Trying to fit one more movie into the DailyView today, but the time was limited. As I was going through the list of Starz movies, I came across the cult film that spawned a huge hit TV show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I had never seen the movie, but I was a big fan of the TV series with Sarah Michelle Geller as the Slayer. I had always heard that the movie Buffy was not very good and so I had avoided it. However, this felt like a good moment to sample it (especially since it was just 85 minutes).

You know what? I did not hate it.

Yes, it wasn’t anywhere near as good as the series. You could tell that the series took the best parts of the concept and built something awesome out of it.

Joss Whedon was the writer on the movie, and he would take the ideas and build a great series later, but the writing on the film was a drawback. This did not have the typically witty and funny dialogue that Whedon is known for. In fact, the dialogue here was the biggest weakness of the movie.

The cast was deep and strong with Kristy Swanson as Buffy Summers leading the pack. Then we had Rutger Hauer, Paul Reubens, Donald Sutherland, Luke Perry, Hilary Swank, David Arquette, and Stephen Root. This is a really strong cast. Unfortunately, they just did not have enough to do for this great ensemble.

Kristy Swanson did a solid job as Buffy, but she is always going to pale in comparison to Sarah Michelle Geller. Still, her efforts here keep the film on a path.

The story felt too crammed into the time frame of the film. A TV series is a much more effective way to tell this story and you can tell why the TV show was such a hit. The tone was a bit too goofy in the movie. In the TV show, even the ridiculous parts were treated seriously. That helped make the humorous parts stand out more. The movie had silly reactions and moments that undermined the action/story with the response (aka Paul Reubens’ death scene for example).

I also missed the vampires turning into dust when stabbed with the wooden stakes. That is an effect that was added to the TV show and made a very solid visual image.

Now, it may not be fair for me to compare the TV show to the movie. The TV show had the advantage of improving the areas that needed improving and spreading out the story elements. The movie did not have that benefit. Looking at it only as a movie and not comparing it to the TV show, the movie was okay. It was better than I thought it would be. It had some story issues and the pacing was off, but I have certainly seen worse movies.

I tried watching this film yesterday, but HBO Max was having some spasms here, so I had to put off this science fiction film, the feature film debut of George Lucas. The film was called THX 1138 and it is a futuristic, dystopian world where people do not have names, only designations and all sexual encounters have been removed.

THX (Robert Duvall) and LUH (Maggie McOmie) rebelled against this rigid society’s rules and connected with each other.

I was just bored out of my mind with this movie. While it is a beautiful film to watch with some of the more intriguing visual shots you are going to see in a science fiction movie with its minimalist style and white backgrounds, I just could not get into this story. The lack of exposition, while a brave choice, keeps the audience members at arms length, since it only continues to increase a level of confusion about what was happening.

The film feels like a thought experiment more than it does a story, but there just is not enough ideas here to make it a science fiction story. There are some fascinating visual storytelling here and you can see some of the director’s chops that would help create on of the seminal works of fiction of all time in Star Wars.

Not one of my favorite films for the DailyView.

I think this is the first movie with Walter Matthau that I have reviewed. I have seen movies with Matthau in them, but I do not think that I have written up any of them. The first film from the classic actor that will make the DailyView and Doc’s Classic Movies Reviewed is The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.

A group of four heavily armed men, led by Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw), hijacked one of the New York Subway Trains, holding the passengers on it hostage. The men made a demand of $1,000,000 or else they would begin killing hostages one at a time. Matthau is Lt. Zachary Garber, who is part of the NY Transit Police, communicates with the hijackers and get their list of demands. He also manages the attempt to stop what they were intending to do.

Walter Matthau is excellent here, his snarky dialogue and sarcastic tone working in overdrive. His character is in direct contradiction to Mr. Blue’s refined, snobby European type character. One would think there eventually was some inspiration from Mr. Blue for the character of Hans Gruber in Die Hard.

Jaws’ Robert Shaw is a wonderful opposition to Matthau’s character. Shaw is playing a thinking man’s villain and is about as cold blooded as you could get.

