DailyView: Day 353, Movie 502

Cedar Rapids is a comedy film that matched up Ed Helms with John C. Reilly with a lot of crude humor. Typically, these kind of films, wit lots of drug and sex jokes, are not up my alley. Cedar Rapids, however, has some charm to it and Ed Helms gives a solid lead performance that helps raise the level of film for me.

After a surprising death, Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) is sent to an insurance convention by his boss Bill (Stephen Root) to try and gain another Two-Diamond award for their company. Tim is shy and withdrawn so when he gets matched up with the wild Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly), things go haywire. After a lot of drugs and alcohol, Tim has to go to see the president (Kurtwood Smith) to keep his job.

As I said, this film has a charm about it, mainly from Ed Helms. John C. Reilly is not as over-the-top as he normally is, probably because he is playing opposite the quieter Ed Helms, so I could handle his performance better than when he plays opposite someone like Will Farrell who is doing the exact same schtick.

Anne Heche played a female agent at the convention who connected with Tim. She was married and had children but she used the convention in Cedar Rapids as her free time.

Sigourney Weaver is in the film as well, but she is grossly underused in a role that could be anyone. If you have Sigourney Weaver, you should really use her more.

The story is fairly typical for this kind of a film and does not miss too many beats. It is predictable as it moves along, but with the enjoyable cast, the film slips by.

Overall, Cedar Rapids is fine for what it is. It can be somewhat offensive at times, but there are some good laughs and Ed Helms does all the heavy lifting to make this a fun film.

DailyView: Day 352, Movie 501

The dangers of picking up a hitchhiker is illustrated in this film noir from the 1950s starring  Edmond O’Brien, William Talman and Frank Lovejoy.

The hour and ten minute film was on Amazon Prime and was in black and white. It was a fictionalized version of the Billy Cook murder spree and became the first noir film directed by a female Isa Lupino (Wikipedia).

Emmett Myers (William Talman) is wanted for his murders of people that picked him up as a hitchhiker. When two friends, Roy Collins (Edmond O’Brien) and Gilbert Bowen (Frank Lovejoy) pick up Myers, they find themselves hostages held at gunpoint for a trip into Mexico.

The three actors had good chemistry with each other, which was important for this to work. However, I had doubt that the two men held at gunpoint couldn’t have found a moment to escape or to overpower Myers along their trip. The three men did not have a lot of character depth and could have used some better dialogue between the three of them.

However, the film looked good for the time it was filmed and the use of the Mexican scenery helped to create a positive environment.

I would have liked more (especially at the end of the film – need some falling action here), but what was here works for what it is.

DailyView: Day 352, Movie 500

Today’s movie achieved a major goal of the DailyView. I had set a goal to reach 500 movies watched during the 365-day DailyView. I had not made it an official goal, but, truthfully, I would have considered it a fail if I had not reached 500. However, that’s not an issue since #500 is Dog Day Afternoon.

Dog Day Afternoon was one of the classic films that I had never seen before and I have to say that it is fantastic.

Directed by Sidney Lumet, Dog Day Afternoon featured a spectacular performance by Al Pacino as bank robber Sonny Wortzik, who, along with his co-conspirator Sal Naturile (John Cazale), attempted to rob the First Brooklyn Savings Bank. Things go awry immediately and what should have been an easy plan turned into a long hostage situation.

Based on a true story, Dog Day Afternoon is filled with themes including the way the media portrays news, the reaction of the public to anti-heroes, LGBTQ + themes, family troubles, police resentment, the price of fame or infamy, and the heartbeat of New York City.

This is such an outlandish situation filled with real life moments. I loved the secondary characters among the hostages. They did not respond the way you would anticipate they would respond and, while none of them got real in-depth development, they were a fascinating group of people.

The film featured a surprising and tender relationship between Sonny and  Leon Shermer (Chris Sarandon) which had to be controversial in a film from the 1970s.

It was also a surprisingly funny movie. There were times that I thought it was going to veer into the realm of parody, however, it was the strength of the performances from Pacino and Charles Durning, as Sergeant Eugene Moretti that kept it from becoming a farce.

It was intriguing how the film turned the criminal Sonny into a character that you could root for. Honestly, the ending of the film made me kind of sad because of that. I do love the fact that we had a real fully developed character as the criminal and not just a bad vs. good situation. Sonny Wortzik and, to a lesser extent, Sal Naturile are complex characters that have a variety of motivations and mannerisms. I should like to shout out Sully Boyar as bank manager Mulvaney, who does a remarkable job in the film as well.

The film was thoroughly entertaining and filled with great performances from amazing characters. The conversation between Sonny and Leon was reportedly mostly ad-libbed and brought such a humanity to what could have been filled with stereotypes, but it was beautifully done.

Dog Day Afternoon was a wonderful film for #500.

