The DailyView continues and in honor of Memorial Day, I decided to do some war films. I have never been a huge fan of war films, but there has always been one, in particular, that I wanted to see. It is a film that has been quoted by many and discussed by more. It is Francis Ford Coppola’s classic Apocalypse Now.

Already troubled U.S. Army Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is recruited to go on a mission that ‘does not exist – nor will it ever exist’. The mission, head into Cambodia, find renegade Green Beret Colonel Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando), whose army has been conducting unapproved missions against the Viet Cong. The army believes Kurtz has gone insane and they want Willard to eliminate the problem.

Willard, with a select crew, is placed on a U.S. navy patrol boat and sent up the Nung River. Along the way, Willard encountered a plethora of wild and odd ball characters showing the pressure of the war.

There is a brutality in Apocalypse Now that is like poetry. There is a feel to the scenes and it appeals to you on a internal basis. It is both beautiful and disturbing at the same time. The insanity of each encounter gives a different perspective on the war and the world around these men trying to exist within it.

Coppola has said that this film is not “about the Vietnam War, it is the Vietnam War.” He set out to create a film that showed how the Vietnam War was such a devastating blow to the psyche of the men involved in it. Even its initial protagonist, Apocalypse Now was a broken man dealing with his own PTSD as he searched for Kurtz. The more Willard learned about Kurtz, the more he wondered how a man like this could have gone insane or why the military would want a man so decorated assassinated.

What situation can push a man to do horrors to their fellow man? What does these men need to do to live with that knowledge?

Apocalypse Now is filled with amazing performances. Martin Sheen is excellent as Willard. Robert Duvall was the eccentric Lt. Colonel Bill Kilgore who was seemingly obsessed with surfing. Dennis Hopper was the photo journalist who has bought into Kurtz’s crazed cult. The film also included Harrison Ford, Laurence Fishburne, Albert Hall, Frederic Forrest, Scott Glenn, and Sam Bottoms.

There is a redux version of the movie, but I watched the original cut of Apocalypse Now. It is a long film, but every scene had its purpose and it fit together amazingly, especially considering the troubles the production faced.

Based loosely on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Coppola was able to keep everything together and create an epic war film that transcended the genre.

“Let my people go!”

That line is ironically delivered by Charlton Heston in the epic film The Ten Commandments. However, it is also delivered extremely effectively by Val Kilmer in the animated version of the same story.

The Story of Exodus is retold in DreamWorks Animation’s masterpiece, The Prince of Egypt.

This is the story of two brothers, Rameses (Ralph Fiennes) and Moses (Val Kilmer), one brother full royal blood, one discovered on the Nile and adopted by the Egyptian Pharaoh Seti (Patrick Stewart). Raised together as full brothers, Moses discovered his true past, leading to everything changing.

The story has been told countless times in all kinds of formats. This animated movie made it into a musical, with songs that were very Broadway-like in sound and execution. While there is not any song in the soundtrack that is one to sing along with, the original music sounds great in context with the story.

The animation is breathtakingly gorgeous. It varied the style of animation, much like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse would do almost 20 years later. The scene of Moses parting the Red Sea is one of the greatest animated sequences I have ever seen. Stunning.

The voice cast is top notch as well. Along with Fiennes, Kilmer, Stewart, there was Michelle Pfeiffer, Sandra Bullock, Jeff Goldblum, Danny Glover, Steve Martin, Martin Short, Helen Mirren, James Avery and Amick Byram.

I have to say that the film really shows the pain of what God did to the Egyptians to get Rameses to free the Hebrews. I found this very disturbing, especially the killing of the first born children. I found the entire plagues and death that comes from this uncomfortable. The first born children being killed was sad because they were totally innocents.

A fantastic version of the “greatest story ever told.” Some of the greatest animation that you will ever see.

Another film in the filmography of director Sam Raimi is next on the DailyView. It is the 2000 supernatural thriller called The Gift.

Annie Wilson (Cate Blanchett) was a widowed mom of three boys and she had a gift. She was a psychic/fortune teller and she would do readings for the people of the town of Brixton, Georgia to help with the money for her family. She had several clients who had terrible problems in their lives and were desperately looking for what would happen in the future.

