It’s Super Bowl Sunday, and at EYG, we celebrate with some DailyView additions. While looking for football movies that I have not seen before, I came across a film that not only worked as a football movie, but also fit into one of the three remaining years without a movie representing it. 1925 was one of three years that had yet to have a movie in the DailyView, however, that is now over as Harold Lloyd’s silent/comedy The Freshman takes that place.
The Freshman is about a naïve young man Harold Lamb (Harold Lloyd) who has enrolled at Tate University and wants to be popular. He goes about it in some strange ways, making himself the butt of the upper classmen’s jokes, without his understanding or knowledge.
In his continual efforts to become popular, “Speedy” as he has become known, joined the football team (although he was only there in reality as the waterboy).
There is a sweet relationship with Harold and Peggy (Jobyna Ralston), a woman he met on the train coming to Tate University. This relationship keeps the film grounded, allowing the rest of the comedy to be really slapstick fun.
The are a lot of funny moments throughout the silent feature. Harold Lloyd had an excellent look for this style of comedy and fits into the slapstick and visual humor of the period extremely well.
The music, always important in a silent film, works with the movie though never really stands out. The football scenes were the most effective in the use of the background music.
The Freshman is on HBO Max and it is a fine example of the early days of cinema.
Tomorrow there is a little football game that is going to be played called The Super Bowl. I did some research about football movies to watch in honor of the Big Game and I found a couple that I had not seen that would work as films for the DailyView. One of them was a 2008 documentary by Kevin Rafferty, which detailed the final game of the season for Harvard and Yale, a season in which both teams had been undefeated.
Of course, if you were not aware of the game, as I was not, the title of the documentary is a gigantic spoiler: Harvard Beats Yale 29-29.
The season in question was 1968, and the documentary compiled a group of players from the game (including actor Tommy Lee Jones) for their insights into not only the game, but also their whole season at their respective schools.
What a fantastic film. I have to say that, even though I knew the title of the doc, as the film was winding down and Harvard was trying desperately to come back from their deficit, I was totally engaged and, if I am being honest, considerably nervous.
In 1968, the two Ivy League schools’ football teams were undefeated heading into their season’s final game. Harvard was an unheralded undefeated team while Yale was fully expected. The air of attitude around the Yale players indicated that they had every expectation of winning this game too.
The first half, Harvard was getting destroyed, but a replacement quarterback, Frank Champi, brought a big strong arm into the game and swung the momentum into Harvard’s camp. However, it did not seem to be that it would matter as Yale led Harvard 29-13 with but 0:42 seconds left to play.
The documentary featured interviews from over 50 players involved in the game and it brought so much depth to the story, not only about what that game meant, but how an instant in your life could affect you for the rest of your lives.
There were also mentions in the documentary of the life at the two universities and how other famous people were in the orbit of these players. They mentioned Meryl Streep as a girlfriend of one of the players, George W. Bush and his antics as a known drinker, Al Gore as Tommy Lee Jones’ roommate who would play Dixie on the touch tones of the phone. These stories may not have added to the story of this famous game, but it helped us see these football players in a more humanistic view.
The film also brought us a villain. Yale linebacker Mike Bouscaren was one of the players interviewed for the doc and he admitted freely that he was trying to take players out of the game because he thought that would help Yale win. He claimed to have injured the ankle of Harvard half-back, Ray Hornblower. He claimed he targeted Hornblower in revenge for making him look foolish on a play the season before. However, replays showed that, despite his insistence that he caused the injury, he was nowhere near Hornblower when the injury occurred.
Bouscaren admitted that he was going after Champi as well, but this led to a vital 15-yard penalty for a face mask violation that help Harvard get themselves into position to score. At the movie’s end, Bouscaren spoke like a person who had realized his part in the game and how it helped him become a better person.
The film had color kinescope video from a WHDH station mixed with the interviews conducted by Rafferty. The video featured play-by-play from sportscaster Don Gillis.
As I said, I was thrilled with this documentary, loving every minute of it. I was totally engrossed with the game and, even though I knew the outcome, was never bored. I hope tomorrow’s Super Bowl is as exciting as this dicumentary.
The second film in the Small Axe series of films directed by Steve McQueen and this one works in the DailyView both for Black History Month and romance (Valentine’s Day). This film was called Lovers Rock.
