DailyView: Day 135, Movie 209

I had seen the 2019 remake of Black Christmas and I was not impressed. I have heard a lot of positive about the original film, a Canadian slasher movie directed by Bob Clark and is considered one of the first examples of the slasher genre. I was curious to see how this may or may not compare with the newest version of Black Christmas.

As holiday break approach, the sorority sisters put on a party before people leave for their plans. A series of obscene phone calls break the feel of the party, and lead to the murder of Clare (Lynne Griffin), by a mysterious intruder who had climbed into the sorority’s attic. Stashing her body away, the other did not know what had happened to Clare and when she did not show up to meet her father (James Edmond), they begin to become worried.

The group of sorority sisters is an interesting collection of characters that work well in the film. Jess (Olivia Hussey) is our lead character and she is having problems with her boyfriend Peter (Keir Dullea). She is pregnant but does not want to keep the baby and Peter disagrees. Barb (Margot Kidder) has her share of problems and she is using alcohol to cover them. Phil (Andrea Martin) is a fascinating and one of the most different looking character in the film.

This is nothing like the 2019 version. In the new film, there was a whole plot about a Satanic cult committing the murders. There was so much overacting nixed with poor story telling. The 1974 version was considerably more intense and scary. The whole intruder in the attic character is way more frightening and the calls on the phone were disturbing at any time.

There are some outstanding shots in the movie. The sequence with Barb and the killer was an amazingly beautiful and terrifying scene at the same time. There was some feel with this movie that it was a smaller, artsy work with some of the best shots of any horror movie I have seen.

This was 100% better than the remake in 2019. I loved how this film developed and the mystery of who the killer is and how the ending remained unresolved. This was a fantastic horror movie.

DailyView: Day 134, Movie 208

I have had three consecutive DailyView that have been terrible. So when I needed to find a film that was a sure fire winner. In order to find that, I went back to my childhood to one of my favorite comedic pairs, Abbott and Costello. Looking through their list of movies, I found one that was intriguing and that I had not seen. It was Abbott and Costello Meets the Killer, Boris Karloff.

Freddie Phillips (Bud Costello) is a bumbling bellhop at a secluded hotel where a murder has taking place, and the clues are pointing to Freddie as the culprit. Freddie turns to hotel detective Casey (Bud Abbott) for help as bodies continue to pile up.

The original victim was Amos Strickland (Nicolas Joy), a lawyer who planned on releasing a memoir of all of the secrets that he picked up over the years. This attracted plenty of potential suspects, including the Swami Talpur (Boris Karloff).

Lou Costello was great as Freddie. This film highlighted the classic Abbott and Costello slapstick humor and wordplay that made them such an iconic duo. You can’t help but find the hijinks of the EYG Hall of Famers funny. This film even had a pretty decent mystery with the murders. The title of the movie may or may not be a spoiler.

Some of the situations are silly, but Lou Costello never fails to dive in with both feet. He is clearly willing to do anything for a laugh and Bud Abbott continues to be perhaps the best straight man to ever appear on screen.

This was a lot of fun, filled with laughs and ended the streak of flops for the DailyView!

DailyView: Day 133, Movie 207

Boy, the DailyView is in quite the slump lately.

Today’s film is another of the “leaving HBO Max” is September films and it is the third straight film that is just terrible. This movie stars Katie Holmes in the 1992 psychological thriller, Abandon.

The DailyView is 0-3.

Katie Burke (Katie Holmes), a senior at a prestigious college, was struggling to finish her thesis and find a good job when a detective Wade Handler (Benjamin Bratt) interviewed her on his missing persons case, Katie’s former boyfriend, the eccentric Embrey Larkin (Charlie Hunnam). Things become even more complicated when Embrey returned and started seeing Katie around.

For a psychological thriller, this movie is really quite dull. I was bored by a good chunk of the first hour of the movie as it inanely moved from current day to flashbacks dealing with Katie and Embrey’s relationship. The plot is a mess, needlessly convoluted and, as I said, took too long to get going. The twist of the story was clear as the film progressed, unsuccessfully toward the third act.

To be fair, the best part of the movie was the very final scene with Katie and Handler, but by that point, the film was beyond making a comeback.

No performances stood out in this clunker. Zooey Deschanel was the one actor in the film that did anything with her character, playing Katie’s roommate.

I need to try and find a film for tomorrow that breaks this string of crap that I am on.

DailyView: Day 132, Movie 206

Another film that is leaving HBO Max at the end of the month of September is Eye for an Eye, a movie starring Sally Field, Ed Harris and Kiefer Sutherland where a young girl is raped and murdered and the killer gets off on a technicality.

