DailyView: Day 231, Movie 319

There is such a plethora of these National Geographic documentaries on Disney +. I recently enjoyed one on Atlantis and now, I have found one on one of my favorite “mythical” creatures, the Yeti. I have always been fascinated by the story of the Yeti and its North American cousin, the sasquatch, and this doc looked to be intriguing.

The documentary features explorer Gerry Moffatt as he goes on his “hunt” for the yeti. He heads up Mount Everest to search for the evidence of the yeti. They research footprints, hair samples, sightings as well as the famous “yeti scalp” at Khumjung Monastery in Nepal.

Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum appeared in the doc. He is a known bigfoot researcher, with several bigfoot books in his arsenal.

The section of the doc with the Yeti scalp is the most interesting part of the story. Unfortunately, it seemed that the evidence found by Gerry Moffatt was less than convincing.

These docs remind me of the old “In Search Of” series narrated by Leonard Nemoy, which helped spur my own fascination with these unknown creatures. It is where a lot of my own creativity has come from and it is neat to see these docs, even if they do not provide anything too satisfying in the realm of answers.

DailyView: Day 230, Movie 318

One day after announcing the extension of the DailyView for a second time to encompass a full year (365 days), I kicked it off with a Christmas movie that I found on Disney +.

The Christmas Star felt like a made-for-TV movie from the mid-80s, especially with a cast that included Ed Asner, Fred Gwynne and Rene Auberjonois.

Ed Asner played Horace McNickle, a counterfeiter who was serving his time in prison. With just a few months to go on his sentence, McNickle saw a TV program that showed the hiding place where he and his former partner hid their money. Afraid that he was going to lose it all, McNickle organized an escape, dressed as Santa Claus, to whom he had a resemblance to.

McNickle got help from a couple of kids, Billy (Nicolas Van Burek) and Trudy (Vicki Wauchope), who believed he was the real Santa Claus. McNickle played on the kids’ naivety and tried to get them to do his dirty work for him. However, he began to see the charm of the children and his inspiration for his plan waned.

As I mentioned earlier, this felt like a TV movie and the plot fell right into that corner. It is extremely cheesy, filled with ridiculous plot points and some of the strangest, out-of-nowhere bits I have seen. This movie changed tones multiple times, even including a mysterious ghost train that played a big part in the story as if it were a different movie.

The kids involved were not great actors at the time, but they were not meant to be. They were there for the cuteness factor (although, to be fair, Nicolas Van Burek did continue on with a decent career).

Ed Asner, who passed away this year, is always fantastic and his very inclusion in this movie elevated it from the drek that it should have been. Asner is charming as the bad Santa who learns a Christmas lesson from a Christmas miracle. Fred Gwynne’s put down police detective character has a few minutes of funny too.

As a family film, this could be worse. It is far from a classic, but I did not hate watching it. Judging it on a scale of silly Christmas movies, this was pretty good. It’s nothing that I would put up for an award, but as a family film during the holiday season, you could absolutely do worse. That may not be a rave review, but it is about much as I can give it.

DailyView: Day 229, Movie 317

There is a lot of things wrong with The Rite.

Michael Kovak (Colin O’Donaghue) joined the Seminary to get away from his father and his father’s mortuary business, but he was finding a lack of faith or belief in God holding him back. Instead of letting him resign, Father Matthew (Toby Jones) sent Michael to Rome to take a course on learning to be an exorcist. Michael finds his way to one of the most successful exorcist in the world, Father Lucas Trevant (Anthony Hopkins) who is involved in trying to help a young pregnant girl.

There were some interesting moments in the movie. There was some intriguing possibilities with Michaerl and his father (Rutger Hauer), but the exploration of this relationship was inconsistent and underdeveloped.

Colin O’Donaghue, who becomes a star in the TV show Once Upon a Time as Captain Hook, was too laid back the whole film. He did not show any of the charisma he did as Hook. He had a good look, but I just wanted more from the actor.

Anthony Hopkins is always great. He is an amazing performer and gives his best in every movie he appears in.

However, some of the dialogue being tossed around by the “demon” possessing the characters was laughable and, no matter how great an actor you may be, you cannot make some of these lines anything but ridiculous.

Another problem was the film, which had some moments working for it, really came off the tracks heading into the third act. I think the actors in this film deserved much better than what they were given.

DailyView: Day 228, Movie 316

I watched one of the classic Westerns today for the DailyView. It was 1953’s Shane. Shane tells the Western trope of a gunslinger trying to stop living the life and start something new only to have someone or something pull him back into the violence. We have seen it in Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven right up to the X-Men’s Logan.