DailyView: Day 351, Movie 499

Today’s DailyView is Rian Johnson’s directorial debut. It was a film that I had never heard of, but I saw it mentioned by film critic William Bibbiani on Twitter as one of the better whodunits around. I like a good whodunit so I added it to my list and rented it on Vudu.

Brick is a neo-noir mystery film from 2005 that featured Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a high school student who discovered the body of Emily (LOST’s Emilie de Ravin), the girl he was in love with but who had broken up with him. Gordon-Levitt’s character, Brendan, decided that he would be the person to solve her murder, not the police, and so he hid her body and went about injecting himself into the world of drug running that had gotten her killed.

This film was well constructed and kept the viewer thinking about what had happened through the whole plot. Joseph Gordon-Levitt was excellent as Brendan, who took quite a beating as the film progressed. Laura (Nora Zehetner), tied to the drug runners, was becoming closer with Brendan, despite his doubt in her. Matt O’Leary played The Brain, the kid Brendan went to in order to figure out what he could. Lukas Haas played The Pin, the head of the drug runners in the school who Brendan tried to get in tight with. The Pin’s muscle, Tug (Noah Fleiss) reacted to most situations violently and attacked Brendan several times as Brendan continued to try and ingratiate himself into the Pin’s world.

All the performances were strong, but they were all anchored by Gordon-Levitt. He does a fantastic job of showing Brendan’s dedication to finding out who put Emily in the line of fire.

There was a great use of dialogue in the film and the writing was solid. I enjoyed seeing the noir based, for the most part, in the high school setting with high school students behind the issues. You could tell that Rian Johnson had that something special that would lead to success.

DailyView: Day 350, Movie 498

Day 350 of the year-long DailyView has arrived and I make it with a documentary/historical drama of one of the great tragedies of human memory: the mass suicide (and murder) at Jonestown by cult leader Jim Jones where over 950 people, whether voluntarily or by force, drank poisoned Kool-Aid or were injected by poison. That number included around 300 children.

This documentary included some of the actual videos and tapes of Jim Jones and his followers, interviews with the few survivors and escapees, and reenactments of the last days of the cult.

While some of the reenactments were not necessarily the greatest acting, there is enough horrendous moments included here that make this a challenging watch.

The story of what happened at the People’s Temple was both fascinating and horrific. The tragedy only amplified by the use of the real pictures and words of some of the victims.

In particular, the words of Jim Jones’s own son, Stephan Jones, about his memories of the time and of his father’s psychosis.

Even with the iffy dramatization, the story was emotional and powerful to watch. It is amazing how someone can talk people into doing what he wants them to do, whether or not it is in their best interest. Especially when we are talking about walking your children up and having them take poison and watching them die, some times in painful ways.

This is a lesson to us all about charismatic leaders and to be wary of those who may not be completely stable.

DailyView: Day 349, Movie 497

If you were after one of those old fashion Disney action adventures of a girl and her wolf, The Journey of Natty Gann will be right up your alley.

Set during the Great Depression when jobs were scarce and difficult to find, The Journey of Natty Gann followed young tomboy Natty Gann ( Meredith Salenger) on her desperate trip to reunite with her father (Ray Wise), who had to take a job 2,000 miles away from her in the Pacific Northwest. Along the way, she was befriended by a wild wolf and the pair of them go on several adventures on her path to find her father.

She also came across grifter Harry (John Cusack) who helped her jump several trains. John Cusack’s role is not as large as one might expect. The film is certainly Meredith Salenger’s and she does a very good job of being the lead protagonist. She never feels whiny, as some Disney characters tend to be. She and the wolf which she named Wolf, have a nice relationship, even if they come about it in a somewhat easy manner.

As a Disney film, you kind of already have an idea of where this was heading, but, to be fair, there is a scene where Natty was picked up by a guy in a truck who tried to force himself on her. Thankfully, Wolf is much more powerful than window glass, but I was surprised by the implication of the creepy guy in a truck in a Disney film.

The film sort of skirts around the dangers and the death that accompanied the trip, leaving much of it to the imagination of the viewers. It is in the film, it is just not front and center.

Ray Wise is always good, but I have to admit that I kept thinking that this film is not too far from when he would be wrapping Laura Palmer in plastic. That is, of course, my own problem and not a critique of this movie.

The Journey of Natty Gann is improbable, but fun. A good family film that has some darkness hidden inside it.

DailyView: Day 348, Movie 496

Werewolves, at least, sort of werewolves, are all over the British horror film Howl from 2015, directed by Paul Hyett. They certainly play with the mythology of the creatures, which is fine of course. However, the basically reduce one of the classic monsters into nothing more than a slasher flick.

A group of people aboard a train are placed in mortal danger when their train breaks down in the woods that happens to be filled with human eating werewolves.

