I’d been on a but of a bad run for the Doc’s Classic Movies section here at EYG.  Three straight films that I had watched that fell below expectations or were just downright bad.  I did not want to continue such a streak.

I knew what I could do.

Last week, the new trailer for the upcoming “live-action” version of Disney’s The Lion King came out, directed by Jon Favreau, and everyone found themselves getting chills and goosebumps.  The reason was the teaser trailer looked so remarkable and it brought everybody back to a world that was nearly universally beloved.  The world of The Lion King.

That new version comes out in 2019, but to snap the streak of bad films, I loaded up the 1994 animated version, which is considered by many to be the greatest animated film of all time.  While that might be a bit too high for my ratings, there is no denying that this movie is in the argument.

The Lion King is a beautiful story of love and betrayal.  It is Shakespearean in design (sharing similarities to Hamlet) and transcendent in animation.  The music is both catchy and completely engaging and the characters are wonderful.  Scar (Jeremy Irons) is one of Disney’s most heinous villains, with his manipulations leading toward the murder of his only brother, the King Mustafa (James Earl Jones) and the attempted murder of Mustafa’s son, Simba (first voiced by Jonathan Taylor Thomas, then by Matthew Broderick) proving his evil intentions. Scar is perfectly happy to let Pride Rock go down in devastation as long as his power as king is unquestioned.

Young Simba goes off to meet his lifelong pals, Timon (Nathan Lane) and Pumbaa (Ernie Sabella), after the death of his father.  One song montage later, years have past and Simba is living the life of Hakuna Matata.

There is a great voice cast here as well including Whoopi Goldberg, Robert Guillaume, Cheech Marin, Jim Cummings, Rowan Atkinson, and Moira Kelly.

The score from Hans Zimmer is truly amazing and the songs that were written by Elton John and Tim Rice make this movie extra special.

There were extra hidden jokes that I had not heard the first time that were funnier now as an adult.  This is an emotional ride with a terrible tragedy, yet continues the circle of life.  The Lion King is one of Disney’s best animated features.  Obviously, it is a…

The streak is broken…

This is one of those films that I do not feel that I will ever revisit.

Don’t get me wrong, I am glad I saw it after all of these years, but to say that it was disturbing is a mild understatement.

A Clockwork Orange is a classic Stanley Kubrick film that plays with the ideas of violence and the responses to that violence.  Does it take things too far?  That might be true.  I have to say I am not sure how I feel about the movie.

On one hand, Malcolm McDowell gives a top notch performance, though he seems to be yelling too much for me.  You believe that this guy is a vile and vicious person and his actions are wicked.  McDowell does a great job of portraying that.  However, I never found myself feeling for Alex after the prison procedure “cured” him of his tendencies.  It felt like he deserved the pain that he was suffering with.

The cinematography is wild and weird.  The sets and the backdrops are wonderful to look at.  The overall performances are solid.  The direction is classic.

And yet, the very topic of the film makes me uneasy.  I am just not sure that it does anything for me.  Especially with the way the film ends.

There are some great technical aspects of this 1971 film, but I can think of many Kubrick films that I would prefer to see.

It seems as if I have never seen the 1980s classic Weird Science, because when I pulled it up on Amazon Prime today, I was unfamiliar with the movie.  I mean, I knew the general plot and I knew a couple of details (I know I had seen the “shower” scene before), but I realized quickly that this was almost totally new material.

The reason I knew?

I hated it.

This was everything that I dislike about this genre of movie.  Here I was thinking that I had missed something by not seeing Weird Science, but I just thought it was immature, ridiculous, sophomoric nonsense with mean spirited characters who I really did not want to spend any time with.

I was about to shut it off.  I was preparing to make this a “Putrescent” film.

However, I will say that the third act of the movie improved considerably.  I liked how the film worked itself out and how the two main characters, Gary (Anthony Michael Hall) and Wyatt (Ilan Mitchell-Smith), actually showed growth and became the type of people that I did not want to smack across the face.

So many moments in Weird Science that irritated me instead of making me laugh.  It highlighted the bottom of the barrel for teens and their behavior.  I just did not like what I was watching.

As I said, the ending, while ridiculously over-the-top, showed some promise of what could have been.

