DailyView: Day 339, Movie 484

This is the start of Wrestlemania weekend in the WWE and I looked through some of the other films that feature the world of professional wrestling. I discovered a film that was shot as a mockumentary called Kayfabe: A Fake Real Movie About a Fake Real Sport.

Kayfabe is a pro wrestling term for treating everything as real, the characters, the rivalries, the injuries. For decades, wrestlers protected kayfabe above all else. If you were feuding with someone, you could not hang out with them after work.

This mockumentary looked at the world of the independent wrestling company, TCICWF (Tri-Cities International Championship Wrestling Federation). The mockumentary took you backstage and showed what the world of pro wrestling was like at the level of wrestling in the churches and bingo halls with a promotion that was on its final legs before folding.

“The Rocket” Randy Tyler (Pete Smith) was the promotion’s top heel (bad guy) who helped the legendary former wrestler Al Thompson (Travis Watters) book the TCICWF matches and storylines. “The Rocket” is the champion after defeating top babyface (good guy) Steve Justice (Michael Roselli). However, Thompson delivered Randy bad news. The promotion was going out of business after the final two shows that had been scheduled.

The film focused on the bizarre characters, not only inside, but outside the ring. You had the hardcore wrestler who always bladed and bled in every match, the suspected gay wrestler who walked around the locker room completely naked, the rookie who was having sex with Thompson’s daughter, play by play broadcaster with a fetish for midgets, among others.

If you are a professional wrestling fan, this is a mockumentary for you. They use plenty of insider terms (many of which are defined for you in the first scene of the film) and they show many of the tricks of the trade.

There are fascinating and eccentric characters to follow and the way that the matches are set up are fun to watch. You can tell that there are plenty of types of real wrestlers being used as inspiration of the weird, behind-the-scene world we are introduced to.

The whole film is found on YouTube and is certainly a film any wrestling fan should watch. I do think there is enough humor and intelligence in the script and the execution that non-wrestling fans could find enjoyable aspects of it as well.

DailyView: Day 338, Movie 483

With tonight being the start of Wrestlemania weekend and another episode of Friday Night Titans, I decided to finish Oscar week with another Academy winning short, this time a Live Action short from 2012 called Curfew.

This one kicked off in a massively powerful way, with our main character Richie (Shawn Christensen) in the bath tub, in the midst of killing himself when the phone rings. It is his estranged sister (Kim Allen) calling in desperation. She needs someone to watch her daughter Sophia (Fátima Ptacek). The request was a surprise to Richie who seemingly cannot say no to his sister, Maggie.

Sophia is distant from Richie at first, but as the evening continued, she begins to warm to her unfamiliar uncle and we learn some truths about them both.

Wow. This one was really good. It immediately gripped me with the bathtub scene and it dove deep into characters with very little screen time. Performances were vital and the three main actors involved here do a fabulous job.

The dance scene at the bowling alley is phenomenal and just came out of nowhere. The fact that Richie was seeing things happen that were not there speaks to the isolation of the character and led directly to Sophia discovering the cut marks on his wrist.

This was a fantastic live short and it used its time brilliantly to tell its story.

DailyView: Day 337, Movie 482

With Morbius scheduled for tonight, I needed to do the early morning DailyView today, which meant I needed to pull from the short category. Since I have been doing Oscar winners this week, I decided to look into the list of Oscar winners for Best Short and I found a film that was intriguing in the Best Animated Short category. It had the title The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.

In the short, a hurricane levels a city leaving Morris Lessmore alone and confused. He saw a flying woman, supported by several books and this led him to a library with a portrait of the woman on the wall.

Morris becomes the proprietor of the library, taking care of the magical books and giving out books to those members of the community still suffering from the storm.

Morris begins to rewrite his memoir, completing it years later. Satisfied with his life’s work, the books swirl around him again and he becomes young once more, flying off much like the woman he saw originally. When a new young girl arrived at the library, Morris’s portrait has joined the wall.

There are lots of connections in this animated short to past films. There is a definite Wizard of Oz flare here, including a use of black and white/color scheme. Jules Verne’s book, From the Earth tot he Moon is referenced during the film as was the children’s rhyme Humpty Dumpty. Morris himself was modeled after Buster Keaton’s character in Steamboat Bill, Jr.

The animation is beautiful, as one could expect in an Oscar winner, and, according to IMDB, it used several techniques in its animation (miniatures, computer animation, 2D animation).

The importance of books and stories in a person’s life cannot be overstated in this film, clearly a major theme. There are plenty of ideas swirling around the film and it is worth a watch.

