Ever since the TV mini series Feud, I have been interested in the career of Joan Crawford. As it showed in the series, Crawford was desperate in those last years of her career to find movies that would hire her. The ageism in Hollywood was terrible at the time and, despite being one of the most famous and powerful actresses around. Because of her struggles to find suitable roles to match her status, Crawford wound up taking a lot of movies that were not up to her past standards.
Her final movie performance is a perfect example of this, as Crawford appeared in a film called Trog. A primitive being was discovered in an underground cave and is taken by the scientist Dr. Brockton (Joan Crawford). Believing that the creature could be the missing link between human and troglodyte, Brockton began teaching, studying and working with the creature, naming him Trog.
However, there is a resistance to Trog and a vocal opposition claiming that he should be destroyed is led by Sam Murdock (Michael Gough, Batman’s Alfred, himself!).
Joan Crawford plays this role 100% straight. There is no silliness or parody in her performance, which makes it all the funnier. The movie is so ridiculous that you can’t help but wonder why Crawford took the role. I guess paychecks are important.
Trog looks like a man with a monkey head on. Trog’s reign of terror at the end is laugh out loud funny.
I think that, despite how terrible the movie is, Trog is something that should be experienced. It is hard to explain.
One of Frances Ford Coppola’s finest films according to critics and cinephiles is next up on the DailyView, The Conversation starring the ever awesome Gene Hackman. Speculation has been that the character played by Gene Hackman in The Conversation is the same character he plays in the movie Enemy of the State years later with Will Smith. Now having seen The Conversation, I can see why the connections have been made.
Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) was an expert in surveillance who was hired to record a conversation between a young couple, Mark (Frederic Forrest) and Ann (Cindy Williams). Paranoid and regretful from a previous job that turned out tragically, Harry stated to believe that the couple might be in danger from the man who had hired him and this worry began to weigh on Harry’s mind.
Written and directed by Coppola, The Conversation has an interesting cast of actors. Along with the excellent Gene Hackman, there was Shirley from Laverne & Shirley, Cindy Williams, a young Harrison Ford, Teri Garr, Allen Garfield, an uncredited role for Robert Duvall, and John Cazale.
The movie is excellent, in particular, the third act that takes what we thought was happening and flipped it around to show us what was really going on. It was a twist ending before twist endings became so predominant in the industry. I honestly never saw it coming.
I love how the film slowly develops the character of Harry Caul and how we see him struggle with himself over what he has done in the past and how this new case could potentially echo that problem.
The underlying theme of surveillance is as important today as it was back in the 1970s. At that time, this movie had come out just around the same time as the Watergate conspiracy and so the nation was surely looking at films like this in more ways than just entertainment.
I’ve said this before, but I miss Gene Hackman. He is truly one of the most underrated actors we have ever had. He has a filmography unlike most Hollywood stars and he is exceptional every time.
The Conversation is one of those movies that I have seen on the different streaming services, but I never watched before. I am glad that I changed that today.
A political thriller day for DailyView which kicked off with the Robert Redford movie Three Days of the Condor, directed by Sydney Pollack. Based on the novel Six Days of the Condor by James Grady, this movie was tense and satisfying.
Turner (Robert Redford) worked as a reader for the CIA. He would read everything, looking for clues or ideas or hints of what someone may be planning and then he would send it to the main office. His most recent report brought an unexpected result. A hit squad came to his office and assassinated everyone there. Turner was lucky because he was out getting the office’s lunch.
When he returned, he took off, trying to figure out what he was going to do. He found a gun and kidnapped a random woman Kathy (Faye Dunaway) off the street who had her own car. He forced her to take him to her apartment so he could hide out and try to determine what happened and what to do next.
Max von Sydow was here too as the main assassin hired by the CIA to take out Turner. He was great as he always was. We did not get a deep dive into his character, but you still could see what he was like and how Max took it and created something original.
Redford and Dunaway were great together and their chemistry burned through some scenes that were uncomfortable to watch.