Shane was available to watch on Hulu, and so I played it. I have been familiar with the story of Shane, but I have never actually sat down to view it.

Directed by George Stevens, Shane featured Alan Ladd, Jack Palance, Jean Arthur and Van Heflin.

Mysterious gunfighter Shane (Alan Ladd) arrived in a town where a group of people who have claimed their lands legally, but were being pressured by a vicious land baron Ryker (Emile Ryker) to leave their land. Shane met the Starrett family, Joe (Van Heflin), Marian (Jean Arthur) and their son Joey (Brandon De Wilde) and started to work for them. Unfortunately, Ryker was escalating things as time passed that would force the mysterious past of Shane to come back to the present.

The film does a great job of setting up the conflict and it does an admirable job of creating the antagonists as well as the protagonists.. Ryker is the clear villain, but he is anything but a mustache-twirling stereotype. In fact, he is shown as a person who wants to compromise with Joe and Shane. Of course, he is compromising from a position of privilege, and he takes measures that are anything but cooperative.

One of those measures is hiring Jack Wilson (Jack Palance) as a potential hitman, pointing him in the direction of people who would not agree to his terms. Wilson was notorious and extremely quick on the draw.

The ending was tense and exciting. Shane showed many of the tropes of the Western and became an inspiration for many of the Westerns that come after it.

DailyView: Day 228, Movie 315

I am not very familiar with the catalogue of performances from Roy Scheider, outside of Jaws and Jaws II of course. When I came across this film with Scheider and Meryl Streep on Amazon Prime, I was interested and the synopsis tripped some buttons for me.

Scheider played psychiatrist Sam Rice, who had a patient named George Bynum (Josef Sommer) who was murdered. George was stabbed to death and the police wanted to know if George had told Sam anything of importance.

However, before the police arrived, a woman named Brooke Reynolds (Meryl Streep) came to see Sam with a watch that belonged to George. She admitted to having an affair with him and wanted Sam to return the watch to George’s wife so she did not have to suffer more than she already was.

Sam became infatuated with Brooke and he was intrigued with trying to find out if she was actually involved in the murder.

This was an okay film, but I did not love it. It felt fairly pedestrian. We spend a chunk of time at an art auction that seemed to try and build some tension, and it was a long and dull stretch of time.

Scheider and Streep were good here, as was Jessica Tandy, who had a small role as Sam’s mother. Joe Grifasi played a police detective that was interesting, but he did not have much to do.

The biggest issue is the mystery. The police kept indicating that the killer was a woman. Because of that, we have Meryl Streep’s Brooke and one other main female character in the movie. This means that either it was Meryl or it was this other woman. Not much of a mystery, especially since they spent most of the film making it look as if it were Meryl.

Still of the Night, which is a nondescript title, is not a terrible film, but there is little about it that really stands out. This is the type of movie that will not stick with me for long.

DailyView: Day 227, Movie 314

Jeffrey Dean Morgan has had several big roles over the last few years, but few lead roles in movies. So when I found The Postcard Killings on Hulu, I was interested. It was a serial killer story which I have always liked too.

Morgan played police detective Jacob Kanon, the father of a daughter who was murdered, along with her husband, on her honeymoon in Europe. Jacob went to find the murderer, realizing that his daughter had become a victim of a serial killer.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan is extremely likable and you can feel his pain during this story. We have seen the vengeful father trope before, but with Morgan, the film avoids the clichés of this character because of his acting and general presence.

After Morgan, much of the film is unremarkable, but watchable. There is nothing new and exciting in The Postcard Killings, but the familiar was okay.

Famke Jansson played Jacob’s ex-wife, Valerie, who has little to do. She has a scene with the father of the killer that is interesting, but doesn’t go far enough.

The final scene, however, is quite a cop out and feels like a poor horror film desperate to continue a franchise than a conclusion to the story.

DailyView: Day 226, Movie 313

This weekend sees the release of Steven Spielberg’s remake of the classic West Side Story so I thought that it would be appropriate to watch another musical set in New York for the DailyView. Who would’ve believed that a musical about the 1899 newsies strike would be made by Disney. Heading over to Disney +, I pulled up Newsies, the 1992 musical.

I was shocked when I saw a young Christian Bale as Jack Kelly, the main character of the musical. I did not know he was involved in the film. There were other faces that were familiar in the film such as Bill Pullman as newspaper writer Bryan Denton, Robert Duvall as Joseph Pulitzer, Anne Margret as Medda, David Moscow as David, Max Casella as Racetrack, and Luke Edwards as Les.

