Guilty pleasure time.

The next film in the snowy Saturday binge watch is a silly, downright dumb, film from 1987 that, for whatever reason, I enjoy.  The Monster Squad is a group of children facing off against the iconic monsters of all-time in Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Wolfman, the Creature and the Mummy.

The Monster Squad is pure 1980s goodness.  It is like the Goonies blended with Ghostbusters in a B-movie extravaganza.  Is is stupid?  Sure.  Does it have major holes? Yep.  Does it work in today’s world?  Not so much.  Still, I cannot say that I don’t enjoy watching it every time it is on.

As I am watching the film, I am amazed at the small moments of depth that the film tries to sneak into the film.  Scary German Guy has a tattoo from a concentration camp on his forearm that we see after one of the kids say that he really knows about monsters.  When Rudy shoots the Wolfman, you can see the conflict within the boy’s face.  Whether intended or not, you can see he was shaken by his killing of the Wolfman.  The realization by Frankenstein’s Monster that he was an ugly creature and how that bothered him was surprisingly effective.  Sean later insists that they do not call Frankenstein’s Monster a monster, referring to him as Frank instead.

All of these moments were enjoyable and brought more to the story than just the silliness of the plot.

Now, there were a lot of things that would be frowned upon today.  Like, for example, how Rudy blackmails Patrick’s sister into helping them by taking pictures of her partially naked and threatening to post them at school.  Not cool, Rudy.  And… why did this group of boys desperately need to find a virgin to perform the ritual so badly?  I mean, they are in a monster club.  All of these boys were all certainly virgins.  Pretty sexist when you indicate that your virgin has to be the girl.

Shane Black, yes that one, wrote the script for The Monster Squad along with director Fred Dekker.  They weaved several hints and homages to the original Universal monsters of the old days of film in their script.  There is little wasted time here as the film moves quickly from intro of the monsters to the final struggle with the kids.  The kids do a good job of getting you invested in them and being cute.

And of course, it has one of the classic lines of all time with “Wolfman’s got nards.”

This film is absolutely not very good, but it certainly could be a nice introduction for families looking for monster/horror movies to watch with their kids.  The rating should not be a surprise since I use a picture of the Monster Squad on the graphic.  The Monster Squad is…

The snow movie binge continues with a 2005 reboot film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp in the iconic role of the eccentric chocolate factory owner.

This 2005 version was a reboot of the 1971 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory that starred Gene Wilder.

Someone thought that this reboot was a good idea.  Spoiler alert…it wasn’t.

Among many things that this new version was lacking was one important detail.

Magic.

Watching these scenes of this reboot, it was clear that the magical moments that were throughout the original version felt dark and pedestrian here.  The color was muted.  The music was completely different.  The ambiance was just wrong.  The “Pure Imagination” scene in the original is beautiful, dream-like, stunning.  The same scene, sans the iconic song, was nothing more than one more poorly lit, nasty, unlikable moment.

Gene Wilder played Willy Wonka with a sense of sarcastic wonder, a hidden dark side breaking through.  Johnny Depp replaced that sense of wonder with a feeling of being broken.  We see completely unnecessary flashbacks to the character’s childhood, including his dentist father (Christopher Lee).  Willy Wonka does not need an origin story.  The mystery of why he does what he does should suffice.  This is a major flaw of this film.  And with all due respect to Johnny Depp, there are so many choices in his portrayal that simply do not help this character.

I did enjoy the performance of young Freddie Highmore as Charlie.  Highmore would go on to star in Bates Motel as the iconic Norman Bates and then on to The Good Doctor.  Highmore has shown his acting chops in these versions and he has a charming visage throughout the film.  You could see that the young man had a bright future here.

I also must say that I enjoyed some of the quips between Willy Wonka and Mike Teevee (Jordan Fry).  Seemed as if Mike kept noticing when Wonka was spinning his lies and then called him on it.  Of course, we also were meant not to like this kid either.