Sally Field and Ed Harris play the parents of the young girl, and Sutherland is the killer. This is a role that Kiefer Sutherland played quite a bit in his early career, as he played several slimeball roles.

This whole film feels quite slimy. It feels as if they are exploiting the worst thing that could happen in a family’s life for no other reason but to set up this revenge tale. It’s not even a straight revenge tale as the question about right and wrong are tossed around haphazardly and done to justify what they do.

There are some ugly scenes that are here because the plot requires it. None of these characters are more than basic sketches of characters. Kiefer Sutherland has every negative trait to make us hate him. There is nothing that makes him a real person. The police are completely incompetent and are almost written as antagonists. Sally Field has some bitter scenes with Joe Mantegna that make her look really bad.

There was a support group of people who had violent losses that was one of the most vile part of this movie. In particular, the work of Charlayne Woodward as Angel. There was so much in this group that felt downright rotten and left me with a disgusting feeling.

This was not a good movie. Yes, they have a great cast, but this class does not elevate the material at all. This is another clunker in the DailyView.

DailyView: Day 131, Movie 205

I had never heard of this movie before, but it came up on the Movie Trivia Schmoedown as a question and, I think it was Andrew Ghai, said he really liked the movie. So when I saw it on the leaving HBO Max list, I decided to give it a try. This was another mall cop movie, coming out the same year as Paul Blart.

This was way worse than Paul Blart. That should say something.

Ronnie (Seth Rogan) worked at a mall as head of security and there are all kinds of things going on. A pervert is showing women his junk, a robber is hitting the mall at night and Ronnie is having major issues. When Ronnie tried to apply for the Police Academy, things start to go badly for him.

This movie has some major problems. The first one is that the protagonist of the movie is 100% a horrible person. I hated Ronnie. He displayed every possible negative characteristic and I think the film still wanted you to root for him. I hated this character and I had no remorse for him. I think the end of the movie made me hate this character even more. There was zero personal growth and his arc was obscene.

But what was worse about Ronnie was that he was diagnosed as Bi-Polar and the movie seemed to make a joke out of it.

There are several jokes and dialogue in the film that absolutely did not age well. Some of the words used are just not used in movies any more. Ronnie was brazenly and unapologetically racist toward a Muslim character (played by Aziz Ansari).

There are a bunch of other characters in the movie that are just as bad as Ronnie. Ray Liotta played a police detective who started out as a friendly and kind cop but ended up cruel and mean. Anna Faris worked in the perfume section and was a horrible person. Michael Peña was Ronnie’s right hand man and another security guard with a deep (but predictable) secret. Celia Weston played Ronnie’s alcoholic mother. Finally, Patton Oswalt was a manager at a cofee shop in the mall. None of these characters are worth the audience’s support.

And above all else, the film is not funny. It is a sad movie with unlikeable characters and ridiculous situations. There is no way that Ronnie isn’t sitting in a jail cell to this day.

This was a terrible movie. I hated just about everything about it.

DailyView: Day 131, Movie 204

Written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Robert Rodriguez, today’s DailyView is the schizophrenic thriller, From Dusk Till Dawn.

Two escaped convicts, Seth (George Clooney) and Richard (Quentin Tarantino). were on their way to Mexico to make a deal with an associate. In order to get across the border, they needed to find sufficient cover. Seth and Richard kidnapped Jacob Fuller (Harvey Keitel) and his daughter Kate (Juliette Lewis) and son Scott (Ernest Liu), who were on vacation in Jacob’s RV.

Once across the border, Seth and Richard took the Fuller family to the roadside bar, The Titty Twister, that they would be meeting his contact in the morning. Unfortunately, beyond their knowledge, the bar was a hangout for vampires, which led to a violent encounter and a struggle for their survival.

What an odd movie. The first half of this movie felt very much like a crime drama from Tarantino. It had the criminals and the bloody results of their crime spree. Richard was a real kook and clearly suffered from some mental illness. Seth was a leader, but very manipulative and battled with his own anger issues.

The film picked up intensity after they snatched the Fullers. I have to say that I found the performance of Harvey Keitel, who has done some really great work in his career, to be one of the best I have seen from him. I was completely engaged with his character and the internal battle he was handling.

Then, without any warning whatsoever, the film went completely batshit crazy and became a fighting vampire movie. Since I already knew about the vampire twist, it did not shock me, but I cannot imagine the reaction of someone heading into the film without that knowledge. It went totally insane. That’s in a good way, though.

