DailyView: Day 293, Movie 413

We lost another amazing director the other day. Ivan Reitman passed away in his sleep. Reitman directed such classics like Ghostbusters, Kindergarten Cop, Dave, Stripes, and Twins. To honor him, I found a film that he directed that I had not see. It was the 2006 My Super Ex-Girlfriend.

Matt Saunders (Luke Wilson) is just a regular guy who had unrequited feelings for his co-worker Hannah (Anna Faris), but she was in a relationship. So on the advise of his best friend Vaughn (Rainn Wilson), Matt started looking to date. Seeing an attractive woman on the subway, he approached her and asked her out. Except, someone snatched her purse. Matt took off in pursuit of the thief, eventually retrieving the purse.

The woman he approached, Jenny Johnson (Uma Thurman) turned out to be the super powered G-Girl in her secret identity. As they grew closer, their physical relationship built, and Jenny told him the secret.

Matt began to see though that Jenny was needy and jealous and he decided that he had to break up with her. Jenny did not take it well and began to use her powers to mess with him.

There are some funny moments of this film, but the biggest issue I had was how crazy they made Jenny. It became very over-the-top, even with the super hero stuff. It made the trope of the crazy ex-girlfriend look even worse than it is.

I will admit that I liked more of this than I thought I would. Luke Wilson is charming and his bro relationship with Rainn Wilson was funny. Uma Thurman is always ready to give it her all and Anna Faris was a good addition. There was also Eddy Izzard as the Lex Luthor-type supervillain, Professor Bedlam, aka Barry. The back story of Barry and Jenny was well done and made sense.

Yes, the movie is derailed by a lot of the sexist tropes and clichés that were on display and Jenny went psycho really quickly, but there were some decent moments in the film as well. I think the idea is sound, but could have used some more work.

RIP Ivan Reitman.

DailyView: Day 292, Movie 412

The third of the Small Axe series from 2020 is the next film in the DailyView today. This one starred John Boyega in Small Axe: Red, White and Blue.

Boyega played the real life person Leroy Logan, a man who joined the Metropolitan Police with the intent to try and change the racist attitudes and policies from inside. This is a true story of the man who founded the Black Police Association. The film does not go into that aspect of the character. Instead, it focuses on the early part of Logan’s life, and his own relationship with his father (Steve Toussaint), who had been beaten by the police and had been falsely arrested.

John Boyega does a great job in this role, trying to show the building frustration of the racism around him and how it affected him, the people of London and the police around them.

The ending of the film did not feel completely satisfying, but I believe that was done intentionally to symbolize how racism never can come to a happy conclusion, that it is always going to be an uncomfortable situation.

This episode of the Small Axe series is perhaps my favorite one. This has a simple story, but one that had so much more depth that it looked like it would. Boyega is great and the anger displayed is excellent.

DailyView: Day 291, Movie 411

Next up on Super Bowl Sunday DailyView is the true story of the friendship between Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers as they played together on the Chicago Bears. Brian’s Song was a 1971 TV movie that won a bunch of Primetime Emmy Awards for the tearjerker that it was.

The Bears drafted Gale Sayers (Billy Dee Williams) number one and he came to camp with lofty expectations. Meanwhile, Brian Piccolo (James Caan), who played the same position, had to battle every second to keep his place on the team.

In a symbol to the world, the Bears, led by coach George Halas (Jack Warden), placed the two men, one white and one black, as roommates. This was not something that was done in the NFL and the breaking of this racial tradition sent some shockwaves across the sport.

Despite some early problems, Gale and Brian became close friends. Brian was there when Gale injured his knee and he helped Gale to work his way back.

Unfortunately, Brian was becoming sick and he wound up being diagnosed with lung cancer. This took their friendship into a different direction.

The racial issues were touched upon, but they were not the main focus of this movie. The focus was the relationship between Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo, and in that area, this movie does a fantastic job. You believe that these two men had built up a connection as teammates on the Bears and that they would do anything for each other.

Billy Dee Williams does a good job as Gale, but James Caan was a huge standout as Brian. Brian Piccolo was more of an outgoing and loud personality and Caan fit that perfectly.

Shelley Fabares, who I knew from the TV series Coach as Christine, appeared as Brian’s wife, Joy. I would not have recognized her if I did not know it was her. Joy also formed a bond with Gale and his wife Linda (Judy Pace). Fabares’ performance was very understated, and real.

The film started with this quote from the narrator: “Ernest Hemingway once said ‘Every true story ends in death.’ Well, this is a true story.” It foreshadowed the sadness that would be coming, but it did not show how much life and hope the film was able to reveal.