Perhaps this film would not be as bad as I think had it been an original film instead of remaking an indelible classic of all time (a member of the EYG Hall of Fame), but it did so every scene from the new film is being peppered by the memory of a completely better version.  If there was nothing to compare this too, maybe we would not realize how much it was missing.

How much magic.

Here on a snowy Saturday, I am going to get some of these movies watched and reviewed.  I will start off with A League of Their Own, a classic film about the All-American Girls Baseball League.

During World War II, people were concerned that baseball might be shutdown because the male players were needed in the war effort.  In response, they began a female baseball league to fill the gap. That is a true story.  A League of Their Own is a fictionalized version of this historical truth.

A League of Their Own is the story of two sisters, Dottie (Geena Davis) and Kit (Lori Petty) from a dairy farm in Oregon, who were recruited to join the fledgling baseball league.  Dottie was the best player in the league and Kit always felt in her shadow.

However, the film was not just about the sibling rivalry.  There were many great scenes with the other members of the team played by a fantastic cast.  Madonna played “All-the-Way” Mae, a promiscuous sparkplug.  Rosie O’Donnell played Doris, a loud, obnoxious but big time hitter.  Tom Hanks was Jimmy Dugan, a former baseball star who lost years at the end of his career to alcohol and became the team’s reluctant manager.  Other great cast members included Garry Marshall, Bitty Schram, Anne Ramsey, Bill Pullman, Jon Lovitz, Tea Leoni, David Strathairn and Ann Cusack.

I love this movie.  It has so many absolutely classic moments that I love.  It also has my all-time favorite quote in any situation.  I am sure everyone would say that it would be “There’s no crying in baseball” because that is the most famous of the quotes.  However, that is not it.  My favorite quote comes near the end of the film when Dottie’s husband returned from WWII and she decides to go back to Oregon with him instead of to the World Series.  Jimmy hears this and he confronts her.  Dottie said that it “Just got too hard” and Jimmy responds “It’s supposed to be hard.  If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it.  The hard is what makes it great.”  I love that quote because it sums up my exact feelings of baseball and why it is such a emotional and compelling sport to me.

But there are other scenes as well.  The “no crying” scene includes a confrontation between Jimmy and the umpire where Jimmy asks him if “anyone ever say you look like a penis with a little hat on?”  Then, after being tossed from the game, Jimmy says, “You misunderstood me!”  LOL!  That is funny. But there were poignant scenes as well. The scene where Betty “Spaghetti” (Tracy Reiner) receives a telegram from the War Department telling her that her husband had been killed in battle was heartbreaking and painful.  This excellent cast was up to every challenge it was presented with.

I do have one major problem with the movie and it deals with a spoiler.  The character of Kit is so unlikable, whiny and bratty, but yet the movie gives her the big moment in the end.  Everything dealing with Kit makes me want to see her lose, not get the big hit in the end.  Heck, even in the final scene, she selfishly runs through a stop sign at third base to barrel over her sister at home plate, knocking the ball free to win the game.  To me, the character does not earn that scene because there is absolutely no growth from her through the entirety of the film.  I loved it when Dottie finally stood up and called out her babyish behavior.  I hated watching her new team carry her around on their shoulders like she was a hero of the game.

Other than that, I love A League of Their Own.  It has wonderful scenes and it truly promotes the love of baseball that I have had for my entire life.  The sentimental scenes at the film’s end at the Hall of Fame were extremely well done as well, creating a sense of nostalgia despite the film not even being over yet.

If not for Kit, this would be rated higher.  I do love the movie and I consider it one of my favorites of all time.  As a movie, I give it…

As a child, I always enjoyed the series of films in the Planet of the Apes franchise.  I remember having Megos of some of the apes and they had a Saturday morning cartoon show.

So I was excited as an adult when there was going to be a new Planet of the Apes film coming out.  I went to the theater and I remember as clear as day.  It was terrible.

Now, since then, the Planet of the Apes franchise was rebooted again with a prequel and the focus fell upon the apes themselves, especially with leader Caesar played by Andy Serkis.  This trilogy of movies were wonderful (although I did not love the third one as much as the previous two).