The film does a great job of keeping you on the edge of your seat while still having moments of humor. The differing tones do not feel out of place and work together well.

The ending of the movie really works well and provides a couple of shocking moments that you do not see coming. The film is making the argument about how the desire for money can poison some people.

The film includes several familiar faces including character actors Martin Balsam, Earl Hindman, Jerry Stiller, Dick O’Neill, Doris Roberts, James Broderick, Nathan George, Lee Wallace (playing a Mayor as he did several times in his career) and Hector Elizondo. Many of these actors wound up playing supporting roles on sitcoms over the years.

This was a quick, enjoyable story of the conflict between good and evil, and showcases the efforts of the public servants in emergencies. There was a bit with four Japanese businessmen early into the film that made no sense and felt a little racist, but that is the time frame of the 1970s sticking its backward thinking into the film. Other than that, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three was a lot of fun and was exciting to see.

Listening to SEN Live from yesterday and the panel wound up discussing a movie called The Kid Detective. It sounded interesting so I checked it out on Starz for the next movie on the DailyView.

Abe Applebaum (Adam Brody) had been a detective since he was 12-years old. He had experienced a lot of success with the simple cases of the school. So much so that the town made him a small celebrity with headlines and awards. However, when he was hired to find Gracie Gulliver (Kaitlyn Chalmers-Rizzato), a missing girl, Abe struggled with the real life aspect of the case. Unable to find the girl, Abe had taken the weight of the failure on his shoulders, bringing him down into a depressive state for many years.

Going through the motions, solving cases of missing cats, it is not until high school student Caroline (Sophie Nélisse), the girlfriend of a kid who had been murdered a few weeks before, came to hire Abe to solve the murder.

I liked this movie quite a bit. The best part of this is Adam Brody, who carries himself with such a sadness that you can not help but root for him to solve the case even though the more you see him work, the less likely he was going to solve anything. Even still, he has a lot of charm and charisma to carry him through the film.

The story is well done, with several intriguing shifts to keep the audience guessing. This is filmed in a neo-noir style and presents that manner in a wonderfully creative way.

It is also a dark comedy, as many of the jokes deal with some seriously disturbing topics. However, it is very funny and you can’t help but laugh when the writing is this good. The dialogue is crisp and believable. The delivery of the lines and the physical comedic moments are spot on.

While it is only 90 minutes long, The Kid Detective does feel longer. The first act or two are pretty slow burns as Abe is investigating the crime as only he knows how to do. The slow burn in this case is not a bad thing and helps us develop these characters besides just the plot.

Adam Brody is excellent here and he carries the most weight of the movie. His character has many layers, dealing with his own feelings of guilt and failure while trying to find his way through the difficulties of life.

A new reimagining of the classic fairy tale Cinderella appears today as the DailyView continues. Ever After: A Cinderella Story was on Disney + and retold the Cinderella story with some more realistic tendencies.

Of course, they included Leonardo Da Vinci (Patrick Godfrey) in the story too.

We see the background of how Danielle (Drew Barrymore) wound up a servant to her step-mother The Baroness (Anjelica Huston) when her father suffered a tragic fate. Danielle worked for the Baroness and her two daughters, the wicked Marguerite (Megan Dodds) and the soft spoken Jacqueline (Melanie Lynskey) at her father’s home.

A chance meeting between Danielle and the rebellious Prince Henry (Dougray Scott) set them up as an unlikely couple. Danielle pretended to be of wealthy and royalty, hiding the truth about her life.

When Prince Henry’s father (Timothy West) had an arranged marriage for him, Prince Henry revolted. The King gave him five days in which to find someone he loved or else the King would make the choice for him. He announced a Ball where Prince Henry would reveal his choice.

Meanwhile, the wicked step-mother, Baroness plotted on ways to make that choice be Marguerite.

I enjoyed this version of the classic tale. The story removed all of the fantastical elements such as the Fairy Godmother, the magical pumpkin coach and the changing back at the stroke of midnight and made it a more realistic take on the story, which was welcome.