DailyView: Day 336, Movie 481

This Best Picture winner from 1946, All the King’s Men, has some distinct connections to the present day politics and made me think of a former president of the United States as I watched it.

Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford) was running for treasurer in his Southern state, and newspaper man Jack Burden (John Ireland) was on hand to report about the race. Stark lost that race, but he had learned a lot along the way and looked to campaign for the Governor of the state.

This time. Stark does not lose, and he begins to grab power through deals and corrupt plans. Stark became a shadow of the former honest man he was seen to be as he continued to carry through with misbehaviors and criminal dealings.

When his son (John Derek) got drunk and crashed his car, putting his girlfriend into a near death state, Stark arranged for the girl’s father to disappear.

The power that Willie Stark had come to find had corrupted him completely, unable to see the horrendous human being that he had become.

Almost 80 years later, this whole story of this governor (who was reportedly based on Louisiana Governor Huey Long) draws quite a parallel with Donald Trump, right down to the impeachment attempt and the chanting crowd protesting the impeachment.

This made this film even more difficult to watch. It was as if I’d been watching this for the past six years.

DailyView: Day 335, Movie 480

We go back to 1945 for tonight’s DailyView Best Picture Academy Award winner. This is a film noir drama directed and co-written by Billy Wilder. The Lost Weekend not only won best picture but it also won for Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director.

Failed writer Don Birnam (Ray Milland) has been sober for 10 days, but he was finding it impossible to stay on the wagon. After avoiding a trip out of town with his brother Wick (Phillip Terry), Don went on a four day bender where he had flashbacks to his early days as a drunk and his meeting with his girlfriend Helen (Jane Wyman).

Oscar winner Ray Milland is exceptional in this role as the obsessed alcoholic just after his next drink. Watching his spiral into chaos was riveting and powerful. Milland carries it off brilliantly. This film does not work without his epic lead performance, but work it does.

We see the heights to which Don will go to get another drink. The desperation in his face and the shame hidden behind it. The passion of another drink juxtaposed with the anguish and distress of Helen as she struggled to find any way to help the man she loved.

I have to say, the scene with Don in “Hangover Plaza” at the local hospital after he had fallen down the stairs was a frightening scene that made this film almost a horror film. It was about as unnerving as it could be. Fascinating that it did not have that much of an effect on Don, showing exactly how far gone he was.

Having said that, the ending does feel a little pat, with things being ended with a nice little bow. It felt as if the ending was not deserved for this picture. There should have been more of a battle at the end, something more powerful to accomplish what happened. I’m not sure what it should have been, but it just felt as if the end just happened.

While the ending may not have been perfect, there is so much more in this movie that works well. It looked at some of the real horrors that alcohol can bring upon a person and how it can change a person’s path in life.

DailyView: Day 334, Movie 479

I am continuing the Oscar winning Best Picture films section of the DailyView in honor of the Academy Awards last night. Today, I watched the 1955 Best Picture winner, Marty, a romantic movie starring Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair. It was the directorial debut of Delbert Mann in which he won an Oscar for Best Director.

Marty (Ernest Borgnine) was a lonely 34-year old butcher whose brothers had all gotten married and people were on his back about when he was going to get married. He lived at home with his Italian mother (Esther Minciotti) and tried to think of something to do with his friend Angie (Joe Mantell).

When they go out one night to a club, Marty meets up with a shy teacher Clara (Betsy Blair). Clara was plain looking and called a “dog” by many of the men at the club. However, Marty and Clara connected with their shared low-self images and spend the night talking and walking around the neighborhood.

Marty’s mother, afraid that Marty would toss her aside if he got married, told him she did not like Clara despite only meeting her for a few minutes, and Angie was jealous of the time Marty spent with her and told him she was a dog. With everyone in his life telling him to end this with Clara, Marty was unsure what he was supposed to do.

Ernest Borgnine was great in Marty as he brought a realism to the part. Marty was a character that you could relate to easily, with his doubts and his loneliness. Borgnine would win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in this film.

The story was simple and sweet, based solely on the connection between the two main characters. And I loved the way the ending of the film went.

Marty was a quick watch, only around 90 minutes, and it gives several true life performances of a couple of characters that you can’t help but root for. Marty was a wonderfully charming film.

DailyView: Day 333, Movie 478

The third Best Picture winner of the day for the DailyView is the musical An American in Paris starring Gene Kelly.

According to IMDB: “Jerry Mulligan (Gene Kelly), a struggling American painter in Paris, is “discovered” by an influential heiress (Nina Foch) with an interest in more than Jerry’s art. Jerry in turn falls for Lise (Leslie Caron), a young French girl already engaged to a cabaret singer. Jerry jokes, sings and dances with his best friend, an acerbic would-be concert pianist, while romantic complications abound.”