These films needed to be great to wash the stench of horrid that was left in the mouth after the release of the 2001 Planet of the Apes, starring Mark Wahlberg.

Recently during these rewatches, I have seen a couple of movies that, when viewed again in a critical eye, I enjoyed more.  Se7en was one of them.  Sicario was another.  A good rewatch can some times improve the viewing of a movie.  So I wondered if a second viewing of The Planet of the Apes, which I had not seen since 2001, would make a difference.

It did not.

This was still a terrible movie.

Tim Burton directed this and he seemed to be throwing in tones that just did not work together.  Was this supposed to be some sort of satire?  Some sort of comedic commentary?  An action movie?  Science fiction?  I think an argument could be made for all of these, but in a way that they simply never meshed together.

Mark Wahlberg has become a considerably better actor in the years since this one.  He was not good here.  You buried the best actors on the cast (Tim Roth, Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Clarke Duncan, Paul Giametti) under make up as apes, really hamstringing what they were able to do.  This was not like the motion capture of today where there is more emotion on the face of Caesar than on some of the human characters.  These prosthetics may have been great in 2001, but they still were basically masks.

The story was all over the place and the final battle made no sense and was hurt by the arrival of a deus ex machina to save the day at the perfect moment.  But even worse was the very end that made absolutely no sense and really tried its best to match the iconic ending of the original Planet of the Apes from 1968.  It failed.

On this watch, I though the middle of the film was better than I remembered, but by this point, I was already tired of the silliness and the stupidity of the story.  The writers tried desperately to shoehorn Easter eggs in from the previous movies, but they felt so forced that it ended up as eye-rolling moments instead.

I am so glad that they were able to get this story right with the Rise of the Planet of the Apes because this one was a total flop.

John Carpenter created one of the most iconic horror movies of the 1980s when he directed The Thing, starring Kurt Russell.  My friend Chris had recommended I watch this as part of my rewatch binge weekend, and I told him that I had never seen the original.  He responded with shock.

So, seeing that it was available on Amazon, I decided that I would go ahead and watch it.  I had seen the prequel that was made in 2011, but I was not a fan.  It ended with a scene of a dog running through the snow in Antarctica and I did not understand.  However, I do now after seeing how Carpenter’s film starts that way.

The Thing creates a remarkable tension and fear by first, isolating the group and amping up the claustrophobic feel, and then placing them in a situation where paranoia took over.  You did not know who you could trust.  You did not know which one or ones of the group were already a part of this monster.  Trapped in this blizzard without any access to the outside world, the group had little choice but to turn on each other.

There is another aspect being examined here besides the result of isolation and paranoia.  The fact that this is an all-male outpost allows the film to examine the effect of male masculinity on the situation.  Sticking out heir chests and gritting their teeth, these men did not want to show any signs of lacking their manhood and the situation placed that manhood in jeopardy.

Kurt Russell is fantastic in the film.  Russell has appeared in several of Carpenter’s movies, but few with as solid of work as The Thing.  Keith David, who I just watched last night in They Live with Roddy Piper, was here also, bringing a load of attitude and questionable behavior.  Wilford Brimley also had a memorable role here, looking much different than the mustached older gentleman that I remember.

Yes, many of the shots of the creature looked kind of silly and may not have aged well but the practical effects actually did make me jump a couple of different times.  There is something about the all-practical effects and no CGI that make The Thing even more effective.

A remake of a 1951 film, The Thing is considered one of the genre’s best examples in the 1980s.  The film is a great example of the use of claustrophobia to make the audience feel enveloped and helpless and, when you throw in the paranoia, you have a fantastic horror film.   Thanks Chris.

“I’ve come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubble gum.”

“Rowdy” Roddy Piper, WWE Superstar, was not the pro wrestler you might expect to star in a science fiction B-list film by John Carpenter.  And yet, Roddy Piper was absolutely perfect as Nada, a bad ass drifter who stumbles across a secret few people knew.  Piper was able to take the cheesy aspects of the script and dialogue of They Live, and make an indelible mark in this role.  How many people could deliver that line about bubble gum seriously?  Roddy could and he did.