The story is slowly unfurled and reveals the truths in a satisfying manner. You are never sure what Redford was going to do next and that made for an edge of the seat thriller. The paranoid filled film worked really well for the time, coming out just after the whole Watergate fiasco. Much like All the President’s Men, Three Days of the Condor works not only as a period piece but also as an thriller.
Unfortunately, a second sci-fi movie that I watched today, after viewing Dune this morning, did not connect with me. The next DailyView was set up to be the David Bowie movie, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and it is a bizarre path of striking imagery, convoluted story and a ton of naked bodies.
David Bowie played Thomas Jerome Newton, an alien being who came to earth because his own planet was suffering with a terrible drought (though honestly, that plot is not really much of the story). He wanted to find a way back to his wife and children on his home planet, but the excesses of earth and the human race’s greed sabotaged his efforts.
I’m not sure how to talk about this film. It is a science fiction story without any real science fiction. I have seen comments that this is the story of David Bowie and how his life was during the 1970s and the whole alien thing here was an analogy for his real life. That makes as much sense as anything else.
Nicholas Roeg directed the film and, you can not argue that he went for it. It feels like an art house film dealing with the excesses of the human condition. It is a creative task, but I needed something more to grsasp and maintain my attention outside all the sex scenes and the genitals.
Candy Clark played Mary-Lou, a hotel attendant that helped Thomas when he was having an attack, and who fell in love with him. I was not a fan of her performance. In particular, I had issues with her voice. I know that is nitpicking, but it was distracting throughout. I do not know if that was an accent she was doing or if that was her real voice, but it pulled me out of the film.
The Man Who Fell to Earth never interested me and I was just waiting for the film to end. It was a disappointment for sure.
Worse yet, I got bored quickly and I am not sure I cared to pay attention enough to understand what was going on.
A new version of Dune is scheduled to come out later this year with Timothée Chalamet starring so I wanted to make sure I had the chance to watch this 1984 version, directed by David Lynch. Like all Lynch projects, this demands your full attention. Unfortunately, I found that to be a more difficult task than even I thought.
I love Kyle MacLachlan. He would go on from here to his iconic role of Agent Cooper on Twin Peaks. You can see the charisma from him here, but the tightness of the script was just not there to really embrace him as Paul Atreides. Kenneth McMillan is utterly disgusting as the villainous Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. Watching bits of goo fly from his mouth/face as he spoke was gross. I was also shocked to see Patrick Stewart here.
I knew Sting was in the film, but he does not do much. He has an imposing presence in Dune and it would have been great if he were more involved.
Special effects were fine for 1984, but I would be lying to say that the obvious green screens were not distracting for me. I know that is not fair to the movie since it was a product of the time, but it did play into my viewing of the film. The upcoming version will certainly have CGI at a considerably higher level.
There was a lot of exposition in the movie, which, again, I understand. You have a lot of set up for the world to be understood at all. However, David Lynch has never been one to use exposition and you can tell by how clunky the exposition is here. There are better ways to deliver exposition and Dune could have benefitted from these techniques.
I thought that watching the 1984 version was a necessary step before the new film coming out in December, but I feel as confused as ever. Hopefully, Denis Villeneuve will have more success at engaging me in the story than this Dune did.
Back in 2011, I chose to not go to Real Steel because it just seemed like a rip off of the old Rock’em Sock’em Robots toys of my youth. I was not interested. There were enough bad toy-related movies available, and more to come (Battleship, anyone?). So I skipped it.
I had added it to the DailyView watch list mainly after a Fatman Beyond podcast where Kevin Smith had said that he loved the movie. He also commented on the Rock’em Sock’em Robots link, but he said that there was a really strong connection in the story with Hugh Jackman and his son. He was right on both counts.
In Real Steel, Hugh Jackman played Charlie Kenton, a struggling ex-boxer who has taken up the robot fights to try and earn money. Charlie was not having any success and he owed money to many people, including his old mentor’s daughter Bailey (Evangeline Lilly).