When a young woman from a wealthy family named Jessica (Katie Holmes) disappeared, her father (Chelcie Ross) and her fiancé Wayne (Greg Kinnear) came to Annie for help, despite the objections of the sheriff (J.K. Simmons). Annie’s visions led the investigation to a pond on the property of local thug/wife-beater Donnie Barksdale (Keanu Reeves), who had been threatening Annie and her kids.

The Gift has some solid performances in it. Cate Blanchett is always great, no matter the film, and this is no exception. She brings a lot of torture and pain into the character of Annie, who has faced plenty in her life. Keanu Reeves was totally convincing in the role of the abusive, out-of-control husband. The stand out performance though was from Giovanni Ribisi, who played the deeply troubled Buddy. There was such rage and pain just under the surface from Buddy that detailed a life of horrors. Buddy had latched on to Annie as the one person who could help him, but his deep-seeded issues reared themselves at inopportune times.

The narrative bounced around in the first half of the movie, but it was still very compelling. There were several bits that were being set up for a pay off later in the movie. The main plot of the second half of the film does not get underway until well into the movie and does not keep the level of success as the film had originally set up.

Without spoiling anything, I was not overly satisfied with the conclusion of the movie. The answer to the mystery did not feel earned. It came out of nowhere and did not fit with the character that we had seen. Again, the best part of the conclusion to the movie was the use of Giovanni Ribisi and his haunting work.

The Gift is an average film that had some really good elements to it. A great cast and some effective uses of mood creates a stylish thriller. The story is, at best, okay.

The third film today from the “Leaving HBO Max” queue I am using for the DailyView is found somewhere in between the other two. It is certainly better than The Avengers, but not anywhere near the levels of Hot Fuzz. It is another comedy, this time starring John C. Reilly, called Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.

I was hating this at first because it was so ridiculous, but then I realized that the purpose of the movie was to be ridiculous. Walk Hard was a parody/spoof of biopics, in particular, rock-n-roll biopics of classic musicians. Once I realized that the ridiculous was intended, it made it easier to take. There are still plenty of stupid moments where the comedy does not work, but those are easier to dismiss.

After a tragic accident as a youth, Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly) discovered music and used it as an escape from the pains of his life. He got married young, had multiple children, recorded a classic hit song- Walk Hard- and discovered the world of drugs.

The way Reilly plays Dewey Cox (as well as the movie’s title) shows one of the big musicians Walk Hard is using as an influence is Johnny Cash, although you can see other influences in the narrative of Dewey Cox.

The best part of the film is the music. There are several excellent songs with really funny lyrics that fit right in with the life being lived by the titular star. Along with the title song, some great songs such as Take My Hand, Let’s Duet, Guilty as Charged, and Beautiful Ride are songs that are entertaining on their own, as well as advance the story of the film.

John C. Reilly is very good here, playing Dewey Cox. He brings an innocence to the character that shouldn’t be there with the life that he has lived. Reilly saves most of the scenes where things go too off-the-rail with his ability to react and respond to the events. His singing is very solid too.

Walk Hard has good moments mixed in with some truly terrible ones. They push the jokes several times, some times stepping over the line. It is a funny film with a great protagonist. Once you realize that this is a spoof, it is easier to accept what is happening.

After the car wreck that was The Avengers, I returned to the list of films leaving HBO Max by May 31st for the next entry in the DailyView and I found a film WAY better than that last piece of rubbish. In fact, Hot Fuzz was a tremendously excellent film.

I do not know what I was expecting with this, but I realized quickly that Hot Fuzz was nowhere near what I thought it was going to be. Hot Fuzz is the middle film, directed by Edgar Wright, in what was referred to as the Cornetto trilogy, and was the final of the three films that I had to see (Shaun of the Dead and At World’s End being the other two). With all due respect to Shaun of the Dead, I do believe that Hot Fuzz is my favorite of the three films.

Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) was a hot shot police officer in London who is transferred to the small village of Sandford because he was making the London police look bad by comparison. Once he arrived in Sandford, it appeared as if this was a typical and boring small town, but Angel knew that there was always something going on…even here.

Partnering up with Danny (Nick Frost), the son of Sandford police inspector Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent), Angel began to see that some of the tragic “accidents” in the town may not be as accidental as they are being made to appear.

