The Grouchy Editor

11Mar

Dead End (2003)

Posted in Books, Movies, TV & Web, Oldies | Leave a comment

I suppose a psychologist can explain the link between humor and horror, and why so many of us seek a mix of the two in our movies. Why, for example, did we want Abbott and Costello to meet Frankenstein? I can’t answer that, but I do know that my favorite parts of the Evil Dead films come when bug-eyed Bruce Campbell ventures into slapstick, Looney Tunes territory.

So what a treat it is to discover Dead End, a bottom-of-the-Walmart-bin gem from 2003. With all of the cheesy, low-budget horror out there, how does a good one like this escape notice?

If you haven’t seen it, and I’m guessing not many people have, the story is this: The Harringtons, composed of all-American mom, dad, son Richard, and daughter Marion, along with Marion’s boyfriend Brad, are on a Christmas Eve road trip to grandmother’s house — or so they think. In reality, or perhaps unreality, they are on a road trip to hell. Things begin to go sour when dad stops to offer a lift to a “lady in white,” an ethereal blonde with a baby who is inexplicably wandering the woods.

The woman is not what she seems, the baby is not what it seems, the road is not what it seems, and before long each Harrington is not what he or she seems.

The plot does veer into horror-film cliché, but Dead End’s wit and comic performances — especially by Ray Wise and Lin Shaye as the bickering, hapless parents — are priceless. It’s inspired lunacy, what you might get if the Bundys from Married … With Children showed up in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Grade: A-

Directors: Jean-Baptiste Andrea, Fabrice Canepa Cast: Ray Wise, Lin Shaye, Mick Cain, Alexandra Holden, Billy Asher, Amber Smith, Karen S. Gregan, Sharon Madden Release: 2003

Watch the Trailer (click here)

09Mar

The Hidden Face

Posted in Books, Movies, TV & Web, Movies | 1 Comment

I’m not sure why, but something that Hollywood used to be pretty good at — the moody, psychological thriller — seems to have migrated south of the border. It’s been 14 years since M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense, and those of us who prefer an O. Henry twist to special effects and gore have had to get used to reading English subtitles.

And so we have The Hidden Face, a Spanish-Colombian production in which a rippling pool of water in a sink is more significant than any number of bloody hatchets — and way more entertaining.

Adrian (Quim Gutierrez) is a rising star with the Bogota Philharmonic Orchestra, a young conductor whose good fortune does not extend to the women in his life. When his live-in girlfriend (Clara Lago) goes missing, Adrian finds solace first in alcohol, and then in the waitress, Fabiana (Martina Garcia), who serves his drinks. But the police are suspicious, and so is Fabiana when things start to go bump in the night at the rented mansion she begins to share with Adrian. Is there a ghost in the house?

The Hidden Face is short, sweet, and satisfying, like an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents with South American scenery and South American nudity. There is nothing profound about it, but it sure beats bloody hatchets. * Grade: B+

* Note: Beware the trailer for this film, which inexcusably reveals a major plot twist.

Director: Andres Baiz Cast: Quim Gutierrez, Martina Garcia, Clara Lago, Maria Soledad Rodriguez, Jose Luis Garcia, Marcela Mar, Humberto Dorado Release: 2011

Watch the Trailer – If You Must (click here)

09Mar

The Weekly Review: March 3 – 9

Posted in Weekly Reviews | Leave a comment

I watched the premiere of Welcome to Myrtle Manor on TLC. There. I said it.

Heaven help me, but I enjoyed the damned thing. Pictured above is series regular Roy. Roy is a hairdresser. Pictured below are Myrtle Manor residents Anne (left) and Miss Peggy. Miss Peggy is an exhibitionist, and Anne is … well, Anne. Let’s all hope and pray that there are no tornado scares at the trailer park.

*****

Let me see if I have this straight. Decades after the Vietnam War, Jane Fonda still gets spat on by angry veterans and denounced in Congress, but Dennis Rodman gets a pass for his love-fest (above) with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un?

*****

OK, America, let’s go ahead and legalize discrimination against smokers. But while we’re at it, let’s also make sure that your fat husband can’t get a job and your alcohol-guzzling wife gets fired, because they are making the cost of my health insurance go up.

*****

Quote of the Week

“John Boehner can barely control his caucus.” — MSNBC’s Karen Finney. I know how Boehner must feel, because there are times I can barely control my caucus.

*****

More good news for job-seekers: They are still seeking a proofreader at The Huffington Post.

