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Reviews
The Wrong Missy (2020)
I liked this movie better when it was called Something Wild
The premise of the movies is that several 30-40 year old, very hot women are crazy to get with a very 50 something David Spade. Okay, okay, the premise is just a vehicle for a series of raunchy set-ups, but still, Spade is playing a guy too old and too boring to not make this a distraction I tried but couldn't ignore in pretty much every scene. He's having sex more often than a pair of recent newlyweds and yet he's not initiating any of it. But I digress. The primary reason I give this four stars is Lauren Lapkus. She carries any scene that works. Rob Schneider and Jackie Sandler do some funny schtick, but neither are actually part of the story. The rest of the characters just show up and go away with no thought as to actually following any of them or resolve any of their "storylines." If you are going to watch anything David Spade does or any of the Happy Madison productions, then honestly you're not going to be on imdb reading reviews beforehand. If you are thinking about watching this, the least you can do is have very low expectation and have plenty of beer on hand.
The Swimmer (1968)
Still Original Storytelling after 50 years
From the first scene you get a clue that not everything Burt Lancaster's character, Ned Merrill, says is reliable. After that, the plot gets stingy with the clues as what the heck this is all about, but it all builds to the finish. I have watched this movies 5 or 6 times, but it's the first viewing that really does it. Like John Cheever's short story, The Swimmer relies on the enigmatic hero to create the mystery about himself. What you don't know is what creates the interest and the subtext.
The fact that Burt Lancaster has all the charisma and looks of the character he plays is what keeps you watching. You won't find another role that requires an actor to carry every scene at his age wearing no more than a pair of swim trunks. It's an incredible performance on every level.
The more that is explained before you watch it the first time, I believe lessens the great impact of the story telling. After that If you become fascinated like I did with how all this got made in spite of any resemblance to what you would expect from Hollywood in the 60s, you can buy the blu-ray with several hours of interviews and back stories. But I'll warn you, fascinating as the back stories are, they kind of ruin the movie for future viewing. Maybe when I'm old and senile I can watch it again fresh.
Catch-22 (2019)
Rewritten for Episodic TV
I'll try to write a spoiler free review for those who have read (and reread) the book like me and those who haven't. If you haven't, you'll have a fairly straight forward experience. The first several episode are mostly taken from the book with some characters consolidated. Dialog is toned way down from the standpoint that it does not use the repetition and circular arguments that define the book. In the director's commentary track from the first movie, Mike Nichols says that his movie was not initially well received because the characters lacked subtext. The makers of the new series clearly sought to avoid all this by having fewer characters and adapting scenes to have character development happen within the scene. I don't judge them. The plot of the book is just not made for movie/tv adaptation. Joseph Heller would start you in the middle of something and only later, maybe chapters later give you the background that explained it. If not for the absurd, biting conversations, arguments and beratings of the characters would most people be able to stay with it. Consequently. the novel wasn't particularly well received at first, but like the first movie came to be regarded as original in the way it demanded you see life and death the way Yossarian did. Not because you were drawn in, but because the force of this characters logic.
For better or worse, the new series decides to change that and with the reworked scenes from the book early on tries to draw you in, to understand Yossarian by going through the horrors of flying daylight bombing missions. I give it a 9 because, taking the show on it's own terms, I think it does this. By the last couple of episodes, the plot loses the book and starts taking the story where modern script writing would go with these characters. So gone are all the over the top scenes of Rome, the fantastic, the allegorical and all female characters of substance. I count off 1 star for the fact that some big characters/plot line are just left hanging. The funny thing is, that when I think about the movie it seems like more happened in it, than in this 6 episode series.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
A review wherein every comment is a spoiler
With a genre that remained popular in America for almost a century, the Coen Brothers had a lot of sub-genres to draw from. The first three stories all end with hero-dies-end-of story. By the time the fourth story of the gold prospector looks like more of the same, it then provided much need relief. However looking back on The Gal Got Rattled, it was clear this started out as an ending like all the others that needed a set up. Somewhere along the way, this went way beyond the other stories. Unlike everything else, there was actual character development and three distinct acts. I thought perhaps this one would be the feature and the preceding stories were like the serials of old westerns in the 30s and 40s, but in the end it was just hero-dies-end-of-story. I understand that the premise was to use the characters of old Westerns and I don't want to be accused of trying to be so PC I'm spoiling everyone's fun. However, when all of the characters are very, very white, and all of the men are rugged, resolute and mostly grizzled and all of the women are not too bright and dependent, and every Native American is a blood thirsty savage where is the interest or surprise really? How do you make a farce or reinvent a genre while ignoring it's most obvious (at least to us now) faults? The last story brought three old western tropes face to face with the random cruelty of death for the convenience and even pleasure of others. After five stories, hitting us with the theme once again like a bullet to the forehead adds nothing. BTW I never liked Tyne Daly much before this, so that was a plus. I was certainly entertained enough while I watched the whole movie, but these faults just bothered me enough that in the end all I felt was disappointment.
White Reindeer (2013)
A Holiday Movie Not to Watch with the Family
What you need to know ahead of any spoilers, you can pretty much surmise the "adult nature" of some scenes from the cover of a Christmas tree made out of lines of cocaine. The plot will still surprise you, but you'll have a warning. Also, do not watch this movie with your in-laws and probably not your parents either. It's an independent movie and while the lead actress is great and the camera is close on her face for what seems like most of the movie; she carries it off. Some scenes start with that awkward pause that happens in low budget movies, like the actors are still waiting for their cue. Sets are sparsely decorated and all shot on location in small homes, etc. The pacing and transition could have been better. It seemed to jump from scene to scene and many scenes suffer from a lack of a second camera angle. If all that puts you off, then don't watch this one. If you are looking for some originality in storytelling do watch. Another strong point is the sense of place. I've lived in Northern Virginia and even Crystal City briefly and the movie captures not just the suburban nature, but the specific Southern, East Coast conservative style of the area.
**SPOILERS** The lead character prefers dressing in beige, loves to shop, sells real estate, takes comfort in decorating for the holidays, and it would have been so easy to create a stereotype of a naive and uptight person. The shock value of the sex and drugs would have been even greater, but I think that would have been a much more simplistic movie. Instead we don't think of her wild behavior as a reaction to some repressed urges, but as part of whatever her grief process is. Maybe her actions are hard to understand, but not impossible. Also, I wanted more scenes with the news anchor and her husband. They were out way too soon. Overall, the originality of the lead character and the fact that the emotional focus of the story did not get lost in the craziness of the scenes overcomes its lack of production values.