Hot Fuzz is extremely funny, full of surprises and has some deep character development, especially between Angel and Danny. Clearly, the chemistry between Frost and Pegg are what this trilogy is built upon and you do not see it in any more obvious situations as you do in this movie.

There is a great cast of actors involved in this film too. Olivia Colman, Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy, Bill Bailey, Paul Freeman, Timothy Dalton, Edward Woodward, Stephen Merchant, Cate Blanchett, Steve Coogan, Stuart Wilson, Lorraine Hilton are just some of the talents (mostly British) cast that either have supporting roles or cameos in Hot Fuzz.

Hot Fuzz is a spoof on buddy cop movies without being ridiculous or demeaning the material. It is smartly written with a story that takes its fair share of twists and turns and benefits from the comedic talents of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. I am not sure what I was expecting from this, but it surpassed those expectations fully.

I was going through the list of movies on HBO Max that are leaving at the end of the month to see if there were any there that I would like to add to the DailyView and I found three. The first one I watched was 1998’s The Avengers, a movie based on the 1960s TV show.

WTF was this movie?

At first, I thought I was watching a farce film, like the Naked Gun franchise or Airplane!. Then I thought it might just be a straight up comedy, but I do not believe that the laughs were intended. I saw that it was listed as Action/Adventure. I went to Rotten Tomatoes and found that it was sitting at a spry 5%.

This review is not going to up that score at all.

I’m not going into a deep plot synopsis here either. That is but a waste of time. British agent John Steed (Ralph Fiennes) teams up with the woman who looks exactly like the terrorist on the videotape they have, Mrs. Peel (Uma Thurman) to engage in a story stolen directly from the 1980s General Hospital. The evil weather machine of Mikkos Cassadine from the 1980s was one of the most campy, over-the-top storylines the show had. Now it is on the big screen with Sean Connery playing the “Mikkos” role.

I must say, having the original James Bond himself playing a Bond villain is fun. Connery is chewing up every scene he is in. I mean… the giant teddy bear suits…what can I say? Although with a name like Sir August de Wynter, maybe he should be a Batman villain instead.

Uma Thurman, in her best Black Widow attire, has a duel role to play here, but we are never given a reason for there being two women with the same face. At least, I never caught a reason. I might have missed it because I was still trying to figure out what this film was.

Having the British Ministry being led by a pair of people named “Mother” (Jim Broadbent) and “Father” (Fiona Shaw) was funny, but I did not understand why Father was cosplaying Trinity from the Matrix.

I’m not sure that I could roll my eyes any harder than I did EVERY time these characters spoke. The dialogue was utterly atrocious and was as stupid as could be.

I’m also not sure how a film as short as this could make me feel like it was never going to end.

For fans of these characters, you can always go back to the 1960s TV show. While i have never seen it, surely it is better than this trash.

I have always loved Dr. Seuss, but most of his books do not translate very well to the big screen. The reason? I mean, his books are short and it is hard to extend it to an hour and a half. It is not a coincidence that one of the best adaptations of all time was the original animated How the Grinch Stole Christmas! from 1966, which was 26 minutes. However, Horton Hears a Who escapes much of these problems, in part with two strong voice performances from Jim Carrey and Steve Carell.

Horton the Elephant (Jim Carrey) is enjoying a carefree existence until one day when a speck of dust floats by and Horton hears voices upon it. He realizes that the voices meant that there was a little person living on the speck of dust. In truth, there was an entire city on the speck… the city of Who-ville, led by the Mayor (Steve Carell).

Because no one else had ears strong enough to hear the Whos, Horton was scorned and believed to be a negative influence on the kids of the jungle. Kangaroo (Carol Burnett) led the charge against Horton, doing everything in her power to get the speck, which had landed on a clover, away from the elephant.

Meanwhile in Who-ville, the Mayor was having the same difficulty getting anyone to believe him that their city was in danger and that Horton was real and in the sky.

This performance from Jim Carrey feels like his Robin Williams/Genie from Aladdin performance. I have a feeling that they let Carrey be free with what he wanted to do as there was a feel of improvisation to much of the dialogue used by Horton. Steve Carell has a great opposing performance and really works well with Carrey. They fit together here well and they are the real reason this works. Carol Burnett provides a strong villainous voice as the antagonist too.