Lovers Rock was a totally different type of film from Mangrove, and something that I have not seen the like of before. Lovers Rock is the story of a couple of lovers (Michael Ward and Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn) who met at a reggae house party in West London in the year 1980, although calling this a story might be stretching the definition a bit. There is not much of a narrative running through the film as it is really focused on the house party and the expression of joy brought on by the music.
There is legitimately more time spent on the dance floor than on the characterization of any individual character. There were a couple of characters that appear that are given some moments, but moments are all that there is.
I found the second half of this film considerably better than the first half, mainly because of one song in particular found during that first part that had a high note at the end of a chorus that is sung by the whole room which felt like it was screeching. That screeching note drove me nutty, like nails on a chalkboard, and the song really never seemed to end. It dominated, crushed… any enjoyment I may have had during that part of the film.
After that song ended, the film improved for me, but it really never got to the point where I was truly engaged in what they were doing. Some of other songs played in Lovers Rock were more entertaining, but there was just not enough to recover.
Ava DuVernay’s Academy Award nominated documentary is on Netflix and this continued my investment in the Black History Month for the DailyView.
13th is a deep look into the history of black people in the United States and the way the race has been attacked and imprisoned over the decades. She looks at the way presidents such as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and, especially, Bill Clinton used wording such as “war on drugs” or “law and order” as dog whistle politics.
The statistics shared about how the numbers of black people in prison were skyrocketing over the decades of the 70s, 80s and 90s was unbelievable. Matching the elevation of these numbers with the political world was fascinating.
The doc uses some great footage to illustrate the point and there are some good uses of the talking heads to pass on the information. Some of the clips of Donald Trump were extremely powerful, showing his thoughts and how those thoughts paint him. To be fair, they picked certain lines from Trump to illustrate their point, context be damned. However, I am not sure that the context would change much of this.
This was a good documentary and it provided some terrible numbers and can help open my eyes about the history of black people in America.
I found another unknown film on Netflix tonight and I wondered if it was going to be as good as yesterday’s The Girl Next Door. Spoiler alert: it is not.
US Census Bureau agent Steve Kady (Jeremy Sisto) arrived in the small town of Rockwell Falls and found a bizarre fact. For the last 100 years, the population of Rockwell Falls has been 436. Steve was beginning to be treated as more than a guest, and, as the mystery deepened, Steve was shocked at the depth of the conspiracy he had discovered.
I never got into this movie. The look felt cheap. The acting was, at best, adequate. Jeremy Sisto was constantly over acting. It felt like a film you might find on Sy-Fy or Oxygen.
Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit appeared as Deputy Bobby Caine.
There was a lot of silliness in the movie and it did not feel scary or tense. The whole pop. 436 thing was explained in the most ridiculous way and it made no sense for why the people of the town did what they did. They also stated that it was God’s will to keep Rockwell Falls at teh number 436. No real reason. Just because.
And you had better not get to 437.
A real waste of time. I did not find this enjoyable at all. I disliked this one a lot.
Every once in a while, you come across a movie that leaves a pit in your stomach. A film that is disturbing and painful to watch, dealing with an area of life that is so shockingly cruel and evil that it is difficult to comprehend how another living, breathing person could commit such a heinous series of crimes against another person. Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door is that kind of movie.
We start the film with an adult David Moran (William Atherton), who had tried to save the life of a hit-and-run victim, reflecting back on his teen years in 1958 and on his first crush, Meg Loughlin (Blythe Auffarth). Meg and her sister Susan (Madeline Taylor), who was just badly injured in the same car crash that claimed their parents’ lives, had to come and stay with their Aunt Ruth Chandler (Blanche Baker), and her sons, Willie (Graham Patrick Martin), Ralphie (Austin Williams), and Donny (Benjamin Ross Kaplan).
Aunt Ruth immediately began to torment Meg and her sister. David (Daniel Manche) was conflicted about what was happening and was not sure what he could do to help. Things get worse as Ruth whips Susan for Meg’s perceived improprieties.
After Meg tried to go to police officer Lyle Jennings (Kevin Chamberlain) for assistance, Ruth had her tied up in the basement, while her boys watched. The abuse grew worse until, after an escape attempt by Meg, Ruth took the torture to a different level.
This was a movie that absolutely ripped out my heart and kicked me in the stomach. It was such a disturbing and anguish-inducing group of scenes that horrified me and caused me to feel empty inside. It is worse yet when considering that this movie is based on a true story, the murder of Sylvia Marie Likens in 1965. The film adapted the novel of the same name by Jack Ketchum.