They Live is a tremendous movie.  It has quite a list of hidden messages that are anything but subtle.  But that is not what makes this film stand the test of time.  That is the performance of “Hot Rod.”

Carpenter wisely kept Roddy’s dialogue down.  Nada was a man of few words and that certainly helped with Roddy’s acting skills.  But even so, Roddy knew how to connect to the audience, something he did for years in the ring.

And the biggest benefit of someone like Roddy Piper is you have someone who spent a lifetime making fake fighting look real.  The iconic fight scene in They Live between Roddy Piper and co-star Keith David is one of the greatest, most realistic fight scenes ever placed on film.  Piper and David’s characters beat the living crap out of each other and there were signs of it.  The blood, bruises and swelling highlighted how brutal the fist fight was.  This six minute fight scene comes well into the run time of the film and never seemed to end.

Nada gets chucked out a window in this film as well in a shocking moment that I remember not believing when I fist saw it.  It was a great scene and Piper played it beautifully.  He was tossed from the window by Meg Foster’s character Holly, who plays a huge part in the end of the film.

Speaking of the end, this film did not have a happy ending, in particular for our heroes and that made it hard for the young me to watch considering I was a lifelong wrestling fan and I loved Roddy Piper.  Still, the ending fit the story and opened the world of the film to uncertainty and potential chaos and those are things that John Carpenter movies love.

They Live is certainly not a brilliant, high-budget film.  It is a B-movie that has a fun science fiction script packed full of social messages and an unexpectedly fantastic performance from Roddy Piper.  It is a film that can be watched at any time and enjoyed for what it is.

Even if you are all out of bubble gum.

Dr. Strangelove is one of my favorite movies of all time.  It is dripping with satire and plastered with laugh out loud lines chronicling one of the biggest fears that consumed the people of the country in the 1960s.

The fear of nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

It seemed like it was going to happen in the 60s.  But could something happen by accident? Those concerns were alive when Stanley Kubrick provided the answer with Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Renegade General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) sent out a command from Burpelson Air Force Base that the planes circling the Soviet air space should continue on and drop their bombs on their targets, effectively starting a nuclear war.  He did this because he believed that fluoridation of the American water supply was a Soviet plot to poison the American people.

Clearly, General Ripper had lost his grip on his sanity.

But with the recall code in hi head alone, there appeared to be no way to sto the planes from starting WWIII.

United States President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) received the news from General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) and the President started desperate measures to try and stop the bombs from being deployed.

Dr. Strangelove is an amazing film that shows the absolute best of EYG Hall of Famer Peter Sellers.  Sellers not only plays the President of the US, but he also plays Dr. Strangelove, a wheelchair bound scientist from Germany who may have served Hitler, and British Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, who is trying his best to convince General Ripper to give up the recall code.  Sellers creates three distinct characters with three distinct personalities.  If you did not know already, you could be fooled into thinking that these were three different actors.  It was a tremendously epic performance from Peter Sellers.

Reports indicated that Sellers was also supposed to play the Major “King” Kong, the leader of the plane that we see, but he did not think he could do the proper accent. Slim Pickens took the role which became one of the greatest of his career, which included the iconic ride on the bomb down to the ground.

There is nothing off the table for Kubrick’s satire.  The idea of the arms race, the conflict between the USA and the USSR, the generals living the high life, the proposition of a President not having any real power at all.  These are all topics satirized by Kubrick and brought home by this talented cast.  And, SPOILERS since the film ends with the bomb being dropped, you would think that the American public, which was already scared and paranoid at the time, would be even worse after this film’s release.  However, that was not the case and an argument could be made that it helped take the sting out of the fear by making fun of it.

Either way, Dr. Strangelove is undeniably funny and brilliantly written, acted and is as enjoyable as it was the first time I saw it.  It is definitely…

After seeing the new reboot of Death Wish this afternoon, I decided it was time to check out the original.  I have never been a huge fan of revenge-killer flicks, but this is the one where most of the rest came from, starring Charles Bronson in what was most likely his most well-known role.

Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) was an architect whose wife and daughter were attacked in their home by three muggers who spotted the women at the supermarket.  After a violent encounter, the wife wound up dead and the daughter was traumatized.

Paul is downtrodden, but returns to work in an attempt to fall into work.  His boss, seeing how Paul is reacting, sends him on a work assignment out of New York, to Arizona.  In Arizona, Paul gets a taste of Old West justice and retaliation by one’s own hand.  Returning to New York with a special gift from a friend, a .32 handgun, Paul heads out on the streets in an attempt to draw muggers out of the woodwork to execute them.

Unlike the 2018 reboot, we see the change in the character of Paul Kersey as he becomes more brazen and confident.  Starting as a Pacifist- a conscientious objector during the Korean War, Paul at first was lost.  After his first kill, he became upset over the killing of a mugger, but as time moved on, he started stalking prey.  He became less concerned over his daughter, going as far as telling his son-in-law that he could not continue to whine and cry all the time.  Even after the police warned Paul that they were watching him, he continued to head out to hunt.

Of course, watching this film with a 2018 eye makes me wonder about the message of the film, but if I avoid that, this one is at least a much more interesting character study of a man who has lost everything and whose perception of the world changed because of it.

Charles Bronson does a wonderful job here, much stronger of a performance than that of Bruce Willis.  Vincent Gardenia played Detective Frank Ochoa, the man with the assignment to get the Vigilante to stop without arresting him or killing him.

Self-defense or brutal killer?  It is a question covered here much better than in the revenge porn of 2018.

When I first saw Seven, I saw it in the local theater and I remember not liking it much.  Everybody else seemed to have a differing opinion on it, going as far as to call it one of David Fincher’s greatest films.  So I decided to re-watch it.

It is better than I thought the first time back in 1995,

I would not put it as Fincher’s greatest film.  For me, that is probably Zodiac.  I enjoyed Gone Girl quite a bit too.  But Se7en would ow make the list where as before I would have omitted it.

Morgan Freeman is great as soon to be retiring Detective William Somerset.  Somerset was a man who had seen more than what he could handle over his years on the force and it had transformed him into a cynical, hopeless man.  Meanwhile, Detective David Mills still has the pretense that they can do something to help. So when they wind up investigating a series of brutal torture/murders based around the seven deadly sins, Mills and Somerset seemed to be opposites of the same coin.

They were in search of the mysterious killer who seemed to be one step ahead of them the entire time.  Kevin Spacey, currently a pariah in Hollywood, played this murderer with a creepiness and quiet evil that really makes him stand out despite only being on screen a short time.

Of course, the moment that stands out the most for this movie is the ending sequence.  While it creates a serious tension filled tone and an uncertainty of what was going to happen, if you think about it, it really does not make much sense in the story or to the character of John Doe.  It absolutely places an almost inhuman ability to plan out a murder.  The other murders were long term plans, even taking up to a year to do.  Suddenly, though, final two murders are last minute, spur of the moment murders that he could not have known about ahead of time. For someone as methodical as John Doe was in planning, switching to something so last minute is not going to happen.

So yes the moment was dramatic, but it actually does more disservice to the story for me than it does anything else.

I did like this considerably more the second time, but I still don’t see it as a masterpiece.

This is one of those all time classic films that I had never seen before.  One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was widely considered one of Jack Nicholson’s greatest performances, directed by Milos Forman.  The film won five Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Actress (Louise Fletcher).

There were a few things that surprised me about Cuckoo’s Nest.  One was how many familiar faces there was in this film.  I saw Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, Scatman Cruthers, Sydney Lassick, Vincent Schiavelli and Brad Dourif.  According to IMDB, Anjelica Huston was also in the film, although the role was uncredited.  I had no idea the level of interesting actors that appeared here.

That list of actors does not even include Will Sampson as The Chief, who was probably the most compelling character to me. I loved the not-so-mute Indian and the relationship between him and R.P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) was one of respect and friendship.  I really liked how McMurphy tried to help the Chief out even before he knew the large man’s secret.