This one was not a good movie and I am not sorry that I hadn’t watched it up until today.  Unfortunately, I can’t say that any longer.

How could a movie that included Big John Studd be bad?

Pretty damn easily, I guess.

Harley Davidson & the Marlboro Man is a comedy/western/action movie featuring Don Johnson as Harley Davidson and Mickey Rourke doing his very best Bruce Willis imitation, desperately trying to keep his face from moving.

Seriously, why does Mickey Rourke only have one expression in this freaking movie?  He has the Bruce Willis smirk and it is on his face in every situation his character finds himself in.

The writing is terrible.  The story is ridiculous.  I guess there are absolutely no police officers in the city (except for the one Harley slept with).  The dialogue is laughable.

In order to save their friends’ bar, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro decide to rob a bank truck.  Unfortunately, the one bank truck they choose to rip off is loaded with drugs instead of money.  So, as any good heroes would, they contact the drug dealers and offer to sell these deadly dangerous drugs (they have been told that the drugs kill 1 out of 7 people that take them) back to them for money.  Hm, quite the heroic pair.  But they are trying to save their friends’ bar, so all bets are off.

Of course, their friends wind up dead and that sets off their eventual revenge part of the story.

My brain hurts after watching this.

The special effects in the third act confrontation are as bad as you are going to see.  The green screen is so obvious that I cannot believe anyone would have okayed the release of the scene.

Don Johnson and Mickey Rourke are good together so the film is not a total wash, but just about everything else is horrible.

Oh, but WWE Hall of Famer, the late great Big John Studd is here and it is good to see him.  He is decent for his short, smallish role.

Otherwise, this is a stupid buddy film that cannot ride on the charisma of Don Johnson and the frozen face of Mickey Rourke for long.

There are not that many films that feature Thanksgiving.  Even in Addams Family Values, there is only a few scenes dealing with the first Thanksgiving at the summer camp where Wednesday (Christina Ricci) and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) are sent.  Even so, this was a good film to revisit during the Thanksgiving Binge Watch.

Addams Family Values is the sequel to the original film which is a reboot of the old television series.  In the film, there are a bunch of plots going on all at once. The main one dealt with the black widow Debbie (Joan Cusack) trying to get Uncle Fester (Christopher Lloyd) to marry her.  She was after his money and planned on killing him once they had been hitched.

Meanwhile, Wednesday and Pugsley have been sent off to camp, thanks to the manipulations of Debbie.  The children are tormented by happiness, the fresh air of outdoors and camp counselors Gary Granger (Peter MacNicol) and Becky Martin-Granger (Christine Baranski).

This all came about after Morticia (Anjelica Huston) gave birth unexpectedly to a son for Gomez (Raul Julia) and the two other children were attempting to murder the baby.

The Addams Family became really dark in this movie, which was great.  The movie is very funny as the situations are taken to their exaggerated conclusions.

The writing is spot on and each character has their moments with sharp banter and razor wit.  Wednesday is especially sarcastic and delivers each line with perfect comedic timing.

Debbie is masterfully wicked and yet perhaps not the most evil person in the cast.  Joan Cusack is really awesome as the over-the-top nanny who is out to scam yet another rich bachelor.

Some times the story feels a tad disjointed as it jumps back and forth between scenes, but they are usually very funny and that excuses many problems a film may have.

I will say that, except for Christopher Lloyd, each cast member is beautifully cast.  Lloyd is a fine actor, but he always will be Doc Brown and he is too familiar here for me.  I did not see Uncle Fester, but instead I saw Christopher Lloyd in a bald cap.

Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, Addams Family Values improved on the original movie because we knew these new version of the characters better.  There may have been too many stories going on, but that is not uncommon for movies.

*Snap Snap*

We move from boxing movies to spoof with the classic “Weird Al” Yankovic film UHF on the Thanksgiving binge watch.

Yes, UHF is very silly and borderline stupid, but it is, at many times, funny and there is no doubt that EYG Hall of Famer “Weird Al” Yankovic went all in on his film.