There were some things that pulled me out of the story though. When the vampires would explode in the sunlight, that was a bit too much for me. Plus, the fact that Cheech Marin played, at the very least, three separate characters was very distracting for me. I did not understand why, suddenly, there was another person who sounded like or looked just like Cheech Marin. After looking at IMDB, I see that John Hawkes (who was Lennon on LOST) also played two distinct roles, but since I did not notice that, it did not pull me out of the movie like the Cheech Marin characters did.

Many of the special effects looked like they were done in the nineties and so they were pretty dated. In fact, there were a couple of moments that were most likely intended to be frightening, but turned out to be cheesy or laughable (I’m looking at you, Fred Williamson).

George Clooney does an admirable job of maintaining his character throughout the movie no matter what bizarre situation he found himself in. Next to Keitel, Clooney was the standout among the cast.

From Dusk Till Dawn was a crazy ride that reverse course rapidly in the middle of the film. It really did feel like two completely different movies crammed together into one. Though far from the best work of either Robert Rodrigues or Quentin Tarantino, this movie is still a entertaining watch.

DailyView: Day 130, Movie 203

In the 1990s, Disney Animation was in a heyday. With the successes of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King, the studio was on a roll. Next up, Disney took a swing at some history, bringing a highly fictionalized story of the real Pocahontas and John Smith to the big screen.

While the animation continued to be at a high level of beauty, much of the film Pocahontas was quite a step down.

John Smith (Mel Gibson) arrived in the New World with his ship’s crew, led by the greedy Governor Ratcliffe (David Ogden Stiers), whose main concern was discovery of gold. As they were constructing the settlement of Jamestown, Smith meets the daughter of an Algonquin chief named Pocahontas (Irene Bedard) and falls in love with the beautiful Indian girl.

Pocahontas had the rebellious spirit, disobeying her father Chief Powhatan (Russell Means), and searching out advice from her grandmother Willow (Linda Hunt), who was a spirit in a tree.

As the tensions continued to rise between the Indians and the white men, Pocahontas and John Smith became closer.

There were a lot of problems with this movie. First, the story itself was sparse. It was nothing that we hadn’t seen before. In fact, there were plenty of beats in Pocahontas that were near copies of earlier Disney movies. The relationship between John Smith and Pocahontas sprung up out of nowhere and became very deep before you knew it. I did not buy the relationship on any deeper level than the initial fascination.

The music of the film was downright boring. There were two exceptions. The Color of the Wind was to become the most well known of the songs in Pocahontas, but it lacked the magic of other Disney classics. The other standout song was Savages, which stood out because I swear, it was an exact copy of The Mob Song from Beauty and the Beast. As I was watching the section including Savages, I was struck how identical the scene and the song were.

Pocahontas was one of the first Disney movies to have the sidekick animal characters not be able to speak. The racoon, the dog, the hummingbird, all had the same type of personification, but the lack of voices made them easily dismissible.

The film is very short and, although it does have some moments of true artistry in the visuals, the rest of the film is very troubling. I have not even gotten into the controversial story elements dealing with Indians or how Pocahontas was turned into such a sexualized being. These issues exist but a better movie would have helped to minimize them. Unfortunately, this was at best a middling effort from the House of Mouse.

DailyView: Day 129, Movie 202

I chose Pan’s Labyrinth on Netflix to review today with the DailyView. Then, when I pulled it up, I realized that it was in Spanish and I would have to read the subtitles in order to watch it. I was not really in the mood to read my movie today so I was about to shut it off and look for something else. However, for some reason, I decided that I would go ahead and play Pan’s Labyrinth and read the subtitles after all.

Boy was that a great choice.

Pan’s Labyrinth, from director Guillermo del Toro, is a masterful fantasy movie that had all the elements of a fairy tale, but one made for adults. The film was graphically frightening at times, with some brutal violence to go along with the magical story.

Set in Spain during the last days of World War II, young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) and her pregnant and ailing mother Carmen  (Ariadna Gil) traveled to the post of Carmen’s new husband, the cruel Spanish captain Vidal (Sergi López), who was here to track down the rebels in the woods. Despite the dangers of traveling at this stage of her pregnancy, he wanted her to be with him before she gave birth to his son.

That night, a fairy approached Ofelia and led her to the faun Pan (Doug Jones), who told Ofelia that she was the daughter of the mystical realm’s king and that she needed to perform three dangerous missions if she wanted to take her place at her father’s side.

The film balances the beauty of the magical world and Ofelia’s efforts to perform her tasks with the the brutality and ugliness of the war and the cruelty of the Captain. While the fairy-tale world had a beauty, there was plenty of gross there too. It wasn’t all unicorns and rainbows. It was more like giant, slobbering toads and child killing trolls with eyeballs in his hands.