It is an uncomfortable movie. It is a painful movie. It will make you mad. It will make you sick. It is hard to watch. I can absolutely see how this would be a divisive movie for an audience, but I think it is important to shine a light on the darkness because the darkness exists. We can’t put our head in the sand and pretend that these horrors are not out there. They are.
Is this movie entertaining? I do not think that is the way to describe it. It is an extremely effective horror film. It is, again, not a film I want to watch again any time soon. I still think it is filled with powerful performances, especially from Daniel Manche and Blythe Auffarth, and a story that we may not want to hear, but that we must see.
I really do not know much about Bob Marley. However, this looked to be an interesting story in a reasonably short documentary on Netflix, focusing on a major event in the middle 1970s in an unstable Jamaica.
The event I am referring to is the attempted assassination of Bob Marley, a singer whom had always been a dedicated fighter for peace.
Honestly, we do not know much about what happened still and the film speculated about the role of the CIA or about the local political leaders.
There were a lot of the people in the area talking about the situation. It was interesting, but the story did not grip me as much as I would have liked it to. It was fine and the political aspect was appealing, but maybe since I was not as much of a fan of Bob Marley, that was a reason why it did not grab me to the extent that it did.
This movie is Castaway meets LOST meets The Creature from the Black Lagoon.
And it is as awesome as that sounds.
When I was looking through Netflix’s film selection for Black History Month, I came across this sci-fi horror monster movie. It was the right length for my viewing tonight and it sounded interesting. Produced by Jason Blum, there was already a pedigree in horror films for Sweetheart. This was so great.
After her boat sank in a storm, Jennifer Remming (Kiersey Clemons) washed up on the shore of a mysterious island. She discovered her friend Brad (Benedict Samuel), who had also washed up on shore, but had bad injuries and he died soon after.
Jennifer buried him, but there was something monstrous that showed up that night. Some kind of creature appeared and took Brad’s body away. Watching one night, Jennifer saw the monster come from out of the water, eventually returning to a black hole in the water.
Soon after, Jennifer’s boyfriend Lucas Griffin (Emory Cohen) and friend Mia Reed (Hanna Mangan-Lawrence), who had also been on the boat, arrived on a raft. Lucas and Mia were happy to see Jennifer, but they were not too anxious to get back in the raft and leave, no matter how much Jennifer protested.
There are several interesting things going on in Sweetheart, including some intriguing implications about what Lucas and Mia may have done to survive on their raft. The monster is very mysterious and we do not know what it is or where it comes from, and I like that very much. They do not feel the need to go into details that do not further the story.
The third act is just great too. The final confrontation is absolutely worth the wait. Kiersey Clemons is a star and she dominated the screen. I loved this because Kiersey Clemons showed that Jennifer was smart and capable, which many times in films such as this, the characters are not. I never thought she was doing anything stupid and I loved how she was written here.
The film looked great. They use some wonderful techniques to shoot the film and the night sections of the movie are some of the best.
I was pleasantly pleased with Sweetheart and enjoyed the film tremendously.
An unbearably heavy and pain-filled documentary this early morning. It is Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog, the doc short from 1955 that looked at the concentration camps of the Holocaust, ten years later.
The imagery of the film is horrifying, shocking evidence of man’s inhumanity to man, specifically the Jewish people who were targeted by the Nazi Party for extermination.
Treated like animals, if not even worse than animals, the Jewish men and women spent years in an intolerable situation thrust upon them from some of the evilest monsters the world has ever seen.
The documentary, narrated in French, spoke of the daily horror and the inglorious end suffered by the prisoners of these camps. Written by Holocaust survivor Jean Cayrol, it was a struggle to finish for him. The combination of black and white war footage and color pictures of the present day (1955). These ungodly images were punctuated by the score written by Hanns Eisler.
Resnais was tentative about making this film until he found out that Cayrol would be involved.
It is an important film because it is a time that must never be forgotten, because the horrors found at places like Auschwitz or Majdanek must never be allowed to happen again.
I find this hard to classify because I do not want to minimize the documentary so I will be skipping that part of this review. This can be found on HBO Max and it should be a doc that everybody sees during their life.
The 400th movie in the DailyView was a film I had never heard of before and was on Peacock. I loved Robin Williams and the premise surprised me. Unfortunately, The Big White felt like a poor man’s Fargo.
Paul Barnell (Robin Williams) and his wife Margaret (Holly Hunter) had been having problems, especially with money. Paul’s brother Raymond (Woody Harrelson) had been missing for five years so Paul tried to cash in a life insurance policy on him.