The movie’s plot is pretty basic.  George (“Weird Al”) is a loser and can’t keep a job.  When his Uncle Harvey (Stanley Brock) wins the deed to a UHF television station in a poker game, he lets George manage the station.  George puts on the strangest array of television programs ever seen.  With the discovery of janitor extraordinaire Stanley Spadowski (Michael Richards) as charismatic kid show host, Station 62 flies to number one in the ratings, drawing the ire of evil studio executive R.J. Fletcher (Kevin McCarthy).

There are many satiric shorts throughout the film including parodies of multiple movies such as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Rambo, and Gandhi.  There are commercials on the station for Spatula City.  The game show classic Wheel of Fish added to the station’s lineup.

There is so much bizarreness in UHF that you simply have to toss away your doubts and have fun.

Anthony Geary (formerly Luke Spencer from General Hospital) also appears as Philo, a character who could be the oddest of the bunch.  Especially when we find out the truth about him.

UHF features “Weird Al” Yankovic’s parody of Money for Nothing by Dire Straits.  He turns it into Beverly Hillbillies/Money for Nothing.  We also get Al’s title track, the classic UHF over the credits.  I would have liked more music in the show, but what we got was great.

Sure this is silly.  But it is a good time, no matter what.  UHF is one of those films that people look back on in a cult status.

The Thanksgiving binge watch continued today with another boxing movie that was missing from my potential list of Top 10 Boxing movies (which I’ll do later this week).  Million Dollar Baby is from director Clint Eastwood and starred Eastwood along with Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman.

Hilary Swank was Maggie Fitzgerald, a woman who hoped to have Frankie Dunn, hardened boxing trainer, trainer her to become a fighter.  Frankie was not up for the challenge at first because he did not train girls.  However, Maggie’s persistence eventually won him over and he connected with her.

Maggie took to the sport very quickly.  Once someone taught her how to use her feet and to properly breathe, she began knocking people out in the first round.  She progressed quickly, becoming a sensation.

Hilary Swank was wonderful as the down-home sweetheart Maggie, who was determined to reach her goals.  She wound up winning an Academy Award for her performance in Million Dollar Baby.  Eastwood won the Academy Award for directing and Freeman was Best Supporting Actor that year.  Million Dollar Baby was also the Best Picture winner.

I did not expect this to be as emotional of a movie as it was.  The picture really hits you with an uppercut and knocks the wind out of you, all in a flash of a second.

Great action.  Great storytelling.  Real emotion.  Million Dollar Baby is way better than I ever expected it to be.  It transcended boxing and became a movie about life and loss and pain.  Truly a moving experience.

I’m just not sure how to feel about this.

I decided to watch Raging Bull because this week’s Top 10 Show featured Boxing Movies and my list was severely lacking in some major ways.  This was one of them so I chose the Thanksgiving binge watch would start with this Scorsese classic.

However, I am just not sure how to feel.

I absolutely HATED Jake LaMotta (Robert DeNiro).  I found him so unlikable that in the first half hour or so, I considered shutting the movie off.  I did not like any of the characters on the screen, including Jake’s brother Joey (Joe Pesci) or his soon-to-be child bride Vickie (Cathy Moriarty).

But I persisted with the hope of seeing this group of people suffer from their horrible choices.  That might not be the most empathic reason to keep watching a movie, but I had to find what I could.

Along the way, I started watching the ambiance and the mood being created by Martin Scorsese and the performance of Robert DeNiro.  The film is beautifully shot, with the black and white imagery and the dreamlike state at times.  The boxing matches may not measure up to the realism of today’s standard, but they are dramatic and told a story.

I saw DeNiro take this mean, unbelievably jealous, rotten abusive human being with a violent temper and send him through the wringer, self-induced as it may have been.  Jake LaMotta had a lot to be thankful for, but he was too crazy or insecure to accept that.  He self destructed completely.  The scene of him pounding the wall of the jail cell was remarkable.

So while I never came around on Jake LaMotta as a character, the film itself won me over.  The raw feel of the characters and the amazing look of the movie makes this a classic.

Die Hard is one of my favorite movies of all time.  When someone asks me what my favorite movies are, this is one of the first couple that comes out of my mouth.  I absolutely adore this movie.  This year is the 30th anniversary of the release of Die hard.

It is clearly going to be…

The highest rating I have.

Let’s talk about this fantastic movie a bit.