Drew Barrymore and Dougray Scott made a wonderful pair, their chemistry was undeniable. The film spent some time with the pair together, giving us reasons to believe that they were in love besides just love at first site. And the movie made Danielle highly capable, specifically showing how she could take care of herself and not just be a damsel in distress.

Danielle reminded me of Belle from the Beauty and the Beast movies. Her intelligence, love of books and rebuke of those who she sees as fools match right along with the Disney Princess.

In a story that had been told many times, it was nice to have the chance to see how it could be changed up. While it remained familiar, the story had many new bits and helped make it more timely and continued to be full of romance.

I was browsing around on Amazon Prime this morning and I came across a film with a title that caught my attention. The Town that Dreaded Sundown was a fascinating title for a movie and then when I read the synopsis, I was all in for the next film in the DailyView.

It is loosely based on a series of cases that actually happened back in Texarkana in the 1940s. A man in a mask, who would become known as the Phantom Killer, attacked several couples out on “lover’s lane”, injuring the first ones and then killing others. The local police put out a manhunt during the time for the predator, but they were never able to capture him.

This is considered one of the first slasher films, being an inspiration for many to come. This feels like it is taking advantage of the real life Zodiac Killer who had been terrorizing San Francisco over the last few years. In this movie, the Phantom Killer does much the same as Zodiac did at his beginning. He would approach parked cars with couples inside and he would attack them. The Phantom used a gun a couple of times, which Zodiac did as well (though Zodiac used a knife too).

The hooded face also made on think back to the Zodiac, in particular with the famous moment in the park.

It was also nice to see Dawn Wells (RIP) appearing here after her years on Gilligan’s Island. I will admit to her presence being a distraction because… hey! it’s Mary Ann! Still, I am happy she was able to get work outside the island.

The film had some truly noticeable tone shifts. In fact, there were a couple of times when I thought the film had gone from a horror/crime film to a slapstick comedy. Those moments did not work at all with the story and were major problems for the narrative.

The film was told in a mock documentary style, which worked much better. If I were redoing this movie, I would lean heavier on that documentary and use that framing device much more freely.

It was a decent little movie, but there was not much about it that stood out.

I went on quite the voyage this morning for the DailyView.

This tip requires some background. At my school, we were discussing last day before summer break activities and the idea of a movie came up. When it comes to movies, people tend to look to me since I have some knowledge. During the discussion, one of the other teachers mentioned about a movie that her teachers would show when she was in school called The Gods Must Be Crazy. I had never heard of this movie before, so I added it to the DailyView list.

The Gods Must Be Crazy is not easy to find.

However, I thought I found the full movie on YouTube and so I planned on watching it this morning.

What the hell am I watching?

About half way through, I was starting to doubt that this was the same movie.

The first thing that made me question it was that Conrad Janis, who appeared as Mindy’s father on Mork and Mindy, was here as a cowboy hat wearing businessman and his name did not appear on the IMDB for The Gods Must Be Crazy. He was a recognizable actor and would have been on the cast list. Suddenly, I was not sure what I was watching. The lead actor here, N!xau (who was a San from the Kalahari Desert and had been discovered by the director of The Gods Must Be Crazy, Jamie Uys), was definitely the same man from the movie I was looking for so I kept watching.

Another question I had was that The Gods Must Be Crazy held am 85% on Rotten Tomatoes and what I was watching did not feel like it would be “fresh” at all. In fact, this was clearly a terrible movie.

I started my search to see exactly what it was that I was watching.

I went again to IMDB and went to Conrad Janis’s page to see what movie it listed him starring in, but funny enough, it was not on his page. Was that a commentary on the film? Undeterred, I went to the page for N!xau and I saw several films. Clicking on each, I was looking for one that would match the weird storyline that I was seeing.

N!xau, who played Xi, wound up with a bottle that contained a bird and he went on a journey to free the bird. It ended up in Kowloon, on the streets of Hong Kong. From there, it was a fish-out-of-water story as Xi tried to make his way through the culture of the land he did not understand.

