| "Slap
Shot" (1977) Slap Shot is the
third film Paul Newman did with George Roy Hill
(Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting
were the first two). Newman is a player-coach of
the worst minor league hockey team in the league.
He is simultaneously trying to get back with his
estranged wife, seduce the wife of his best
player, and find a way to make his team win. The
pressure increases when the town mill closes, and
it is announced that the team will be disbanded
at the end of the season. He discovers that
overly physical play not only pleases fans, but
wins games. He also starts a rumor that the team
will be sold to a group of investors hoping that
it will come true.
This is not so much a film about hockey as it
is about hockey players. It was written by Nancy
Dowd (her first) and is based on conversations
with her brother who was a professional hockey
player. She traveled with his team, and he taped
real locker room and bus conversations so she
could make the film realistic. In fact, there was
some criticism of the rough language in the film.
Newman, who played amateur hockey, did nearly all
of his own skating, only bringing in a double for
some fancy stick work that was beyond his
ability. Supporting actor Michael Ontkean
actually played minor league hockey. The exposure
is from Melinda Dillon, who plays the estranged
wife of a hockey player who ends up in bed with
Newman. If we ever have a poll for best
performance by a nipple in a supporting role, she
is a good candidate. On one level, this film is
mostly fun and has some hilarious moments, but it
also speaks to the controversy over whether or
not violence has a place in hockey. Most people,
including me, licked this film.
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Melinda Dillon (1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6)
"Reindeer
Games"
Reindeer Games is everything Scoopy said it
was and less. The plot twists came totally out of
left field, it was impossible to tell if anyone
actually liked anyone else in the story, Theron
had three love interests, and no chemistry with
any of them. The nearly constant gunfire did
manage to keep me awake though. A little
character development would have gone a long ways
toward making this a decent film. I have the
feeling that the "soliloquy at
gunpoint" to explain the story at the end
was there because the director was as tired of
this one at that point as I was. Still, if you
like action films, this might be an ok way to
consume a bag of microwave
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Charlize Theron (1,
2,
3,
4,
5)
|
| "Hollow
Man" Yeah, I'm sure you're
expecting this to be a cinema classic, right?
Hint: it was directed by Paul Verhoeven. Think
"Showgirls". Actually, I went to see it
with my kids, and we all kind of enjoyed it,
although a bad sign is that they thought it was
kind of dumb. This is a leading indicator of true
dumbness because they're impressed with the
sophistication of The Smurfs.
Contrary to your expectations generated by the
title, this is not a biography of John Tesh, but
rather yet another version of The Invisible Man.
Possibly with a bit of autobiography of director
Paul Verhoeven, since invisibility was his
fondest wish after he read the reviews of
Showgirls.
The plot is the usual mad scientist crap. The
research is ready to test on humans, and the mad
scientist decides to test it on himself. And he
doesn't tell the congressional oversight
committee that he is ready for that stage. Then
he delivers such classic lines as "they say
I'm mad, but I'll show them, I'll show them all.
Mua-ha-ha-ha". Actually, this isn't from the
movie but is an actual quote from Verhoeven's
life, when he was discussing his decision to make
a gazillion dollar movie starring Elizabeth
Berkley. Anyway, then the scientist/girlfriend
says "be afraid, be very afraid". Then
they muse about what might have happened if he
had used his genius for good instead of evil, and
whether man is meant to challenge God. Well,
maybe not that bad a rip-off, but you get the
point. The usual horror cliches.
All the scientists, good or bad, drive very
expensive automobiles and live in luxury, and are
uniformly handsome and in great physical
condition, despite spending 22 hours per day with
their test tubes.
Kevin Bacon apparently has discovered the
Fountain of Youth as well as the invisibility
serum, because he looks about the same as he did
in Animal House. The serum makes Bacon a for-real
mad scientist, so he gains deranged murderous
impulses to go with his previous God complex, and
he's just a big Freudian mess to begin with. Then
the invisibility thing gives him absolute power,
and he gets even crazier, and starts raping and
killing and pillaging small Eastern European
villages, and refusing to share his plunder with
his fellow invisible freebooters. But I'm sure
you know that in the end the handsome good
scientists triumph over the handsome evil
scientist, and they escape the flaming
underground bunker through an elevator shaft.
The runaway elevator stops three inches from
their heads, the dead mad scientist is not really
dead yet ... thereby adding the usual action
cliches to the horror cliches. They did forget
the thunderstorms and the ticking bomb that stops
at 0:07, but I'm sure those will be in the
sequel.
So what's good about it if it has all those
corny cliches? I'll show you. I'll show you all,
mua-ha-ha-ha. Well, it isn't really good at all,
now that I think about it. I mean you won't
confuse it with "Henry V". But it does
have Rhona Mitra and Kim Dickens showing their
breasts (Bacon slips off Dickens' blouse when she
sleeps, and he peeks in on Mitra), and it has
some absolutely great invisibility effects. The
best effect, by far, is the bodies appearing and
disappearing on the operating table as the
visibility or invisibility potions take effect.
Very cool stuff, although not really worth the
number of times they repeat it. But it's must
viewing if you have an anatomy final coming up.
The reviewer ratings:
Mitra
(1,
2)
Dickens
"Avanti"
(1972), from Johnny Web and TomCat
This is one of those fluff comedies from Billy
Wilder (Some Like it Hot, The Apartment, Irma la
Douce) and his favorite star, Jack Lemmon. Most
of these were made in the late 50's and early
60's, but Wilder and Lemmon still had some energy
in the 1972 anti-establishment era, although by
then this style really seemed quaint compared to
Altman's M.A.S.H. and some of the other new
filmmakers of the time. Even though it was
old-fashioned even in its own time, and is
therefore quite dated now, it is a sweeter comedy
than Wilder's usual fare, and the characters are
real and vulnerable enough to make the film still
quite watchable.
Jack Lemmon plays a stiff American businessman
who goes to Italy to claim his father's body.
Seems that daddy died with his mistress, and
Lemmon eventually ends up falling in love with
the daughter of the mistress (Juliet Mills). The
humor is mainly based on the endless red tape of
the Italian bureaucracy, and Lemmon's typically
mannered egocentricity.
The really good news: some very nice nudity
from Juliet Mills.
Mills. (TomCat's TV captures, not from DVD,
put pretty darned good!) (1, 2, 3, 4)
"Boccaccio
'70" (1962), from Johnny Web and TomCat
There is really nothing much to see here, but
this scene is dear to my heart, because it was
the first time I ever saw a naked woman on a
movie screen. My friend, The Wily Duck, and I
snuck into the theater. My mom dropped us off at
another theater (playing "Darby
O'Gill", if memory serves) around the
corner, and we went to see this film instead. In
those days, there was no sophisticated system to
keep 13 year olds out of the theaters. We just
paid for our tickets and got in. I suppose the
movie would be rated PG if re-released today, but
we thought this was some seriously hot shit. It
was a pretty decent film. There were several
unrelated stories based on Boccaccio's tales.
This segment was directed by Luchino Visconti,
and was typically dreary, but two other segments
directed by Fellini and DeSica were great fun,
especially the Fellini segment in which a poster
of a giant-breasted Anita Ekberg came to life.
Romy Schneider, who probably challenges Robert
Goulet for the record of getting the most career
mileage out of one successful role. In her case
the empress, "Sissi", whom she
portrayed in about eleven or twelve thousand
movies. OK, maybe it was really only three films.
To her credit, she never sang "If ever I
would leave you" in any of them. (1,
2,
3,
4)
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