The other surprising thing about Cuckoo’s Nest to me was how funny the film was.  Sure it was dark as could be, but there is no denying that the tone of the film had its share of humor to it.  The setting did not seem to be conducive for humor, but this talent cast took the dark comedic material and made it work well.

Of course, the ending took an even darker turn, and yet I found myself strangely inspired by the actions of the Chief.

The performance of one of the iconic antagonists of all time, Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched, was wonderful.  The cruelty of the woman was truly sad as she treated these poor men in such a rotten manner.  She was the perfect foil for McMurphy as they were opposites to each other.

Watching the movie today, much of what they show taking place in the asylum is outdated.  The shock therapy and the lobotomy are not used any more (I think…at least I hope), but the character and their motivations are still right on track.

I am certainly glad I took the time to see this great film.

Saturday night, I was feeling the desire to watch the Disney classic Aladdin, but I did not have the DVD in my collection.  I have a lot of DVDs so I was surprised it was not there, since Aladdin has been one of my favorite Disney movies of all time.  I know I had it once on video tape, but apparently I never purchased it on DVD.

That sent me on a search of streaming services, but they also turned out to be a dead end.  So I gave up on my wish.

Today I watched the animated Early Man and I hated it.  Because of that, I went on a search again to try and find a great animated film.  Heading to YouTube, I found success.  There was a version of the feature length film that was sped up just a little bit.  The songs went faster than normal, but I was willing to put up with that to get a dose of Aladdin.

I love this movie.  It might be my favorite of the Disney movies.  The number one reason is, of course, Robin Williams as the Genie.  The frantic, energetic performance may be the greatest voice over performance in the history of film.  If not number one, it is certainly in the argument.  Williams took the script and did his typical improvisation with it, and much of what he did with the script caused the animators to redo the visuals to fit Williams improv.  That is amazing respect shown one of the greatest comedic minds of out time.

The music is tremendous.  “Friend Like Me,” “Prince Ali,” “A Whole New World,” “One Jump,” could not be more perfect in this film.  Robin Williams showed even more of his skills with the vocals of the Genie’s songs.  The score beautifully highlights the story and the tone of the film.

The film also benefited from one of the best villain pairings of all time in Jafar and Iago. Jafar is as wicked and evil as any villain and he was brilliantly voiced by Jonathan Freeman.  Then, Jafar’s wicked sidekick Iago, voiced by the talented Gilbert Gottfried, played the villainous henchman without fail.  Iago delivered several of the best lines of the film with nasty precision.

But Jafar was not the only character with a sidekick here.  Aladdin had two of the best sidekicks ever in Abu the monkey and Carpet the Magic Carpet.  These character bring a flavor to Aladdin and each have a vital moment in the story.

The pace of the film is wonderful, as the film moves very quickly.  Aladdin has an exciting story with a great villain and a love story that feels real.  You care about these characters and you love the songs.  It is a classic film for the entire family and I am so happy that I was able to see it tonight after the failure of Saturday night.

Every Christmas season I pull out my favorite Christmas movie of all time. The Muppet Christmas Carol.  This came out in 1992 during a stretch when the Muppets were doing films based on classic literature stories such as this and Muppet Treasure Island.

A week or so ago, I made the list of Top 10 Christmas movies and this one came in at #1.

The story follows Ebenezer Scrooge (Michael Caine) who is an old miser who hates Christmas.  Scrooge is haunted by three ghosts who show him the past, present and future in an attempt to save his soul from an eternity of lugging chains like his old business partners Jacob and Robert Marley.

Though the Muppets take certain liberties with the story, there is actually quite a few similarities between this and the Charles Dickens classic.  Many of the lines are used here, just as they are in other versions.  The classic Christmas Carol line  “if they are going to die, then they best get on with it and decrease the surplus population” is used to great effect.

Gonzo plays Charles Dickens as the omniscient narrator that follows along and adds the comments.  Rizzo the Rat tags along.  These characters are consistently breaking the fourth wall and each time it is funny.