There was a plot with some bumbling diamond thieves (who wore sunglasses and trench coats) too that came from out of nowhere. Carina Lau played the businesswoman who Xi followed and Ching Wan Lau played her assistant John, whom got stuck with Xi on his misadventures.

Finally, I was able to track down the title of this movie (which was listed as The Gods Must Be Crazy on YouTube0. It was Crazy Hong Kong, the fourth film in the Gods Must Be Crazy series. There turned out to be five of them in this series. This one certainly did not inspire me to watch the rest.

The production values on this were terrible. The dubbing was bad (even the dubbing for Conrad Janis was echo-y and poorly done). The story was nonsensical.

Still, it is one of those films that you can sit down with and have a good time making fun of.

I hope to still search out The Gods Must Be Crazy, which sounds like a considerably better movie, and I won’t be fooled again.

The DailyView binge has given me an opportunity to fill some gaps in my movie viewing knowledge. Caddyshack is one of the gaps that I had. I had never seen Caddyshack despite its reputation as one of the great comedies of all time. It is highly quotable and, out of context, has some classic lines.

However, I found this to be dumb, boring and exceedingly unfunny. The humor was crass and sophomoric.

The only thing I thought was even remotely funny was the performance from Bill Murray because it was such a committed performance. His battle with the gopher had its moments and it is certainly iconic.

Other than that… just not a fan.

I have always enjoyed Rodney Dangerfield, but his performance in the movie was the same as everything he ever does. It was his act and I had heard the jokes before.

The story was a loosely strung together group of sight gags or juvenile gross bodily fluids jokes. Mistaking a Baby Ruth candy bar for a turd? Ha Ha. That one is so funny.

Then the ending scene was both completely predictable and confusing as can be. The golf challenge strokes do not seem to add up, but what was going to happen was telegraphed a mile away.

I thought that I would enjoy this, but I simply did not. I was wishing it would end during the first 20 minutes. This one is just not in my humor range.

I feel as if this is a hot take, so I will say that if you are someone who loved Caddyshack and believes it is one of the funniest movies of all time, more power to you. You are welcome to your opinion. My opinion is different. Movies are subjective. Humor is subjective. I did not like this movie. It does not mean that you can’t. Just stemming off the haters.

I’m not sure what is going on at WordPress. It says that I have a six day streak posting at Embrace Your Geekness despite the fact that I have posted a post every day since April 29th with the DailyView. It is really weird and I am not really sure of the data they are using. Anyway… going for a seven day streak today with today’s film, The ‘Burbs.

I added this film to the list after watching the Schmoedown Horror Exhibition from a few weeks ago. It was the answer to one of the questions and critic/Schmoedown star William Bibbiani made a comment about The ‘Burbs being one of his favorite movies and I knew I had never seen it. I was surprised that it was included in a horror Schmoedown because I did not think that The ‘Burbs was that kind of movie. I was intrigued.

Then I looked at Rotten Tomatoes and I saw it was at 53%, which is one of my memories of the film- the reviews were bad. It just kept being an intriguing film. So I watched it today and I found it great. It was funny, interesting and I was never sure what was going to happen next.

Some new neighbors move in to the house next to Ray Peterson (Tom Hanks) in the suburbs and they start to show some questionable actions. They were rarely seen, weird noises coming from their basement and Ray saw them digging in their backyard during a rainstorm.

Ray, along with his neighbors Rumsfield (Bruce Dern) and Art (Rick Ducommun), begin to look into the neighbors when another neighbor, old man Walter (Gale Gordon) disappeared without a trace.

The paranoia continued to build among the neighborhood as strange occurrences continue to happen. One of the fun aspect of the film is that Corey Feldman’s character Ricky is one of the neighbors and he spends his time on the porch watching everything that is happening in the cul-de-sac. He would invite his girlfriend and his friends over to watch the events happening around them.