I was a huge fan of Moonlighting the television program starring Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd so I was excited to see Bruce move into the world of film.  I had gone to see him in Blind Date, but that was anything but one of my favorites.

Then Die Hard came along.

It is just a brilliant action movie. One of the best, if not THE best action movie in history.  There are so many perfect beats in this film.

First of all, Bruce Willis is spot on.  He is so believable in the roll of everyman cop John McClane who finds himself in impossible situations in Nakatomi Plaza in California.  he is funny, witty, smart and brave and as easy to relate to as any protagonist you are going to find.

Then, we have one of the greatest villains in cinema history as well with Hans Gruber, the film debut of the brilliant Alan Rickman.  Hans was menacing and frightening without ever being over-the-top.  He was perfectly played by Rickman in his sinister manner.

The writing of the film is astounding.  Every little detail comes back and pays off.  There is nothing that is superficial in this movie.  “Fists with your toes”- a small unimportant conversation John has on an airplane leads to him running around the building with bare feet.  An off hand remark from Ellis (Hart Bochner) about Holly’s (Bonnie Bedelia) watch comes back in the final confrontation with Hans.   Al Powell (Reginald VelJohnson) and his story of being unable to use his gun pays off in a big way.  Every little detail is there for a reason and it is a wonder to watch.

The action is amazing. The fight sequences are off the charts, as is the major knock down drag out between John and Karl (Alexander Godunov).  Although I have a hard time buying Karl surviving that final fight with John, it is worth it for the last scene with Al.

The lines are quotable as can be.  Everyone knows the iconic “yippee etc etc” line but one of my own favorites is when John is on the roof and trying to call for help on an emergency channel and the cops are not believing him.  His response to “Sir, this line is reserved for emergency calls only” is “No f#*king sh#t lady, do I sound like I’m ordering a pizza?” I lose myself laughing every time I hear that.

The ridiculousness of the other LA cops and FBI agents add into the feel that John McClane must keep going because no one else will be able to stop these terrorists.  Paul Gleason, who plays Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson, gives his lines with such a dry delivery that he is one of the funniest parts of this movie.

Very few films have been done so well and Die Hard continues to be the class of all of the following Die Hard sequels.  It is one of the great movies of all time and will always have a place on my own top 5 list..

I do like serial killers.  Always have.  They fascinate me.

So with this thriller where at the heart of the story is a serial killer who was copycatting some of the most infamous serial killers inhistory, well, that film is one for me.

When you throw in the powerful casting of Sigourney Weaver and Holy Hunter into the mix, it only gets better.  Then, there is a creepy performance for the ages from Harry Connick Jr.  to make it all the more intense and suspenseful.

After being assaulted and nearly killed by obsessed killer Daryll Lee Cullem (Connick Jr), Dr. Helen Hudson (Weaver) wound up an agoraphobic.  However, Helen, a clinic psychologist specializing in serial murders, cannot stay out as she made several calls to the police, trying to give assistance on a new serial case.

Detective M.J. Monahan (Hunter) was the only one who was taking Helen’s calls seriously, and enlisted the sometimes unwilling aid of Helen to find the copycat killer (William McNamara).

The first time I saw this years ago, I was on the edge of my seat.  I will admit that I was not as filled with anxiety this time around.  Age will do that to you.  However, I still enjoyed the film and the performances of these actors.

I very much liked how Weaver’s character used her smarts to outwit the copycat killer at a point in the film.  She should be shown as intelligent and when she confronted him, Weaver showed how much of a bad ass she really could be.

Some of the other police officers did some really dumb things, which I felt was just because the plot needed them to be dumb.  That is a drawback to the writing.  Other than that, I liked Copycat very much and had a good time watching it.

As the country approaches an important vote on Tuesday, I looked back at a film, where at its center, was love and acceptance of differences.

The Birdcage starred Robin Williams and Nathan Lane as a middle aged gay couple who run a drag club in Miami.  Armand (Williams) had a son Val (Dan Futterman) who had fallen in loved with a young girl (Calista Flockhart) and wanted to get married.  The problem is the girl’s parents were extremely conservative, with her father being Senator Keeley (Gene Hackman) who had co-founded an organization for the morals of the country.