Of course, the most important part of any musical is the music and one of the great musical composers, EYG Hall of Famer, Alan Menken, but, in Newsies, the songs were a mixed bag. I think the biggest issue with some of the songs were the fact that the actors who were singing them were not necessarily the best singers ever.

Robert Duvall as the antagonist of the film was so over the top with his character that he was a distraction from the rest of the cast. I am not sure the character choices made here, but they did not work.

The dance choreography was decent and the kids did a decent job with it.

The ending was anticlimactic to me and failed to put a real bow on the story that was being told. Still, some of the young actors were charming and Christian Bale showed that he was going to be a star as he carried Newsies on his back.

While the movie was lackluster at best, the stage musical that was inspired by it actually turned out to be a Tony winner, including Best Musical. That goes to show that it may not have been the material that was the failure in the film.

The movie Newsies had its moments, but a lot of the story was hard to believe and the people in the cast who should not have been singing always seemed to be singing. The film was a little long, but was not without its positives. We’ll see how it compares to West Side Story.

DailyView: Day 225, Movie 312

Christmas has never been so nasty.

Horror/thriller has been combined with Christmas several times, but Better Watch Out really takes the cake in uncomfortable situations and anxiety-filled moments.

Ashley (Olivia DeJonge) had been a steady babysitter for 12-year old Luke (Levi Miller) for years, but she was not aware how his feelings for her had changed. So when his parents were out for a Christmas party, Luke was hoping to see what could develop. However, when it appeared that his house was under attack from an invader, Ashley was forced into protecting the boy from the holiday dangers.

And yet, things were not quite what they seemed.

Better Watch Out was excellent. It was dark, funny, jaw dropping and full of surprises, twists and unexpected events that you do not see coming. This movie is gruesome at times, dark and sinister. It takes a turn right around the end of the first act that changed what we thought we were watching.

Olivia DeJonge and Levi Miller are great. Levi Miller is so believable in his outlandish character that he anchors the unlikely plot. DeJonge is lovely and shows that “it” factor that so many of the stars have. She is great in Better Watch Out.

Patrick Warburton and Virginia Madsen played Luke’ s parents, but, honestly, they do little in the film. Luke’s best friend, Garret, is played by Ed Oxenbould and he is a different energy.

The film takes a dark look at the classic Home Alone, which played a strange homage during this plot.

This was a surprisingly excellent movie that I enjoyed tremendously. I wanted a little more resolution to the story at the end, but there is also something oddly satisfying about it.

I found this on Amazon Prime and it was great.

DailyView: Day 224, Movie 311

Merry Christmas continues at the DailyView with the next Christmas film on the list. It is the infamous 1996 Arnold Schwarzenegger/Sinbad film, Jingle All the Way.

What a figurative cartoon this film was.

Arnold played Howard Langston, a successful businessman who has been taking his wife Liz (Rita Wilson) and son Jamie (young Anakin himself, Jake Lloyd) for granted, missing important events like Jamie’s karate meet.

Howard wanted to make it up to his son so he wanted to get his son the hottest toy on the market, the Turboman action figure, the same toy Howard was supposed to have already gotten weeks before. On Christmas Eve, the chances of finding one of the wanted toys was nearly impossible.

As he is standing in line at the toy store, Howard meets Myron (Sinbad) a postal worker who was also desperate to find a Turboman figure for his own son. This led to a series of increasingly ridiculous situations that placed the pair of them into a Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote-esce conflict.

The film also featured a performance by the late Phil Hartman as Howard’s slimy neighbor Ted, who was looking for his opportunity to make a move on Liz. Hartman was always great, but he could not save this turkey.

This movie has some entertaining moments that are just truly stupid. You have to really stop thinking or hoping for depth in character or sensible plot points, and, if you do, it is possible to not be offended by Jingle All the Way…maybe.

If you look at it as a cartoon, this is dumb fun (well, fun might be a stretch). Arnold is totally playing an Saturday morning cartoon character, with facial expressions to match. Arnold has had better acting performances in his career, but Jingle All the Way has to be near the bottom of the barrell.

Oh, and poor Robert Conrad.

This one is bad. Really bad.

DailyView: Day 223, Movie 310

One of the YouTube commenters who I have enjoyed over the years has been John Campea, from days at AMC Movie Talk to his current YouTube Channel. He spends his time on his channel talking about movies, TV shows and pop culture. One of the typical things that he would discuss on his channel was movie trailers, and it was always apparent that he loved the medium of trailers.