05Mar

Reviews in Short: March 2013

Posted in Books, Movies, TV & Web, Reviews in Short | Leave a comment

Juan of the Dead

Senseless and silly, but with a goofy kind of charm, Juan presents zombies invading Cuba with the fate of the country left to a small band of ragtag Havanans. The zombies are rumored to be part of a nefarious plot by the United States (the walking dead are referred to as “dissidents”), but this movie is much too wacky and good-natured to concern itself with politics. Release: 2011 Grade: B

*****

Cache

For most of its two hours, Cache is a gripping drama. Someone is secretly taping events and places related to a French family, then sending the videos and disturbing letters to the increasingly paranoid parents. And now I’m going to break a cardinal rule and give away the film’s resolution: There isn’t one. I spoil the ending because there’s a difference between thought-provoking enigma and simple cop-out. Cache, by failing to provide answers to its central mystery, is a frustrating tease. Release: 2005 Grade: B

*****

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

It’s choppy and unpolished, but there’s a good reason that Ridgemont is a high-school comedy classic. Amy Heckerling’s film (scripted by Cameron Crowe) features one unforgettable character after another. Sean Penn’s pot-fried Spicoli is legendary, and many a male has freeze-framed Phoebe Cates’s, uh, poolside charms, but repeat viewings are a hoot thanks to Ray Walston, Judge Reinhold, and too many others to mention here. This ain’t no Porky’s; yes, there are sophomoric hijinks, but there are also moments of genuine heart. Release: 1982 Grade: A-

*****

The Searchers

Psst … don’t tell Searchers fans like Martin Scorsese, Curtis Hanson, or pretty much any critic who votes in “best of” lists that I’m saying this, but John Ford’s famous western is — at least in some respects — badly dated, with some truly cornball acting and key scenes that don’t ring true. The movie does, however, showcase John Wayne at his orneriest and some spectacular outdoor photography shot at Utah’s Monument Valley. Release: 1956 Grade: B

*****

Zero Dark Thirty

The first 90 minutes of Kathryn Bigelow’s docudrama aren’t so much about the hunt for Osama bin Laden as they are about the hunt for bin Laden’s courier — an interesting, but not particularly compelling, historical footnote. The other problem with Zero is Jessica Chastain, an actress who lacks the strength of personality to convince as the tenacious CIA agent who locates the infamous terrorist. Claire Danes does this sort of thing much better on Homeland. But the climactic raid on bin Laden’s compound is tense and worth the wait. Release: 2012 Grade: B

02Mar

The Weekly Review: February 24 – March 2

Posted in Weekly Reviews | Leave a comment

Oscars Wrap-Up

Adele picked up an Oscar for her song from the movie Skyfall. I’m thinking of calling the picture above, with Adele towering over Kristin Chenoweth, “Sunblock.”

Lending a touch of glamour to the proceedings, Oscar winners Jennifer Lawrence, above left, and Anne Hathaway, right, posed for photographers after the big show.

I guess that when you have two gay guys producing the Academy Awards telecast, there is no way to avoid god-awful musical productions, but geez. Perhaps they thought they were throwing a bone to heterosexual men with their “We Saw Your Boobs” number (above), but even that fell … uh, flat.

It takes a lot to steal the show from Adele, who sang the Oscar-winning “Sunblock,” but Barbra Streisand (“The Way We Were”) and especially Shirley Bassey (above, belting out “Goldfinger”) managed to do just that.

*****

Thank God that poor, downtrodden Ben Affleck got an Oscar so that we can all relax and stop feeling sorry for him. Ben was inspirational when he told us how life had been a struggle for him, but that we should all follow his example and just keep on fighting. And when the cameras cut to Ben’s movie-star wife shedding movie-star tears in the audience, I had to reach for some tissues. Well, OK, so it wasn’t a tissue, but brown barf-bags are also made from trees.

*****

Quotes of the Week:

“At the time you were kissing Mr. Burns’s lips, did you know he was dead or not?” — prosecutor’s question for Jodi Arias at her murder trial on Monday.

The topic on Wednesday’s Red Eye was working from home. Bill Schulz said, “The alone time does tend to make one odd … you watch a lot of weird stuff.” Yes, like Red Eye at 2 o’clock in the morning on Wednesday.