I have to say that I was not in love with any of the songs in this musical, but the dance routines are spot on, including the long 20-minute dance routine at the conclusion of the movie. The one exception I would include was “I Got Rhythm” with the kids singing the “I Got” part.

Jerry and Lise are also just a pair of jerks here as they string along their own partners as they fall in love with each other. Lise accepts a marriage proposal even while she is secretly dating Jerry. Her fiancé seemed to be a great guy and was a friend of Jerry which makes it all the worse. Am I supposed to support these two people who are downright cruel to the people they are with?

I was entertained with the dancing. The romance does not work as well for me. I did not hate the romance, but I thought they deserved each other at the end. An American in Paris is a classic, and an enjoyable watch.

DailyView: Day 333, Movie 477

Continuing the previous Best Picture winners at the Academy Award section of the DailyView, I have come across a 1963 British comedy called Tom Jones, a film that I was unaware of and one starring Albert Finney.

Tom Jones (Albert Finney) was left as a baby in the care of Squire Allworthy (George Devine) by a woman claiming to be his mother, Jenny. Jones became a womanizer, troublemaker but roguishly beloved by many. Tom falls for Sophie Western (Susannah York) but his reputation and behavior causes Sophie’s father to refuse him.

First of all, the plot of this is fairly convoluted. Trying to keep track of the comings and goings around the story is difficult at best. However, Tom Jones, as played by Albert Finney, is charming and easy to like. He is a rapscallion and makes for a strong protagonist.

The film is very funny, filled with the typical British humor we would see in the time period. It is not quite as satiric as Monty Python comedy, but this most definitely has that feel to it. There are weird moments through the film, including some characters breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to the audience. When it happens with Lynn Redgrave near the end of the film, it was kind of jarring. There is a narrator telling us the story as the film progressed.

While I watched this Academy Award Best Picture winning movie, all I could think about was that this is the type of movie that would never win Best Picture today and, in fact, would never even be nominated. It astounds me that the Academy not only nominated this in 1963, but also decided that it was the best movie of the year. In fact, it won despite being in the same category as Lilies of the Field, Cleopatra and How the West Was Won. All three of those films would have a much more likely win with today’s Academy than Tom Jones would. I would like to see the Academy expand their thoughts on what a Best Picture is. Sure, they nominate 10 movies, but let’s face facts. Only about two or three have a reasonable chance of winning, and there are plenty of films that could have been nominated that are great but not considered “Oscar” movies.

Anyway, Tom Jones was fun and had some good moments. Albert Finney was very charismatic even within a story that was really messy. If you like British humor, you should enjoy Tom Jones.

DailyView: Day 333, Movie 476

With the Academy Awards tonight, I decided that I would go about a week with watching some of the Academy Award winning films (mostly Best Picture winners) that I have not yet watched. There were quite a few on the list that I had never seen. I decided to start with one that I had seen discussed on Twitter a week or so ago and that I then rented on Vudu. It is the 1942 British classic Mrs. Miniver.

I was unaware of this movie before I saw the discussion on Twitter about it and I was fascinated by the concept. I was going to watch it before I knew it was an Oscar winner, but it fit right in with this week’s DailyView theme.

Mrs. Miniver (Greer Garson) is our lead character and a part of a middle class family in England around the start of World War II. She was married to Clem Miniver (Walter Pidgeon) and had several children, including a grown boy named Vin (Richard Ney). A local man, Mr. Ballard (Henry Travers) created a rose and named it “Mrs. Miniver” and planned on entering it into the local flower competition against the roses of Lady Beldon (May Whitty), the grandmother of Carol (Teresa Wright), the young lady that Vin was courting before he left to join the British Air Force.

If that recap is a bit disjointed, then you understand what the narrative of the film was like. It was more like a series of scenes or vignettes strung together all about the family of the Minivers, instead of a continuous storyline. Despite this unlikely narrative structure, the film really works well. This type of structure fit into the chaotic time in history that Mrs. Miniver took place within.

The film was made in the middle of World War II and used references/scenes including historical moments such as Dunkirk. A German (they do not use the term Nazi) pilot was shot down and came to Mrs. Miniver’s house. The air raids across London during this time really emphasized the terror and the fright being committed against the Brits.

There was some criticism of the film that it was nothing more than a piece of wartime propaganda, but the quality of the movie overcame any questions there may have been about it.

There were some wonderful performances, especially Greer Garson as Mrs. Miniver. She did win an Academy Award for the Best Actress for her role. Garson had the gamut of emotions to play throughout the film as each vignette brought about a new circumstance for the character to dive into. It included easier moments such as rose contests to huddling with her loved ones during an air raid attack.