Val returned to see his father and “mother” Albert (Lane) to get their help to convince the Senator that they were a typical family.

Meanwhile, Senator Keeley’s co-founder died in the bed of an underage black prostitute, creating a huge scandal.  Keeley decided to escape the press by taking his wife Louise (Dianne Wiest) to meet Val and Val’s family.

There are a lot of uncomfortable moments in The Birdcage, a film based on the French film “La Cage aux Folles,” when the characters are being forced into situations that they simply are unable to exist within.  One could argue that the selfishness of Val and Barbara are really on display here, throwing their parents’ feeling away.  Val is downright cruel to the overtly emotional and practically on fire flaming Albert, never once really considering the feelings of the man he considered a mother.  Armand had to do so much damage control, but, in that damage control, we see the real and deeply caring relationship between these two men and you understand how Armand could live with the temperamental Albert.  The scene where Williams finds Lane sitting on a bench and gives him the palimony agreement is such a beautiful scene of love between two people that it really underscores the idea of the film.

Albert and Armand are willing to do anything for Val, even what might be uncomfortable or mean, because they love him and they accept him.  Val’s learns that lesson as the film moves on and when he finally cuts through the crap, we understand that he sees what he has done and that he had the power to straighten it out.

The film is remarkably funny, with the robust scene stealer Agador (Hank Azaria) as a Guatemalan house boy dominating every scene.  Robin Williams truly anchors the wild performance of Nathan Lane and keeps everything under control.  He still has his share of laughs, but it comes from his dry wit and the situations instead of his normal hectic manner.

Gene Hackman is spot on as the conservative senator who finds himself smack dab in the middle of an unbelievable scandal.  His sweetness toward “Mother Coldman” shows that he is not a bad man, just one who may not see the same way as the others.

The film shows that there is the possibility of people of different lifestyles to come together and help one another instead of immediately entering into hatred.  The lesson that Val learns is a lesson that much of the country these days need to learn as well.  The Birdcage is a wonderfully funny, engaging film that celebrates individuality.  When Armand, Albert and even Agador tried to be what they were not, the struggles for everybody involved was obvious.

This is a great movie that is eminently rewatchable.

This past week’s Top 10 Show’s list was music biopics and their number one film was Amadeus.  I usually do a list of my own following their show but I have been unable to find the time.  Plus, I had some noticeable omissions when I was trying to write up the list, this being one of them.  I wanted to watch this before doing my own list, but there was just no time seeing as the fact that Amadeus was a three hour movie.

Finally, Friday night, I got a chance to watch the film and it was really great.

I enjoyed the format of the film very much.  The fact that the tale is being told by a rival of Mozart (Tom Hulce), an old man version of Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) brought such an interesting spin to everything that is being said.  We have no idea if anything that Salieri said was true or even close to being true.  As a rival of Mozart, Salieri is a perfect example of an unreliable narrator, someone who sees the story through their own perspective.

F. Murray Abraham is wonderful as Salieri and Tom Hulce turns a great comedic performance as the man-child Mozart.  Both men were nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor, with Abraham taking the prize.  The film won a ton of Academy Awards and other awards back in the 1980s and I can see the reason why.

Amadeus is very funny, but it is also able to turn on a dime and show off drama that borders on tragedy.  There is a fine line between humor and tragedy and there has not been a better film to illustrate that concept than Amadeus.

It also has a fascinating turn by Jeffrey Jones, an actor known for playing comedic villains such as Ed Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  Jones’s portrayal of the Emperor is both funny and beguiling.  I enjoyed his work here.

I did enjoy the film, but I will say that it would not make my number one spot on a music biopic list. It would certainly be in the top 5, however.

I had a chance today to catch Disney’s Hocus Pocus on the big screen for the first time since I saw it back at the drive in.  That was the last show I have seen at our local drive in.

I have to say, it was not as good as I remember.  It was still fine and I enjoyed myself for the most part, but there were a lot of scenes that just did not hold up 25 years later.

The Sanderson sisters were a group of witches who would use the life force of children to stay young.  Before they were hanged for witchcraft, they completed a curse indicating that they would be back.