Kermit the Frog is Bob Cratchit and Miss Piggy is his wife.  Robin the Frog got to be Tiny Tim. Honestly, every time Tiny Tim dies in this film, I cry.  I don’t know why.  Maybe it is hearing Kermit and Piggy so sad.  It is extremely well done.

Another thing that is well done is Michael Caine as Scrooge.  I know some people think that George C. Scott is the perfect Scrooge.  Others might say Alastair Sim or Jim Carrey.  However, I say do not sleep on Michael Caine.  Yes, he is acting with Muppets, but he carries this role beautifully.  You can see how Scrooge slowly changes from the wicked old brute he was into the caring, loving man of after.  Caine goes through every range of emotion possible and he so relatable.

I also love the Muppet designs of the ghosts, especially the Ghost of Christmas Present.  There are great songs as well.  “Wherever You Find Love, It Feels Like Christmas” is wonderful as is the “Scrooge” song at the beginning.

I think there are three Muppet movies that have to be considered the best ever made.  This is one of them.  I love this movie and I watch it every Christmas.

A friend and colleague of mine recommended I check this movie out.  It was released in 2014 and I think I remember some of the trailers for the movie.  So I gave it a shot tonight on Hulu.

It was okay.  Well acted with a solid cast.  I have always enjoyed Ed Harris and Micheal Pena. Eva Longoria might have stolen the show with her performance.

I wonder if Donald Trump had seen this movie and formed his border policies on what he saw here.  I couldn’t help but think of him as I watched some of the plot points that happened in the movie.

So Miguel (Michael Pena) is illegally crossing the border from Mexico to the United States with a family friend (Michael Ray Escamilla) when they meet Olivia (Amy Madigan) on a horse.  She gave them water and pointed them in the direction of possible work.  Her husband, a former sheriff Roy (Ed Harris) likes to do things his own way, she said, explaining why she had no work for them.  Little did they know that three teens were taking up position to shoot at the illegal Mexicans crossing the land.

The boys did not intend for anyone to get hurt.  They just wanted to scare the Mexicans, as they said. Problem was that Olivia heard the shots and, when she went to check on them, her horse was spooked and threw her.  She hit her head on some rocks and would die.

Roy also heard the shots and came rushing to the site, just in time to see Miguel standing over Olivia, his wife, with the bridal of the horse in his hand.  He assumed that Miguel had hurt Olivia trying to steal her horse.

Miguel retreats and Roy nearly shoots him, but he pauses, allowing Miguel to escape.  Taking his wife in his arms, Roy holds Olivia as she dies.

As I said, there was solid acting in the film, especially from Harris, who was solid as the grieving husband who still wants justice to be done, and from Eva Longoria, the wife of Miguel who faces dangers of her own as she tried to get to America herself to see her arrested husband.

I did have some problems with the movie, though.  First, it felt like everything really fixed itself quickly.  Terrible things happen to these characters, but then a scene or two later the situation resolved itself, setting up the next one.  It just seemed as if the movie wanted to show everything that could happen to or because of illegal aliens, but just did not have enough time to go into specifics in any plot.  Because of that, we did not have the chance to really get involved in enough of the story.  It was as if it was on fast forward most of the time.

I seriously wonder if Trump saw this movie prior to his infamous “They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people” comments.  SPOILERS: the film even ends with Miguel putting up a fence on the border.  Build a wall????  I wouldn’t be surprised.

I try to remain non-political here, but that was going through my head so much that it affected how I saw the film.

In the end, this is a well acted film that does not spend enough time on any one storyline to truly be effective.  Ed Harris, Michael Pena and Eva Longoria are good here, and this is not a bad movie to watch on a lazy night with nothing else to do.  It was okay.

I had a chance to attend a screening of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner today, and I was very pleased that I did.  I had never seen the film before, but I found it a fascinating look at the time.

Clearly, race relations remain at the heart of many of the problems we face as a society and it is vital that we face them head on and face them with honesty and respectfulness.  This film should be a cornerstone of that respect.