Campea took that love of trailers and created a documentary that looked at the history of trailers, how they make people feel, and why they have become such a cultural phenomenon.

It is a fascinating topic because trailers have become a huge business, not only on YouTube, but across the Internet. John Campea brought some of his friends and fellow YouTube commenters/reactors to discuss the history of trailers and how these trailers helped create a greater anticipation for the movies they are trying to promote.

Some of Campea’s colleagues and friends involved in the documentary included Robert Meyer Burnett, Grae Drake, Kristian Harloff, Scott Mantz, Cody Miller, Greg Alba, and Chris Gore. These “talking heads” of the documentary is one of the best parts provided. Watching how Scott Mantz’s face lights up talking about the trailer for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is worth inclusion of all of the speakers.

The documentary is split into several chapters, ranging from the trailer history to a discussion on whether trailers give away too much of the movie. Each section is highlighted from some of the best trailers in movies history.

I was disappointed that I did not see my personal favorite trailer, the “Hurt” version of the Logan trailer. Still, with the massive amount of trailers available, I can understand why some were excluded. There were a lot of focus on the Marvel trailers, and the discussion on how the Iron Man trailer at Comic Con 2007 changed the game was intriguing.

I really enjoyed the documentary very much. I could hear John Campea’s voice in the narration of the documentary, despite it not being his literal voice. There were point made that I had heard Campea make on his show before. His personality did come through in the trailer as did his love for the genre.

If you are a movie fan, you enjoy this documentary. It is a light watch, but it shows the passion that comes with movie fans.

DailyView: Day 222, Movie 309

Today, I went back into the catalogue of Charlie Chaplin with the 1917 short, The Adventurer. Where as the last Chaplin film was starting to feel old for me, this one was back to the original feel for me.

In The Adventurer, Chaplin was an escaped convict being chased by a group of prison guards. Escaping from the guards by swimming out into the ocean along the beach, Chaplin found a group of people who were drowning. Saving them, Chaplin made up a story of him hearing their cries for help on his yacht.

This led to a party and the prison guards returning to chase Chaplin around.

This short shows off one of the greatest skills of Charlie Chaplin, his impeccable comedic timing. The slapstick in this short included several moments where the expert timing had to work at an exact moment or it would not work. I do not know how many takes it required to perform these brilliant moments, but it looks fluid.

Everything was so meticulously choreographed and designed that it was really fun to watch. Chaplin is very funny and his expressions only make the scenes better.

Another fun and funny short with EYG Hall of Famer Charlie Chaplin.

DailyView: Day 221, Movie 308

The second of the Christmas movies in the DailyView this December is a film that many people love. It is one of the most well known rom-coms, Love Actually.

However, it turned out to be not one of my own personal favorites.

I was amazed at the list of actors who were in this movie. I knew a few of them originally, like Hugh Grant, was in the film. However, the film included Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Andrew Lincoln, Bill Nighy, Emma Thompson, Keira Knightley, Martin Freeman, Alan Rickman, Laura Linney, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Martine McCutcheon, Gregor Fisher, Rodrigo Santoro, Billy Bob Thornton, Elisha Cuthbert, January Jones, and Rowan Atkinson.

The problem is the director, Richard Curtis, had nine separate stories going on in the script. Even at two hours and fifteen minutes, there was not enough time for all of these characters to have their own individual storylines. Because of that, most of the characters turned out to be one dimensional and some got reduced to the simplest characters or just appeared to appear.

Some of the stories were better than others. I thought the Liam Neeson and his stepson in love story was cute, if not unrealistic. The Hugh Grant as England Prime Minister finding love at work was sweet, but undeveloped. The famous scene with Andrew Lincoln was in probably my least favorite of the stories.

There was just not enough time to develop anything past the surface level and if that is enough for you, you probably love this movie. I want more than what was given and I would have liked to have seen some of these stories eliminated and expanded. They could have saved the other stories for a potential sequel.

I don’t consider Love Actually a complete wash, but it was not to the level that I have heard some raise it to.

DailyView: Day 220, Movie 307

One of the movies listed on HBO Max’s leaving in December queue was an Oscar winner, Gods and Monsters, a semi-fictionalized story of the last days of the life of director James Whale, who directed classic movies Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein.

James Whale (Ian McKellan) had retired and was facing poor health, including strokes that affected his mind. Openly gay, James would still have younger men in his home for a variety of purposes. James’ housekeeper Hanna (Lynn Redgrave) disapproved but she loyally remained by his side, helping the old man through his life.