DailyView: Day 291, Movie 410

Football films for the DailyView continued this morning in honor of the Super Bowl with a film that was released late in 2020 on Disney +, a film that I had never heard of before. Safety is the true story of Clemson football player Ray McElrathbey who, because of troubles at home, had to take in his younger brother while trying to continuing to play football for the Clemson Tigers.

Ray McElrathbey (Jay Reeves) was a freshman at Clemson, filled with a brutal schedule between practices and a heavy class load, when he found out that his mother (Amanda Warren) had been arrested again for possession and was being placed in a recovery program. Instead of letting his brother Fahmarr (Thaddeus J. Mixson) be placed into the system during their mother’s program, Ray decided to take him with him back to Clemson to hide him out in the dorms.

This would not last though as the difficulties of what he was trying to accomplish started to weigh on Ray, affecting his football play and classwork. When they found out that their mother was going to continue in the program after the original 30 day plan, Ray had to make some changes.

After initially sending Fahmarr back to the system, Ray returned and brought his brother back. With some aid from his coaches and his team, Ray and Fahmarr began to adjust to their new normal. The problem was that the NCAA began investigating the case for improper gifts and help for a student athlete.

I have to say that this was so much better than I ever expected it to be. Sure there were the typical Disney movie cheese surrounding the story, but it worked surprisingly well. At the end, I was shocked to find my eyes watering up, even during some of the more saccharine sweet moments.

Jay Reeves, who had not a ton of credits on IMDB, does a really good job as the brother desperately trying to figure out how not to lose either of his families. He had a good chemistry with young Thaddeus Mixson and they made a wonderful pair of siblings. I believed everything with them.

While this may not be as great as some of the best football movies (Remember the Titans springs to mind), Safety is a solid film and of higher quality than I expected from a direct to Disney + film.

DailyView: Day 291, Movie 409

It’s Super Bowl Sunday, and at EYG, we celebrate with some DailyView additions. While looking for football movies that I have not seen before, I came across a film that not only worked as a football movie, but also fit into one of the three remaining years without a movie representing it. 1925 was one of three years that had yet to have a movie in the DailyView, however, that is now over as Harold Lloyd’s silent/comedy The Freshman takes that place.

The Freshman is about a naïve young man Harold Lamb (Harold Lloyd) who has enrolled at Tate University and wants to be popular. He goes about it in some strange ways, making himself the butt of the upper classmen’s jokes, without his understanding or knowledge.

In his continual efforts to become popular, “Speedy” as he has become known, joined the football team (although he was only there in reality as the waterboy).

There is a sweet relationship with Harold and Peggy (Jobyna Ralston), a woman he met on the train coming to Tate University. This relationship keeps the film grounded, allowing the rest of the comedy to be really slapstick fun.

The are a lot of funny moments throughout the silent feature. Harold Lloyd had an excellent look for this style of comedy and fits into the slapstick and visual humor of the period extremely well.

The music, always important in a silent film, works with the movie though never really stands out. The football scenes were the most effective in the use of the background music.

The Freshman is on HBO Max and it is a fine example of the early days of cinema.

DailyView: Day 290, Movie 408

Tomorrow there is a little football game that is going to be played called The Super Bowl. I did some research about football movies to watch in honor of the Big Game and I found a couple that I had not seen that would work as films for the DailyView. One of them was a 2008 documentary by Kevin Rafferty, which detailed the final game of the season for Harvard and Yale, a season in which both teams had been undefeated.

Of course, if you were not aware of the game, as I was not, the title of the documentary is a gigantic spoiler: Harvard Beats Yale 29-29.

The season in question was 1968, and the documentary compiled a group of players from the game (including actor Tommy Lee Jones) for their insights into not only the game, but also their whole season at their respective schools.

What a fantastic film. I have to say that, even though I knew the title of the doc, as the film was winding down and Harvard was trying desperately to come back from their deficit, I was totally engaged and, if I am being honest, considerably nervous.

In 1968, the two Ivy League schools’ football teams were undefeated heading into their season’s final game. Harvard was an unheralded undefeated team while Yale was fully expected. The air of attitude around the Yale players indicated that they had every expectation of winning this game too.

The first half, Harvard was getting destroyed, but a replacement quarterback, Frank Champi, brought a big strong arm into the game and swung the momentum into Harvard’s camp. However, it did not seem to be that it would matter as Yale led Harvard 29-13 with but 0:42 seconds left to play.

The documentary featured interviews from over 50 players involved in the game and it brought so much depth to the story, not only about what that game meant, but how an instant in your life could affect you for the rest of your lives.