I truly enjoyed the movie.  A young white girl named Joey (Katharine Houghton) returned to her parents, Matt (Spencer Tracy) and Christina (Katharine Hepburn) Drayton, with her brand new fiance, Dr. John Prentice (Sidney Poitier).  They had fallen in love on a trip to Hawaii and the whirlwind romance led them back to Joey’s parents’ door.  The issue?  John was black.

The Draytons were a liberal couple, raising Joey to believe color of skin was not important in the value of a human, and Joey was sure that they would have no trouble with her marrying a black man.  John was not as certain.

One of my favorite parts of this film was how human it was.  It did not make the Draytons racists.  On the contrary, they were reasonable, friendly and truly believed in the equality of the races.  You could see how much respect they had had for John and all the wonderful things he had accomplished as a doctor worldwide.  And yet, the thoughts of the dangers and troubles that their daughter would face in a mixed race marriage caused even these progressive thinking people to take pause.  I liked how they approached this plot point.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner would become the final appearance on screen for Spencer Tracy as Matt Drayton.  Tracy passed away not too long after the finish of the filing of the movie.  His performance is so great, as he embodied the struggle of his beliefs against his fears.  His longtime scene mate, Katharine Hepburn was beautiful throughout the entire film, with her tears just slightly hanging within her eyes.  You could tell how much of a connection these two actors had after years of working together.

Sidney Poitier also turned in a wonderful performance as Dr. Prentice.  You could see on his face how uncertain he felt when broaching the subject with Joey’s parents and how he felt when trying to avoid telling his own parents.  His strength of character really played through the film, making the struggle all the more challenging for Matt.

There were several other fun performances from secondary characters.  Isabel Sandford (from the Jeffersons fame) played housekeeper Tillie with all the sassy you would expect.  Cecil Kellaway received an Oscar nomination for his role as family friend and priest, Monsignor Ryan, who provided a neutral voice among the emotions.  Virginia Christine played the closet racist Hillary St. George.  Her firing by Christina was a highlight of the story.

At its time, this movie was very controversial, with the topic of interracial marriage being a hot one.  A few months after the movie finished shooting, the United States Supreme Court ruled the laws against interracial marriage as unconstitutional, making a line of dialogue about John and Joey being criminals in some states out of date.

Tracy and Hepburn together one final time made this film all the more powerful.  It was a real enjoyable film that I am glad to have had a chance to see.

Getting ready to watch the comedy The Disaster Artist, starring James Franco, this weekend, I pulled up The Room, written, directed and starring Tommy Wiseau, to wacth once more.

I saw The Room once before, as one of the RiffTrax Live showings and it was unbelievably and unintentionally funny.  The thought of watching the Room without some aid was harrowing.

Fortunately, three of the personalities at Collider Video, Mark Ellis, Dennis Tzeng and Ashley Mova recorded a movie commentary about the Room, with Mark and Ashley never having seen it before.  So I pulled both of these videos up, played them simultaneously and watched away.

The Room truly is one of the worst movies of all time.  It is either this one or Birdemic: Shock and Terror that take the crown.  It really is hard to say.

There is not much of a story.  Johnny (Tommy Wiseau) is a successful banker and he seems to have a strong relationship with his future wife Lisa (Juliette Danielle), but Lisa is not happy.  She engages in an affair with Johnny’s best friend Mark (Greg Sestero).

Did I mention that Mark is Johnny’s best friend?

The Room is so bad that you have to laugh at it.  You can really have a good time watching this because it is so horrible.  The acting, the dialogue, the plot, the sex scenes, the multiple establishing shots are all just terrible.

Honestly, I can’t imagine how a film like this gets made.  And yet, here it is.

Tommy Wiseau put his heart into this project, and he has given the world, unintentionally, something to laugh about.

I am very excited about seeing the Disaster Artist this week.  The film that is the making of the worst film ever.  James Franco seems to be channeling the mysterious Tommy Wiseau and could be nominated for an Oscar.  Is that ironic, that a film about the worst movie ever has a chance to be an Academy Award nominated film?

Thanks to Mark Ellis, Ashley Mova and Dennis Tzeng for doing this commentary.  Their reactions really helped me get through the film.  Because The room is definitely…