There are a few times when the animation of the movie, which is fine, if not remarkable, switches to look more like the drawing from the actual Dr. Seuss books, which is a clever use of the structure. I would have liked to have seen more of this style than what we got.

There are parts to the story that do not feel fully integrated into the movie. For example, the Mayor’s son, JoJo (Jess McCartney) plays a major role in the finale, but his story was a side note for much of the film. It took a seismic shift to make him more important and I am not sure his third act heroism was necessarily earned.

But overall, the part that did not work quite as well are few and the charm of the rest of the film outstretched the issues. This was one of the most successful feature length Dr. Seuss adaptations and, watching it on Disney + makes it a perfect film for the DailyView today on a busy day.

Found footage was a genre that burned itself out after so long, but that did not mean that there were not some really great films during the time period. The Paranormal Activities films, Chronicle and now, Creep, which becomes today’s entry in the DailyView binge.

Aaron (Patrick Brice) is a young videographer, answered an ad for a one day job chronicling the life of a dying man, Josef (Mark Duplass) in his secluded cabin. Josef tells Aaron that he is making the video for his unborn child but it quickly becomes apparent that there is more of a sinister background to the story than he expected.

Creep was gripping. A psychological drama that consistently made you wonder what was happening. Josef was a talented liar and it was never exactly apparent what were the truths and what was the lies. He was so good that Aaron could not help but get sucked in by the stories. It felt as if something terrible was about to happen and that anxiety was throughout this movie.

The film was expertly shot. There are times in these found footage movies that you wonder why the camera is rolling, but this one does a great job of letting the audience understand why the camera was on.

Mark Duplass was exceptional as the unbalanced stalker. You would range from being empathic towards him to feeling the need to run away screaming. From the very first scene with him in the bathtub, he varied between overpoweringly sad to creepily eerie. Duplass pulled off both within the scene.

The literal jump scares were funny and both broke the tension and elevated it at the same time.

This was a Blumhouse film and it was one of the better offering from the company. I found this fully compelling and it was an excellent entry in the found footage genre.

While I hated Dazed & Confused, I have come across the first truly horrible film in the DailyView. It is a Bruce Willis sci-fi vehicle that is nowhere close to his epic run in The Fifth Element.

Released late in the year of 2020, Breach is a story of the human race attempting to flee the earth because of a terrible plague. They have set up a new location dubbed New Earth (oh so creative) and they are evacuating the final group of humans to New Earth. Noah (Cody Kearsley) and his pregnant girlfriend Hayley (Kassandra Clementi), who happens to be the daughter of the admiral of this shuttle (Thomas Jane), are trying to get on board the ship. They get separated and Hayley gets on the ship. Noah stowaways on the ship, pretending to be part of the custodial crew.

As Hayley goes into cryo-sleep, Noah meets a group of crew members, including Clay (Bruce Willis), supposedly one of the former warriors that was a huge bad ass. Now he is just a grumpy and angry old man, making moonshine to pass the time.

Some kind of alien is introduced in the setting, leading to crew members that dies being turned into zombie-like creatures.

This one is terrible. It is one of those Bruce Willis films that head straight to home video. Bruce just goes through the motions as he plays every character he has ever played since the mid nineties. There is a use of a hologram of Bruce’s head that was laugh out loud funny every time it popped up.

Nothing here makes a lick of sense and it just feels like it took every sci-fi space alien trope or scene form superior movies and just tossed them in to make a movie. Very little is explained.

The special effects were atrocious. The gunfire appeared to be painted on the screen and they may have used the same shots of the crew firing their guns for every time that they needed to show it.

The ending is as bad of an ending as we have seen in a sci-fi story for a long time.

Just a terrible movie and I can see why I had never heard of it before it popped up on Amazon Prime. I miss the days when I looked forward to a Bruce Willis movie.

This film was mentioned on a Top Ten Show a few weeks ago by John Rocha and I found it intriguing. I placed it on the list for the DailyView binge. I was never a huge fan of Mel Gibson, and I found the statements he made to be quite obscene. However, I am trying to separate artists from their art. Never wanting to support Mel Gibson again is a stance that I can completely understand and would never argue against someone for deciding that. I just think there are plenty of other people who have done horrendous things or have made ignorant comments, but their creative outlet may not be affected.