As his luck continued to spiral out of control, he was given news that his ex-wife had died and that her sister Debra (Hope Davis) was looking to win custody of Charlie’s son Max (Dakota Goyo). Making a deal with Debra’s wealthy husband, Charlie would be paid off and would keep Max for the summer, while Debra was in Europe.
Max, unhappy at being dumped with the father that deserted him, started to pick up the robot fighting and helped out his father. On a raid of a junkyard, Max found a smaller robot, mostly in tact, that was an old sparring bot. Max made a connection with the robot, named Atom, and wanted Charlie to get Atom a fight.
Sure the movie is pretty predictable and follows those old boxing movie tropes consistently, but there is a charm and a heart-warming feel of Real Steel. Max is cute as can be and his training of Atom to dance is a highlight of the film, even winning over Charlie.
Despite the robots everywhere, this movie works because of the relationship between Charlie and Max. They had a terrible start, but Charlie’s path from trying to sell off Max to being a real father to him is very real and feels natural.
The robots are cool, and the CGI with them are awesome. You find yourself really rooting for Atom as he battles each fight, as they get more and more difficult. And yes, the fight fight with the overpowered Zeus is cliché, but it is surprisingly emotional too.
Anthony Mackie is in Real Steel as well, as a fast talking promoter, showing off Mackie’s skill at talking. He was a minor part of the movie, but he stole the scene every time he was on screen.
This is way more enjoyable than any Rock’em Sock’em Robots game might be.
The DailyView movie today is one of the creepiest, frightening films that I have seen in years because it is so real and possible. The Bay is a found footage film that deals with a breakout of some parasitic disease that happened during the July 4th Crab Festival in the town of Claridge, Maryland on the Chesapeake Bay.
The film is constructed like a documentary reorganized by a reporter Donna Thompson (Kether Donohue), the creepiest thing about the film is how this feels like something that could happen. I am really glad that I was not watching this at night.
The panic shown in the people on the clips was just frightening. Adding to the tone of the film was the imagery of this terrible sickness that seemingly came from the water and the parasites that are found within it.
Written and directed by Barry Levinson (screenplay by Michael Wallach), The Bay builds an unbelievable amount of tension and anxiety through what seemed like a harmless, fun summer celebration only to show the tragedy of the events and the desperation of the people in charge. The doctor (Stephen Kunken) and his determination to stay and do what he could do to help people while his staff retreated was inspiring, yet, in the end, a waste of time. Some of the scenes from the hospital shook me.
It is legitimately a movie that will stick with you, especially with what we just lived through the last year and a half with Covid-19. The water should be safe, but this film shows how easily something that is supposed to sustain life and make people’s lives better can be warped and mutated into something dangerous and deadly. The film never goes into exactly what happened, but it does imply several causations. These are completely scary.
I was searching for a shorter movie to fit into the time before Smackdown and the Movie Trivia Schmoedown, both of which I was looking forward to seeing. I was having a craving for an animated movie too, so I searched through Google for an option. As time ticked away I was worried I would not find one that would fit into the available time. Then, I found one that had one of the greatest of all time in the title.
Back in the 2000s, EYG Hall of Famer Stan Lee created a group of other characters under the POW banner. None of the characters really took off, but I found an animated feature called Stan Lee Presents: Mosaic. I had no idea what it was so I gave it a chance.
Maggie Nelson (Anna Paquin) was a student at a High School of Dramatic Arts and the daughter of an Interpol agent. Her father was investigating a break in at a museum that left a guard dead who appeared to be anything but human.
Meanwhile, an accident with lightning and a chameleon gave Maggie some bizarre abilities that she found useful when she wound up deep inside the case her father was working.
The story was pretty simple. The animation was Saturday morning cartoon level. The origin was unoriginal. However, Oscar winner Anna Paquin voiced Maggie, which gives the movie credibility. The powers were cool.
This would never be a success in the theater, but for what I was looking for… a light movie that was quick and entertaining. And this was that. I liked this. It was not a great movie, but it was passable.