That is basically it. Exactly what you think will happen, happens. The group of people have absolutely zero characters I wanted to root for. They were all nothing more than the typical victim character with, perhaps, one or so, defining characteristics trying to pass them off as developed charatcers.

There is not a single one of the characters that I gave a hoot for and, much like the slasher movies I referenced earlier, you just set them up to see how they are killed.

That would still be okay if the werewolves did not look as silly as they did. There was very little horrific about the creatures. They looked so much better when they kept them in the shadows without revealing their appearance. Once the brought the werewolf into the light, it stopped any further tension.

There was little difference between these werewolves and the classic zombies, with the exception of the howling and some extra hair.

I found this to be quite disappointing and uninteresting.

DailyView: Day 347, Movie 495

As a lifelong Dodger baseball fan, when I came across this ESPN 30 for 30 documentary on one of my all-time favorite pitchers, Fernando Valenzuela, it immediately went onto my watchlist.

Fernando Nation was a 51 minute doc on the history of one of the great phenoms in baseball history. Fernando Valenzuela was a 19-year old sensation when he started opening day for Los Angeles in 1981. The Dodgers initial opening day starter, Jerry Reuss, was not ready for the season to start and Fernando was given the ball in his first career start. He threw a complete game shutout against the Houston Astros and Fernandomania kicked off.

The doc looked back upon the racial troubles of Mexican-Americans in LA, especially with the ejection of several people from Chavez Ravine, the location where Walter O’Malley wanted to build his new Dodger Stadium for when the Dodgers moved west from Brooklyn. That was an interesting piece of history that I was unaware of, but that did not surprise me.

In his rookie season, Fernando started 8-0, with a ridiculous 0.4 ERA. He threw a bunch of complete games and helped lead the Dodgers to the World Series in that strike-shortened 1981 season.

They covered the rookie season fully, but the years post it was not covered as much. The doc looked at the contract dispute between LA and Fernando, and there were some ugly moments, including someone from immigration saying that if Fernando did not pitch for LA, he would be asked to return to Mexico.

The documentary was a great look at a pitcher who was a worldwide sensation and one who had to face difficulties as an idol for the Hispanic population of, not only Los Angeles, but of the world.

DailyView: Day 347, Movie 494

Summer of 84 felt like it was one specific type of genre film and then it swerved into a whole different type without any warning. I guess I should have known since it was on Shudder that it would be considered a horror movie, but I did not expect how things developed.

This absolutely felt like those 1980s flicks where a group of kids pursue the villain and/or solve the mystery at the end, films like The Goonies, Super 8, Monster Squad, It, Stand by Me. Sure, the topic was darker, but the feel of the film was very much similar.

Over-imaginative teen Davey Armstrong (Graham Verchere) suspected that his neighbor, police officer Wayne Mackey (Rich Sommer) was a serial killer who had been targeting kids for years. Though he had his suspicions, Davey had no proof so he and his friends started to spy on Mackey over their summer searching for the evidence that they needed to bring their theory to Davey’s parents.

The best part of the movie was the fact that I was never sure which way the film was going to go. There was certainly a possibility that Davey was correct and that Mackey was the killer, but there were also hints and nods that Mackey was not the killer and that Davey was mistaken. I actually switched my thoughts several times throughout the film and was not sure until a certain moment occurred. I love not being 100% sure and being kept off balance by the story.

Graham Verchere did a fantastic job as Davey. He was a perfect protagonist, someone everybody could relate with and the personification of the innocence of youth. His friends were all great too, with each getting something extra added to their characters as the story went along to provide each of them more depth. Davey’s best friend Woody (Caleb Emery), Faraday (Cory-Gruter Andrew), and Eats (Judah Lewis) spoke like real teenage boys with too many hormones to think straight. Each of the boys had something to build the characters on so they were not just tropes.

There was also the older and beautiful girl next door Nikki (Tiera Skovbye) gave Davey a foil to bounce things off even while driving Davey’s friends crazy with her beauty.

While all of these characters fit nicely into the group of kids and a mystery genre film, Summer of 84 took a drastic turn at the end. At first, the ending felt anticlimactic after building to a certain scene, but then the film went seriously dark and left the viewers with a gut punch of a conclusion that I did not see coming.

I do not think the film needed to be set in 1984. There was a Reagan-Bush yard sign and a reference to Steven Spielberg, but, after that, there was not much use for this as a setting. Perhaps it was set in 1984 to prevent the use of cell phones and such, which does ratchet up the tension in several moments where a cell phone could have been helpful. I think the setting was more for the ambiance of the film genre than for anything else.

Summer of 84 was engaging throughout, perhaps a tad long, but flipped the script in the third act to really earn its horror classification. The film featured great performances from its young cast and an ending that will stick with you.