The cast is fun, including Tom Hanks who was still in his comedy acting style of his early movies. It was great seeing Carrie Fisher too as she was Tom Hanks’ wife.

As I was watching this, The ‘Burbs made me feel as if I had been transported back into the 1980s. This film had a tone much similar to The Goonies and other comedic action films of the time. The music, the dialogue, the over-the-top situations are all so very 80s and hit on the nostalgia. I wonder if I would have thought differently had I saw this in the actual 80s.

I enjoyed this quite a bit and I am glad that I finally saw it.

One more Memorial Day movie for the DailyView is Black Hawk Down, the 2001 film from director Ridley Scott and starring a potpourri of actors.

Black Hawk Down tells the true story of a US Army Rangers mission into Somalia on October 3, 1993 to attempt to capture two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord. Unfortunately, this mission took a turn and resulted in a massive firefight between the US forces and a group of heavily armed Somali gunmen. The film is then a drawn out battle sequence displaying the pain and anguish associated with war as we see first hand the injured Americans suffer and die trying desperately to hold on until reinforcements could arrive.

There is a huge ensemble cast in this movie, and to be honest, half of them I could not tell who they were. With the short haircuts and the helmets and gear, when I looked at IMDb for the cast list, I kept hearing myself say… “he’s in this?” I was able to recognize Eric Bana easily enough and I spied Jeremy Piven. Josh Hartnett is the “lead” of the protagonists if there is one. There is also Tom Sizemore, Ewan McGregor, Tom Hardy, William Fichtner, Sam Shepard, Ioan Gruffudd, Jason Isaacs, Steven Ford, Orlando Bloom, Ty Burrell, Gabriel Casseus, Ewen Bremner and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.

With a cast this size, one of the drawbacks of Black Hawk Down is the fact that we do not get much character development from any of the characters, save a few. And even those are limited. I honestly had a hard time knowing which characters were which and that limited the amount of concern I had for them.

Despite this, they were absolutely placed in a tense situation and I did not want to see them getting killed. There were a few emotional moments, mainly because they were the Americans and I am trained to root for them. I believe, though, that if there was more time spent on character development in the movie, I would have been more emotionally invested.

The gunfire scenes are very well done and create an anxious movie viewing experience. Again, I might have preferred to lower the sheer amount of firefights with bullets everywhere and focus in on something more human. I am afraid that the continuous gunfire desensitized me to the action scenes and made me care less.

The film looked great and the scenes where the soldiers are being shot/injured are certainly difficult to watch. I believed that these soldiers were in a situation where they were in serious jeopardy and I was unsure how they were going to be able to survive. It looked like a warzone and convinced me of the danger.

In the end, this is a very competent war movie that I would have liked to readjust some of the time given to the constant gun fighting in order to develop the characters in a deeper level. If you are a fan of war movies, this one is probably for you.

The second documentary during the DailyView is a partner to Apocalypse Now, which I watched earlier this morning. It is the Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper, and Eleanor Coppola directed documentary dealing with the creation of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse tells the story of the difficult process of making Apocalypse Now, which suffered from script difficulties, weather challenges, Marlon Brando, and Francis Ford Coppola’s self-doubt and insecurities.

The documentary included footage and sound secretly recorded by Coppola’s wife, Eleanor during the filming of Apocalypse Now.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the documentary was it truly showed how Francis Ford Coppola was dealing with the constant issues in much the same way as the characters of Apocalypse Now were dealing with their struggles. There are times when, in his own words, you can hear Coppola taking his stress and frustrations to levels unimaginable. It is ironic that a movie about characters dealing with situations that could drive them insane seemed to be doing that very thing to the director as well.

The words of Coppola when he found out about the heart attack suffered by leading man Martin Sheen were shockingly cold. I am sure that he did not mean it the way it comes across, but you can hear that he has been pushed past a certain point.

This does a monumental job of giving us the behind the scenes details that only serve to enrich the success of the final product. It is amazing that the movie is able to be completed considering the amount of distractions and hurdles that the production had to handle.

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.