It is a controversy, I know.

The Beaver is a film that is clearly an attempt to redeem the career of Mel Gibson. Directed by Jodie Foster, a close friend of Gibson, the movie deals with depression, mental illness and multiple chances.

Walter Black is a depression man, whose toy company, that he inherited, is on the brink of bankruptcy. He is having troubles at home too. His wife Meredith (Jodie Foster) has kicked him out and of his two sons, Porter (Anton Yelchin) does not want anything to do with him.

His troubles lead to several failed suicide attempts from Walter. After his last one, he found an old hand puppet of a beaver in a dumpster. When he puts the puppet on his hand, he develops a second personality that speaks for and takes over the life of Walter. Named, simply, The Beaver, the personality tries to reorganize Walter’s life while reconnecting with the family he had been separated from.

I remember when this movie first came out. It seemed like a silly film, and, with the Gibson controversy, it was easy to ignore it. However, though there was some dark comedy involved here, this was not a silly, puppet movie. This was a dark, gloomy film with a character that was totally lost and suffering with his mental illness. The Beaver seems to be able to help Walter be successful, but it just meant that The Beaver was becoming dominant.

Porter was having his own issues. Selling himself to other high school students to write papers in their voices, Porter is hired by Norah (Jennifer Lawrence), another student, to write her graduation speech. The problem was that Norah was dealing with her own loss. Porter connected with her but his attempts to help only cause more problems.

There are some deep issues being dealt with here and it is a completely different movie than I remember seeing trailers about back in 2011. Strong performances by all the cast, a deep character study and just the right amount of dark humor sprinkled in makes The Beaver a film that was unexpectedly decent.

It was sad to see Anton Yelchin in the film. He was such an amazing young actor and his death was just a major tragedy. Who knows what he could have accomplished by now? His performance here is excellent.

The beaver is a very solid movie and, if you can look past Mel Gibson, who shows he is an exceptional actor (while maybe not a good person), this is a film worth the time.

Last night I watched The Blob from 1958 as part of the DailyView and tonight I took the next step and watched the 1988 reboot of the film. There were similarities among the two movies, including the basic plot and manner in which the Blob is handled. There were several scenes that looked to be pulled directly from the original and repackaged just a bit for the late 80s, and that is alright.

Like before, a meteorite landed on earth, bringing with it a strange, gelatinous creature that begins to hunt and devour people in the town of Arbeville, Colorado. A group of government agents (undefined from where) arrive, but it turns out that their motives are a little less than helpful.

I had a problem at the beginning of the film because i was not sure what characters I was meant to root for because as soon as I was introduced to a character, they wound up being dissolved inside the Blob. I was shocked a couple of times when characters who were seemingly being set up as the protagonists were dealt quick and gruesome deaths. Although I did like the uncertainty, it did make it awkward when trying to know who to support.

In the end, our main protagonists were cheerleader Meg Penny (Shawnee Smith) and motorcycle-riding outsider Brian Flagg (Kevin Dillon). They were pursued by both the creature and the government agents, led by cookie cutter mad scientist Dr. Meddows (Joe Seneca).

Honestly, when the Blob consumes the friendly waitress Fran (Candy Clark), I was sad, but I missed the fact that it had already gotten the sheriff, Herb Geller (Jeffrey DeMunn). I missed it so much that later on, I kept wondering to myself, “Where is the Sheriff?” I had to go back to rewatch the scene to catch Sheriff Geller’s fate.

This movie has a widely inconsistent tone. At one moment, it feels as if it is trying to be serious and frightening. At other moments, it feels as if it is meant to be humorous and campy. These tones worked against each other several times and did seem to undermine some of the more dramatic moments of the movie.

The special effects are much better than the original, of course. The mostly practical effects are impressive and the kills are much gorier. I have to say that the sequence where Dr. Meddows gets his comeuppance is extremely satisfying, starting with the best use of a rocket launcher ever.

This feels more like an R rated version of the Monster Squad, which is not all bad. There are some moments of fun involved, but the original has more charm and had better protagonists we get to know right away. In the right mood, this could be a fun watch. It could also lead to a lot of eye rolling.

