probably because of the baby elephant. I laughed where I was supposed to, I enjoyed the fashion and soundtrack, but it just wasn’t very good.