*****

I’m having trouble following this “Blade Runner” business in Australia, possibly because it’s taking place in South Africa, not Australia. The “Blade Runner,” legless Oscar Pistorius, is on trial for killing a model. First, we got the shocking news that the trial prosecutor will also be tried for homicide. Then we were again coldcocked, this time with reports that Pistorius’s brother will also be tried for homicide. I fully expect to hear, any day now, that the judge is accused of some murderous rampage.

*****

Apparently, we were all supposed to be wowed over the retirement of that Catholic creep in Rome. Why this pedophile protector isn’t moving out of the Vatican and into a prison cell is the real story, but you’d never guess that from fawning media coverage.

*****

Lots of exciting news at The Huffington Post. They still have an opening for a proofreader, and secondly … well, here is my hopeful post in their comments section:

*****

At some point, haven’t we all?

02Mar

Cold Sweat

Posted in Books, Movies, TV & Web, Movies | 2 Comments

Cold Sweat is one of those horror flicks in which people constantly do illogical and stupid things — like hiding where the bad guys can (or should) find them, or failing to locate the front door — and in which the plot degenerates from the implausible to the silly to batshit crazy. But because director Adrian Garcia Bogliano is on top of his game, bringing energy, mischief, and style to his movie, Cold is eminently watchable.

Bogliano has said that he wanted to lace his horror with a little history, reminding young Argentineans that there are real-life bad guys walking the streets of their country: aging holdovers from a military dictatorship that conducted a reign of terror in Argentina dating to the 1970s. To that end, the villains in Cold are — I’m guessing you haven’t seen this before — two geezers living in a ramshackle house in the heart of Buenos Aires.

And what sort of skullduggery are these deranged coots up to? “Catfishing,” of all things. Locating young, attractive women on the Internet, the codgers lure these gullible girls to their creepy abode, sprinkle a nitroglycerine derivative onto their bodies, and then force them to … solve math formulas on a chalkboard! (Please refer here to the opening sentence of this review, i.e., people doing stupid and illogical things.)

It’s nonsensical, but if you’re willing to simply absorb Cold Sweat on a visceral level, it’s a fast-moving hoot. Bogliano knows how to pace a thriller, and visually his movie resembles The Texas Chainsaw Massacre redone as music video.

Oh, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t credit Bogliano with one of the more creative means of getting an actress to go nude: Apparently, once your body is sprinkled with an ultra-sensitive nitroglycerin derivative, your wisest survival course is to completely disrobe. I did mention the words “stupid” and “illogical,” did I not? Grade: C+

Director: Adrian Garcia Bogliano Cast: Facundo Espinosa, Marina Glezer, Camila Velasco, Omar Musa, Omar Gioiosa, Noelia Vergini, Daniel de la Vega, Victoria Witemburg Release: 2010

Watch the Trailer (click here)

27Feb

Totally MAD

Posted in Books, Books, Movies, TV & Web | Leave a comment

What, me worry? Yes, unfortunately. This coffee-table sampling of 60 years of MAD magazine disappoints on a number of fronts. Many of the selected articles are incomplete; the type is often impossible to read without a magnifying glass; and, last but not least, there is not enough Don Martin. There can never be enough Don Martin.

Another problem, probably one that could not be helped, is that much of MAD’s humor is topical – and topical humor tends to lose bite over time. Marlon Brando jokes from the 1950s don’t quite cut it in 2013.

It might have been a better idea to do what Dark Horse Comics did with old issues of Creepy and Eerie, and publish a series of books containing entire issues of MAD; if they had done so, I would have been happy to buy editions representing, say, 1964 to 1970. But I don’t want to be too harsh on “the usual gang of idiots,” because there are a lot of funny bits in this 256-page collection, and nostalgia seekers will surely find some nuggets.

24Feb

Argo

Posted in Books, Movies, TV & Web, Movies | Leave a comment

Ben Affleck’s moderately entertaining Argo is the trendy pick to walk off with a Best Picture award at tonight’s Oscars, and if it does, it will be a bigger con than the great escape his movie depicts.

Argo, loosely based on a joint effort between Canada and the CIA to smuggle six Americans out of Tehran in 1980, is a perfectly serviceable blend of comedy and suspense – but no more than that. The movie doesn’t come to life until its third act, when Affleck, as real-life agent Tony Mendez, has some tense moments shepherding his American charges (posing as filmmakers in Iran to scout locations) through Tehran’s hostile airport security.

Prior to that, we sit through 90 minutes of mostly yawn-inducing exposition in which CIA spooks make plans and Hollywood players (Alan Arkin and John Goodman) crack jokes. Don’t make the mistake that I did, expecting this film to be a comic thriller, with the emphasis on “comic”; for the most part, Argo takes itself oh-so seriously, with Arkin and Goodman on hand, sporadically, to contribute a few wisecracks.