It is a deserving Academy Award winner and I am glad I got the chance to see it.

DailyView: Day 332, Movie 475

I’ve said before that I like films involving serial killers. Sadly though, there are a whole lot of them that are pretty bad. Suspect Zero is one of those.

Suspect Zero featured Ben Kingsley, Aaron Eckhart and Carrie Anne Moss in a sleeper of a story that sees Eckhart pursuing Kingsley’s character across the country, believing him to be a serial killer of dozens of missing people, only to discover that he is actually killing other serial killers. Eckhart was also being tormented by psychic visions of the future that was making him irrational to the other FBI guys.

Carrie Anne Moss is here for reasons. She was a former flame of Eckhart’s character which is touch upon once where Carrie Anne seemed to be angry at Eckhart and the next scene seemed like she was desperately concerned for him.

The whole psychic flashes were here to just try and build a confusion for the story and build tension. It does not work.

Ben Kingsley was good overall, especially with the garbage that was given to him.

This is forgettable. It was a waste of time and had little to no tension. The final act was laughable and our killer had nothing to him. It is a bad film.

DailyView: Day 331, Movie 474

Elvis Presley made a lot of movies in his career. This is the first film that is not a concert film that I have seen from The King, and many people believe that this was one of the best films in the catalogue of Elvis Presley.

King Creole is based on the novel A Stone for Danny Fisher by Harold Robbins.

Danny Fisher (Elvis Presley) is a troublemaking 19-year old who has been unable to graduate from high school which caused conflict between him and his father (Dean Jagger). It turned out that Danny could sing and he started to sing for Charlie Legrand (Paul Stewart) owner of the King Creole nightclub. However, local gangster Maxie Fields (Walter Matthau) wanted Danny to sing for him instead.

There is more to the story than that, but it is a little messy. Some of the motives are shaky. I am not sure what Maxie Fields was think through much of the third act of the film, in the final showdown specifically.

However, Elvis was pretty good, Carolyn Jones was excellent as Ronnie, the mistress of Maxie, and the music was great.

King Creole was a fun film even if it is a lesser story. I would guess that this was the best Elvis film around.

DailyView: Day 330, Movie 473

Last Flag Flying was another one of those movies where I remember seeing the trailers quite a few times in the theaters, but never having the movie come to the theater so I could see it.

The film is the story of three former Vietnam vets. They had gone their separate ways after the war. Larry “Doc” Shepherd (Steve Carell) had served some time in the brig at the end of the war and then got out and got married. Richard Mueller (Lawrence Fishburne) became a recovering alcoholic and became a preacher. Sal Nealon (Bryan Cranston) became a bar owner and was constantly getting drunk.

Doc came to find his friends to ask them a favor. His son was killed in Iraq and he needed to go claim his body and he asked his old friends to come with him.

Conflict arose between the old friends whose paths had taken such drastic turns. Especially between Sal and Richard. However, as the days pass, the three of them discovered how important they were to each other.

Directed by Richard Linkletter, Last Flag Flying has, at its core, three great performances from three top of the line actors. This may be one of my personal favorite performances from Steve Carell. The sadness of his loss permeated the character and it was painful to watch him. Even his moments of pure joy and laughter had a ring of anguish behind his eyes. Carell was exceptional.

Bryan Cranston had some outstanding moments too, but he felt a little over the top at times. He was such a blunt character that didn’t appear to care what anyone else felt, but his connection to Doc and Richard was different. Lawrence Fishburne had a quieter performance, but shades of the old Mueller Mauler was brought out by Sal’s buffoonery.

There was a scene with a Marine colonel that felt unresolved, but the storyline with the three men and the loss felt by Doc dominated any other possible secondary story arcs.

The strength of this film is clearly the three stars. Some of the story is not as strong, but the three actors really elevated the material.

DailyView: Day 329, Movie 472

This one wrecked me.

The documentary on Amazon Prime from filmmaker Kurt Kuenne is a heart-wrenching and powerful love letter to Kurt’s friend, Andrew Bagby, who was a beloved doctor by tons of people. Unfortunately, he was murdered by a woman, Shirley Turner, who he had broken up with. Turned out that Turner was pregnant with Andrew’s baby and she gave birth to Zachary, a beautiful boy.

Kuenne started the film as a way of giving Zachary insight into the father that he would never know, but it turned out to be something considerably more tragic.

Andrew’s parents, David and Kathleen, were at the center of the attempts to try and gain custody of Zachary, but they had to play along with Shirley as she was in and out of jail on bail and as the courts in Canada slowly progressed, Shirley manipulated the system.