Insurance investigator Ted Waters (Giovanni Ribisi) told Paul that they could not Raymond declared dead until he was missing for at least 7 years.
Paul, desperate to figure something out, discovered a dead body in the dumpster outside his work. Paul decided to take the body and make it seem as if it was his brother come back, only to die accidentally.
Ted never believed the coincidental result and a couple of thugs (Tim Blake Nelson and W. Earl Brown) who had put the man in the dumpster in the first place both were putting the pressure on Paul.
While I think there are some good ideas in the film and some moments were decent, much of the movie is a mess. The whole “Tourette Syndrome” storyline with Margaret never worked, was played for comedy and was never resolved. Ted went off the rails big time in the movie and that did not feel right. The love interests were odd characters just for the sake of being odd.
Robin Williams is great as usual. Woody Harrelson was playing a character that he has played in many other movies.
The story is messy and convoluted. It has some moments, but I think it would be more effective if it had been edited down.
It was not a terrible movie I watched, but it could have been so much better.
In 2020, a series of films were released first on the BBC and then a week later on Amazon Prime. This series of films were all under the awning of Small Axe and they were all written and directed by Steve McQueen. It was a series that I wanted to watch at the time, but just did not fit them into my schedule. That oversight then is my benefit now as I can use these films in the DailyView during Black History Month.
The first film is the true story of the Mangrove restaurant in west London and the subsequent trial of the group known as the Mangrove 9, a group accused by the police at the time of organizing and starting a violent riot.
The Mangrove restaurant was targeted by the police at the time under suspicion of criminal behavior going on, despite the fact that there had been no evidence of anything taking place. Trinidadian immigrant Frank Crichlow (Shaun Parkes) opened the Mangrove in Noting Hill during the 1960s and the place immediately became a local spot for black people to meet.
The restaurant is watched by racist Constable Frank Pulley (Sam Spruell) and Pulley leads several assaults and raids on the establishment, tormenting Frank and his employees.
The neighborhood rallied behind the Mangrove and organized a protest against the unfair police actions. After the police instigated violence among the protesters, several arrests are made and the group is placed on trial.
Letitia Wright played Trinidadian Black Panther leader Altheia Jones-LeCointe, and she does a magnificent job. She brings a power to her performance that I did not expect. Other featured actors included Malachi Kirby, Nathaniel Martello-White, Richie Campbell, Alex Jennings, Samuel West, and Darren Braithwaite.
The courtroom scenes in this movie are extremely compelling, especially when Altheia and Darcus, who were defending themselves, cross examined some of the key witnesses of the case. The judge certainly seemed to be favoring the prosecution and created anxiety among the viewers with how unfair he seemed to be.
The film does a great job of showing how much agony the defendants were in from the searching for justice that did not appear to be coming.
A magical fantasy combined with a real life feel, Beasts of the Southern Wild was a powerful film of life, family and courage.
Six year old Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) had a lot to face for someone so young. Her father Wink (Dwight Henry) was having serious health problems and their home in a bathtub in a southern delta at the end of the world was being threatened by natural disasters and an army of prehistoric creatures called auroch. When her father’s health deteriorates, Hushpuppy goes in search of her long lost mother.
The film is centered around an amazing performance from the young Quvenzhané Wallis, the youngest actresses currently to have been nominated for Best Lead Actress Oscar at the Academy Awards. There is a force of nature feel to the young girl and she dominates the screen with every moment she appears. She plays brilliantly off Dwight Henry, who gives a tremendous supporting performance, with a complex character unlike any that I’ve seen before.
The blend of the fantastic and the realism of the world is another impressive feat that this movie pulled off. To be such a mixture of the two film types and to be so successful at it is a true compliment to the film’s director, Benh Zeitlin.
Not only did Quvenzhané Wallis receive an Academy Award nomination, but the film itself was nominated as Best Picture at the Oscars. It was recognized as an original, beautiful story that you just do not see evryday.
All of this was coming from the POV of Hushpuppy, so everything depended on the imagination of the young girl. Everything that was going on around her was adapted into the world that was created in her mind. Without the presence and power of Hushpuppy, this does not work nearly as well.
This was a surprisingly powerful and emotional experience and should be a film that you check out.
The February section of the DailyView continues with the rom-com films with Forgetting Sarah Marshall, starring Jason Segel, Kristen Bell and Mila Kunis.