James took a liking to the gardener, Clayton Boone (Brendan Fraser), a strapping young man, and he struck up a friendship with him. Clay was uncomfortable with the homosexual lifestyle, but the ambiance of the movie director intrigued him and, despite some outbursts, began to bond with James.

During the time with Clay, James was suffering flashbacks to World War I and the loss of loved ones in his past. The memories would cause serious repercussions to the old man’s present.

In the real world, James White was found dead in his pool, which is dealt with in the movie, but it is one of the parts, along with the relationship with Clay, that has been fictionalized.

The film dealt with uncomfortable feelings and the pain of loss and trauma that existed in the lives of men. It also handled the importance of compassion and seeing someone for who they were.

Ian McKellan was amazing as the troubled artist/director. Being most famous as the director of the first two Frankenstein movies, the film was able to place James into several “monster” metaphors that could look at the real monsters of the world. I have never been impressed with Brendan Fraser as an actor outside of the Mummy-type action films, but he does an outstanding job here as the gardener who felt uncomfortable at first and developed into someone who could see past the surface level of behavior by James into the pain beneath.

Gods and Monsters was tough to watch at times, but the underlying text is important for people to understand.

DailyView: Day 219, Movie 306

Tonight’s DailyView comes from Disney +, and it is a movie that is the answer to the question, “What if Treasure Island The Swiss Family Robinson had a baby?” The answer is Shipwrecked.

A Norwegian film based on Oluf Falck-Ytter’s book Haakon Haakonsen: En Norsk Robinson stars Stian Smestad and Gabriel Byrne. Yes, that Gabriel Byrne.

Haakon (Stian Smestad) was a young boy whose father came back from sea with a terribly injured leg. He would not be able to go back out to sea and, because of that, the family would lose their farm. Haakon volunteered to head out on a two year voyage to make enough money to save the farm.

Once on the ship, however, he came across Lt. John Merrick (Gabriel Byrne) who had plans to kill the captain and take over the ship. Merrick was successful in his attempt, but the ship gets wrecked in a storm and Haakon is stranded on a deserted island.

On the island, he discovered a treasure left there by Merrick and he began planning for the day when Merrick would return.

He was accompanied on the trip by family friend Jens (Trond Peter Stamsø Munch) and a stowaway they met named Mary (Louisa Milwood-Haigh).

The film was a family adventure with reasonably likeable actors in a story we have seen 100 times. There are very few surprises in the plot (although the strange appearance of a gorilla in the middle of the film was odd- especially since we never see the gorilla again), and the acting was so so.

Still, it is a quick watch and fun enough as a film for the whole family. There are certainly worse films made for young viewers that are pretending to be family films. Shipwrecked has a few moments and is not a waste of time. Maybe that is not a rave review, but still…

DailyView: Day 218, Movie 305

The unexpected death of The Princess of Wales, Diana, was a moment of tragedy felt across the entire globe, and the movie The Queen looks at that time period that could have threatened the very state of the monarchy in Great Britain.

It was well known that Diana and Queen Elizabeth had a tempestuous relationship, especially after Diana left the Royal family and divorced Prince Charles. So when Diana was involved in a fatal car accident in France, there were a gamut of emotions stirred up in England, not only from the people of the country, but also the Royal family.

This biopic focuses on this time of British history as Elizabeth (Helen Mirren) struggled to understand the reaction of her country to, not only, the death of Diana, but the Royal family’s seemingly cold response, or lack thereof, to the tragedy. We also meet and follow new Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen), who sees the Queen in a different light than everybody around him and who helped to advise Elizabeth she needed to reconsider her stance on the death.

The film used real life news footage and archived video featuring the real Princess Diana interspersed with the film’s exceptional performances, in particular from Helen Mirren, who won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for her role in The Queen.

Helen Mirren was outstanding as Queen Elizabeth II, a woman who had never been a fan of Diana and who had become out of touch with her subjects. The connection between Elizabeth and Tony Blair was impressive, especially since the pair do not share screen time much.

James Cromwell and Sylvia Syms played Charles and Queen Elizabeth I respectably and both are impressive. Other cast members of the film included Helen McCrory, Alex Jennings, Roger Allam, and Tim McMullen. The side characters are wonderful, helping to build the isolation of the Royal Family from their subjects which showed them as uncaring and separated.

Yet Helen Mirren is the reason to watch this movie. She is amazing in the role and gained remarkable praise, even from Queen Elizabeth herself. It is a solid film that is elevated by some powerful performances and some intriguing use of news footage.