There were also mentions in the documentary of the life at the two universities and how other famous people were in the orbit of these players. They mentioned Meryl Streep as a girlfriend of one of the players, George W. Bush and his antics as a known drinker, Al Gore as Tommy Lee Jones’ roommate who would play Dixie on the touch tones of the phone. These stories may not have added to the story of this famous game, but it helped us see these football players in a more humanistic view.

The film also brought us a villain. Yale linebacker Mike Bouscaren was one of the players interviewed for the doc and he admitted freely that he was trying to take players out of the game because he thought that would help Yale win. He claimed to have injured the ankle of Harvard half-back, Ray Hornblower. He claimed he targeted Hornblower in revenge for making him look foolish on a play the season before. However, replays showed that, despite his insistence that he caused the injury, he was nowhere near Hornblower when the injury occurred.

Bouscaren admitted that he was going after Champi as well, but this led to a vital 15-yard penalty for a face mask violation that help Harvard get themselves into position to score. At the movie’s end, Bouscaren spoke like a person who had realized his part in the game and how it helped him become a better person.

The film had color kinescope video from a WHDH station mixed with the interviews conducted by Rafferty. The video featured play-by-play from sportscaster Don Gillis.

As I said, I was thrilled with this documentary, loving every minute of it. I was totally engrossed with the game and, even though I knew the outcome, was never bored. I hope tomorrow’s Super Bowl is as exciting as this dicumentary.

DailyView: Day 290, Movie 407

The second film in the Small Axe series of films directed by Steve McQueen and this one works in the DailyView both for Black History Month and romance (Valentine’s Day). This film was called Lovers Rock.

Lovers Rock was a totally different type of film from Mangrove, and something that I have not seen the like of before. Lovers Rock is the story of a couple of lovers (Michael Ward and Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn) who met at a reggae house party in West London in the year 1980, although calling this a story might be stretching the definition a bit. There is not much of a narrative running through the film as it is really focused on the house party and the expression of joy brought on by the music.

There is legitimately more time spent on the dance floor than on the characterization of any individual character. There were a couple of characters that appear that are given some moments, but moments are all that there is.

I found the second half of this film considerably better than the first half, mainly because of one song in particular found during that first part that had a high note at the end of a chorus that is sung by the whole room which felt like it was screeching. That screeching note drove me nutty, like nails on a chalkboard, and the song really never seemed to end. It dominated, crushed… any enjoyment I may have had during that part of the film.

After that song ended, the film improved for me, but it really never got to the point where I was truly engaged in what they were doing. Some of other songs played in Lovers Rock were more entertaining, but there was just not enough to recover.

DailyView: Day 289, Movie 406

Ava DuVernay’s Academy Award nominated documentary is on Netflix and this continued my investment in the Black History Month for the DailyView.

13th is a deep look into the history of black people in the United States and the way the race has been attacked and imprisoned over the decades. She looks at the way presidents such as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and, especially, Bill Clinton used wording such as “war on drugs” or “law and order” as dog whistle politics.

The statistics shared about how the numbers of black people in prison were skyrocketing over the decades of the 70s, 80s and 90s was unbelievable. Matching the elevation of these numbers with the political world was fascinating.

The doc uses some great footage to illustrate the point and there are some good uses of the talking heads to pass on the information. Some of the clips of Donald Trump were extremely powerful, showing his thoughts and how those thoughts paint him. To be fair, they picked certain lines from Trump to illustrate their point, context be damned. However, I am not sure that the context would change much of this.

This was a good documentary and it provided some terrible numbers and can help open my eyes about the history of black people in America.

DailyView: Day 288, Movie 405

I found another unknown film on Netflix tonight and I wondered if it was going to be as good as yesterday’s The Girl Next Door. Spoiler alert: it is not.

US Census Bureau agent Steve Kady (Jeremy Sisto) arrived in the small town of Rockwell Falls and found a bizarre fact. For the last 100 years, the population of Rockwell Falls has been 436. Steve was beginning to be treated as more than a guest, and, as the mystery deepened, Steve was shocked at the depth of the conspiracy he had discovered.

I never got into this movie. The look felt cheap. The acting was, at best, adequate. Jeremy Sisto was constantly over acting. It felt like a film you might find on Sy-Fy or Oxygen.

Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit appeared as Deputy Bobby Caine.

There was a lot of silliness in the movie and it did not feel scary or tense. The whole pop. 436 thing was explained in the most ridiculous way and it made no sense for why the people of the town did what they did. They also stated that it was God’s will to keep Rockwell Falls at teh number 436. No real reason. Just because.

And you had better not get to 437.

A real waste of time. I did not find this enjoyable at all. I disliked this one a lot.