After getting a couple of new releases watched this morning, I returned to the DailyView with a movie on Shudder called Heathers. I had heard about this movie, but I honestly had no idea what it was about so the subject matter surprised me.
As a dark comedy, this one was dark. Real dark.
Veronica (Winona Ryder) wanted to be in the coolest clique in her high school, a group of girls all named Heather, and what she was having to do to gain admittance was meaner than she hoped. Secretly, she wished that the head of the Heathers, Heather Chandler (Kim Walker) would die.
Enter new student J.D. (Christian Slater), who began a relationship with Veronica and set it up so that they would poison Heather. When Heather died, they made it look like a suicide.
The suicide kicked off chaos at the high school as the staff and student body tried to figure out how they were to act or how they were to respond. J.D., however, was just beginning.
This is considered a classic, but I have to say that a lot of the film does not hold up much. This would never fly in the theaters in 2021, no matter how much of a dark comedy it claimed to be. It did have some very funny moments in it though and the sick relationship with Veronica and J.D. was one of the highlights of the film.
The clique of Heathers really were a horrible group of girls, and this is a movie trope that we see all the time. Taking to the extreme of reactions towards them is fascinating and created a movie that is unlike any other I have seen. Deeply cynical, Heathers has some things to say about the toxicity of the high school environment and the potential viciousness of the teenagers that encompasses it.
Perhaps I would have liked a little more details about J.D. as I believe that he has been at this for awhile now. The relationship with his father was one that I would have liked to have been explored more.
The cast delivered the material brilliantly. Shannen Doherty was cruelly exceptional as one of the surviving Heathers. Glenn Shadix as Father Ripper provided us with some of the most ridiculously funny sermons at the funerals of the suicides. John Ingle brings his credibility to Principal Gowan, who has no idea what to do.
While the references to homosexuality is out of date, the rest of Heathers is very dark and funny and shows how much of a jungle high school can be.
After watching the season finale of Loki the other day on Disney +, I viewed the review of the series from YouTube critic and personality Dan Murrell and he made a reference to the opening scene and the audio clips from the MCU to the scene from Contact, calling it an homage to the movie. I had Contact on the DailyView list of films as a possible watch, so I thought this would be a nice one to pick up at this point. Dan was right about the similar idea with the Loki scene. The introduction to Contact is very much alike.
Contact starred Jodie Foster as a scientist whose team was involved in the investigation of extraterrestrial contact, mostly with messages from space. The film started with the scientific community looking down upon her and her group, even casting them aside. This led Dr. Elle Arroway (Foster) to desperately search for funding to maintain her project.
During this time, she comes in contact with Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey), a renowned author and theologian, and they developed a short-term relationship.
After successfully finding funding, Elle’s team had a huge breakthrough, discovering a complicated message from a star called Vega. Within the message, which included the return broadcast of a video of Adolf Hitler at the 1936 Olympics, they found a diagram for a machine they believed was a transportation device to exchange ideas between the two races.
Directed by Robert Zemeckis, Contact is adapted from a novel of the same name by Carl Sagan. There are a lot of high concepts and scientific properties involved with this science fiction tale. It makes the movie feel smart and realistic despite the fantastical special effects and scenes from the last act of the movie. In fact, the realism of the first part of the film pays off when the more sci-fi aspects take affect.
The performances are all very solid. Jodie Foster is great as the dedicated and, at times, fiery scientist. There is a top notch cast here including Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, David Morse, Jena Malone, William Fichtner, James Woods, John Hurt, Angela Bassett, Rob Lowe, and Geoffrey Blake.
The movie was set in the middle of the Bill Clinton presidency and clips of President Clinton were used to show his involvement. There were plenty of other journalist and TV personalities who made cameos such as Larry King, Geraldo Rivera, Bernard Shaw, Bryant Gumbel among others. There are also plenty of real life politicians and famous individuals appearing in cameos such as Geraldine Ferraro, Robert Novak, Jay Leno, John Holliman, and Dee Dee Myers.