When Max (Omri Katz), a new boy in town, was showing off for the pretty girl (Vinessa Shaw), he unwittingly brought the sisters back to life.  Winifred (Bette Midler), Sarah (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Mary (Kathy Najimy) picked up where they left off, trying to regain their lost youth.  Max, his young sister (Thora Birch), and a talking cat named Binx (Sean Murray) teamed up to prevent the sisters from returning forever.

There are many fun scenes in Hocus Pocus.  I still laugh like an idiot when Sarah Jessica Parker says, “Amuck, amuck, amuck, amuck.”  I always liked Omri Katz from the television program, Eerie, Indiana, and he is very easy to cheer for here.  Vanissa Shaw is beautiful and she has some nice, easy chemistry with Omri.

The musical number performed by Bette Midler, “You Put a Spell on Me” was fun and moved the story forward.  The three Sanderson sisters were great here.

The whole virgin running joke felt very 1990s and was driven into the ground hard by the movie.  There were some moments when the Sanderson sisters were confused by the new world, but other times when they made jokes about things that should have confused them as well.  It was as if they only did not know about the new world when the plot called for them not to know.  That is a weakness.

There are some scary scenes for the young viewers and a few charged moments for the adults.  Hocus Pocus is a fine movie for the Halloween time of the year.

I loved the Universal monster movies as a youth.  Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula, The Creature from the Black Lagoon… they were some of my all time favorites.  However, I must say that I had never seen the H.G. Wells classic The Invisible Man until this very morning.

Claude Rains starred as Dr. Jack Griffin, who, as with any great mad scientist, experiments on himself and turns himself invisible.  The chemical he uses affects his brain as well, sending the man cascading toward madness.

We are along for the ride as we “see” the man at first bad tempered before changing into a psychotic killer.

Directed by James Whale (who also directed Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein), The Invisible Man has many special effects that were quite amazing for the time frame.  When you realize that this film came out in 1933, what they were able to accomplish is even more impressive.

Nearly the entire cast of secondary characters are unimportant here.  Even the Gloria Stuart as Griffin’s love Flora felt unimportant to the story.  The only other character of any real repute here is Kemp, played by William Harrigan.  Kemp was Griffin’s associate and partner and the man whom Griffin approached to help him formulate the antidote.  Kemp, understandably creeped out by the slowly insane invisible man, betrays Griffin by calling the police.  The fate of Kemp was a standout moment of the movie.

This role turned Claude Rains into a star which is remarkable since it was a role that you never see his face until the very end of the movie.  It is a strong performance from Rains, who was unable to use facial expressions in his acting and had to require other means to emote what he wanted to do.

I enjoyed The Invisible Man very much although I could have done with less screeching from the inn keeper (Una O’Connor)

One of the worst movies of all time, Plan 9 from Outer Space, is the next film in the October Fear Fest.  I was inspired to watch this after watching the wonderful Ed Wood movie starring Johnny Depp.  Part of that story was involving the filming of Plan 9 from Outer Space.

And while this is one of the worst films ever, it is also one of the best worst films ever. It is actually quite fun to watch it is so bad.

Ed Wood was the infamous director of this film and he was widely known as one of the worst directors ever.  He would take one shot and move along no matter what happened.  He cast his friends and people he knew.

This turned out to be the final film of Bela Legosi’s career and, in fact, he died before filming was over.  So, Ed Wood replaced him with his girlfriend’s chiropractor who bared a slight passing resemblance to Legosi.  He would have the chiropractor cover his face with the cape whenever he was on screen.

Former pro wrestler Tor Johnson was given something that he should never be given in a film…lines.  The early lines spoken by Tor were some of the worst delivered lines in the history of movies, right up there with “solar panels” by Alan Bagh in Birdemic: Shock and Terror.

Stock footage is used regularly and one scene of Bela Legosi is literally re-used five times during the film, if not more.

The film is just horrible, but it can provide a solid unintentional laugh if you understand what kind of film this is.  Like The Room, Plan 9 from Outer Space has a cult following that elevates the movie to something more than just a terribly created B-movie.

Again, watch the Tim Burton directed Ed Wood before you watch this travesty and it will provide you with more respect for the film than it probably deserves.  It is a terrible film, but it may end up on a list of best worst films ever.  I’ll do that list some day.

Until then…