Ootek_Says Reviews

Reggie (2023)

Bring The Brie Because There's A Lot Of Whine In Here

[2/10 · 2 June 2023]

Reggie Jackson is one of the most iconic athletes in the 20th Century. He was self anointed as the "straw that stirs the drink." Well the fizz is nowhere to be found in this flat and monotonous monolog on race and how Reggie was done wrong.

The early sequences of him in Birmingham were quite eye opening and shed some light on the times and even his future team as he came up with guys like Rudi and Fingers in Birmingham, both of whom are in the doc.

But it didn't stop there. For a guy that made hundreds of millions and sported one of the greatest, private car collections, you'd think Jackson was a victim of indentured servitude.

I'm sure Reggie has some great stories but for someone baring it all, they're conspicuously absent.

For someone so dynamic and exciting, Reggie comes across bitter and dare I say, a bit of a bore.

Slap Shot (1977)

Sneaky Feminist Flick

[3/10 · 14 November 2021]

What do toothless goons, middle-aged marital losers, and men who play boy's games that refuse to grow up have in common? They are in the crosshairs of writer, Nancy Dowd as she takes aim at every male character (and men in general) other than Ned Braden (played by Michael Ontkean), the reluctant recruit to Reg's (Paul Newman's) goon squad.

Every man in "Slap Shot" (other than Ontkean) are homophobic (or just plain homos), misogynistic, puerile and outright delusional.

Yeah, we get The Hanson Brothers, and references to "Eddie Shore" and it's all supposed to be yucks and fun and games, but Dowd is pulling one over on everyone.

All the women in the movie have power over men (not vice versa) including the owner of "The Chiefs" who will not go along with Newman's scheme to turn the minor league operation into something bigger. For her, it's just a tax write off. Newman's own ex-wife not only leaves him, but the small town drama behind to set up shop cutting hair in New York. Unlike Reg (Newman), she isn't bound by the illusion of staying young forever. She's the adult to Newman's puer aeternus and makes adult choices leaving Newman to play Captain Hook with the lost boys on ice.

Dowd's greatest achievement is pulling one over on the men who gush over this movie as one of the greatest sports movies of all time.

She thinks you're all idiots and even more so for laughing at her so called comedy, while in reality it's a blistering critique of men and sports, while elevating the female characters in the film at the expense of a one-sided- portrayal of caricatures supposedly cast as men.

Captain Blood (1935)

Not Just A Pirate Classic

[10/10 · 19 May 2018]

If you pay attention to Captain Blood, there's some, uh, interesting things going on. Flynn's character is named "Peter Blood" and the name isn't some random cipher. It's a linguistic embed. Peter Blood is code for engorged p***s. I chuckled at the the thought of the thinly veiled symbolism and moved onto watching film. Then, some interesting things took place in the film, goatee stroking interesting, hmmmm, things.

There's a scene where Flynn/Blood takes off on his horse to treat the Governor of Jamaica who has gout, De Havilland rides beside him. Protruding from the saddle is a rather phallic horn that Flynn lightly strokes. It's a very odd scene, but connects with the title, "Peter Blood."

When Flynn is about to leave the governor after treating him for his gout, the governor pleads with him to stay, and with a wide smile, asks Flynn/Blood to bleed him one more time? Because everyone has a wide eyed smiled when it comes to getting bled.

Upon Flynn's arrival back at the stockade, Jeremy Pitt, has been drawn and quartered. Dr. Blood attends to his wounds and at one point, Pitt played by Ross Alexander is embraced from behind by Blood and has this bizarre soliloquy about seeing ships going in and out, in and out in and out of the harbor. The scene not only has a strange current of homosexuality in it, similar to the previous scene, but Alexander, who was a closeted homosexual would commit suicide in Hollywood, just two years later.

On one level, the film serves as a symbolic vehicle to launch Flynn's swashbuckling career into the minds of millions, replete with symbols of virility and power. These qualities would be associated with Flynn for most of his career.

And on another level, Michael Curtiz and perhaps even Flynn are playing with homosexual undertones. It was later revealed amongst many other hidden aspects of Flynn's life, that he was bi-sexual.

It's truly one of the great pirate films of all time, and Flynn, the Gemini, was flashing at times, a decidedly gay blade.