The documentary showed the despair from the Bigbys about the situation as well as showing them as two of the strongest people around. And they were going to have to be.

I’m not going to go into specifics about what happens with this story. If you can come into this documentary without knowledge of the case, like I did, you will find this to be a gripping, emotional tale that hits on all of your feelings.

I can’t imagine the pain and the anguish these amazing people suffered, with the knowledge that the woman who had murdered their son was now responsible for the life of their grandson. Still, I was not ready for the way this story went.

The ending of the doc was filled with love and heart. It was a tough one to watch, but the love is obvious and the powerful moments made it worth it.

DailyView: Day 328, Movie 471

So I saw that Mean Girls was leaving Paramount + this month, and I had it on my list to watch for the entirety of the DailyView. I also had just watched Three O’Clock High today, which could fall into a similar genre category as Mean Girls so everything seemed perfect.

I have to say, I really enjoyed Mean Girls. I found it funny and sadly more realistic than I would like it to be. I certainly did not have as many “eye-rolling, that would never happen spots” as I did in Three O’Clock High. Sure there were several moments where unlikely events occurred, perhaps taking things into a hyper-elevated exaggeration, but there was more of a ring of truth in Mean Girls than I expected.

Did I mention that it was funny?

Cady (Lindsey Lohan) had spent her whole life living in Africa and being home schooled by her parents (Neil Flynn and Ana Gasteyer) until her mom got a new job and she had to go to public school. She was the new student with little understanding of the social cliques that exist in a high school. She met Janis (Lizzy Ian) and Damian (Daniel Franzese) who told her about the Plastics. The Plastics were the “popular” girls who no one liked, but everyone idolized, including Queen Bee Regina George (Rachel McAdams) and her two followers Gretchen (Lacey Chabert) and Karen (Amanda Seyfried).

When Regina brought Cady into the circle, Janis convinced Cady to become a spy inside the Plastics and to tell her all the terrible things that they did. However, as Cady was portraying her role, her role became too method and Cady became as bad any any of the girls.

And look out for those buses.

I found the film to be extremely well-written, clever in the dialogue and the voice over (done by Lohan) and the crazy situations were elevated just enough to not make them totally unbelievable.

There were some awesome performances. I loved Tina Fey as the down-to-earth math teacher and Tim Meadow as the put-upon principal, Mr. Duvall. Both of these SNL alums knew how to deliver the comedic moments while staying real. I was not a huge fan of Amy Poehler’s role as Regina’s mother. She felt too fictional, too hyperbolic.

I found this to be one of my favorite teen comedy films and I thought this was really well done.

DailyView: Day 328, Movie 470

I saw this film mentioned on Twitter the other day and I looked into it on Vudu. Historically, as a teacher, I do not like movies set at a school that featured part of the plot that would never happen in a million years, and Three O’Clock High has plenty of moments like that. However, there was just something charming about the film, which is clearly not great, that made me ignore those times throughout when I rolled my eyes and just enjoy the basic story.

Jerry Mitchell (Casey Siemaszko) was a nerdy high school student who was in charge of the school student store at Weaver High School. The infamous new student Buddy Revell (Richard Tyson) came in with a reputation for being a bad boy filled with violence. Jerry was assigned to get an interview with him for the school paper and all hell broke loose.

Jerry touched Buddy on the shoulder and it was known that Buddy had a thing about people touching him. Buddy immediately scheduled a fight with Jerry at 3 o’clock in the school parking lot. Panicked, Jerry spent the entire day doing things unlike him to try and get out of the fight.

There are so many things that happen in this day that just would never happen, even in a fantasy film that happen here. There is a whole thing about a switchblade knife that, even back in 1987, would have sent Jerry home with a suspension, not just released back to the classes. The whole book report fiasco would never have been allowed, nor would the results of the situation.

There was a whole Buddy cheating off of Jerry bit that, apparently, Buddy did not need to do. That entire plot point made no sense whatsoever.

The fight itself after school would never have happened the way it did either. To ask the audience to accept all of these ridiculous premises stretched the boundaries of credibility.

And yet I did not hate it. There was something about poor sap Jerry that was relatable and made for someone to root for. He was the underdog and the pathetic protagonist that we hoped could overcome his troubles. Buddy made for a good villain, even though everything about him was contradicting what we thought we knew about him as a character.

I’d like to think that most of the most was some kind of daydream or exaggerated fantasy, but there is no indication that this film was doing that. Mixing this together as some kind of adolescent dream makes the silliness make more sense.

It is no doubt a stupid movie. However, if you could get past the obviously ridiculous situations, there are things to like about the film. It is a painless watch and has a couple of interesting performances.