It’s no spoiler to reveal that big Ben and the Americans win the day. I won’t carp about the unlikely, nick-of-time developments (pick up the phone! pick up the phone!) that add to the suspense, because that’s what thrillers do. And I also won’t complain about the climactic chase scene, which reportedly has no basis in reality, because hey, that’s also what thrillers do.

But the epilogue is one of those absurd “everybody stand up and clap” clichés that Hollywood loves to stage – even though, in this case, nobody actually claps. (Wait, I double-checked; yes, they do.) For no apparent reason, Ben’s estranged wife takes him back, and Ben gets a macho backslap from the boss. God forbid they also give him an Oscar. Grade: B

Director: Ben Affleck Cast: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, John Goodman, Victor Garber, Tate Donovan, Clea DuVall, Scoot McNairy, Rory Cochrane, Christopher Denham Release: 2012

Watch Trailers and Clips (click here)

24Feb

The Weekly Review: February 17 – 23

Posted in Weekly Reviews | Leave a comment

“He called me a fucking idiot.”

— Jodi Arias testifying at her murder trial on Wednesday. Her colorful language somehow slipped past HLN’s censors, causing me whiplash as I sat at my computer and prompting HLN anchor Ryan Smith to apologize to surprised viewers.

*****

Taylor Swift revenge songs … Taylor Swift revenge dress …. Am I the only one who’s beginning to wonder if the problem here might be Taylor Swift, and not the endless series of ex-boyfriends she seems hell-bent on trashing?

*****

If I continue to have this problem with ConsumerAffairs, do I report it to ConsumerAffairs?

*****

Retailers often emphasize sports when they promote their big-screen, high-definition TVs. I think a better selling point would be the programming on the Science channel. Nothing quite like watching computer-generated asteroids hurtling toward Earth, or supernovas bursting in crystal-clear detail on shows like How the Universe Works and Through the Wormhole.

This story is not particularly newsworthy, but it is a good excuse to post a cool outer-space picture, so here you go.

22Feb

Girls

Posted in Books, Movies, TV & Web, TV | Leave a comment

Thoughts from a Middle-Aged Male About a Show Meant for …

Well, Not Him

Lena Dunham’s Girls attracts an awful lot of media attention for a show with modest ratings. According to its critics, the HBO series: fails the diversity test; celebrates as role models four young women living in New York City who are self-centered and do little but whine about their (privileged) lives; frequently foists upon the unsuspecting viewer the unwelcome spectacle of a naked Dunham, a big girl who has no business taking her clothes off.

The show’s champions, especially television critics, say Girls is groundbreaking TV and Dunham is a genius.

Clearly, the world demands some impartial reflections from a middle-aged male, such as me. My impressions after binge-viewing the first five episodes:

One: At its core, there is nothing particularly new about the show’s themes. Girls just want to find love … girls just want to have babies … girls just want R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

It’s the manner in which those themes are addressed that gives the show its bite. Hannah (Dunham) and her roommate Marnie (Allison Williams) enjoy watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show … but it’s hard to imagine Mary and Rhoda cracking jokes at an abortion clinic, as Hannah and Marnie do, or engaging in kinky sex play to get their boyfriends off, as Hannah does.

Two: Unlike Mary and Ted and Mr. Grant, the main characters on Girls are not overtly lovable. I would call them “interesting.” Hannah and company are reaping the rewards of feminism — but they are also abusing them. Casual sex and potluck drugs are de rigueur for these gals (their boyfriends are no better).

Three: There really isn’t all that much nudity — at least not in the first five episodes — contrary to the sniggering comments found at some Web sites.

Four: The girls don’t strike me as all that spoiled or that privileged. If you’re going to criticize their characters, it would be for their immaturity — something I certainly never experienced. Did you?

Five: There are no minorities in major roles. Big deal.

Six: There is a lot of crude behavior and language. Not a good thing, but last time I checked out the real world, there is a lot of crude behavior and language.

Bottom (middle-aged) Line: I like the show. It’s not the work of brilliance that some critics maintain, but it is well-written, funny, and unpredictable. Grade: B+

Creator: Lena Dunham Cast: Lena Dunham, Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke, Zosia Mamet, Adam Driver, Alex Karpovsky Premiere: 2012

Watch the Trailer or Episodes (click here)