I was not a fan of the relationship the movie provided between Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey. I did not believe this relationship at all, which stemmed from a one night stand. McConaughney’s character did several things to betray Foster that I, personally, would never have let the snake back to my life. It was certainly the weakest of the part of the film.
Contact may have been a tad long too, coming in a 2 and 1/2 hours, but most of the movie was intelligent and compelling. There were solid performances and is probably would really be like if an alien race contacted the earth.
One of the most acclaimed documentaries of all time is When We Were Kings, the story of the fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Africa that became known as “The Rumble in the Jungle.” I had thought about watching this before, but I was under the impression that it was over three hours and movies that long are tough to commit to. However, I was looking at the Showtime app on Amazon and I came across this movie and it was listed as an hour and a half for runtime. I was both shocked and excited. This made this choice for the DailyView a much easier one.
When We Were King was more than just a look at the Ali-Foreman fight. It encompassed the entire black culture of the time, looking at political questions, music and how Muhammad Ali personified all of these. The focus of the film was more on Ali than Foreman for sure because of how charismatic and engaging the former champion was. Listening to the talking heads come on the screen and build the environment of the match was fascinating.
You can’t go wrong just putting the camera on Ali and letting it go. He was so charismatic, so outgoing that even though people did not believe he stood a chance with the young and powerful current champion George Foreman, a show was going to be put on.
The documentary dives into Don King some as well, in particular the efforts he had in putting the fight together. He was able to convince both Ali and Foreman that he could get them $5 million dollars each to create the fight, despite King not having $10 million dollars. Involvement of Zaire dictator Mobutu Sese Seko not only financed King’s match, but brought it to the continent of Africa. Ali had been outspoken about a lot of the politics of black culture and the American treatment of blacks so holding this fight in Africa played into that narrative heavily.
The film brought James Brown, The Spinners and B.B. King to the front as well, discussing the black music festival that was planned. We heard comments from Howard Cosell, Norman Mailer, Spike Lee, George Plimpton, Odessa Clay, and Thomas Hauser.
The analysis during the footage of the fight was fascinating and gave a real inside knowledge to not only what happened leading up to the fight, but how Ali was able to pull off what was considered one of the great upsets in sports history. It was mentioned that George Foreman went into an extended depression for two years following the knockout, which sounds like an extremely intriguing story as well.
Muhammad Ali is one of the brightest lights of both black and American sports, transcending past just an athlete. This doc does a beautiful job of highlighting that fact.
I have recently come to appreciate the character of Conan the Barbarian from his current run in the Marvel Comics run. When the original movies came out starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. I was not interested. I have recently seen Conan the Barbarian from 1982 and I did not love it. The sequel to this brings Arnold back to the sandal, sword and sorcery genre of pulp films as Conan the Destroyer.
Created by Robert E. Howard, Conan has been a successful pulp[ character for years, including several successful runs in comics. Conan the Barbarian #1 (Marvel) has been inducted into this year’s EYG Hall of Fame while Conan was inducted las year.
You probably do not find a better actor to play Conan than Arnold Schwarzenegger. The original film was darker and more tragic, focusing on Conan’s early life and his search for vengeance. Conan the Destroyer is considerably less dark, bordering on silliness, including some dumb comedic moments such as a drunk Conan.
Conan is hired by Queen Taramis (Sarah Douglas) to escort her niece Princess Jehnna (Olivia D’Abo) in retrieving a magical crystal that will help them procure the horn that legends say can awaken the god of dreams, Dagoth (Andre the Giant).
Conan has a band of people with him including Jehnna’s bodyguard Bombaata (Wilt Chamberlain), Zula (Grace Jones), wizard Akiro (Mako), and the cowardly Malak (Tracey Walker).
This is a silly movie with a ridiculous plot and special effects that are laughable. I felt for poor Andre the Giant beneath the terrible costume they had him.