After a five year relationship, actress Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) dumps Peter (Jason Segel), composer and sad sack boyfriend. Peter spirals out of control and goes through a series of meaningless one night stands, but he could not get over his broken heart.
So when his step brother Brian (Bill Hader) convinced him to take a trip. Peter went to Hawaii and coincidentally wound up at the same hotel as Sarah and her new boyfriend, rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand).
Depressed Peter was helped out by one of the hotel employees Rachel (Mila Kunis), who provided him a room at the hotel. Peter and Rachel hit it off and started hanging out while he kept running into Sarah and Aldous.
This was a lot of fun. I loved the film, from the beginning right through to the intriguing ending. How can you not love Dracula The Musical (with puppets)! Jason Segel went all out (and all off) to make the movie funny. He had great chemistry with Mila Kunis.
Russell Brand was perfectly cast as Aldous Snow and he was cool in the role. There were some great cast members here too including Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill, Liz Cackowski, Jack McBrayer, Taylor Wily, Steve Landesberg, Da’Vone McDonald, Maria Thayer, William Baldwin, Jason Bateman, Billy Bush, and Kala Alexander.
Many times I do not like this kind of raunchy comedies, but I found Forgetting Sarah Marshall to be a smartly written, intelligent and fun film that used the humor in an excellent manner.
Woody Allen has been a controversial figure for many years. The accusations that have followed him have turned off many people. It can be a struggle to support an artist like him who has been accused of such terrible things. People like Michael Jackson, Mel Gibson and Woody Allen have created such amazing work over the years, but can someone enjoy the work knowing how potentially horrible they are?
Annie Hall is a great example, because this movie is fantastic, but the whole time I was watching it, I kept thinking about Woody Allen.
Putting that aside, Annie Hall is great. I loved how Woody Allen started off just speaking to the audience, breaking the fourth wall, which he does several times throughout the movie.
Allen played comedian Alvy Singer who was reflecting upon his failed relationship with Annie Hall (Diane Keaton). The story bounced around giving us moments throughout the history of the relationship and of Alvy’s life, filled with neuroses and paranoia. Annie Hall is the great love of his life, but I am not sure that he ever truly realized that.
Woody Allen was all over this movie and he brought his best work. Annie Hall is considered one of the greatest movies made by many cinephiles. It is definitely funny and Allen’s constant neurotic behavior as well as his one liners keep the film a good time.
Diane Keaton is excellent as the title character, and she does win an Academy Award for Best Actress. Annie has a real arc of a story across the movie, making more change than probably any character. I guess as the character who the film is named after, that makes some sense.
The rest of the cast is filled with some fascinating cameos as well as some solid actors. The cast included Tony Roberts as Alvy’s best friend Rob, Carol Kane, Paul Simon, Shelley Duvall, Christopher Walken, Collen Dewhurst, Jeff Goldblum, Janet Margolin, Truman Capote, John Glover, Sigourney Weaver and Beverly D’Angelo.
At some point, you have to be able to separate the artist from the art, because if you can’t, you miss out on some awesome stuff. That is the way it would have been with Annie Hall if I could not do that separation. And I enjoyed the film tremendously.
Today we are blending together the rom-coms with Black History Month and we get The Photograph, a 2020 film that I missed in the theaters because of the pandemic.
The Photograph told two intermixed stories from two different time frames. Famous photographer Christina Eames died unexpectedly, leaving her estranged daughter Mae (Issa Rae) filled with questions. When Mae discovered a photograph, it lead to an investigation into her mother’s past life and her love, Isaac (Y’lan Noel). As she was looking into the mystery, she entered a relationship with a journalist, Michael Block (LaKeith Stanfield).
LaKeith Stanfield and Issa Rae were wonderful in this film, showing an undeniable amount of chemistry between them. Both are exceptionally strong, up and coming actors that have huge futures ahead of them. This showed that they are capable of tapping into the romantic side of their repertoire. Because of them, the present day story was much more compelling that the story of the past, which felt fairly typical.
Some of the film was set in New Orleans and that backdrop added to the flare of The Photograph.
There are a strong cast of black actors in this ensemble including Courtney B. Vance, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Teyonah Parris, Milton “Lil Rel” Howery Jr., Rob Morgan (Turk from Daredevil), Chanté Adams, and Jasmine Cephas Jones. The cast also included Chelsea Peretti.
The Photograph was fine. The performances of the main two stars carried it through a fairly predictable story.
EYG- Embrace Your Geekness 