Maribel Verdú played the character of Mercedes, a woman whose brother was among the resistance as she worked inside Captain Vidal’s camp. Much of the secondary story with Mercedes was extremely compelling and kept the real world in full view as these magical moments were going on.

The character design is brilliant and beautiful. The film did win Academy Awards in the areas of Art Direction, Cinematography and Makeup, and you can see why. The look of Pan’s Labyrinth is amazing and really holds up in today’s world.

I am so glad that I did not shy away from this master class in storytelling because I had to read some subtitles. Pan’s Labyrinth is an unbelievable accomplishment for Guillermo del Toro and everyone involved in the project. If you haven’t seen it, do it. Es una obra maestra.

DailyView: Day 128, Movie 201

With the calendar flipping to September, the list of movies leaving HBO Max was refreshed and I can target some new films for the DailyView. The first one that I picked off the list is Single White Female. Probably did not make the best choice.

Allison Jones (Bridget Fonda) broke up with and kicked her lover Sam Rawson (Steven Weber) out of their apartment when she discovered that he had cheated on her with his ex-wife. She needed to find a roommate and Hedra Carlson (Jennifer Jason Leigh) answered the ad. Hedra revealed that she was a twin, whose sister died at childbirth. She began to bond with Allison. When Allison and Sam decided to get back together, Hedra began to lose her shit.

This falls into the category of films such as The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, Sleeping with the Enemy, River Wild, Double Jeopardy, The Intruder, and a bunch of Tyler Perry movies. Hedra comes in nice and loving, but she shows her real side as the film moves along. And the real side is crazy. Coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs.

This just becomes ridiculous. So many dumb things happen only to be obstructed by the implausible things. Honestly, as soon as Hedra turned her hair the same color and length as Allison, she would have been out on her ass.

There was nothing new here and nothing made sense. These people were all just horrible characters that are anything but real.

I feel like I am being too negative on this movie. Still, I think it deserves the vitriol. There are some good actors in Single White Female, but they do not seem to be doing much acting. It is over-the-top and silly.

DailyView: Day 127, Movie 200

Can’t sleep.

Tomorrow is also going to be very busy, packed full of things, including Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings in IMAX. So I decided that since I am not succeeding in going to bed, I may as well use my time wisely and get the 200th movie done for the DailyView. That movie is the final two-reel short film for Charlie Chaplin, entitled Pay Day.

As for most of the other Chaplin films that I have watched during the DailyView, Chaplin wrote, directed and starred in the film. He composed the music, which is of huge important in the silent film.

Chaplin, in his typical Little Ramp garb is a laborer in a construction site. After getting paid, Chaplin keeps some of the money from his wife so he could go out drinking. He is able to return to his home just in time to act as if he had just woken up and to go to work.

Chaplin continued his mastery of the slapstick comedic form that he displayed in all of these movies. There is a joke with an elevator at the work site that is pure wonder.

Edna Purviance appeared once again as Chaplin’s regular co-star. Phyllis Allen played Chaplin’s wife.

These Chaplin films on HBO Max have been a godsend for me during the DailyView and, with just a few remaining ones left, I hope I can get by without them.

Now… off to be *fingers crossed*

DailyView: Day 126, Movie 199

Tom Selleck was a huge star in the 1980s, a huge TV star, that is. He tested for the role of Indiana Jones, but was locked in on his Magnum P.I. contract to take the role. Instead, he wound up taking this role in the 1984 sci-fi/action film Runaway. All’s well that ends well for Harrison Ford and the rest of us. Maybe not so much for Tom.

Kiss bassist Gene Simmons starred opposite Selleck as the villain of the piece. His name was Luther. There was not much to him either.

In a futuristic society where robots did most of the common house chores and mundane work, Jack Ramsay (Selleck) was a police officer who specialized in stopping robots that were runaways. One case found one of the robots was not a runaway, but had been tampered with to create a killer robot.

There really is not a ton of sci-fi elements to Runaway, outside of the weaponry used by Luther and the box robots that rolled around the set. Jack had a robot housekeeper called Lois, which was fun, very much like Alexa with wheels.

The film was surprisingly dull considering. There were a few moments of intrigue but most of it was just a cliched cop drama with a few toys.

Selleck’s new partner was Thompson, played by Cynthia Rhodes. Jack had a son named Bobby (Joey Cramer). The scenes between Selleck and Cramer were cute, but fairly simple in depth.

This is not much of a film, feeling longer than the 100 minute run time.