I was disappointed to see that Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway were credited with writing this. As two of the extremely talented comic book writers, including those already writing Conan comics (Roy Thomas was credited with writing the aforementioned EYG Hall of Fame comic Conan #1) because the dialogue was atrocious and the plot was simplistic.
I actually had several belly laughs from this movie, which I assumed was not supposed to be the case. I am not sure what they were going for here, but it finished off the Conan franchise in movies for years, despite ending with the coolest shot of the whole film, Arnold sitting on a throne as King Conan, clearly a movie that they would have liked to make, but never did. I wonder why? (Sarcasm)
With Loki coming to a close today, I spent a good chunk of the morning with that series and the variety of YouTube reactions for it. Because of that, time slipped away so it meant that I would be watching another Charlie Chaplin short for the DailyView. Today’s film was called The Rink and it goes all the way back to 1916.
Charlie Chaplin is his typically bumbling, clumsy self as a waiter at a restaurant who takes his lunch break to a roller skating rink where he meets up with a young lady (Edna Purviance).
Charlie Chaplin on roller skates was way more fluid and graceful than I thought he was going to be. However, when others would get in his way or cause him to off balance, the resulting pratfalls and slapstick was hilarious. While the material at the restaurant was fairly typical, the roller skating scenes were tremendous.
I enjoyed the music that served as the film’s soundtrack more than several other Chaplin films. I am not sure why I noticed this one as much as I did, but it was great.
Charlie Chaplin’s roller skating was certainly the highlight here and worth the time. It was a lot of fun and quick.
Luc Besson has directed a bunch of great movies such as Lucy, La Femme Nikita, and my personal favorite of his, The Fifth Element. Today for the DailyView, we will be looking at another one of Besson’s thrillers, Léon: The Professional.
Léon: The Professional was the debut of Natalie Portman in the young role of Mathilda, the 12-year old girl whose family is murdered by police officer Stansfield (Gary Oldman) and his staff from the DEA. She escaped from the same fate by hiding out in the neighboring apartment of Léon (Jean Reno), a professional hitman. She convinces him to let her stay with him and teach her the tricks of the trade of being a “cleaner.”
The relationship between Jean Reno and Natalie Portman is so wonderful and just a little bit uncomfortable. This is one of the most intriguing relationships in the movie. Gary Oldman is just wicked as can be here too. Oldman is an amazing actor and he creates a character here that is just horrendous and you cheer for him to get his.
This is a simple story and depends on the skills of its performers to carry it through. It is extremely violent as well, as it does not shy away from showing the viciousness of that life style. Léon is shown as being an example of one of the best hitmen around.
Léon: The Professional is a wonderful film, a story of connections amidst a world of violence and corruption. Jen Reno and Natalie Portman created the most unique pair on the screen ever and Gary Oldman is as evil as you’re ever going to see. There was humor, thrills and excitement throughout.
The EYG Hall of Famers Monty Python had some classic movies in their careers. Monty Python and the Holy Grail has always been my favorite and the Monty Python movie that I returned to several times. I had never seen the Life of Brian before and so I thought this would be a good time to change that.
Brian Cohen (Graham Chapman) was a young Jewish-Roman man who was born, on the same day, next door to Jesus and was mistaken as the Messiah. Brian joined a political movement to get the Romans out of Judea, and he was able to paint slogans on the wall in Jerusalem. The desperate people of Judea hooked on to Brian, looking to him as a prophet, despite no evidence. Captured by the Roman army, Brian faced an unhappy fate of the same man he was born beside.
Putting their spin on the story of the Christ crucifixion, Monty Python is not afraid to go for the laugh in whatever topic they satirize. In this case, they faced plenty of cries of blasphemy from the religious people of the world. The fact that it works and is very funny gives Monty Python the ability to get past the aanger.
The movie ends with one of the greatest moments with the song “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” sung by Eric Idle and the rest of the people being crucified. It is a brilliant end to the movie and is one of the best songs Monty Python has ever done.
Monty Python is Eric Idol, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones and Michael Palin. They were fearless and went for the laugh no matter what.
EYG- Embrace Your Geekness 