DailyView: Day 287, Movie 404

Every once in a while, you come across a movie that leaves a pit in your stomach. A film that is disturbing and painful to watch, dealing with an area of life that is so shockingly cruel and evil that it is difficult to comprehend how another living, breathing person could commit such a heinous series of crimes against another person. Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door is that kind of movie.

We start the film with an adult David Moran (William Atherton), who had tried to save the life of a hit-and-run victim, reflecting back on his teen years in 1958 and on his first crush, Meg Loughlin (Blythe Auffarth). Meg and her sister Susan (Madeline Taylor), who was just badly injured in the same car crash that claimed their parents’ lives, had to come and stay with their Aunt Ruth Chandler (Blanche Baker), and her sons, Willie (Graham Patrick Martin), Ralphie (Austin Williams), and Donny (Benjamin Ross Kaplan).

Aunt Ruth immediately began to torment Meg and her sister. David (Daniel Manche) was conflicted about what was happening and was not sure what he could do to help. Things get worse as Ruth whips Susan for Meg’s perceived improprieties.

After Meg tried to go to police officer Lyle Jennings (Kevin Chamberlain) for assistance, Ruth had her tied up in the basement, while her boys watched. The abuse grew worse until, after an escape attempt by Meg, Ruth took the torture to a different level.

This was a movie that absolutely ripped out my heart and kicked me in the stomach. It was such a disturbing and anguish-inducing group of scenes that horrified me and caused me to feel empty inside. It is worse yet when considering that this movie is based on a true story, the murder of Sylvia Marie Likens in 1965. The film adapted the novel of the same name by Jack Ketchum.

It is an uncomfortable movie. It is a painful movie. It will make you mad. It will make you sick. It is hard to watch. I can absolutely see how this would be a divisive movie for an audience, but I think it is important to shine a light on the darkness because the darkness exists. We can’t put our head in the sand and pretend that these horrors are not out there. They are.

Is this movie entertaining? I do not think that is the way to describe it. It is an extremely effective horror film. It is, again, not a film I want to watch again any time soon. I still think it is filled with powerful performances, especially from Daniel Manche and Blythe Auffarth, and a story that we may not want to hear, but that we must see.

DailyView: Day 286, Movie 403

I really do not know much about Bob Marley. However, this looked to be an interesting story in a reasonably short documentary on Netflix, focusing on a major event in the middle 1970s in an unstable Jamaica.

The event I am referring to is the attempted assassination of Bob Marley, a singer whom had always been a dedicated fighter for peace.

Honestly, we do not know much about what happened still and the film speculated about the role of the CIA or about the local political leaders.

There were a lot of the people in the area talking about the situation. It was interesting, but the story did not grip me as much as I would have liked it to. It was fine and the political aspect was appealing, but maybe since I was not as much of a fan of Bob Marley, that was a reason why it did not grab me to the extent that it did.

DailyView: Day 285, Movie 402

This movie is Castaway meets LOST meets The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

And it is as awesome as that sounds.

When I was looking through Netflix’s film selection for Black History Month, I came across this sci-fi horror monster movie. It was the right length for my viewing tonight and it sounded interesting. Produced by Jason Blum, there was already a pedigree in horror films for Sweetheart. This was so great.

After her boat sank in a storm, Jennifer Remming (Kiersey Clemons) washed up on the shore of a mysterious island. She discovered her friend Brad (Benedict Samuel), who had also washed up on shore, but had bad injuries and he died soon after.

Jennifer buried him, but there was something monstrous that showed up that night. Some kind of creature appeared and took Brad’s body away. Watching one night, Jennifer saw the monster come from out of the water, eventually returning to a black hole in the water.

Soon after, Jennifer’s boyfriend Lucas Griffin (Emory Cohen) and friend Mia Reed (Hanna Mangan-Lawrence), who had also been on the boat, arrived on a raft. Lucas and Mia were happy to see Jennifer, but they were not too anxious to get back in the raft and leave, no matter how much Jennifer protested.

There are several interesting things going on in Sweetheart, including some intriguing implications about what Lucas and Mia may have done to survive on their raft. The monster is very mysterious and we do not know what it is or where it comes from, and I like that very much. They do not feel the need to go into details that do not further the story.

The third act is just great too. The final confrontation is absolutely worth the wait. Kiersey Clemons is a star and she dominated the screen. I loved this because Kiersey Clemons showed that Jennifer was smart and capable, which many times in films such as this, the characters are not. I never thought she was doing anything stupid and I loved how she was written here.

The film looked great. They use some wonderful techniques to shoot the film and the night sections of the movie are some of the best.

I was pleasantly pleased with Sweetheart and enjoyed the film tremendously.