I was watching Kevin Smith and Marc Bernardin’s Fatman Beyond podcast tonight and Kevin Smith made a reference to the movie, The Blob. He was referring to the 1988 version, but I had made the decision to add this to the DailyView, I wanted to start with the original, 1958 version.

A meteor containing a strange gelatinous blob landed on earth and connected itself to an old man’s hand. Kids Steve (Steve McQueen) and Jane (Aneta Corsaut) found him and took him to the doctor’s office. The creature continued to grow and dissolved the old man. It started attacking other towns people as it grew and grew.

One of the trope in horror is when the kids tell the parents/adults what they have seen and the parents/adults do not believe them. You see that all the time, including here. However, going against that trope was the character of Lt. Dave (Earl Rowe). He listened to what the kids said and he took steps to show that he believed them. I loved this character as he showed all of the best traits a police officer should have. There was another cop in the film that was just the opposite and he is an annoying character.

The Blob was an entertaining film, though to be fair, it was simplistic. The Blob creature was good for the time and there are many moments of fear in the narrative.

One of the drawbacks for me was that Steve and Jane did not look like teenagers to me. They looked to be in the mid to upper twenties at the least. That was distracting. Aneta Corsaut would end up being Helen Crumb in the Andy Griffith Show just a few years later. She played a teacher in that show.

There are some silly things that happen in the movie, but it moves along quickly and the Blob makes its way around the town without much issue.

The movie was a charming B-level monster flick and I will be following this up by watching The Blob from 1988.

Sam Raimi has had a long career of directing geek type films, from the Evil Dead franchise to the first Spider-Man series. He is currently helming the director’s chair of Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. He has several Raimi-isms that appear in many of his films that would tell you that this was a Sam Raimi project. However, the 1998 neo-noir thriller A Simple Plan was directed by Sam Raimi and avoided many, if not most, of the traits of the director and has to be considered one of his best films ever.

Three men, Hank (Bill Paxton), his brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) and Jacob’s friend Lou (Brent Briscoe), went chasing after a fox that had caused them to slide their truck off the snow cover road and into a tree. However, the revenge mission was stalled when they discovered a snow-covered small plane crashed in the woods. Even more, inside the small plane was a satchel with $4 million dollars of cash. The pilot was dead and the three of them tried to decide what they were going to do with the money. Hank’s first impression was to turn it into the cops, but Lou wanted to keep it for themselves. The convinced themselves that the money was from a drug dealer and that there would be no victims from them keeping the money. The money would change their lives forever.

The only way Hank agreed to the plan was if he would hold on to the money. Then once some time passed, they would divvy up the cash and all leave town.

A simple plan? Yes, but it is not too soon after this that complications begin to be tossed in the works, and it becomes anything but simple.

Raimi’s film dramatically investigates the theme of what greed or the power of money can do to good people. Hank is a friendly, run-of-the-mill type person who everybody likes, but you can see how he does increasingly, one might say, evil things in the name of the money. The promise of how this money would give these men something their loves were missing affected each of them in distinct manners. Lou became more desperate as the time went on, unable to balance the hope for the future against the pressing needs of the present. Jacob, already a little slow mentally, can be seen having his conscience weighing him down with each of the terrible events.

Billy Bob Thornton is tremendous here as Jacob. You can see the struggle inside his head after each moment in the film. You are never quite sure what he is going to do next. The late Bill Paxton is also great here as the guilt of his actions are pulling at his insides, but his guilt is fighting against the cumulative effects of his unavoidable actions. A Simple Plan is an excellent psychological thriller that you may not expect.

There is also a scary performance from Bridget Fonda, who plays Hank’s wife Sarah. She shows a manipulative side that comes out viciously when she hears about the amount of money. Many of the worst things that happen in the movie come directly from the machinations of Sarah, which plays in direct opposition to the type of character this normally would be.

The film has several twists and turns that help keep that pressure on out characters and allow the audience a chance to continue to be uncertain about where the eventual destiny will take these characters.

A Simple Plan is thrilling and disturbing all at the same time. You find yourselves rooting for Hank even after he had done some evil things because everyone can be questioning themselves about exactly what they would have done if they had been placed in the same situation.

What would you do?